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 In the finale of our first season here at The Wayfinders Podcast, we’re tackling the psychological level of slowing down life: even if we do all the tricks and strategies to open up time in our schedules, how can we make it feel like time is going slower?My oldest kiddo just turned five, and it really hammered home a new feeling for me - that my kids’ lives are going by Too. Damn. Fast. I decided to dig into some research:Why does time feel faster the older we get?Why do some periods of our lives feel longer than others?What can I do to prevent one of my fears from coming true: that I’ll wake up one day and realize my life is passing me by?Tune in to learn more about the answers to these questions and some strategies we can take forward to slow things down in this fast-paced world. As for the next season, it’ll start up on September 23rd! I’m taking my own advice until then and choosing some SLOW in the meantime.  

 As our kids age, they have more opportunities to explore their own interests away from us - in the form of lessons, clubs, and groups. In our fast-paced, too-busy world, this shift evokes the image of a parent-turned-chauffeur, a chaotic calendar that drives everyone crazy, and a lack of quality family time.Since the earliest days of being a parent, I’ve been afraid of this dynamic, which sometimes feels impossible to avoid. Because of course I want my kids to explore their interests. I want them to have all the opportunities to learn, grow, and be part of their own community of peers. I was lucky enough to get those chances growing up. I’m also selfish, and don’t want to have to sacrifice to make this happen. I don’t want to compromise on the pace of life I want to lead, and I don’t want to feel like nothing but someone else’s chauffeur, even if I also get to be their cheerleader. I want time for me to learn and grow, too.In this episode of our #chooseslow series, I bat this idea back and forth, consider some parents I know with kids older than mine, and think about how they seem to structure their lives in a way that works for them amidst these competing pressures.By the end, I’m a little less afraid.  

 We’re continuing with the second episode in our #chooseslow series this week, tackling a particular moment of life that seems like it should be our opportunity for slow, but so often ends up rushing by in a blur: THE WEEKEND.It’s hard to jam-pack all the good stuff that’s supposed to make up our days off from work into just a day or two, and that doesn’t even account for the life admin catch-up from the work week before. We pack a lot of expectations and hope into the weekends before they even arrive, and then they’re over before we know it. What can we DO about this? This episode is packed full of strategies - I’ve put together 9 tips I’ve tried or am going to try myself going forward, because dammit, I WILL have weekends that are slow and spacious! 

 To say we live in a fast-paced world is, at this point, practically cliche. Yet calling it out doesn’t seem to diminish the pressures we face to say yes to more - more time, more productivity, more involvement, more haste. For the next few episodes on The Wayfinders Podcast, we’re tackling how to SLOW DOWN life in a world that never seems to stop rushing. And we’re starting by looking this dilemma square in the face: WHY is it so hard to choose slow?We’re digging in to how slow can feel like saying no, and how we can reframe to say YES - without actually saying yes to all the things that make us feel our life’s going by in a blur in the first place. (Special shout out in this episode to Megan Seely of The Goal Designer, who gave me one of my favourite mantras of late, which I share in the show!) 

 One binary I’ve found difficult to navigate as a parent is the divide between structure and flexibiity - we know routine is good for kids, but so is adaptability… how do we perform this dance as the people leading?In this episode, I dig into why this is difficult to navigate (spoiler alert: it’s because routine and flexibility seem to enhance the same key skills in kids, but only in just the right proportions), why partner dynamics add a complicating layer, and how I’ve struggled since becoming a parent to create a “system” of structure and flexibility. I talk about two of my favourite parenting books, which I wrote about in way more detail over at the www.raiseamother.com blog. Alex Russel’s Drop the Worry Ball, and Pamela Druckerman’s Bringing Up Bebe, give me ideas that when, put together, make me realize that… maybe I’ve been going about this all wrong for the last five years. (Story of parenthood, right??) It’s okay, though - I come out with some hopeful thoughts for a new way forward in the end ;)  

 Sometimes it feels like every decision we make as parents has an undue amount of weight. Why is this? Has this always been a dilemma? And can we escape the heaviness?Today on the Wayfinders Podcast, I’m wondering if previous generations felt similar stress over the “little” decisions leading to “big” consequences, whether they had more innate sources of faith that they were more or less going to do things “right,” and how we can cultivate more trust in our own innate sources for guidance?We’re talking parental conviction, identifying our core principles… and owning the stuff we just don’t really give a shit about. It’s time to dig deep and come out the other side with more confidence. 

 Of all the decisions we make in parenthood, there are many that have no right answer. It’s easy to get stuck, hemming and hawing, talking our possible paths to death in hopes of finding the one piece of info that will suddenly make our choice clear.These are often the big, “life design” questions, like:how many kids to have?when should my kids have their own devices?what school should they go to?should we move?It can feel like if we just get enough data, we can identify the ‘correct’ decision (for us), but sometimes, we can’t! Instead, there might be a whole bunch of paths that would all actually be fine, in the end. But I’m a huge systems-and-organization person, so this is hard for me, and I really wanted to tackle this question: How can we get out of our own heads when there really isn’t a right answer, and just get on with living our lives? 

