EDUCATORS & PROFESSIONALS
Mindful Kids is a community of voices coming together for one shared purpose. To support our children in knowing themselves and to support ourselves as we guide our children. We are here to create resources to guide ourselves and one another on the path to wholeness. To a deep sense of understanding why we are here.
No matter how you work with children, formally or informally, part time or full, the ages of the children, or the content of the material, here is one important question to ponder...
Do you remember why you chose this work?
Did you have any awareness at the time about how important it was for your own growth and development? For the learning and integration of your own inner child? If your answer is no, that’s pretty normal. Not a lot of people go into these fields with that specific understanding or consciousness.
From the age of 12, I knew that I wanted to work with children. I remember specifically the day and time I decided. I had exited a therapy session, not my first one, but my first with this particular counselor. When my mom asked me how it was I told her I had learned two things. The first was how messed up I was, and the second was that I knew that I wanted to be a counselor when I grew up. (insert giggle here) I don’t have a lot more memory of the session but something really profound happened for me. It was like all at once I realized both the brokenness and the way to healing. Not a quick fix, but a life long way. That’s my story, just one of many.
Maybe you got into teaching because you love guiding and leading, and that feeling when your students grasp a concept they hadn’t previously and you see them expand into themselves more deeply, the confidence rises, and you can feel a part of that in some small way, and it reminds you of your power, and your ability.
Maybe you became a counselor or social worker because you want to be a part of the healing on this planet. You know how deeply in need so many of us are, and you are offering yourself, your abilities, your knowing, your experiences, and your presence.
I could keep writing & writing all sorts of reasons why people choose to work with children.
Maybe you’re a nanny, maybe you’re a coach, maybe you teach preschool or high school. Maybe you work in social services, maybe you work on a farm that employs children, the possibilities are endless.
Children are in great need, you know that.
And so are we as adults.
All the big people walking around are carrying their childhood experiences, their inner children with them. With their acceptances, and their failures, with the blessings, and the hardships, with the sadness and the grief, with the trauma and with the excitement, all of it.
What’s important to know is this…
We can’t work with children without coming into contact with and getting to know our own inner child.
Often, we get into this work with children to avoid dealing with our own. There is a level of detachment and distraction we can curate through this work, losing ourselves in the service of others, but there is always the opportunity to find yourself here too.
But we must look, we must make the effort.
At times we can become hardened, we can create walls to protect ourselves from the heaviness that this work can bring. And we need tools, we need communities, we need individuals to bring us back and let the work open us, inform us, guide us even deeper into our own tenderness and vulnerability, and then back into a new sense of strength, of resiliency, of emotional capacity. That is the healing journey.
Welcome to Mindful Kids.
Here is our invitation to you.
It is our intention to provide resources to support children BEING in the world in a deep, authentic, and powerful way. The way they were meant to be here. Their way.
(Maybe this is your intention too.)
We know that the more space we can give to these big spirits in small bodies the more THEM they can be. And, this requires something of US.
It can take a great deal of work to disassemble many of the things we were conditioned to think about what it means to be a teacher,
a leader, a coach, a counselor, a fill-in-the-blanker.
Because of that, this work is disruptive.
It disrupts old paradigms and ways of thinking about relating to our children and ourselves. This work is not what ‘everyone else’ is doing. This work is pioneering. This work is not a band-aid, or a short term solution. This work is transformational healing for our world.
It takes courage and willingness to step out into unknown territory where we can build a new way of being together.
We are here to guide you as you guide them, and you.
This work is an invitation to deepen in our experience of what it means to be human and live a full, conscious, connected life.
This work is centered around our children,
but this work is for US too.
Get messy with this work. It will make you uncomfortable. Then you know you are doing it right. It won’t stay that way though, because you will feel important shifts happening deep inside you. You will see how the internal changes are creating external changes and you will feel the expansion happening. So, share these resources with (your) children and let it be clear to you how important living this information is for everyone. Live it. Breathe it. Integrate it. Let it change you.
Guide our children and all the while be guiding you.
As you serve our children, let your service shine a light on who you are, so that you may see yourself more clearly and so too, the world. And as your light shines, it will remind all those with whom you come in contact, of their own.
