This week, I am taking a break from podcasting for the holidays, so thought I would take this opportunity to bring you a previously recorded interview that was done of me by Dr. Elisa Song for her Thriving Child Summit. Elisa is my children’s pediatrician and the founder of Healthy Kids, Happy Kids, an online resource for pediatric holistic health which hosted the Summit.
The conversation was an opportunity for me to reflect on my own experience as a parent, especially when we faced developmental delays and health challenges with my older son, how my experience leading a process called “reflection” inspired me to focus my coaching practice on mothers, and the inspiration and plans for Mother’s Quest in the months before the podcast launch.
I hope you will enjoy getting to learn a little more about me and my journey as a mother, and how moments of pause and reflection contribute to me living my E.P.I.C. life and helping my children to thrive. I think you will also enjoy hearing from Dr. Elisa Song and I look forward to bringing you my interview with her in the first week of the Mother’s Quest Podcast in 2017.
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Mother's Quest is a podcast for moms who are ready to live a truly E.P.I.C. life.
Join in for intimate conversations with a diverse group of inspiring mothers as they share how they are living an E.P.I.C. life, engaging mindfully with their children (E), passionately and purposefully making a difference beyond their family (P), investing in themselves (I), and connecting to a strong support network (C).
Learn More at www.mothersquest.com
Join our community of mothers to light the way and sustain you on your quest at https://www.facebook.com/groups/mothersquest/
In this episode, I’m honored to have a conversation with two amazing mothers to their 8 year old daughter, Oakland-based life and business partners Lynn Johnson and Allison Kenny.
They are the co-founders of Spotlight: Girls, which celebrates and activates girls and women through multi-media learning experiences and products. Through their Go Girls! summer camps, after-school, and school break programs, elementary and middle school girls build social/emotional skills through acting, music, media, dance and visual arts activities.
Lynn, the CEO of Spotlight: Girls, has over 25 years experience as a teaching artist working in diverse communities all over the United States. She is a sought-after facilitator and speaker and serves on the National Advisory Board of Teaching Artists Guild and the Board of Directors of the How Kids Learn Foundation.
Allison is a writer, blogger, and actor. She is the author of Starring Celia - a chapter book about a 4th grade girl who goes from being bullied to becoming a Go Girl! and Go Squirrel! - a series of coloring books aimed at teaching young readers complex social/emotional lessons through social stories. In her own words, Allison shares the “adventures of their queer, multi-racial, adoptive family” on her blog RaisingaGoGirl.com.
In this conversation, Lynn and Allison talk about how their mothers, each in different ways, instilled the value of community that influenced the creation of Spotlight: Girls. We explore how they are making a difference beyond their family by igniting a Compassion Revolution with their programs, inspiring belief in the power of girls and women to be changemakers in the world, to take center stage in their lives, and to make brave and bold choices. And how the Go Girls! 5 point Culture Code, like the Mother’s Quest E.P.I.C. framework, provides a powerful guide that Lynn, Allison and their daughter have fully integrated into their lives.
I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. I was struck by how powerful a metaphor theater and the arts can be for how to live your live. I hope you will leave the conversation, as I did, inspired to think about the ways in which you can “take center stage” to live a Go Girl! and E.P.I.C. life.
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The Mother’s Quest Facebook group - join http://www.facebook.com/groups/mothersquest
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Mother's Quest is a podcast for moms who are ready to live a truly E.P.I.C. life.
Join in for intimate conversations with a diverse group of inspiring mothers as they share how they are living an E.P.I.C. life, engaging mindfully with their children (E), passionately and purposefully making a difference beyond their family (P), investing in themselves (I), and connecting to a strong support network (C).
Learn More at www.mothersquest.com
Join our community of mothers to light the way and sustain you on your quest at https://www.facebook.com/groups/mothersquest/
In this episode, I’m excited to be reunited with an old friend and former colleague, Rootopia founder Michelle Ratcliffe. Michelle is a farm to family specialist, who aims to help mothers raise happy, healthy kids and help our nation’s farmers prosper. She is a mom to two boys, and lives on a 4-acre farm near Portland, Oregon.
As a first-generation American who struggled in school, digging in the earth and growing food grounded Michelle and turned her onto academics. Over the past 20 years, she’s been researching ways to get more local healthy foods on our plates and advocating for policy changes that would do that. Michelle earned her doctorate in Agriculture, Food and the Environment from Tufts University with research focused on the impacts of school gardening on adolescents. Her research into school gardening was vital to the gardening and childhood obesity efforts of First Lady Michelle Obama, which led to Michelle’s recent visit to the White House to celebrate the White House Kitchen Garden Dedication.
In this conversation, Michelle and I talk about the transformative experience we had creating a community garden with young people over 15 years ago and how the honesty of Michelle’s students course-corrected her to the meaningful career path she is on today. Michelle shares the importance of being rooted in her family and their health, as well as the importance of community and civic-mindedness. And, we explore stepping forward with faith on your path, taking the next right step, even when you don’t yet know exactly where it will take you.
During this holiday season, I hope this episode will inspire you to get more grounded with your family by saying no to over-scheduling and yes to cooking, eating and spending quality time with your children.
Looking to make an end of the year donation? Consider Alternatives in Action, the non-profit youth development organization celebrating 20 years of service, where Michelle and Julie worked together. www.alternativesinaction.org
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Mother's Quest is a podcast for moms who are ready to live a truly E.P.I.C. life.
