This Is the Most Important Part of Conscious Parenting

The repair: humility, and re-writing generational trauma

I’ve been feeling so good. Clear. Grounded. It’s as if I can finally see certain things in my life with a level of clarity I’ve been waiting for years to have. I am so grateful. As a result, I simultaneously feel so, so close to something our family is soon to experience — I can almost taste it.

I’m referring to our land and home on Salt Spring Island. I can already sense the frequency of it, even though we haven’t even visited the island yet. Juuso and I both have been able to feel it for a few years already because time itself is not linear. There’s been a shift though — the physicality of it feels even closer, like a spiral of cycles becoming smaller and smaller and smaller, about to find completion.

We found the house — or shall I say, the house found us. The listing dropped into my inbox on August 12 of this year, and when I saw it, I knew it was the house I had seen in a dream back in March 2021, before I even knew who Juuso was.

In that dream, I woke up in a home I had never seen before, beside a man I did not know, and I was filled with so much love. When I saw the listing, I started to cry. It was the emotional remembering of what I had already seen and what we have already experienced.

Now, as I can feel us getting closer and closer to it, I find myself dreaming of gardens — herbal, flower, and vegetable — an orchard of apples and other fruit trees, nuts, and berries. I am dipping my toes into knitting, something my mom has always done but I have not yet tried. I imagine learning how to harvest our own sea salt and dipping candles from beeswax I harvest from our own beehives. All of this will come.

Interestingly but not a surprise, as the rise of AI continues, I feel more inspired than ever to live traditionally, and yet, in a new way. I feel many of us are experiencing this (let me know in the comments if you feel the same.)

When I say in a new way, I mean with a rise in consciousness, awareness, and presence — which is exactly what this time is designed to bring. It’s designed to bring us closer to our authenticity. And when I say authenticity, I mean Consciousness itself, the way God desires to live through us, beyond all the filters of identity.

Last week, while preparing for an episode on Light of the Way Podcast called Avalon, Apples, and the Return to the Garden of Eden, I found myself down a few rabbit holes. Without thinking, my fingers were just moving intuitively from source to source. First, my Ancestry DNA chart that I received four years ago. I am of Northern European decent, a mix of UK (Scotland, Ireland and England), Germany and Sweden. Next, cottage bookings on the English countryside. Then, YouTube videos on King Arthur and Avalon and finally, videos on the parenting styles of the baby boomer generation. The episode itself came together in such a beautiful, synchronistic and powerful way — I highly recommend a listen. Hear a sound clip below.

Back to the point — conscious parenting. As I watched these videos of adults recounting their childhood raised by baby boomer parents, I also remembered so much of my own childhood and the words that were spoken to me. Not because they meant to be cruel, but because those were the words that had been spoken to them, and to their parents, and to their parents before that.

So when I say that I feel inspired to live more traditionally, I don’t mean going back in time. I don’t wish for that at all.

We are living in a moment where science and technology are advancing faster than ever before — what once took a year to develop now takes a week. And yes, that can feel frightening when we listen to narratives about artificial intelligence taking over the world. But if we read between the lines, we can see that artificial intelligence can never surpass Divine intelligence. It’s just not possible. In truth, technology is mirroring us. As it accelerates, so too can we — rising in consciousness just as quickly.

An experience opened after moving through this ancestral healing with my parents and my daughter — one that revealed a deeper layer of healing within me.

I was reminded that the most important part of conscious parenting was completely absent from my own childhood and the way I was raised. This is something I had to learn on my own, through the slow, tender work of opening my heart and peeling back the layers that had been formed and shaped upon me.

I’ve never read a parenting book. I’ve never sought out external guidance. I’ve never studied a method. Everything I’ve learned has come from remembering what is already within. Divine intelligence lives within us no matter how we were raised.

This is the gift of this time: we don’t need to outsource every answer. We have innate, internal, Divine intelligence. But if we continue to rely only on the external — on systems, on tools, even on technology — we risk forgetting our own Knowing. It will never truly leave us, but we can lose touch with it in our experience.

Now, after nine years of being a parent, I’ve come to see that the most important part of conscious parenting is the repair.

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It’s said that having a child is like having your heart live outside of your body — and it’s true. The love is so deep, so pure and so innocent. Still, parenting is, by far, the greatest spiritual practice one can experience. Our children mirror to us our shadows, our blindspots, our wounds to heal and can test our patience more than anyone else can. These tiny teachers can pull out ancestral patterns and wounds from deep within our DNA that we swore we’d never repeat. It happens. This is life. Rather than sweep it under the rug in shame, conscious parenting begins, and continues, with humility, love, and the repair.

What is the Repair?

The repair is, in a nutshell, the return to presence after separation.

It’s the moment that happens after the conflict. After the tears. After the anger, after the emotional eruption.

It’s the breath that steadies the nervous system, the soft tone that re-opens the heart, the willingness to say, “I’m sorry.”

It isn’t about erasing what happened but restoring connection.

