inspiration
According to Certified Life
Coach Clare Seffrin Bond, although the adolescent years can be difficult, there’s plenty that parents can do to nurture
teens and encourage responsible behavior.
giving birth,” says this mother of two, in Richmond, Indiana.
Rewarding relationships come through accepting the notion that chil- dren are individuals living their own journey, rather than extensions of their parents. “What parents see or feel in a situation is not necessarily what the child is experiencing,” Bond explains. “Taking the time to recognize the fact of individual realities can be huge in re- thinking one’s approach to discipline.” She recommends speaking to adolescents honestly—even when it’s painful—and listening to them, even when we may not want to hear, or believe, what they’re saying. “Stay in touch with the fact that your relation- ship with your children is absolutely huge in terms of their—and your— development as a happy and fulfilled person,” counsels Bond. “Work hard at remembering your own teen years, including the frustrations and disap- pointments. Empathy and respect are essential ingredients in successful human relationships at every age.”
To connect with Lori Petro, visit Teach-
Through-Love.com; for Lori Simmons,
GummyGiggles.com; and Clare Seffrin Bond,
TheRoadToClarity.com.
Beth Davis is a contributing writer to Natural Awakenings.
The Power of Place T
by Linda Sechrist
he qualities that make a place spe- cial to us are highly personal, and they often help us to define who we are. Whether the setting is a lake house, a mountain lodge, a seashore cottage or a backyard at twilight, our sensory con- nections to these special places shape us in deep and lasting ways. Childhood experiences of our hometowns and memorable spots where we ran free dur- ing summer vacations are often deeply embedded in our strongest memories. This relationship to place is one that we carry within ourselves for a lifetime. Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner noted that his own “little postage stamp of native soil” was an inexhaustible source of material. Fellow Mississippian and Pulitzer Prize winner Eudora Welty wrote, “Place ab- sorbs our earliest notice and attention, it bestows on us our original aware- ness; and our critical powers spring up from the study of it and the growth of experience inside it. It is to this place that each of us goes to find the clearest, deepest identity of ourselves.” Psychologist Carl Jung lived nearly half his life in a home he built in the village of Bolligen, on Switzerland’s Lake Zurich. In his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung remarked, “At Bolligen, I am in the midst of my true life, I am most deeply myself. At times I feel as if I am spread out over the land- scape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the splashing of
the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons. In Bolligen, silence sur- rounds me almost audibly, and I live in modest harmony with nature.” Iona Dreaming: The Healing
Power of Place, is Clare Cooper Marcus’ journal of her six months on the Scot- tish island of Iona. The author writes, “I feel pure in this place. It is as if there was no separation between my living, breathing, perceiving body and my soul- nature. No posturing, no pretending. I am who I am—no more, no less. As my breathing slows and I relax, I experience the sound of the sea passing through me—not me hearing the sea, not me and the sea—just the sound. A breeze blows across my face; the sun shines on my cheeks and forehead. For a moment, they seem to penetrate my body. Then, they just are. My body ceases to exist. No Clare or ego or a specific person, but a manifestation of divine energy just like everything around me… our separate- ness just an illusion.”
These kinds of intimate experiences occur most often when we are in a relaxed or meditative state, or spending full-bodied, multisensory, openhearted time in nature. Such moments inspire the experience described by American Poet Robinson Jeffers in which we “fall in love outward.”
Linda Sechrist is a senior staff writer for Natural Awakenings magazines.
natural awakenings May 2012 35
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