February '25 in the SMP
As promised, the SMP 2025 is a bit of a construction zone. I’m hoping to make the updates as painless as possible. Ultimately, the idea is for you to experience the new resources as even more robust and high quality. My goal for the project this year is to reach many more parents with the message that it’s possible to reorient to life’s painful circumstances, recognizing them as our greatest teachers.
To convey the vision, I’ll sprinkle updates in each month’s newsletter. For February, here’s all you need to know:
Attachment Matters
AM now has it’s own platform and episodes will no longer be published through The Stoicmom Project’s podcast. Season One will remain as SMP episodes for the foreseeable future since Substack does not offer a way to migrate them from one stack to another. However, we’ve compiled these episodes along with descriptions and links into a convenient list that lives on the Attachment Matters main menu bar. Check it out “Season One Links” at attachmentmatters.substack.com
Rose and I are so very excited to be giving Attachment Matters its own home where we’ll be able to offer rich resources to support the podcast content. More coming soon, and I’ll keep you posted when we have the first episode of Season Two recorded and ready to share!
The future of the SMP Substack and announcing…!
I am collaborating on an upcoming parenting project of which I’ll share more of in the coming months. This project, along with feedback that I’ve received from my community, has invited much contemplation about the future of my work and how best to serve the most parents.
A few changes that are emerging as a result of this contemplation:
The Parenting Paradox is a new Substack and podcast I am launching to be able to serve more parents who are experiencing the pain of raising children in today’s divisive world. The tagline for this new project is “using the pain of parenting to grow ourselves up and find inner peace” and like here at the SMP, the focus is on the development of the parent rather than parenting itself, ensuring we’re more effective and content in all relationships and areas of life.
I’ve had quite a few community members tell me that they wished they could share my work with others who could benefit from it, but many feel that it would be awkward to send them to the SMP, both for the parent recommending and the ones they’re wanting to expose to the philosophy and orientation encouraged here.
The content at the new Substack will not be created specifically for parents of the trans-identified. It will be for any parent experiencing destabilizing circumstances with their children that have resulted in pain, confusion, and frayed attachment.
Many parents these days are finding that their current ways of engaging their children and helping them come of age are no longer working, and sometimes even lead to devastating results. Reorienting in the way we encourage here could benefit any parent while also supporting healthy relationships with their loved ones.
So while the content at The Parenting Paradox will be very similar to what you get here at the SMP Substack, it will leave out specific mention of trans-related issues. There’s much more rationale for this decision to launch a new platform, and I’ll share more details in future newsletters.
I’ve begun creating the new Stack but it’s not ready yet for subscribers. I promise to keep you in the know and ensure you don’t miss the launch of this new platform that I’m planning to pack with helpful resources for parents who are open to this approach!
I’m sure you’re wondering what this will mean for the current SMP Stack? I’m excited about this too! It’s not going anywhere, but it will be a little different experience. You may have already noticed more guest content? I frequently republish the work of Walk With Mom (with her permission, of course), and recently I published an update written by Eloise, whom I interviewed on the podcast. Next week, we’ll have another guest authored piece by a member of the community.
The new vision for the SMP is to collect more stories and elevate the voices of parents who’ve experienced healthy transformation as the result of emerging out of the other side of their “dark night of the soul.” You no longer need me pounding the idea that this is possible—we have plenty of parent stories now that illustrate this. If you have your own story of how you’ve grown bigger than your painful circumstances, and how that’s affected your life and relationships in positive ways, I hope you’ll consider submitting it for publication here on The Stoicmom Project.
1:1 Coaching
The final SMP update that I need to share is how I’ll be onboarding coaching clients in the future. Because I’ll be focusing heavily on creating programs that can reach and support more parents, this means I’ll need to back off of promoting my 1:1 coaching.
I love 1:1 work, and I’m so pleased to have such a solid group of committed coaching clients who are doing this deep work! I certainly don’t plan to stop offering 1:1 coaching altogether, but it will look very different to go from being a consumer of my content to becoming a client.
Up to this point, I’ve been able to offer free discovery sessions to help us determine a good fit, but this will soon become unsustainable. Moving forward, I plan to offer 1:1 coaching only to compliment SMP education and community programs. Parents in these programs will have gained foundational knowledge about my approach and been able to engage face-to-face with me. This eliminates the need for the discovery session.
Sooo…I’ve got 6 more of these complimentary discovery sessions that I can offer. (It’s important to note that I don’t have room in my practice for 6 more clients. If you nab one of these final 6 discovery sessions, and my coaching practice fills in the meantime, I’ll notify you and we can discuss options. Even this single 1:1 session with me can offer some relief along with clarity and direction. I’d love to still connect with you, and honor the session. )
To jump on this opportunity while it’s still a thing, you can schedule here. I will be offering paid consultations through the Parenting Paradox, once that’s launched.
It’s wild to me that I’m not more nervous about the direction this project is headed. It seems so big and intimidating. (I have so much more to share with you!) Yet I feel a surprising calm when I imagine the road ahead, knowing that all I have to do today is take the best next step forward and stay open to what Life is telling me.
Maybe this is all you need to do as well?