When we repair, we teach our children something profound — that conflict or disagreement doesn’t have to be about danger, it can be a return to love. And when a parent apologizes authentically, with humility and honesty, they model emotional intelligence. When they slow down, breathe, and meet their child’s eyes again, they teach regulation through the body. This moment builds a trust stronger than any moment of perfection can and also teaches children that love stays, it cannot be broken

Awareness Shifts Patterns

I learned the importance of the repair from my daughter Honu. When pregnant with our son, I began to notice a pattern — both from my childhood, all around me and then, present within my own family. A narrative that parenting a daughter is harder than a son, that the son bonds with the mother and the daughter bonds with the father and that the mother and daughter are bound to have some kind of lingering friction. At that time, any woman I spoke to about this agreed: “my mother and I do not get along but she gets along perfectly with my brother.” I heard this from women all around the world, not just within North America, which showed me that it is not just cultural but rather a result of thousands of years of imbalanced masculine and feminine energy within our collective humanity. That’s another letter for another time.

I would not accept this for our family. I would not repeat this pattern with my daughter. Upon the arrival of our son, I began to look at the experience of parenting our daughter through a different lens, and thus, found the repair.

How to Repair

The body always knows when the field has contracted. If you have any level of awareness what-so-ever (which you definitely do if you’re here), you can feel the tension in the air and the tightness within your heart space. Whether your child has stormed off or quietly sitting, silently hurt, you can feel the energy of the experience within your system.

Regulate yourself first. Take space.

The repair doesn’t happen immediately after the conflict. Usually, I take between 20-30 minutes, sometimes longer, to allow us both to regulate.

Sometimes the activity has already changed. I do not just wait for myself to feel regulated, but I watch the body communications of my child to make sure they’re feeling calm again as well.

Note: With our toddler, no matter what has happened, I pick him up immediately. I cuddle him and breastfeed him. Never, ever have I let him cry longer than necessary. He’s too young to understand this. Space is for older children, as they learn to regulate their emotions and energy.

It’s so important to allow the space so that we meet our child with calm instead of residual chaos. If you’re at all in the space of defence or your apology is followed with “but…” (I’m sorry but…) you aren’t ready. Deal with yourself first, breathe. Do a Line Activation. Step outside. Drink some water. Place your hand on your heart. Listen to some music. Cry. Whatever you need to do, deal with yourself first before holding space for them. This is how energy shifts in the home: not through words, but through presence.

Then, when you are ready, approach your child with simple words, humility and an open heart. It can be as simple as:

• “I see that I hurt you. I’m sorry. Can we talk about this?”

• “I was frustrated. That wasn’t fair to you and I am so sorry for how I reacted.”

• “Can we hold hands and take a deep breath together?”

It’s very important for Honu to feel seen and heard and so I hold that space. However long she needs, I let her talk. My body is calm and my energy is empty. Children are so deeply intuitive that they can tell if you’re quiet but in your own head and thoughts. Allow them the space they need to share, while you are listening and hearing, before you begin.

After she has spoken her heart, I share where I was coming from. Not at all in a place of defence or reasoning for my actions but more so an opening as to how I was feeling. I never want our children to think that just because I am an adult, I don’t feel my feelings. I share with them how I am feeling, openly and honestly.

Once we have both shared everything that is needed to be shared, we hug for at least 10 seconds. I don’t count this in my head, but I make sure that we are connected for quite some time. After all, there’s solid science behind the 10-second hug.

1. Oxytocin release
When you hold a hug for around 10 seconds or more, your nervous system begins releasing oxytocin, often called the bonding or connection hormone. This lowers stress, supports trust, and calms the body.

2. Lower cortisol (stress hormone)
A longer hug, not a quick tap, reduces cortisol. This brings the whole system out of fight-or-flight and into regulation.

3. Heart-rate synchronization
In a longer hug, your breathing and heart rate begin to co-regulate with the other person. Research shows that holding someone close slows the heart rate and supports vagal tone.

4. Increased parasympathetic activation
Around the 10-second mark, the body shifts noticeably into rest-and-digest mode. Short hugs don’t always get you there. Longer ones reliably do.

5. Emotional bonding + safety
Longer hugs activate neural circuits related to safety, warmth, and secure attachment. This is why they feel so different from quick hugs, the body has time to register the connection.

Breaking the Pattern

Repair is not only for our children — it’s also for the child within us. It is how we come Home, again and again.

As I mentioned, I was not taught the repair. Many of us weren’t. We learned silence, avoidance, or punishment. We learned to hold our breath when love felt uncertain.

Repair changes that. It interrupts generational patterns and rewires timelines — healing not only this moment, but the ones that came before. Each time we repair, we tell our ancestors and our children: It’s safe to stay open.

A few weeks ago, Honu texted an old rhyme from 1881 to my mom before she went to sleep. When she woke, she said that my mom had replied with a line that was added years later — a line that normalized abuse and violence within the home and between loved ones.

When I saw it, I asked my mom, “Why would you say something like this to a nine-year-old?”

I was met with excuses. No responsibility. No apology. No repair.

But something else happened instead.

Juuso and I sat with Honu and together and had a long conversation about consciousness, the open heart, generational trauma, and the cycle of abuse. We talked about how we can always make an active choice to do things differently, to respond in love and compassion instead of repeating what was modelled before us.

After a week or so, Honu did received an apology. Within that space, I came to realize that I’m not always repairing my own actions with her. Sometimes the repair is for other people. Sometimes it’s for what was left unhealed in generations before.

All of this — every conversation, every pause, every honest reflection — is part of rewriting the patterns of trauma. It’s how her capacity for love, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, and understanding continues to expand. And so does mine.

This is how we rise in consciousness as parents and as families — living rooted in our traditions, stepping lightly on the planet, living with more simplicity, closer to the land, but not repeating the cycles of those who have come before us.