Bonnie Compton - Mothering with Courage: The Mindful Approach to Becoming a Mom Who Listens More, Worries Less, and Loves Deeply

Praise for Mothering with Courage

It is one thing to read a book about parenting. It is another to have a resource which provides the tools to help us create authentic, influential relationships with our children. Mothering with Courage offers moms an easy-to-follow roadmap of self-discovery exercises designed to unlock their inner awareness and guide them to release the expectations and fears that prevent them from deeply connecting with their children in meaningful ways. It may be for mothers, but all parents can learn from this kind of self-explorationand all of our children will benefit.

Lori Petro, TEACH through Love founder and speaker, parent educator, and child advocate

A childs relationship with their mother is sacred. It is through her courage and intention that a mother learns to rise above the challenges of parenthood, become self-confident while seeing the beauty in her child. Mothering with Courage is the perfect gift for all mothers and children!

Dave Pelzer, author of A Child Called It and Too Close to Me

What an eloquent, compassionate guide to parenting from the inside outbeautiful! Fostering self-awareness and mindfulness are two of the most important keys to conscious parenting. I love Mothering with Courage its the perfect book to keep at your bedside and to continue to anchor back to as a reminder of how to stay connected to your children and to your soul. I cant wait to gift this to my family members and clients. Highly recommended for all parents!

Renee Peterson Trudeau, coach/speaker and author of The Mothers Guide to Self-Renewal and Nurturing the Soul of Your Family

Mothering with Courage offers a blueprint for parenting from a deep awareness. Bonnie offers ways of incorporating positive messages while acknowledging negative ones carried from previous generations. She provides tools to help heal emotional wounds and end fear-based mothering. A must-read for all mothers.

Kathy Maher, Energy Healer and Family Constellation Therapist

Mothering with Courage is rooted in emotional intelligence and deep caring for the overall relationship between mother and child. Bonnie Compton has written a wonderful book that you must add to your parenting library. Authentic, warm, and full of helpful advice, Comptons knowledge is what todays mothers need.

Carrie Goldman, award-winning author of Bullied: What Every Parent, Teacher, and Kid Needs to Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear

Oh wow! In a world where we often times feel we are on our own in parenting, Mothering with Courage is the guide book that I wish Id had twenty-five years ago when my child was born.

It offers clear and compelling guidance to feel confident in parenting. It inspires all of us as moms to tap into our most precious resource of all: our sixth sense. And reminds us that we already have all of the answers... if we only listen. This is the essence of a Mothers intuition! It truly is a must-read!

Sarah Scott Putnam, Intuitive Life Coach, The Art of Intuitive Living Program

Copyright 2017 by Bonnie Compton

All rights reserved.

Published by Familius LLC, www.familius.com

Familius books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases, whether for sales promotions or for family or corporate use. For more information, contact Familius Sales at 559-876-2170 or email orders@familius.com.

Reproduction of this book in any manner, in whole or in part,

without written permission of the publisher is prohibited.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

2016962608

Print ISBN 9781944822637

Ebook ISBN 9781944822644

Hardcover ISBN 9781944822651

Printed in the United States of America

Edited by Lindsay Sandberg

Cover design by David Miles

Book design by Brooke Jorden

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

Dedicated to Greg, my champion, husband, life partner, and most loving supporterour love only grows stronger.

And to our childrenErin, Sarah, Ashley, and TylerI love you. Thank you for teaching me to be a better mom and continuing to support and challenge me.

Also for Olive, Tessa, Charlie, and all the sweet grandchildren yet to come: you are my sunshine and my teachers.

Preface

Recently, I received a call from a frustrated mother who sounded overwhelmed and exhausted. She said, I want to be a really good mother, but I feel totally lost. Ive read so many parenting books, but their tips and techniques work for only a few days. Ive not found any that have helped me be a better mother.

I have received many similar calls, so the degree of this mothers frustration did not surprise me. In my thirty years of counseling and coaching mothers, Ive observed how overwhelmed they can become by their responsibilities of motherhood and how isolated and alone they can feel. Mothers share with me that, on many days, they are on automatic pilot, lost in survival mode. Many express regret for not being as good a parent as they want to be. Additionally, many mothers look back and lament, I wish I had known better so I could have done better. It is for these lost and frustrated mothers that I wrote Mothering with Courage . It is for moms navigating the uncertain journey of motherhood. It is also for new mothers just beginning their journey.

The stories in this book are derived from my years of clinical experience. They are not representative of particular clients, but reflect experiences many mothers have shared. By providing you with guidance and knowledge early in mothering, I hope that you will be better equipped to consciously choose your own path and perhaps avoid much of the frustration and heartache I hear from mothers in my office.

It used to be that mothers relied on extended family and village elders for guidance in mothering. In our busy, often disconnected world, mothers now look to books or blogs by experts and moms in the trenches on how to raise their children. While many of those books and blogs focus on correcting a childs behavior or offering suggestions for a mothers self-care, Mothering with Courage provides guidance for mothers to self-reflect and dig deep to discover what is important to them from their own perspective. Only from that space can a mother discover how to be the best, most authentic mother for her child.

Im convinced that as long as mothers look for answers outside themselves, they miss the opportunity to tap into their own inner knowing. Both in my professional work and my experience as a mother, I have witnessed the power of a mothers intuition. Inner knowing can be instrumental in guiding mothers as they make decisions for both themselves and their children. Ive seen over and over again that mothers have the ability to be their own best parenting expert when they begin to know and trust their own wisdom.

Mothering with Courage is based on the process Ive used with many mothers that Ive worked with over the years. In fact, it is the process I recommended to the woman whose call I described above. A week later, she reported that this new approach gave her hopehope that she was not alone, hope that things could get better, and hope that she could find a way to be a better mom. She said she felt she had come home to herself.