Creating more peace

I'm not interested in helping people battle or fight or struggle. I want to help them find joy, gratitude, abundance and peace.

Fighting a lack of peace isn't creating more peace.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Colleen Prieto

Joy, gratitude, abundance and peace

I'm not interested in helping people battle or fight or struggle. I want to help them find joy, gratitude, abundance and peace.

Fighting a lack of peace isn't creating more peace.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Chrissy Florence

Joy, gratitude, abundance and peace

I'm not interested in helping people battle or fight or struggle. I want to help them find joy, gratitude, abundance and peace.

Fighting a lack of peace isn't creating more peace.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Chrissy Florence

The greatest strides

Leah Rose wrote:I have made the greatest strides in my own deschooling by learning to notice when I feel myself "struggling," and to Stop! Then I can choose to let go, to relax about the disparity between what I want and what is. And what I have discovered is that that conscious mental shift releases the energy I need to step forward mindfully into the moment...and then that moment becomes, itself, a step towards what I want, away from what I don't want.

—Leah Rose

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Ester Siroky

Generous and kind

You don't need to control yourself to keep yourself from being controlling. Make generous, kind choices, over and over, as often as you can.

SandraDodd.com/battle/
photo by Hannah North

Your words matter

In response to

I see the cause of the issue but struggling with finding solutions.

Do you WANT to keep struggling? Or do you want to live more gently and peacefully?

SandraDodd.com/battle

Your words matter, to your thinking, to your soul, to your relationship with your child.

Negative approaches to peace

Unschooling shouldn't involve battling, struggling, fighting.

—Sandra Dodd
(more context)

photo by Sandra Dodd
(of the cow above the cow catcher;
Keith's in there by chance)

Elvis, Barbie and Rebellion

I started to name this post "Elvis," but up popped "Elvis, Barbie and Rebellion." When I went to search my other blogs to see why that was happening, I found "Elvis, Battle of New Orleans, Pinky and the Brain, Cavemen."

Those two sets of words, separated from their origins, are more interesting than what I had originally intended to write about Elvis. I invite you ponder for a moment what I might have been thinking.

If you get tired of that, you are welcome to explore the first one and the other one, at your leisure.
photo by Holly Dodd herself

Lack of control

You don't need to control yourself to keep yourself from being controlling. Make generous, kind choices, over and over, as often as you can.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Sandra Dodd

Soft, grateful, gentle

When you wake up, think. Am I glad to be here? Is this a good moment? If so, breathe and smile and touch your child gently. Be soft. Be grateful. Find abundance. Gently.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Sarah S.

Over and over and often

You don't need to control yourself to keep yourself from being controlling. 🙂

Make generous, kind choices, over and over, as often as you can.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Nina Haley

Let go; relax

Leah Rose:

Sandra wrote: "They need to STOP battling, STOP fighting, STOP struggling."

This has been such an incredibly powerful, empowering concept for me. It's a total turn around from the way I grew up thinking, from the way we think and speak in Western culture. But I have made the greatest strides in my own deschooling by learning to notice when I feel myself "struggling," and to Stop! Then I can choose to let go, to relax about the disparity between what I want and what is. And what I have discovered is that that conscious mental shift releases the energy I need to step forward mindfully into the moment...and then that moment becomes, itself, a step towards what I want, away from what I don't want.

—Leah Rose

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Cathy Koetsier

Brief retirement

Someone wrote once:

"I really have to be vigilant on myself and try not to control."

I was amused, but responded, in part:

Being "vigilant" sounds like absolutely exhausting effort. Relax. You do not "have to be vigilant." Especially not on yourself. That's you watching yourself. Way too much work. Let go of one of those selves. Relax inside the other one. Have a snooze. Don't be vigilant.

When you wake up, think. Am I glad to be here? Is this a good moment? If so, breathe and smile and touch your child gently. Be soft. Be grateful. Find abundance. Gently.

SandraDodd.com/battle/
photo by Charles Lagacé, in Nunavut

Don't be vigilant

Being "vigilant" sounds like absolutely exhausting effort. Relax. You do not "have to be vigilant." Especially not on yourself. That's you watching yourself. Way too much work. Let go of one of those selves. Relax inside the other one. Have a snooze. Don't be vigilant.

When you wake up, think. Am I glad to be here? Is this a good moment? If so, breathe and smile and touch your child gently. Be soft. Be grateful. Find abundance. Gently.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Celeste Burke

Softer words

Some parents express their learning as "struggle" or "challenge," but those words are antagonistic. Try to relax, and try not to feel that you're wrestling (with your child's desires, or with your own thoughts).

If you can find softer words, you will experience softer emotions.


SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a flowering plant
growing out of a rain spout
on a castle

Relax into safety

The word "struggling" is used too much lately. Everyone says they're struggling about everything.

Please consider re-phrasing. If you think of the situation in your own words, you will think of it, and see it, and respond to it more clearly.

And anytime people describe things as a battle, a struggle, a fight, they're categorizing the thing as though it's fighting back, and they're in danger.

SandraDodd.com/struggle
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Holly posing her shadow

Relax now

It will be challenging as long as one is struggling.
It will stop being so challenging as soon as one relaxes.

---

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Sandra Dodd

Enjoyment

Enjoyment is about joy.

Find enjoyment in the little things you do.
Choose joy.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Janine Davies

Softer

Some parents express their learning as "struggle" or "challenge," but those words are antagonistic. Try to relax, and try not to feel that you're wrestling (with your child's desires, or with your own thoughts).

If you can find softer words, you will experience softer emotions.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Vlad Gurdiga

Partners, not adversaries

If you can start dismantling all the adversarial parts of your relationships, there won't be things to complain about. Neither you nor your children will be complaining.

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Nina Haley

Relax into peace

"Power struggles can disappear when the person with the power stops struggling."

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/deblewis

SandraDodd.com/battle
photo by Sandra Dodd