(note: please forgive the brashness expressed in this article – my need for being with reality is bigger than any desire to be overly polite . . .) “Fuck you!” Those were the words that cut off my recent attempt-to-connect sentence coming out of my mouth: “Sweetie, let’s try talking abo-” As the door slammed behind my just-turned 13-year-old son, I tried picking my jaw off…
There I was, inside a circle of 30 workshop participants. I’ve never liked being in the spotlight, never saw myself teaching, and I was feeling quite nervous and scared. And then, within the span of about one minute, I felt calm, safe, and totally impassioned about moving on. What could have brought about such change so quickly? How do I within seconds achieve clarity, connection and…
I was experiencing mixed emotions in anticipation of the day both my children stopped believing in Sinterklaas. On the one hand, I didn’t want the joy, the excitement, the “magic” to end for them. On the other hand, I was looking forward to the day I could have far more honest conversations with them, experience less pressure concerning filling their shoes AND to give them something…
Ahh, playground politics! A friend of mine recently said to me, “I didn’t get this down when I was a kid, and now I have to re-live it as a mother!?” Who (among us who spend any time picking up our kids from a Dutch school) doesn’t relate to that, I wonder? Today I was confronted with a hefty dose of it and found myself mediating…
Another article posted online (http://www.amsterdam-mamas.nl/stories/this-month/developing-positive-habits) and here . . . I’ll admit it – there have been many a January when I conducted an online search on something like “create positive habits” . . . only to find a wide variety of suggestions, best strategies or top ten tips that sounded promising, but in reality didn’t help lead me to much change. I’m motivated to share what has helped…
It was exactly a year ago, when I got some honest feedback – all one has to do is simply ask a child – and realized I still had serious work to do. We were sitting together at the same table, engaged in the same Sinterklaas-related artwork as this past week. Our conversation was on the subject of Zwarte Piet names. In Holland, much like…
My latest blog was posted on the Amsterdam Mamas website today (http://www.amsterdam-mamas.nl/stories/this-month/seeking-balance-taking-a-closer-look). In it, I reveal my own journey toward finding work-life balance and pass on some tips for how others can as well. You can also read it here . . . When both my kids attended elementary school, there was notably quite a bit more breathing room to gain more grip on the theme of…
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