A Wonderful Day

A few weeks ago I ran The 2018 Gentle Parenting Retreat, it was a great success, and I really want to tell you about it and celebrate with you and those who attended with photos from the day and some ideas to extend the workshops.

Here was the premise:

We began the retreat with a little get to know you session, I asked each mama to write a question on a slip of paper to put in a basket and pull out one at a time, we had some really great questions including who would you invite to your fantasy supper? What is your favorite building? And Name an event in your live that changed you for the better.  We didn't manage to answer all the questions so saved them for use later, but it was really great to find out more about everyone there and help them to relax and get to know each other better.

We then moved into the room that we were using as a studio and began our creative session with a guided meditation.  I wrote the meditation myself based on the guided meditation in "The Rainbow Way" By Lucy H. Pearce. The meditation invited the mamas on a journey to their own inner sacred creative space where they could feel safe to express their creativity.  After the meditation we began the storytelling art piece I had planned.  This piece was based on an exercise created by The Dulwich Centre, designed to help vulnerable young people, and is now a process used around the world. I was also inspired by the words of Nathan B. Weller when I was writing my narrative for the guided piece.   The point of this exercise was to help us to focus on different aspects of our life, how we spend our time, where we have come from, our skills, dreams, hopes and the legacy we intend to leave behind us when we're gone.  All these make up our story.  When I was planning the activity at home it helped me realise what is important in my life and where I need to focus my attention to make the most of my life.  It also helped me realise what I have to give, and how little of my energy I positively spend working on the things I want to be my legacy.

We tried to maintain the meditative feel in the room and in our own head spaces whilst I read the instructions I had written for the art piece.
When the drawing and writing part of the process was complete we opened up the space for more conversation and we added colour with chalk pastels to our Tree of Life pictures.  I chose chalk pastels because their colour is so pure and vivid. We filled in our trees with the colour to transform the piece from an illustration of a process into a piece of art that is visually appealing, inspiring and uplifting.

After the art pieces were finished I closed the session by reading a poem called "Advice from a tree" by Ilan Shamir.

Beautiful finished pieces:

Aren't they beautiful, and all so different and colourful.

We then enjoyed a yummy vegan lunch and began the afternoon session run by my good friend Vicki Clubley-Moore which was a vision board workshop.  She gave us a beautiful guided meditation followed by some journaling prompts and the workshop for making the vision boards. It was a really inspiring workshop and helped me gain more focus on what I want my life to look like.

It was a really great day, so lovely to chat with the like-minded mamas who attended and I am so grateful to them for committing to their own self care and trusting in me to provide a good day for them.  I am so thankful to each and every one of them for their beautiful contributions to the day, and look forward to running another day in the future.

For the mamas to came to the retreat (and anyone else who has completed the Tree Of Life exercise, here are a few activities to take the experience further:

Journaling:
You may have done some journaling about this already as you completed your drawing of the tree, but you can add to this after by way of reflection.  From writing about where you have come from you might need to journal a bit about how your upbringing has influenced you now both positively and negatively, you could consider how negative experiences have informed your life in positive ways. As you wrote down the things you do daily you might have noticed that there aren't many things you do just for yourself each day, you might like to journal about what ways you can include more things in your day that nourish you.  When considering your skills you might want to write about what skills you want to develop or new skills you would like to learn. As you reflect on your values, you might like to journal about how you are instilling these values in you children and link this to your legacy.  When reflecting on your hopes and dreams consider ways in which you can achieve them.  You might have had thought of things you want to do to achieve the legacies that you wrote down; things to enable you to leave behind the things you want to pass on. You can journal and list these and form goals and schedules for you to achieve them.

Letter Writing:
You might like to consider writing letters to those people in your life who have passed on legacies to you.  You could thank them for what they have done and let them know how important they are to you.  You could also consider writing letters to your children telling them about the legacies you wish to leave them (something for them to read in the future).

Art extensions:
You may have found yourself particularly inspired by the use of chalk pastels in this activity and would like to experiment with them further, here are some random time lapse videos on youtube to give you some ideas and inspiration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdyS4uDuK3k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbgPQNRcJ6c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTzonXPclks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0qYTXLb90o

Also take a look at Pinterest HERE for more chalk pastel inspiration.

You might have felt inspired by the idea of trees and like to explore this further a google or Pinterest search will provide you with an abundance of inspiration and ideas.  For example you could experiment with creating a blow paint tree like THIS, a hot glue gun tree like THIS, you could also explore wax crayon rubbings of the bark or leaves of the tree.
Another avenue you might like to explore in meditative art and healing art therapy.

Hen Do Fun

Its becoming a rarer and rarer thing to go out with my girlfriends and just have fun, but a Hen Do is one totally legitimate reason to pilfer my toddler off onto my husband and spend the day laughing and being silly! Which is what I did a couple of weekends ago.
I travelled with Biscuit up to Birmingham to for the Hen Do of my best friend's sister, we all grew up together and are all good friends now, I have two younger sisters who are a similar age to my best friend's younger sisters so we all played together and our mums were friends.  My friend has a toddler now too, she is Boris's God Mother and I am her toddlers God Mother.

It was a beautiful sunny day so we took a picnic and walked to some nearby playing fields in the village where we all grew up and where her parents still live.   We had a great time telling funny stories and reminiscing about old times.  We also played some games including an egg and spoon race and a three legged race and by far the most hilarious game of all where we dressed the bride and another hen up in toilet paper wedding dresses.

We divided into teams. The younger (child-free) girls amongst us began carefully planning what style of wedding dresses they would make with their toilet paper - should it be strapless, off the shoulder, princess style, or mermaid?  My friend and I on the other hand, like two silly school girls began running round and round our poor "bride" wrapping her like a mummy in reams and reams of toilet paper!  I was in absolute tears with laughter,(which I mopped up on the living toilet paper dispenser that was our bride-to-be!)

So I am sure you might be wondering why I am telling you this story (she had a fun day, so what?)  Well I am writing it on the off chance that you are reading this and are currently child-free and thinking what a great idea it would be to have babies.  Of course, by all means have babies, but first there is something really important that you need to do... PARTY!!!!  And I am talking like literally every day.  Well maybe not every day, that might make you ill, but as often as you can, dress up, go out, go to the cinema, go to clubs, have weekends away, travel, because I am not kidding, the end is nigh! Once you have kids its over.  There will be no more partying, there will be no more spontaneous trips to the cinema, there will be no more dressing up, those days will be gone.  So party while you can because one day soon you too will be running round a field with a roll of toilet paper like it is the funnest thing EVER, like you are on day release from an institute, and you too will look back and wish you had partied more, I know I do. Mark my words folks, the end is nigh!