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Setting New Rhythms for Summer (An Update)
June 5, 2018 In News No Comment

Valued readers & listeners: To honor the needs of our writers and team members, and to reflect the values we hold dear regarding family time together, Kindred Mom is taking a break from releasing new essays and podcast episodes for the summer. If you’re finding our community for the first time, we invite you to read and listen to all the exquisite stories of real moms we’ve shared in recent months. You can connect directly with other moms in our community by joining our private Facebook group. To stay connected with us, subscribe to our Kindred Mom newsletter (and get the freebies in our subscriber resource library!) and if you’re a writer, please subscribe to our writer-specific email list so we can keep you updated about upcoming opportunities to write for Kindred Mom.  

Find all 40 episodes of the Kindred Mom Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and to catch up on the recent series topics, visit each of the monthly home pages for each series: Self-Care for Moms, Loving Well, Becoming a Resilient Mom, Intentionally Cultivating Your Family Culture, and Cherishing Childhood. 

Thanks for being part of this lovely community and please be in touch if there is anything our team can do for you during these summer months. 

The following essay is from Kindred Mom founder Emily Sue Allen, originally shared over on the blog at Joyful Life Magazine. For more inspiring words, follow Joyful Life Magazine on Facebook and Instagram. Have a wonderful summer!

 

It was a simple summer—definitely not one that topped the list as “most exciting” or “most memorable”—but it marked me for life in a profound way. 

My children were little, but all of age and ability to explore a playground without needing a helicopter parent. I planned regular dates to meet up with friends at local area parks, and I’d show up to each location with a portable living room stuffed into the collapsible wagon I kept in the back of our van: a few camp chairs, a beach blanket, and a full day’s worth of hydration and snack supplies. I also made my children wear matching neon shirts so that I could count them from a distance without straining my eyes.

Upon arrival to a park date, I’d scope out a shady spot with a good view of the playground, set up chairs for the moms who planned to join me and sink my weary self into a seat to watch my children swarm the playground in their matching neon shirts. Putting all six of them in the same eye-popping color made it easier to count and keep track of them. That summer rhythm offered me freedom from piles of anxious thoughts and the annoyance that accumulated when we were in close quarters for too long.

Every time June rolls around, I find myself longing for a taste of the peace and calm I experienced that summer.

Right now, my open calendar is an expanse of possibility. I want our summer to bring respite from the busy pace we’ve kept in recent months, but if I don’t slow down to consider how to establish new rhythms, I’m at risk of filling up the calendar with things that do not serve our family well. 

In my quest to welcome peace and purpose into the months ahead, there are three areas I’m exploring as I shape our family calendar…

Read the rest of this essay on Sacred Rhythms of Summer over at the Joyful Life Magazine blog. 

 

Emily Sue Allen is the founder of Kindred Mom, and she hosts/produces the Kindred Mom podcast. She is a contemplative, creative soul who celebrates the beauty of a humble, handmade life and deeply values the power of encouragement. She lives with her husband and six kids in the Pacific Northwest, and personally blogs at emilysueallen.com. Find Emily on Instagram.

 

Subscribe to the Kindred Mom email list to receive our newsletters and gain free access to our library of printable resources for moms!


 

 

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Start Your Own Summer Connection Group
June 9, 2017 In Childhood News No Comment

If you haven’t listened yet, we’d love for you to check out the new Kindred Mom Podcast and please leave us a review on iTunes! Episode 2 about Building Community might be of particular interest in conjunction with this post!

I hugged his preschool teacher hard this morning. It’s been a good year. I have seen my son mature, learn, and grow. It has flown by so fast. I can’t even believe he’ll be in Kindergarten next year. How do you wrap up a school year in one hug? I nearly was in tears as my 5-year-old son and I walked away from his preschool classroom, me holding his tiny hand tightly as if holding more tightly would stop time.

“What happens now?” he said curiously.

“Well, we have summer!” I responded cheerfully.

His little face contorted into a sweet mixture of wonder and confusion as he spat out, “What’s THAT?”

What a good question. What exactly IS summer? Disrupted schedules? Maybe. Jammies-all-morning? Yes, please! Daylight until 9pm and flexible house rules…ok, I’ll take it. However, one thing I have felt summer brings is the disconnect from seeing our friends due to vacations, summer camps, and the general lack of planning on my part!

Can I get an AMEN!?

(Summer thoughts from Lynne Patti)


This summer, the Kindred Mom team would like to offer up a way that you can still see your friends and even your kids’ friends throughout the summer. We are buzzing about our Summer Connection Groups for mamas and their kids! This is a chance for you to intentionally open up your home to your friends in order to press into community during the sometimes lonely, sometimes challenging weeks of summer.

