WellnessWithHolli

Last blog, we started a conversation on  Proactive Parenting!! What Parents Need To Know and Do!!  Because April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, it is especially important to draw attention to our parenting, but as  parents and guardians, when we signed  up to have children or take custody of them we made a long term commitment that requires our best practices day in and day out! A significant responsibility in our parenting includes educating ourselves about social dangers such as child abuse and implementing effective strategies that will help to protect and prevent our children from being victimized. Before we discuss a few more key strategies for Proactive Parenting,  let's review from the previous blog the two Proactive Parenting Principles that we first must solidly integrate into our mindset and then apply to our parenting styles. Remember, these principles hold true regardless of the social danger, concern, or challenge. PP #1 - The degree of access...

* This blog contains sensitive material which may not be suitable for minors. April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.  As with other wellness issues, it is important to designate time and attention increasing our awareness through on-going education and communication.  However, with one in three girls and one in five boys being victimized by the time they are eighteen, I believe it is critical not only to continue our conversation on a daily basis, but it is also imperative to implement  Proactive Parenting.  Because there are several experts whom I highly respect and who have family friendly resources available to parents or guardians (*see references below), for the purposes of this blog I am going to give you two important strategies for  Proactive Parenting . Most responsible parents work hard to provide nurturing, loving, and safe environments for their children.To do otherwise, in my opinion, is shirking the responsibilities of parenthood.  At t...

Over the past several blogs, we have been discussing codependency as it relates to us and our well-being: What Is It? Am I Codependent? And Why? Now What Do I Do ?- Day 3   ;  Day 4   ;  Day 5 Support From Others Before we conclude this series, it is important to talk about  Support Groups. Please keep  reading!  No matter where you are in your recovering journey with codependency, Support Groups can and do play a vital role in your healing. I'd like to share a personal example. When I was in my early thirties, I was teaching at a middle school where a I met a wonderful teacher who befriended me. I will call her Alice. She was an older, very wise woman. I was captivated by Alice as she described her difficult past of addiction followed by her many years of sobriety. As Alice came to know me, getting acquainted with my codependent personality, she encouraged me to attend Al-Anon. Even though I had been in counseling previously t...

For the last several blogs, we have been discussing codependency by focusing on steps in answering the question - Now What Do I Do?   If you have not done so, please go back and review Step One - Shift in thinking and mindset ; Step Two - Detachment   (turning our focus inward and separating our worth and our identity) : and Step Three - Self-Care   . Today, we are going to focus on Step Four - Boundary Work. However, before we do, I want to clarify one very important point. Although we - as codependents - will need to work all these steps simultaneously as we continue our recovering work, I believe it is almost next to impossible to start our healing unless we are ready and willing to shift our mindset and thinking. We must accept that we are not responsible for another person's well- being and that what we have been doing is not working. At the same time, because we are codependents, we will slip back into this thinking, time and time again, and we will need to ...

Last time, we started our conversation on codependency by addressing the first two steps in answering the question - Now what do I do?   If you haven't had a chance to read the previous blog, please take a few minutes and familiarize yourself with Step One - Shift in mindset or thinking  and Step Two - Detachment. It is super important to understand detachment as I believe it is impossible to move forward unless we begin that process of turning our focus inward and separating our worth and identity from someone else and from his/her unhealthy behaviors. This is hard work and it takes time.  Before we move on to Step Three - Self Care ,  allow me to share more of my own story ( previous blog ) and how it relates to the importance of detachment . Detach and Heal As I described in Codependency: Day 3 , once I shifted my thinking about the relationship I was in, I was then able to begin my detachment work. Although I was still living with an unhealthy man...