Confidently parent beyond coercion without falling back on reactive patterns or collapsing and suppressing yourself.
You care for children (or want to). You want to be respectful and compassionate. But your feelings are getting in the way. You are let down by parenting advice that leaves you feeling inadequate instead of supported.
You might find yourself being reactive… Maybe…
You’re calm on the surface but underneath there’s intense feelings of overwhelm, rage, helplessness…
You snap at those close to you (partners, pets, children) and then feel incredibly guilty
You often feel like something is wrong with you
You might give in rather than being mean or harsh. Maybe you…
Struggle to set boundaries or say no
Shut down emotionally and just go through the motions
Feel like you need to hide your feelings
Fantasize about running away from it all
I offer 1:1 coaching to help you be less reactive so you can enjoy healthy, supportive relationships with your children and yourself.
This package is specifically designed for caregivers who experienced chronic coercion themselves.
Coercion happens when punishments, rewards or labels are used to control us. It also includes the unconscious (yet impactful) messages from our caregivers about what was accepted or not.
Coercion is how we were taught that love and care are conditional… on our behavior, feelings or beliefs
Chronic coercion is experienced in social environments (families, schools, workplaces) where coercive tactics were consistently used and normalized.
Wondering if this applies to you? Take this quiz.
When coercion is normalized it often shows up generationally — meaning if we experienced chronic coercion, it’s likely because our parents experienced the same thing themselves. Reflecting on our own experience is not about shaming or blaming our caregivers, but about examining these patterns so that we can do something different.
Chronic coercion impacts how we relate to ourselves. We can hold ourselves to really high standards and have a hard time getting support. When we add children to that mix, it can feel like an incredible amount of pressure. This pressure can make us feel brittle and actually take away our capacity to show up as the calm, grounded parent we hope to be.
Parenting beyond coercion means respecting and trusting the autonomy, emotional and intellectual expression of your children and yourself.
As a parent, I know we have big feelings too.
When I first became pregnant, I was dismayed at how common it was for my feelings and concerns to be met with platitudes. Even within spaces that were holistic or focused on respectful parenting, I would hear advice that sounded good but left me feeling missed. Things like, “make sure you have support,” or “don’t be afraid to ask for help.” I have seen this pattern throughout my parenting journey — it can feel like there’s little room to be actually heard between all the comments of, “self care is the most important thing,” “this is a really challenging time, but know how strong you are.” Even though parenting is an emotional process, I often see how we are rushed through intense feelings to quickly find peace and acceptance.
A lot of respectful, conscious, gentle, attachment parenting advice recognizes that we need to be grounded before we can show up for our kids. There is so much about how to support our children’s emotions, but we are expected to be measured with our own feelings and parenting foibles. Where do parents go to actually get that emotional support and grounding? Especially those of us who were coerced out of our feelings when we were young.
Parents need someone to help hold all those big feelings so they can smooth out instead of landing raw and reactive on our loved ones. Someone who could hear the nuance and help untangle us. Maybe we want help, but don’t have practice receiving help — we grew up having to be helpers not helpees. Maybe we want to offer space for our child’s tantrums, but we feel overwhelmed by these emotions that we learned to push away for ourselves.
Despite my parents best efforts, I grew up in an environment of chronic coercion. My parents were able to interrupt some generational patterns of coercion, but a lot got passed along too. These experiences are why respectful parenting is close to my heart — I know how important it is because I didn’t have it when I was young. My early experiences mean I’m motivated to offer my son something different. Those experiences also mean I need to heal so I can show up for him. I need to heal from the times my needs weren’t okay and I couldn’t ask for help, from all the times it wasn’t safe for me to express my emotions.
For me, this is a lifetime practice that started when I first dreamt of having children. This practice is one I share with my clients. It is the delicate unwinding generations of patterns for the sake of bringing our fullest selves into the world. In doing so we tend to our children so they may also blossom.
Parents need
emotional care
just as much as children do
Parents are carrying the beautiful responsibility of tending to a person’s introduction to this world and to their growth and development. They are also carrying all moments that they themselves needed tending and support and didn’t receive it.
You aren’t broken if you experienced chronic coercion. And neither are your children.
We are here with gifts for the world, the same as any part of nature. When we’ve been chronically coerced, we have been pulled away from ourselves and our connection to our innate purpose. Healing from those wounds, whenever that happens (even if our children are adults!) allows us to be more alive and more accepting of life — including our children’s’ messy, full expression of aliveness.
