Engage
This week, I’m inviting you to engage with gratitude in small, meaningful ways as we parent.
Dear fellow parent,
Thank you for meeting me here again. Whether today brought a quiet victory, a sudden meltdown, or a mystery stain on your top! I’m glad you’re reading.
In our last Engage newsletter, we explored the magic of play— the sacred nonsense that connects us to our children when words or rules fall away. Today, I’d like to offer a companion practice:
Engage with Gratitude.
Not the forced kind.
And certainly not the kind that demands we pretend things are okay when they’re not.
I’m talking about the flickers. The glimmers. The small, quiet thank you’s that live on the edges of even the hardest days.
Gratitude is not a command to feel happy.
It’s a way of noticing what is already holding us up.
The tiny pause before your child reaches for your hand.
The professional who listened without interrupting.
Getting to speak to someone on the phone when you call your service provider after your internet goes down.
The cup of tea your partner has made for you and you can drink all of it before it gets cold (I know that you know what I mean!)
These moments don’t fix the bigger challenges. But they can hold us, gently, to something more spacious than our struggle.
So this week, I invite you to explore gratitude — not as an obligation, but as a form of engagement. As a way to stay present with both the pain and the beauty of this path.
If you have some time this week, try this:
Pause and reflect:
What is something — small, ordinary, or unexpected—that you are grateful for this week?
Speak it aloud or write it down:
Even just once. Not to make it real, but to let it be received.
Notice what your child might be grateful for too:
A favourite snack? A moment of being listened to and understood? A plaster on their knee?
Can you honour their joys — even if they seem unusual to others?
A Glimpse Ahead
Next time, we’ll continue with:
Adapt with resilience and creativity.
Until then, take one breath for yourself.
And one for your child — just as they are, just as you are.
And may gratitude not be a task, but a thread that ties you back to what matters.