Who am I?
Parenting is my passion and my life’s work has become sharing with other parents how they can shift their controlling fear based relationships with their children to a loving enjoyable reality. At the age of 44, I finally found the courage to become a mom. Growing up in a very challenging relationship, with my mom, created an intense anxiety about becoming a parent. Even though I had a passionate desire to “be” different with my daughter, I found that my own parental modeling was all I had available in times of stress. When I was faced with so called “negative” behavior I would instantly feel the urge to parent the way I was parented. Through my own determination and desire to “feel” better I began to explore being with myself, in relationship, with my daughter in a new way. I began to see how when she was distressed, instead of being there for her, I would fall into my own pattern of distress and then need her to “behave” so that I could be the wonderful mother I wanted to be. Over and over, I began to see how instead of maturely responding to my daughter, in her time of need, I asked her to be the mature one.
Through my own investigations and the support of many other parents questioning their own models, I created Purejoy Parenting LLC. With my background as a psychotherapist working with families I began to move into a coaching model. After years of having deep insight into my patterns, through psychotherapy, I found that through the coaching model, I was able to offer more “in the moment” coaching in real-time situations. I created the parent coach model for a national company, Vive (www.vivenow.com), supporting parents with at risk teens, working with over 1000 families to reach higher ground.
The greatest gift you can give your children is you. After trying every behavioral technique I could find I finally realized that my daughter’s undesirable behavior had a lot to do with mine. While trying to control and manage her behavior, so I could relax and be the loving parent I wanted to be, I came to a deep and profound understanding that my child was responding to my state of being and when I took ownership of my own feelings she began to relax and open. I began a long and exquisite journey to realizing that I have the power within me to accept and love all of me which allowed me to love all aspects of my daughter. This was when miracles began to happen and our relationship began to flourish.
If you have spent countless time and money trying to “fix” your child so that you will be happy you may enjoy this site. After sitting with many parents and helping them shift into a “joy- based” model of parenting I have witnessed amazing shifts in their home. Shifting the focus off controlling your child’s negative behavior to working with how we react to this behavior allows us as parents to see all expressions as sacred. As we relax, owning all parts of ourselves, we are able to accept and enjoy our child instead of punishing, consequencing or controlling them. I invite you to join me on the journey to experience the pure joy I guarantee you is only a breath away.
I offer parent coaching sessions for parents who are interested in shifting their parenting paradigm from a child-focused approach to a parent/child connection one.