Parenting Beyond Coercion Coaching Package
During this six-month, virtual one-on-one coaching program, you will learn how to regulate your own emotions (without suppressing yourself) so you can foster healthy relationships with your children.
Learn how to relate to your own emotions and express them in healthy ways
Feel confident in your ability to be a respectful parent without burning yourself out or sacrificing your other relationships
Learn to appreciate your child’s expression of emotion as beautiful and healthy (even those big feelings)
What this program looks like…
We will meet 1:1 for 60 minutes every week on zoom for a total of 25 sessions.
You will receive custom journaling questions that will be updated throughout the engagement
You will receive exercises you can weave into your daily life to integrate your learnings
For our calls, please be somewhere private where you feel safe to express yourself and free from distractions.
We will be a good fit if you…
Work with children, have children or are planning to have children
Care deeply about providing an emotionally safe place for them to learn and grow.
Feel like you need to control your own feelings better.
Would like to treat your child with respect as the whole person they are… and are starting to suspect that the way you were raised is interfering with your ability to do so.
Find yourself replicating the ways you were coerced when you were young or you find yourself collapsing and caving around your child for fear of coercing them (or oscillating between the two).
I have a special place in my heart for people who…
Might feel helpless and angry about the magnitude of issues we face in this world, but still try to find a path to live their values, despite the odds. Maybe this means trying out permaculture, being vegetarian or vegan, buying secondhand clothes or trying to rest more.
Like whole things — whole food, whole grains, holistic approaches, wholesomeness, wholeheartedness, the whole enchilada
Find themselves thinking and talking about decolonizing all kinds of spaces, inside and out
People whose lives changed when they read bell hooks, Lama Rod Owens, Cheryl Strayed, Arundhati Roy, Malidoma Patric Somé, Sobonfu Somé, Joy Harjo, Gabor Mate.
Are curious about, but haven’t yet tried working with a therapist. Or those who have tried and either it wasn’t the right fit or they stalled out with talk therapy.
We probably aren’t a fit if…
You’re looking for parenting tactics
You want to quickly change your child’s behavior.
You’re not willing to question some pervasive strategies for working with kids like bribing, timeouts, praising, etc
You’re not interested in exploring your own patterns and how those are impacting your parenting and your relationship with your child.
You’re unable to be in a private space, free from distractions during our virtual sessions together.
“I resonated with the framework immensely. It felt like all the messy convos I had with myself in the past 30+ years suddenly found a structure, and more importantly a reason.
This helps me start my journey to start listening more attentively to [myself] and build that trust and grounding. It also made me more conscious of the next couple of years are critical for me to work with my 5.5 year old.”
— Helen
“Originally, I thought working with a "coach" meant someone helping me identify and organize goals. I held back from reaching out because I was afraid to confront difficult feelings and past emotions.
It felt too overwhelming feeling deep emotions, and actually talking about it with another person caused extreme anxiety/made me feel very unsafe/uncomfortable.
I finally reached out when I had reached an all-time-low and was willing to try anything and everything to feel "normal."
The most positive outcomes I've experienced is actually being able to identify and hold space for my feelings now. I feel a better sense of self and hopefulness that I'm "exactly where I need to be." I'm able to better express and understand myself. I'm also able to feel more deeply without feeling helpless or confused.
I no longer feel constant resentment, shame, guilt, and feelings of unworthiness. I am happy with myself and am excited the future and to continue growing. I can finally find comfort in strength in myself.
I think it's very difficult but also extremely rewarding. I'm glad it's more emotion-based than I originally thought. I look forward to each session. I feel and see the improvement in myself, and I also understand it's an on-going non-linear process. Having Cara really helps me navigate through the difficult/confusing emotions.”
— Jessa L.
“Cara helped me develop a greater sense of self awareness of my emotional state, particularly "in the moment"
…that helped me channel/address my emotional state in a more proactive way. (vs stewing on it, unaware of the source or how to process)..”
— Tim H.
What people are saying
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What People Are Saying
“I trusted her before we were in the room, and that trust felt even stronger the second we sat down together. ”
— N.F.
“Moving to a new city and establishing my roots brought up a lot of conscious and unconscious reflections from my childhood. Cara's coaching helped me to unlock some of the roles that I had felt shame and blame around. She compassionately coached me to take a step back and put words and understanding to a lot of the anxious and judgmental feelings I was experiencing.”
— Nina
“Cara helped me develop a greater sense of self awareness of my emotional state, particularly "in the moment" that helped me channel/address my emotional state in a more proactive way. (vs stewing on it, unaware of the source or how to process)..”