A Conversation with Michelle Gale on Conscious Parenting
Erik: Thank you for sharing that. I want to back up a little, because there are people listening, and I count myself among them, who are running into the phrase conscious parenting for the very first time. My gut assumption is that it's something like regular parenting with a side of meditation. That's about the extent of what I think I know. So let me just ask you directly: what is conscious parenting?
Michelle: Meditation can absolutely be a piece of it. I'm always nudging parents toward some kind of contemplative practice. Sitting down to meditate works. So does mindfulness, which really just means bringing your attention back to this moment, again and again. That attention matters to conscious parenting. I'd go so far as to say you can't parent consciously if you aren't being mindful, and meditation does feed into that.
But the first move isn't outward, it's inward. Every one of us carries leftover material from our own childhoods that we never fully sorted out, and we carry it right into the relationship with our kids. That's unavoidable. So the work begins with turning the gaze on ourselves. Children have a way of reflecting back the exact places where we still have growing to do. We're raising ourselves at the same time we're raising them, and if I'm being honest, probably doing more of the former. If we want our kids to change and grow, we have to be willing to change and grow first. It starts with us. That, to me, is what conscious parenting means.
Erik: Thank you. I think we hit a small technical hiccup for a second, but you came right back.
Michelle: Okay.
Erik: So conscious parenting leans on mindfulness and meditation as a kind of foundation, and then it asks us to reckon with our own history and how we carry ourselves into family life in the present. I'm curious what that actually looks like once you're living it. Day to day, how does a conscious parent behave differently from a parent who isn't working this way?
Michelle: They're doing their own inner work without letting up. This isn't the kind of thing where you sign up for a workshop, finish a book, walk back through your front door, and declare yourself finished. It's every single day. Moment by moment. Always asking questions, always noticing, always peeling back another layer: who am I, how am I showing up, why did I just react like that? I'll grant you it can sound tiring. And it is, sometimes. It can also wake you up and lighten you in a way that almost nothing else does.
A large part of it, for me, is this: we let our children see the inner work. Parents don't always catch onto this at first, but we show our kids what's actually happening inside us. When we're having a hard time, we hand them the words for how we're working our way through it.