Hosting a group doesn’t have to be stressful or all-consuming. The point really is to be intentional about drawing your girlfriends or mamas that may be new to your area (or new to motherhood in general!) in to some things you might already be interested in doing this summer. As a team, we have generated some ideas for you, if you find them helpful in your own Summer Connection Group planning.

What does a summer connection group look like?

There are no hard and fast rules! Your group can reflect your personality and desires. Different members of our team are tackling this in a few different ways.

One of our team members is hostessing a daytime “Coffee Hour” that is open for mamas and their littles. The time is centered around an activity for the kids and a chance for the moms to chat and connect (and drink ALL THE COFFEE). She has planned out 8 weeks of simple activities for the kids (skip down to the bottom of this post to see a few of her suggestions), and she provides coffee and tea, and asks the mamas who join for the day to bring a snack to share with the group to keep it manageable for herself.

If a quieter, kid-free evening sounds more appealing to you, curate your invite list and ask your friends to each bring something sweet to share. You can’t go wrong with a cheese platter and a few desserts. Center the evening around asking each other questions and getting to know each mama present. You could go through a book together (we highly recommend Shauna Niequist’s book, “Bread and Wine”) or you can simply let the evening breathe with laughter and wine. This is a wonderful way to deepen relationships with dear friends, new and old.

If you’re not sure about hosting in your home, you can set some dates/times for a nearby park (we recommend a weekly rhythm—same day/time) so people can plan ahead to join you. One of our team members is doing things two days a week, one day meeting friends at the zoo, another day meeting friends at a park for the kids to play and the moms to chat. Bring a lunch and some sunscreen, and have a blast together! You may be interested in the Summer Survival Kit we shared recently (scroll to the bottom of the linked post for a list of great summer gear).

The ultimate goal is that the mamas who attend would feel seen, loved, and heard.

However you structure a group, we want to encourage you to reach out this summer and draw your mama-community in close. We cannot do this mothering gig alone! Connection with other moms can be the difference between surviving and thriving this summer.

Five ways to make your Summer Connection Group great:

1) Set firm dates/times —Decide what kind of group appeals to you (daytime with kids, evening with moms, weekly or selected dates, at your home or at another location)

2) Communicate with friends (email your friends, send out an Evite, or start a private Facebook group to communicate about what you have going on)

3) Have available basic refreshments and don’t be afraid to ask to others to bring things (It’s great if you can let people know what you’re providing and let them know what they can bring to share with the group)

4) Decide on some activities to include — If you’re planning a backyard water-play day, most mamas will want to know that in advance so they can bring the appropriate gear. Roughly planning out activities will help keep everyone on the same page.

5) Be Flexible—Summer is a tough time to plan things if you’re hoping that everyone will be there each week. If you can make peace with the fact that the group will be different week to week because of vacations and other summer commitments, you can enjoy the time with whomever does arrive for the fun.

Some general tips:

Consider co-hosting your group with someone. This will ensure you always have at least one person there to spend time with even if the others can’t make it!

Set up the night before if you have a daytime group. Leaving the details until the last minute can be stressful, but if you can have your activities ready ahead of time, it can be a lot more relaxed as people arrive.

Think about your space and where people will gather.

Think about using disposable cups and paper plates to make cleanup easy.

Add a personalized touch to welcome the mamas who come. Set out some fresh flowers, use your grandmother’s lovely teapot or serving dishes, put up a banner—anything that brings a special element into your gathering.

Be sure to introduce people as they arrive so that new people feel welcome. Name tags are a nice touch if you know your guests don’t know each other well!

Here are some backyard activities you might consider for your daytime group:

~For younger kids~

Sidewalk chalk
Make sailboats with yogurt cups (and play with them in water!)
Create a sensory table with dirt and “bugs” or have each child bring a car to “wash”
Water balloon fun
Painting on a deck or sidewalk with water and big paint brushes
Bubbles

~For older kids~

Painting rocks
Marshmallow toothpick tower creations
Have the kids make a fruit salad (wash and chop with a butter knife)
Make animal creations out of fruit and toothpicks
Ice cream sundae bar (each guest brings toppings)
String together pasta necklaces

Obviously, Pinterest also has endless ideas! These are just a few to get you thinking.

However you put your group together, please tell us about what you’re doing! You can post on instagram and use the #kindredmom hashtag (or tag us directly!) or feel free to join our private Facebook group and share your Summer Connection Group shenanigans there! Thanks for joining in!

**This post contains affiliate links**
(Special thanks to Sarah Allard for the original idea to gather women together in this capacity!)

   

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Mother’s Day Surprises
May 14, 2017 In News 9 Comments

Mamas, we hope your Mother’s Day was filled with love, rest, and the sweet gifts and gratitude you hopefully received from your children on this day. We have a few surprises to share with you, and hope you’ll be as excited about them as our team is.


Our team is ecstatic to announce that our Kindred Mom Podcast is launching in a few days (May 16) *Edit: NOW AVAILABLE!* The first episodes are done and just waiting for iTunes to approve/list them for access through your favorite podcast app, so once the iTunes elves have worked their magic, you should be able to find them. The podcast is a companion to the Kindred Mom blog, and is an interview-style podcast that dives a little deeper into the topics we cover here on the blog. We hope that as soon as it becomes available, you’ll go subscribe, share with friends, and more than anything, we hope this is another great way to bring you encouragement in the midst of your busy mama life. We have intentionally kept episodes to roughly a half hour for easy-listening, and will feature many of the mamas who share their essays here on the blog.


The heart of our mission at Kindred Mom involves connecting mamas together because we believe sharing our stories with each other—online and in real life—is an essential part of flourishing in motherhood.

We want to encourage you to think about how you might intentionally make space in your schedule to connect with other moms face-to-face this summer. To help facilitate this, we’re inviting you to begin your own Summer Connection Group. You can read a little bit more about what we have in mind here.

Will you join us in the vision to bring moms together?


In honor of the Kindred Mom Podcast launch and the above Summer Connection Groups, we are doing two different giveaways for two lucky mamas to win!

We’re keeping the exact details a surprise, but each of the bundles have beautiful and practical hostessing helps from Magnolia Market and Amazon that will help the mamas who win them get a Summer Connection Group started in style and help spread the mission of Kindred Mom by intentionally getting moms together.

One giveaway is happening on Instagram (@kindred_mom) beginning on May 17th, and the Hospitality Bundle we’re giving away there is geared toward mamas who might host a backyard Moms & Kids Coffee Hour style connection group. To enter, go to our Instagram feed and look for the official giveaway graphic and follow the (easy) steps to enter.

The other giveaway will go to one of our email subscribers, and this Hospitality Bundle is geared toward mamas who might host an evening Dessert & Conversation Night for mamas without kids. To enter, all you need to do is subscribe to our email list before May 24th when we randomly choose a winner from the list!

~

That concludes our Mother’s Day surprises! We are honored to journey with all of you courageous, committed, inspiring, resilient, persevering mothers. Thanks for all you do!

With love,

The Kindred Mom Team

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Welcome to Kindred Mom!
January 26, 2017 In News 3 Comments

Welcome to Kindred Mom! This is a little space on the internet where moms can find encouragement, community, and resources to help them flourish in their motherhood journey. Soon, we will be sharing essays from a variety of women about a wide range of mothering topics with the hope that you will find bits of wisdom that might help you as you navigate the awesome and challenging reality of raising little ones. This space is new, and will be taking shape more and more over the coming weeks, but our Kindred Mom Vision Team has collaborated on the following manifesto to communicate what we are all about. Mothering is a journey that is sweeter with the camaraderie of other moms, and we hope you’ll find that here. We’d love to have you join our Kindred Mom Facebook Group for more conversations and updates on our upcoming official launch.

Kindred Mom Manifesto

We are mothers who embrace the wonderful, messy, surprising, and rewarding role of motherhood.

We are mothers who savor the wonder-filled beauty of childhood and seek to honor our unique, brilliant, curious children with our attention and love.

We are mothers who strive to live with compassion and kindness as core values.

We are mothers who celebrate small victories.

We are mothers who have the courage to ask for help when we need it.

We are mothers who know sleeplessness, loneliness, sacrifice, exhaustion, fear, uncertainty, and struggle, yet we believe motherhood to be a valuable and satisfying endeavor.

We are mothers who support each other without judgement.

We are mothers who celebrate the courage and beauty we see in others and believe that motherhood is not a competition.

We are mothers who believe that every mom can flourish in her motherhood role.

We are mothers who listen to and learn from one another.

We are mothers who honor the beautiful mothering journey of other women—supporting and encouraging moms who find themselves in that role by natural birth, adoption, foster care, step-parenting or any other means.

We are mothers who acknowledge the difficult journey of women who long to be mothers that are still in a season of waiting, mothers who have experienced secondary infertility, and mothers who have experienced the profound loss of a child at any stage.

We are mothers who share both the struggles and triumphs of motherhood.

We are mothers who celebrate the experiences that are common to all moms, and respect the differences of each mother’s individual journey.

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