Liberated Parents Circle
Do you feel disenchanted or overwhelmed by parenthood?
Perhaps...
You don’t know who you are anymore. You’ve lost your sense of self. Even your jeans don’t fit anymore. You feel like you are waiting for moments where you will finally feel like your old self again.
You feel like this is not what you signed up for. You imagined yourself a glowing, serene, nurturing parent, but you find yourself feeling more like a “shit rag” or an anxious mess.
You don’t feel like a real parent. You feel like you are faking it, like an imposter. You are changing the diapers, making the snacks, playing the games, but you still don’t really identify with the word “mom” or “dad”.
When you share your experience about parenthood and seek support, you just end up feeling dismissed and misunderstood. It feels like no one is willing to hold this pain with/for you.
You are constantly haunted by self-doubt, and mother guilt. All the things you read contradict each other and you feel lost.
You feel like you are failing your child, yourself or that your body is failing you.
You know deep down you deserve better, and you long for a meaningful, sacred and celebrated entrance into parenthood.
The thing is, your are not failing. Our society has failed you.
Parents Matter
Have you noticed that parenting experts are all old white males? I got tired of reading old white males telling me how to be a good mom. What do they know? What I know is that parenting has as much to do with ourselves as our kids. I also know that parents love their children more than anyone else could. I am not a parentING expert, but I am a PARENT expert. I believe that if you are cared for, if you are given the support, community and initiation you deserve, you will carry it forward into a fierce, intentional and powerful parenthood.
What would it be like to:
Have the space and time to ceremoniously grieve and reflect on the things you leave behind as you grow into this new role.
Create an intentional version of motherhood that aligns with YOUR values, gifts and strengths rather than with the “good mother” myth we have been fed.
Learn self-care practices that allow you come home to yourself so you feel PRESENT in your new role.
Connect to an ancestral web of wise mothers, caregivers, and nurturers so you always have wisdom you can tap into.
Unapologetically embrace healthy boundaries to claim YOUR space, YOUR time, YOUR energy and YOUR parenting choices without feeling guilty.
Have a practice of ceremony and ritual that support your parenting by offering you abundance and groundedness
Have a community that celebrates the depth of this transition, so you can find MEANING in every day parenting.
Feel like you embody your role of mother, father or parent.
Welcome to the Liberated Parents Circle
A sacred virtual 6 week circle for folx who want to get the initiation into parenthood they deserve.
YOUR unique version of a liberated, fulfilled parenthood exists within you. We will navigate the following pillars to help you uncover it:
1) Feminism: Desconstructing the “good mother” myth.
Why am I afraid of turning into a “soccer mom”? What does it mean if I do not breastfeed or if breastfeed until 5? Or if I sleep-train or co-sleep? Where do those labels and stereotypes come from? Who are they serving?
What does a liberated, radical and glorious mother look like to YOU? What does it mean for YOU to have this new identity of parent?
2) Embodiment: How can we begin to really LAND in this new role, so we can actually feel like a parent.
My husband and I couldn’t believe we were parents for the first 5 years of our kids’ lives. But once we began to tune into our boundaries about being a parent vs a child, and tuning into our nervous system needs, it became easier to feel like real parent.
3) Ceremony and ritual: We use birth-story writing, visualisation, birth art, and ancient story-telling to connect to the archetypes of this initiation. These practices become daily self-care strategies and ways to process our role on a deep soulful level.
4) Community: We gather together weekly for 6 weeks. We meet live in order to build a community of like-minded folx who are going through it too.
For what? The purpose of this, is to have you feel really confident, grounded and liberated in the parenthood that YOU will walk. It will be yours alone, and you deserve to own it.
You have experienced an enormous transition. Remember puberty? This is that, but now with a tiny human that needs you completely. You’ve transitioned from the archetype of the “maiden” to the archetype of the “mother”. You DESERVE an intentional initiation into this new role in order to embody it with wisdom, fierceness and power. Here is what you will get from our live circles:
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Each week, you will enter a sacred space where your experience will be honoured, believed, and contained so you can feel safe to process it.
