Are you seeking change?

Often, the habits of today we seek to change are the products of events from our past. The habits we develop can serve to meet the need in that moment, but are not necessarily helpful to sustain long term. We often look at habits as being bad or good, but both types of habits are cultivated in the same way, by repeating an act that meets a need in that moment. The more we repeat that act, the stronger the neural network in our brain grows in support of that habit and the more likely we are to go back to that when we are faced with a similar stimulus or event.

Testimonials

Hi! I’m Renee,I am entering my 30th year as a teacher and I have been a therapeutic foster parent for the past 19 years. I was 32 years old when I started fostering, and had never been a parent. The day I started foster care classes the song lyric “It’s the end of the world as I know it… and I feel fine” got stuck in my head. However, that was far from the truth!

We made LOTS of mistakes as first time parents, but one of the things we noticed was how differently these children were impacted by their food choices than my husband and I were. There was a connection between the trauma they had endured and the malnutrition their bodies had suffered as a result.

This drove me to research how to heal malnutrition. Along the way I learned about gut health and the connection to the immune system. I studied brain health, and how to improve brain health in children who suffered malnutrition, as research has shown the long term cognitive deficiencies can be healed. I learned how and why the attentional issues were the hardest to remediate, which is why I studied Mindfulness to learn strategies to help children learn to calm and have increased awareness of their body.

I used everything I was learning to make changes in my children’s diet, which then helped their bodies have the nutrition they need to begin to heal- healing not only their bodies but their minds.

However, in the process of helping my children to heal I discovered I was also healing myself. I grew to understand more about the patterns from my past that drove behaviors in the present. I learned about cravings and emotional eating. I understood how the behavior of the children in my life could be feeding into my own challenging choices, and how my choices could be feeding into their challenging choices, increasing the intensity and duration of any wild ride of a moment. My awareness led to conscious efforts to break those patterns.

Now, I am healthier than I was 20 years ago. I no longer eat away all of my emotions as a way of coping with the stresses of the day. I understand how the food I put into my body impacts my body and brain and can make the problem worse instead of better. I had inherited the worst parts of each of my parent's- my dad's quick temper and my mom's stubborness which frequently meant that I was making any negative interaction with a child even worse through the addition of those personality traits. I have learned how to be aware of the moment's challenges without being driven by the moment's challenges, applying the brakes of resolution instead of the gas of acceleration. It has been transformative in my interactions as a teacher, foster parent, parent, and especially as a spouse.