Maria Bowler, author and creative coach, shares her journey from magazine editing to exploring spirituality with nuns. She discusses redefining productivity and embracing a life of creativity. Maria emphasizes seeing schedules as supportive tools, rather than constraints, and encourages parents to embrace early emotional struggles with compassion. The conversation also touches on our complex relationship with social media and the importance of nurturing tiny moments of joy in a challenging world. A fascinating exploration of being versus doing awaits!

A growing goal for SCRATCH THAT is to find ways for this community to know and connect with each other, so this week, we have a special invitation for our listeners. What is a song that has held you — as a parent and/or a person? A song that has brought you back to the ground/yourself/your values. A song that gave you the thing you needed when you needed it? Would you drop it in the comments below? We'll turn all our songs into a group playlist — a way to feel each other's presence as we go about this windy journey of peopling and parenting.And we'll go first! On this episode, we each share about a song that has meant something big to us over the course of our lives.

Last week, we swirled around the impossible questions of paradigms – What stories did we inherit? What stories are we passing on (intentionally & unintentionally)? Enter – Abbie VanMeter. Abbie is the executive director of the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution, the host of the Stories Lived. Stories Told. podcast, the host of the CosmoParenting Podcast, and an incredibly insightful and curious communicator. On this episode, Abbie meets us in the chaotic center of our swirls and offers us new frameworks and tools for the messy work of re/building paradigms as parents and people. We hope you enjoy our sprawling, juicy conversation!Tune in to hear us talk about:💭 What it looks like to embody a communications perspective (hint: communication is more than what is being said).🧰 Instead of a script or map, building a toolbox we/our kids can carry into the unknown future.🛠️ Good tools for the box, like resilience, curiosity, improvisation, and repair.🌱 Taking good care of ourselves as good parenting (and the scripts that make us feel selfish for doing it).❓ Questioning the common phrase "My parents did their best."🌀 Leaning in, not pulling away from, complexity.📚 Building paradigms that leave room for multiple stories.📝 Empowering ourselves/our kids to be meaning makers in our worlds.We would love to hear from you! What tools do you have in your toolbox? What tools are you trying to pass along?

This week on SCRATCH THAT, we process the great and ambiguous responsibility of creating paradigms for our kids — the context for what they will understand as "normal" — the scripts/stories they have about themselves, the world, and their relationship to it. Holding our curiosity in the forefront and never tying any tidy bows, we swirl around our own inheritances and the ones we're passing along. And if you would like some actual tools for navigating this wobbly territory, we can't wait to share next week's very special interview with you!Tune in to hear us talk about:🧳 The "cargo bay of baggage" we're bringing into this conversation.☃️ The great allure & potential harms of creating cozy-snow-globe paradigms.🌿 The desire to build flexible/stretchy paradigms that grow & evolve with us.🎢 The uncomfy lack of control we have over the paradigms our kids are forming.📆 The unspoken values we are teaching our kids through our deeply engrained daily actions.🎞️ Trusting the process of long-arc relationships & human development.🤸 Playing with new frameworks for paradigm building (e.g. Relationship over rules, or curiosity & openness over mandates & prescriptions. ) 🌱 The importance of tending to our own deep beliefs and lasting paradigms.We would love to hear from you! How are paradigms manifesting for you in your parenting and/or re-parenting experiences? What kind of paradigms are you wanting to build? What ones were built for you? How are you reshaping them?Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

💔 Why is it hard to feel hopeful right now?✨ Point to something that makes us feel hopeful — tell a story?🌱 Hope as a verb — name a seed we are going to plant?✏️ Caitlin leaves us with three practices they're using to imagine a hopeful future

Now that we're a few months into making SCRATCH THAT, we take this episode to reflect on the podcast values that are revealing themselves as the most important to us. In this episode, we pull cards from Lisa Congdon's Live Your Values deck and compare notes. What do we want to prioritize? What is the target? What do we want to guide/ground each conversation?This feels like an ongoing collaborative project, and we want you to be a part of it! Would you take a couple of minutes to fill out our Patreon poll? What SCRATCH THAT values are becoming the most important to you?? We wanna know.

In a riveting conversation, Sacha Mardou, the author of the graphic memoir "Past Tense," opens up about her battle with anxiety and her transformative journey through therapy. She discusses the importance of self-compassion and creativity in healing, and shares insights on Internal Family Systems therapy. Sacha also reflects on how these experiences shape her parenting, especially with her teenager. With honesty and clarity, she navigates the messy, nonlinear path of personal growth and advocates for open communication within families.

Last week, Caitlin invited us to mark the turn of the year by writing letters to 2024/2025. Today, we bring you the words that came from that prompt. You will hear tears, a whole lot of heartfelt, both/and reflection, and an invitation to write your own letter/create your own artifact to mark this shift in the calendar.At the end of the episode, Rebekah shares a little bit about how deeply difficult this year has been for her niece and sister. Since recording, the GoFundMe she started for them has exceeded the initial goal! It's been stunning to see folks rally around them. Because of that support, they are heading into the new year with one piece of this impossibly hard situation made a little bit lighter. If you would like to participate in supporting this family, the GoFundMe page will be up until January 3rd. A wholehearted, full-body THANK YOU to every single person who has donated/shared/tucked this family into your heart.We would love to hear from you! What are you keeping with you from 2024? What are you letting go of in 2025?

In today's episode, we reflect on our memories/associations with New Years, and the practices that do/don't feel good around this time of year. We are moving away from new year's resolutions and toward reflective practices that allow us to bear witness to the previous year.Tune in to hear us talk about:🎊 The ways we moved through this holiday when we were young.📓 Caitlin's annual, seasonal, and monthly reflection practices (including picking a yearly word, Lisa Congdon's Live Your Values deck, and reflection guides).🕯️ Caitlin's new practices, including admin adulting days, fun seasonal bucket lists, and a new advent tradition.❌ A new kind of resolution that asks – what are you NOT prioritizing this year?🗓️ Rebekah's daily documentation practices – why she does them and how she holds them lightly.⏰ Our angst about the rapid passage of time and how we want to be present for the moments as they're passing.💌 And invitation to write a letter to 2024 or 2025 – we'll read ours next week!Mentioned in this episode:Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver BurkemanLisa Congdon's Live Your Values deckWe would love to hear from you! How to you mark the turning of another year? Do you have any documentation practices that feel good to you?Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

As we gear up for the week of Christmas and all of the layered feelings this stretch of days can bring, we wanted to offer you something good and grounding. To prepare, we gave ourselves a prompt: write a little blessing, love note, prayer for the holiday week. Today, we read them allowed – an offering to ourselves, each other, and you.We would love to hear from you! How are you orienting yourself this week? What feels hard? What feels easy? What feels different than previous years? What are your disco balls on the tree or flashes of lighting over an open field?Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels