This is my Mom, Lillian. She is my rock, my mentor, my inspiration and she is the best mother and friend, a girl could ever ask for. She brought me up on her own and like every single mother, fought as hard as she could to give me the best life she possibly could.
Life was a challenge for us for many years for various different reasons. Marital breakdown, career changes, beareavement, house moves and relationship struggles (to name but a few) took a massive toll and impacted both our lives but especially our emotional relationship.
By the time I had reached my teens, between us there was what I would describe, an emotional disconnect, through nobodies fault of course. I felt quite emotionally disconnected from Mom and I didn’t feel able to confide in her about my own inner world or private life for fear of putting even more stress or pressure on her. I think I subconsciously knew that she was suffering with emotional overload and I just didn’t want to add to that.
There was a massive turning point in our relationship, I think it was either my first or second year of secondary school. Mom did a parenting course and my god did it have an extremely positive impact on our connection going forward. She became much more open minded and seemed to approach me with much more tolerance and less fear based judgement. I finally felt that I could open up to her and this was the beginning of a very firm friendship as well as mother-daughter relationship. No doubt there were many other changes to approaches but those are the ones that stick out in my mind the most.
So why Parent Coaching? Quite simply, I want others to experience that transformation in their parent-child relationships and I want to support as many people as I can to do so!