"Conscious parenting is about slowing down and living in the moment; it is about finding the grace in every experience; it is about feeling gratitude for all the mysterious gifts that make up a lifetime." – Conscious Family Journal, June 2009.
Happy New Year!
We are not big partiers in the Brown household. The past few days have been spent quietly at home – playing in the snow; trying out new board and video games; entertaining a few close friends.
Almost staying up ‘til midnight, to ring in the New Year.
So far, 2010 feels a lot like 2009: mostly good. Still, when I logged into Facebook the other day, several friends were lamenting the year just finished, hoping for a better one this time around. The television is showing one montage after another, displaying in exhaustive detail all the negative headlines of 2009.
For a minute or two, they started to draw me in. Wow, I forgot all that bad stuff. Maybe I shouldn’t be feeling this happy right now. Am I crazy, or just naïve?
Our 2009 wasn’t without its difficulties – the stock market, the flu and dragging my sons through middle school all come to mind – but even upon fairly rigorous reflection, it truly was pretty darned wonderful. I do recognize that some families struggled much more than we did last year: Best wishes for a New Year filled with hope and healing.
In the meantime, I invite you and your family to wrap up 2009 with a few moments of reflection and perhaps a healthy dose of gratitude. What are the best things that happened to you in 2009? In what ways are your lives better than they were a year ago? How have you manifested your dreams? Even the tiniest steps forward are worth celebrating.
And for our children, many of whom have already forgotten the blessings of the holidays as they race back to school, let’s slow down a bit and lock in some happy memories.
Just to get you started, I am sharing my list: The Best of 2009.
We celebrated my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. We also celebrated my father’s 75th birthday and the birth of my parents’ 28th grandchild. Woohoo.
Our home is warm, our cars still run and there is plenty of food in the pantry.
We survived sixth grade. (Yes, it was a family affair.) We also made it halfway through seventh. We are confident that our experiences will make it all at least slightly easier, when my younger son follows his brother into middle school next year. Maybe.
My seventh grader learned to do his own laundry. Again, woohoo.
After three years, I’ve started to settle into this “stay-at-home-mom” thing. A day filled with dirty laundry, parent-teacher conferences and basketball practice no longer frightens me. It is no more mind-numbing than a day filled with meetings, email and office politics. And you get to spend most of your day in your pajamas.
We enjoyed some wonderful family travel. We visited dear friends in Oregon, whom we hadn’t seen in years. We spent two memorable weeks in France with my mother, where we re-traced the steps of my grandfather, who was stationed there in World War I.
We spent a glorious week frolicking on the beach with some cousins.
I’ve completed my first full year of blogging. Conscious parenting is a subject that continues to inspire and thrill me. Thanks to the power of technology, Conscious Family Journal has reached some wonderful people and hopefully brought joy – or a little bit of humor – to a couple of them.
As I shared in a recent post, I did not burn my house down on Christmas Eve.
And through it all, I find that my sons are just a little bit more mature than they were this time last year. I am just a little bit more relaxed than I was this time last year. We are all still healthy, safe and together.
Life is good.
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