Welcome back Tribe Members! It's been a while since we had anyone guest post on the blog, but I am pleased to introduce you to someone new. This month's guest is Stephanie Jones, wife, Mama to a beautiful baby girl + awesome owner/blogger of Courage From Within! I love reading blog posts Stephanie writes, because she shares from her heart + her experience is one that is often overlooked. Her past is laced with the beauty of a painful past filled with resilience that makes her the strong courageous woman she is today! A while back we completed the relationship series, 20 Days to Better Relationships (the workbook is now available - click here) + one of the issues we addressed is relationships with absentee parents. I offered the perspective of a Therapist, but Stephanie is here to share her own personal story with an absentee parent...
Read moreThe Ultimate Guide to Positive Discipline
I don't have to know you personally to know that you have areas of improvement in your life. How can I say this with such confidence? Well because I have areas of improvement as well. Discipline is something everyone could use more of! We grow disciplined in one area + then discover another area where we need to start working to improve. Our first experience with discipline comes when we are infants. Our parents instill in us values, ethics + morals for navigating through various phases of life. This experience can either be positive or negative.
Once we become parents, we have a choice to pass on the same parenting techniques or raise our children to experience the world differently. How do we know we are disciplining in a style that is beneficial to our child(ren)?
Read moreChild Abuse Prevention Month
April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month! Child abuse is one of those sticky topics many people experience, but no one wants to talk about. We don't want to talk about it, because it means we have to get emotional + vulnerable. Becoming vulnerable is difficult for many of us. Another reason we don't talk about it is because we don't understand it. We don't understand how someone could abuse a child or we understand exactly how someone could abuse a child + that scares us. We might also be confused about what classifies as child abuse. Here is a link to the US Department of Health + Human Services which shares information about child abuse.
Read moreReader Q + A | Why Do Parents Walk Away From Their Children?
Dear Reader,
Thanks for being brave enough to ask this question! So many of us are nervous or scared to invite "real life" conversations + I applaud you for being the one to get the ball rolling! There are many reasons why parents walk out on their families, but the root of all of these reasons (I believe) is pain. Let's think about several different situations that most likely come to mind when you think of an absentee parent:
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