A seed beneath the soil sprouts unseen, sending a tender tendril through the earth, and breaks through the soil into the light of the sun. It’s is in the first stage of growing up, literally. Now mostly in the earth and new to the sky it is pale, yellow perhaps, its seed leaves unlike those […]
Belonging
Welcoming loneliness
A relationsip is not a bulwark against loneliness. We may soon find, despite our most cherished hopes to the contrary, that rather than dispell our sense of being adrift, a generous home also houses our solitude. On days when we are down on our knees, desperate to be rid of our longings, we may lay […]
Overparenting and social monoculture
Parenting implodes in a social monoculture. The social ecology we’ve depended on as parents until recently, is today many times frail and tattered. There is little social cohesion around our homes, few of us have a living community in which to plant our children. In a few generations, the communal life that held our children […]
Breathing through a feeling
Feelings are fleeting. Anger can be over in a flash. Sadness can settle and seem endless. But it’s in the nature of all feelings that they pass. And they pass faster if we don’t do violence to ourselves by supressing or fighting our feelings. Your child can learn how not to be overwhelmed by her […]
Seeing the north star
It’s March, and for a few months longer on the northern hemisphere, until dimmed by the long summer days, the stars will strew the night sky. This is a good time of year to head out with your child after nightfall, to introduce her to the North Star, this fixed axis point on the firmament […]
Good table manners
As midwinter approaches on the northern hemisphere, it is time to once again gather with our loved ones around a table for a shared meal. It’s a time of great generosity, hospitality, a social ritual of both giving and receiving, feeding and being fed. We welcome our guests, we might cook together, decorate the table, […]
Becoming a family servant
In a few days, a dozen or so men are gathering at our farm around a man about to become a father. So I’ve spent some time pondering what this moment asks of us, now that his life seems to be taking him away from a certain singularity awash in endless possibilities, towards an obligation […]
Home as a place that doesn’t exist
The global village tends no fire around which the children can gather. Its sophisticated arrogance is politely to sneer at domesticity as a lovely ideal, but ultimately a naive and inevitably temporary undertaking. It announces to anyone seeking to grow roots, that home is to be found everywhere, making sure that it is nowhere to […]
The spell of potential
There are a few spells around, beliefs that are so common we hardly notice their insidious impact on how we lead our lives. Like when we tell a child “You can be anything you want to be”, without us actually having any way to know what that child’s potential truly is. Potential has no definite […]
Your child’s spiritual doctor
Your child’s nature unfolds like an oak from an acorn. Once she has tumbled onto the ground from some mysterious height, it is the soil and the wind and the rains that give her ultimate expression its particular form. Who she becomes when she’s well rooted and fully extended has painfully little to do with […]
Place is your child’s close relative
A friend of mine grew up in the inner city, a world of asphalt, concrete, steel and the growl of combustion engines. Outside his apartment a solitary lime tree sprung from the pavement. Every day he’d climb that tree. He says he perched there for what seemed like most of his childhood, watching the world […]
Playlist of your ancestors
Music is a bridge to our ancestors You can wander on the arch of a tune towards the loved one’s you’ve lost. For me it’s Marian Anderson’s “Coming through the rye,” a song my father would theatrically sing to us as children. Or my grandfather’s songs that he learned in Sweden’s endless spruce forests, during […]
Attachment beyond mom and dad
Attachment theory places a child’s sense of belonging at the breast of the mother, or in the lap of the father. But we’re all born with a need for attachment to a home that is far vaster than the nuclear family. Imagine instead an attachment theory that knows the pain of being uprooted and adrift, […]
How to plant your child in community
I’ve heard from many parents who dream of planting their children in community. Like them, maybe you too have raised your head and looked around and seen nothing but fragments of a village, shards of a tribe, threads of an ancestral tapestry. You think at times of moving your family to where community seems more […]
Broken chrysalis
The world is being broken open, and you may break with it, like a chrysalis. This is one way we heal–breaking down whatever separates us from the whole. So rupture the cocoon of factory-mind, emerge resplendently winged. Take flight, by submitting to all that lies beyond this sugared shell spun like a spell around your […]
Stories for the love of earth
We need children who love the earth unconditionally. Let the stories you tell your small one seed the ecology of her imagination. Go far beyond the arid fields sown with concepts, statistics, theories, information and labels about the natural world. Harness your heart to fairy-tales and myths, fables and anecdotes and journey with your child […]
Step one to breaking out of isolation. And step two.
When we first become parents we’re shocked at how isolated we feel. The first years without ample support of an extended family are overwhelming. There’s no shame in that. It’s really not about you or me. Almost everyone who is a parent knows that place of loneliness and anxiety. In the culture we’ve created, we […]
How the stories you tell can strengthen your child
Sharing your family stories helps your child develop a strong sense of who she is and where she comes from. Drs. Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush at Emory University found that the more children know about their family history, the better they are at facing challenges. By exploring the adventures of your ancestry, you’re sharing […]
Pulled apart, longing to be together
All we ever want is to be together as a family, to laugh, play, and enjoy our lives as a little team. But there is so much in the modern world that pulls us in different directions–work, money, geography, school, health, digital technology, media. How do we as parents respond? Lower the bar–start small, take […]
Autumn and every family in transition
The equinox just past, and every family is in transition, whether in cities or countryside, apartments or houses. It’s on the winds, in the rains, under our feet and in the canopies. And it’s in our children too. They’re called indoors, to fires and candles and stories and games and comforting blankets. Like seeds, they’re […]