Welcome to my new improved blog: The Awakened Parent! Brand new name, brand new logo!

I have now been running Free Your Parenting for over a year, and it quickly became a blog that surprised me in how well-received it was.

The aim of Free Your Parenting was to support today’s parents (myself and my husband included), who often struggle because of the culture we live in – the fact that we are frequently judged for making choices that are considered ‘different’, that the importance of our role is disrespected, and that our deep knowledge of what is right for us and our families is disregarded in favour of what the ‘experts’ can tell us.

I dreamed of a culture where parents are empowered to make truly informed choices and are respected for the decisions they make. With this in mind, I try to ensure that my posts didn’t describe what I thought parents should do. Instead, I aimed to share evidence-based information and to suggest ideas that may help parents make the choices that are right for them and their families.

However, as the year has turned full circle, something I’ve always known has bubbled up to the surface so that I have to take notice of it: not only is our culture inhospitable to conscious, awake parenting, but we are also hindered by our selves. We don’t trust that we have the answers within us; we don’t trust that we have wisdom within us that can show us the way; we aren’t truly conscious.

How can we hear our inner voice if we don’t even believe that it exists? When we believe that only an ‘expert’ or a professional knows how to parent our own children best?

Ghandi said:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

So if we wish to see a culture where our inner voices are trusted and the choices we make based on what we hear are respected, then we need to start doing so ourselves.

It was this that drew me to change the name of Free Your Parenting, and to create a subtle shift in the ethos of the blog. I give you The Awakened Parent – a blog to help parents hear their inner voices, and to trust and heed them.

The new web address is http://theawakenedparent.org – I’d appreciate any readers who link to the blog changing their links, but http://freeyourparenting.com will still work for at least twelve months.

In addition to subtly changing the energy of this blog, I am also preparing to hold local Mother Circles, with a similar ethos, where mothers are invited to share their stories, to learn to hear their wise, inner voices, and gather the support they need to make the choices that are right for them and their families. Look out for more posts about those in the next few days. Look out for a blogiversary give-away as well.