On the WeParent Bookshelf: Becoming the Mom I Wish I’d Had

Becoming the Mom I Wish I’d Had:  How to Heal Yourself and Your Family through HEART-based Parenting by Venus Taylor is a must read if you’re a parent interested in raising healthy, whole, resilient, self-aware children.  A family and relationship coach and founder of the Family Healing Institute, Venus walks us through simple but powerful steps and strategies for using our own experiences as children to guide us toward becoming the best parents we can be.  By sharing painful examples from her troubled relationship with her own mother, Venus shows us that healing is not only possible; it is critical to breaking cycles in our families.

The book is broken down into two sections.  The first, “Looking Back”, guides us through our own childhoods.  Again using her own story for illumination, the author gently encourages us to explore some of our happiest and most painful memories from childhood.  She then helps us uncover parenting wisdom and compassion for our children from those experiences.  By challenging us to view the world through the eyes of the children we once were, she offers a new way of thinking more empathetically about the needs of our own children.

In part two, “Looking Forward,” we are empowered with a set of principles and a toolkit for what Taylor calls HEART-based Parenting.  She offers this approach as a way to develop a stronger, loving and mutually respectful relationship with our children and as an alternative to what she refers to as POWER-based parenting.

Becoming the Mom I Wish I’d Had really is a wonderful guide for any mother who is ready to heal emotional wounds from her own childhood.  But, even more, it is a powerful resource for any parent seeking new strategies and tools for parenting their children more consciously.

The book is available at www.healmyfamily.com.

WeParent is a community of parents and parent advisers striving to give our children one of the keys to a happy, healthy and fulfilled life…strong families. We are on a mission to support and uplift African-American mothers and fathers, like us, who are living apart but parenting TOGETHER.

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