What 100 posts have taught me

I have to admit, I’ve been counting down to this post for a while now.  I’m pretty excited because this is post #100!  I feel like my kids at their 100th day of school celebration (yes, that is now a yearly event), excited to reflect on all the days that have passed in order to get to today.  Some of you may know, it all started two years ago when I had an idea for a book.  I spent a couple months, an hour or two here and there, writing it.  I showed it to a couple people and while they liked the content, I knew I had a long way to go.  I couldn’t help but think that I needed to share these ideas with the world sooner rather than later.  I wanted to share my experiences, start a conversation with other parents and get their feedback on what was working and what was not.  One day while talking to a friend, the idea of a blog came up.  I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind, but I knew nothing about blogging.  I researched it for a couple days, put together a page on blogspot and went for it.  

My first post talked about an experience that I had with my daughter where I was trying to teach her about emotions and how they impact our moods, attitudes and those around us.  At the time, that was my goal – I wanted to bring what I considered spiritual practices, into a language that children would understand.  Over the last two years, I’ve learned so much and now would replace the word spiritual with the word mindful.  I followed the first blog with pushing the pause button.  A couple weeks after that I introduced the Drama Scale, as a way to talk to my daughter about the sometimes petty nature of young girls.  I was encouraged to hear that many of you successfully incorporated the Drama Scale into your conversations with your own daughters, allowing them to open up about a very difficult social topic. 

I made it a point to post early on Saturday morning, because I figured that it would be an easy read with your morning coffee, before your day got too crazy.  I have to admit, some days it was hard to meet that deadline, either the comfort of my bed or the burden of writers block, got the best of me.  On those days a few of you reached out to me – where’s the blog?  It was at that point I knew I couldn’t stop, so I recommitted to posting consistently. 

Many of my posts are based on things I read like This is not a test and of course the time I met one of my favorite authors Dr. Shefali.  I’ve also been able to share some of my biggest lessons, like how important is it not to keep score, which I blogged about twice in Not Fair and Keeping Score.

I could go on and on listing my favorites, your favorites and the ones I thought were great, but fell a little flat.  But after 99 posts, I’ve learned two things.  First, it is possible to teach children to be mindful of their emotions.  Not only can you teach them, but it is possible for them to put it into practice, to stop themselves (before they blow up at their sibling) and remove themselves from the situation.  It doesn’t happen every time or even every day, but if you stick with it and keep having the conversations, you will see a difference.  The second thing, and maybe more important, I’ve learned that as much as we want to make it about our children, we won’t get anywhere if we don’t first focus on ourselves.  It’s so easy as a parent to put everyone and everything before ourselves, but in order to truly be the best parent you can be, you must take care of yourself, no exceptions. 

Thank you all for reading my words over these 100 posts.  Time is precious and I am honored that you spend a little bit of your time reading my words.  Every week I sign the blog, Heart-FULLy yours, because writing this blog, sharing these stories with you, makes my heart full.  We are stronger together, supporting each other. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to support you and for supporting me in return.

Here’s to the next 100!

Heart-FULLy Yours, 

Kacey

p.s. You may be thinking, the blog is great, but I could never do that!  I disagree and am here to help!  Let’s schedule a 30 minute consultation to define what matters most to you right now and create a plan on how to spend more of your time doing that.  Email me at balancedheartcoaching@gmail.com and we’ll work out the details.

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