I am an Architect of Conscious Caregiving. From the time I was a kid, I've been working with kids. Then, I started teaching professionally straight out of college. I've since been an educator in a variety of formats, places, and spaces. From my earliest teaching days though, I knew there was something very imbalanced in the way we were structuring power in most adult-child relationships. I realized quickly it wasn't enough to love kids; I wanted to honor and respect them deeply. I wanted a relationship grounded in trust and mutuality. This meant I had to consciously uproot the mainstream toxic systems of control. As I worked to do this professionally, I was hit with the hard reality of modern-day parenting.

 

I found that I was drowning in unrealistic parenting expectations and relying on unhealthy solutions that left me feeling in a near constant state of dysregulation. I had to take myself back to the basics, excavating those voices, biases, and power imbalances that weren't mine.  I returned to the foundation of all relationships: a need for interdependence and mutuality.