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In the perinatal period, so much happens in the body. We need time to integrate and begin embodying those changes and what they mean to us. As a somatic practitioner, I will teach you hands-on practices that will teach you how to process the experience of pregnancy, birth and postpartum, so you can parent from an embodied state.
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Parenting can be deeply depleting, so will create your own menu of pleasure and resource that you can use to ground, reconnect and strengthen you. We will also talk about boundaries and the unrealistic capitalist, patriarchal and colonial expectations that deplete us even more.
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Through Somatic Experiencing, visualisation, art, and sacred stories, you will gain skills to help you own and re-claim your pregnancy, birth and postpartum story in a way that feels, powerful. I want you to start seeing how bad-ass you were, and still are.
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Who are you as a parent? What are your deepest values? What matters? Let’s throw out the parenting books written by white men who probably did 2% of the parenting. Let’s make our own story together. Let’s reclaim what it means to be a powerful, embodied, sacred life-giver.
Who is this woman?
Let me introduce myself. I am Christiane Laflèche (she/her). I am a cis, white female, in a hetero relationship. I am a scorpio (can you tell?). I am a mother of 2 sweet boys.
After completing my masters in social work, I set out to study trauma and the perinatal period. I had experienced postpartum depression and birth trauma and I was angry that so many birthers were suffering. What I found helped me, also helped many folks in my private practice:
ceremony, ritual and community around the transition into parenthood. We deserve a formal initiation! While we cannot quickly change the social structures that make parenthood so hard right now, we CAN begin by demanding respect and reverence for this sacred role. This circle is exactly this. It is an offering made out of love and deep respect for all the primary caregivers out there who feel like shit, but deserve to feel like they are shining like stars. You create life. You nurture love. You are everything this world needs and I am here to honour YOU.
What can I expect week by week:
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Week 1: Building Safety
We will begin by naming our needs in regards to group safety. Then we will dive into learning about your nervous system and the role it played in your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. You will learn what your specific nervous system patterns are which will help you know when you are parenting from a place of safety or threat. We will do a boundary practice to help you start the practice of identifying what supports you and what depletes you.
HW: Preferences as an extension of boundaries: Creating a pleasure toolkit
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Week 2: Identity and Feminism
Let’s talk about what it means to be a mother. This week, we will have an open discussion about the myths we have been fed, our deepest fears about how parenthood will change us, and how deepest desires about parenthood.
We will connect these myths to our somatic practice of boundaries from last week, seeing what feels good and what doesn’t.
HW: Worksheet on redefining the good mother.
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Week 3: Somatic Integration
We will go through a guided practice of somatic integration in order to learn how to complete the cycle of your fight, flight and freeze responses so you prevent parental burn out, and learn practical ways to prevent trauma symptoms.
This will also be an opportunity for you to feel what it is like to be a parent within your body. How does this new role change you? What does it FEEL like to be a parent?
HW: Birth/ Perinatal Story Writing
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Week 4: Ancestor Work and Self-Compassion
In this session, we will connect with the resources around us such as the Earth, our ancestors, or our friends and family through a guided visualisation that will give you insight into your healing journey. We will also learn how to use self-compassion as a way to nurture ourselves.
HW: Choosing your art modality and guided somatic practices
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Week 5: Art and Sacred Stories
This week, we will hear the story of Innanna, the great Goddess who travels to the underworld. This story is often used as a metaphor for trauma and shadow work. We will discuss how elements of the story are mirrored in your experience. Then, we will spend time creating healing art as a response to this story. (Don’t worry, I am not an artist either. It is not about the product but rather the process.)
HW: Preparation for next week
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Week 6: Re-Birthing Ceremony
This is a special session that is different with every group because YOU get to design how we celebrate and close our sacred circle. From sharing music, singing, sharing poetry, offering virtual gifts, burning symbols, and anything your can conjure, we will find rituals to decide what we leave behind and what we take forward with us.