Join in for intimate conversations with a diverse group of inspiring mothers as they share how they are living an E.P.I.C. life, engaging mindfully with their children (E), passionately and purposefully making a difference beyond their family (P), investing in themselves (I), and connecting to a strong support network (C).
Learn More at www.mothersquest.com
Join our community of mothers to light the way and sustain you on your quest at https://www.facebook.com/groups/mothersquest/
On this episode of Mother’s Quest, I had an opportunity to talk with an amazing mother, entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and blogger, named Katherine Wintsch about bringing authenticity into our lives as women and mothers.
Katherine is a nationally recognized expert on the topic of modern motherhood. As the founder and CEO of The Mom Complex, she advises major corporations on what mothers really need in order to create better products and services that make mothers lives easier. She writes about the highs and lows of motherhood in her blog, In All Honesty. Her TEDx talk titled, Unmasking Motherhood, uses spoken word to deliver a powerful call to action to mothers, and inspired me to let down my own mask, to be vulnerable and honest, through the creation of Mother’s Quest.
In our conversation, Katherine shares how she learned to let go of people-pleasing and mommy guilt, and instead got curious, learned to love herself and designed a life that fulfills her. We talk about the power of revealing the truth about motherhood and that it’s absolutely OK to not be OK and to not have all the answers.
I hope her story will inspire you to let down your own mask and help you step more fully into your own authentic, E.P.I.C. life.
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Welcome to the very first episode of the Mother’s Quest podcast!
I am so honored to bring you this conversation with Navjit Kandola. Navjit is a spiritual adviser, educator, speaker, filmmaker, full-time mom, and the director of the Nizhoni School for Global Consciousness. Navjit works with clients to heal subconscious wounds, release anxiety and strain, identify habits that spiral into negative behaviors, and unblock stagnant energy in relationships and projects.
It felt right to have my first conversation on the podcast with Navjit because she was one of the first people I reached out to after I decided to launch Mother’s Quest. I found her through Danielle LaPorte’s website. Danielle, another profoundly spiritual mother, who is also an entrepreneur, author and poet, is a long-time friend of Navjit’s and refers to Navjit as a masterful soul sister who is lucid as a diamond.
I determined I needed some of that guidance and reached out to Navjit for a phone session. I proceeded to tell her about my desire to embark on my own hero’s journey and all my hopes and dreams for Mother’s Quest. She helped me think about the metaphor I was choosing and encouraged me to make it my own...to hold a vision for a journey that could include more connection and ease than the typical one found in epic stories. Those words stayed with me and have been a guide as I have gone through the ups and downs of birthing my new venture and laying a foundation for the Mother’s Quest community.
More recently, I reached out to Navjit again, distraught with fear and sadness in the wake of the election and consumed by self-doubt in the days leading up to this podcast launch. I got to experience firsthand how Navjit’s healing presence could help me tap into the wisdom of my inner child, a term she refers to in this interview. It was a powerful and transformative experience and one that I wrote about the next day on a blog post that I will include in the show notes.
I share all this because this first conversation has a different tone than many of the episodes that follow. It is a deep dive into spirituality and consciousness. And, if these are topics you don’t typically gravitate to, I encourage you to stay with it. Navjit talks about being grateful for those magical moments when we’re present and connected with ourselves, our children, and with nature. She shares how she lives her E.P.I.C. life when she can shift her mindset from a place of scarcity and stress to a place of openness and abundance.
It feels like the world is a very different place than the one it was when Navjit and I first recorded this episode. But, the concepts she talks about feel more needed and relevant than ever.
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Welcome to this introductory episode of the Mother’s Quest podcast. This solocast will give you a preview of what to expect in this twelve week season and reveal the stories behind Mother’s Quest E.P.I.C. framework, the podcast logo and the mantra that closes each show.
This solocast, and the podcast that it officially kicks off, is a birthday present to myself. This milestone birthday, on December 1st, 2016, and the reflective and transformative experiences in the months preceding it, inspired me to start my quest and this podcast.
For the first time in my life, I have the desire to create and share publicly something deeply personal; to use and share my voice; to commit to something I am calling my E.P.I.C. life; and to build a community to support me and other mothers along the way.
In the episodes that will follow, I interview other mothers to learn their words of wisdom. But this episode is an opportunity for me to use my own voice and share some lessons I’ve learned since the moment I decided to cross the threshold and begin living my E.P.I.C. life.
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Acknowledgements:
I would like to use this introductory episode as an opportunity to thank some of the key people, most of whom are also mothers on their own quest, several of whom donated or discounted their services, to help make this podcast possible.
The podcast production team at Radcasters (Karly, Jo and Neil) - http://www.radcasters.com
Mia Sutton, Podcast Coordinator
Meghan Lewis, Podcast Episode Art
Priscila Najar, composer of the podcast music
Jayleen Magill, Virtual Assistant
The team at Flight Design Co. (Ariana, Katrina, Matt) who created the podcast art http://www.flightdesign.co/branding/
Paula Jenkins http://www.jumpstartyourjoy.com for a podcasting class that jumpstarted it all
Claire Frye of http://www.loudandclaire.com for the generous use of her studio and generous coaching
My first interviewees: Navjit Kandola, Katherine Wintsch, and Michelle Ratcliffe
Chris, Ryan and Jacob Neale, my family foundation
Fran and David Lieberman, my own extraordinary mother and father
And so many other dear family members, friends, coaches and more who provided inspiration and support all along the way.