 There are a lot of decisions to navigate in parenthood. Sometimes it feels like life is now just one big avalanche of decisions, one coming after the other, and it’s hard to see where it’s all supposed to be going. Seriously, humans have been doing this for awhile now, so WHY exactly haven’t we come up with a manual for this already!?I know I’ve wished for one so many times, and today’s podcast digs into what why I want one, why I can’t have one, and, maybe, why that isn’t actually such a terrible thing. More importantly, though, we’re talking about how even if we can’t have a parenthood manual, maybe we can still implement some things in our lives that make it feel more like we do have, if not exactly a manual, at least some reassurance that we've got this.SHOW NOTES:Podcast: One Bad Mother, which - super fun fact - I was on as a guest with my sister, Shannon, back in 2016! 

 We’ve been talking a lot here at Wayfinders about time for ourselves - how to get it, prioritize it, enforce it, claim it… but what if we have a partner, who probably also wants this desirable ‘self time’?Too often, negotiating time to just be our individual, adult selves, pursuing our interests or even just RELAXING, can feel like a competition or a losing game. We want our partners to have this, too, but we don’t want to feel like we got the short end of the stick. I find this incredibly hard to balance, even in a relationship that otherwise has pretty great communication and solidarity… Sometimes it seems like even if we can work everything else out, this question of who gets more time to themselves and who’s more burnt out is one we can’t solve.So I decided to ask some other parents for advice on how they navigate these rocky waters. This episode is chock full of the STRATEGIES that came out of these conversations. We’re tackling mindset, appreciation, feminism, scheduling hacks, common goals, ‘date-night’ and more in here, so let’s go! 

 It’s can be a huge accomplishment to decide that time for ourselves IS something we will take, and that we deserve it - it can be a whole other mountain to climb to actually implement that decision. Between logistical roadblocks, the flux and inconsistency of child development/family life, our feelings of being other-focused and the guilt that arises from taking time to ourselves, there are a lot of things that can get in our way. And that doesn’t even take into consideration that BEFORE we were parents, we may not have been the best at follow-through or prioritizing ourselves. Today on The Wayfinders Podcast, we’re tackling the obstacles we face and coming up with some creative solutions and helpful resources that might help us get to the point where time for ourselves is just a GIVEN.  

 We're told constantly as parents that we NEED 'me time' and 'self care' - but the more I hear this, the less meaning these ideas have.When we're told, “Remember to take time for self care!” amidst all the other high expectations of modern parenthood, it can feel like just another thing piled on the to-do list. And then when we do take indulgent time for ourselves, coming back to everyday reality can feel like a smack in the face. Is this version of 'me time' really working for us? In this episode, we're talking escapism, contrast, and how our perspective and focus during our 'me time' determines the effect that time has on us. 

  We hear a lot about the "Hot Mess" parenting style, and while it comes from good intentions, is it really helping us at the end of the day?I've been a Hot Mess, and I'm so grateful that this model was an option, rather than just failing at being a "good mom." After awhile though, being the Hot Mess didn't help me anymore - it just made me feel disempowered. In this episode, I share my story about how I got out of being a Hot Mess parent, and took back the agency in my own life. Spoiler alert: it's 100% OK to be on the Hot Mess Train - but we don't have to be on it FOREVER if that's not what we want. I'm choosing instead to get on the train of agency, empowerment, and showing my kids that adulting actually doesn't have to be all that messy all the time. 

  We love our kids, and are happy to be parents - so sometimes we feel guilty for wanting to take a break and go back to our pre-parent lives...Mom-guilt, parent guilt, whatever you want to call it - it can be easy to feel guilty for sometimes resenting our role, and longing for the life we used to live before we had kids. But when we think about it, why WOULDN'T we miss that life?! It was pretty awesome. In this episode, we empathize with ourselves for missing that time, break down three ideas that can trigger guilt when we want time away from our kids, and figure out a better, more productive place to put our energy when those feelings hit. 

  The big changes we want in our lives/relationships/parenting need a lot more time than we have in our everyday lives - so what CAN we do, right now?In this episode, we're breaking down why it feels like we have so little time and why we don't have many success stories in our culture that feel repeatable in our own lives. We tackle three types of changes - to logistics, behaviour, and relationships - and identify new strategies we can apply immediately and simply. 

  In a world of 'supposed to's, it can be difficult to figure out who we actually are, what’s right for our family, and how to be confident just making our own decisions instead of catering to everyone else’s advice/opinions. If we can manage to cut all that outside noise, though, this becomes a lot easier.It's really important that we figure this out, so that we can move beyond judgment (or the fear of it) and on to embracing our own awesome. Since it's such a big topic, it can help to take it one story at a time. My story in this episode includes thoughts on orienteering, birthday cupcakes, and a Brene Brown book. 

  There's a whole of new judgment thrown at us when we become parents (on/offline), so how can we throw it right back?Using my own stories of feeling judged (and judging other people - yep, I'll admit it), I work through where my own feelings of being judged come from, and offer some strategies we can try to kick judgment to the curb and replace it with empathy, joy, and more good stuff. 

  People talk a lot about being "real", but it can be hard to do this about parenthood, because we're stuck between binary expectations of bliss and disaster. In this very first episode of the Wayfinders podcast, we talk about the struggle to truly share our stories as parents. We don't live in a world that's very comfortable with paradox, but that's what parenthood often is: a contradictory mix of emotions and happenings that run the gamut from delight to dread, sometimes in the same moment. There are a lot of expectations pulling us in both directions. Sometimes we feel compelled to put on a smile when things are falling apart, and sometimes we feel pressured to shit-talk our parenthood because that seems like the way to connect with other parents. This episode has some ideas to get out from this rock-and-hard-place situation.