Category: Nuts & Bolts

Posted in Adult Offspring, College, Fragile Life, Insight, Milestone Moments, Mother to Crone, Nuts & Bolts, Takes a Village, Twenty-something, What's Next? (18 & beyond)

No Guarantees

Posted on by Kelly Salasin


There’s something about a college graduation.

I can’t put my finger on it.

Last weekend, at the farmers market, I came across another college graduate and she told me about her plans to return west to start her career, and I walked away weeping.

I’m grateful for sunny days. For sunglasses.

I think it’s time. Maybe it’s time. Time passing.

Teens becoming grownups. Everything changing, reshaping.

I had come to the Farmer’s Market from yoga so maybe I was especially tender. I feel awfully proud of my son’s graduation, but I’m not sure why. What did I have to do with it?

I actually felt called out when the commencement speaker said: “Thank your parents,” especially as I looked around at all the richer parents or harder working ones or more sacrificing ones–those who put their kids through school while ours did it on his own.

And then I remembered all the trips I made to be close by when he was going through something that I couldn’t quite figure and then all the times I helped him navigate through alternate routes and detours and segues. I remembered all the encouragement and returns and goodbyes and trips to the airport. The fights. The pillow talk. The persistence. So much persistence.

Maybe I feel used up.

Maybe that’s just right.

I gave it my all, I did.

He seemed so happy on his graduation day and that made me happy. It still does. He was so full of himself in the way that every one of us should be at such a moment. Inflated. Buoyant. Light. The whole point of me was to be ballast. Weight. Homecoming. Backboard. Less and less relevant.

I always feel better when I write into something that I don’t quite understand even if I don’t understand it much better afterward.

Just showing up for myself is something.

Like I showed up for him.

Like we’ve been showing up for this nation.
For women.
For immigrants.
For Muslims and Jews and POC.
For the underpaid. The uninsured.

No guarantees.

Posted in *Workshops, Home again, Nuts & Bolts, Teens, Tweens, Twenty-something, What's Next? (18 & beyond)

YOUR Plate is TOO Full!

Posted on by Kelly Salasin

Gender oppression begins in the home. Come eradicate it with me with this whole-family approach to conscious collaboration & change.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The “How Full is YOUR Plate?” project was created back when my soon to be college graduate was in the 5th grade–complaining about his chores. “It’s not fair,” he’d say, claiming he had an unfair burden of responsibility.

This resulted in a dynamic investigation of what it takes to run a household–who does what, and how often it needs to be done–and this provided for just the right “AHA” (for each of us) to organically drive awareness, appreciation & change. (This, along with pizza, followed by a movie.)

Instead of an updated chore chart, the outcome in our household was a list of daily & weekly contribution “options”–a much better fit for our then 10-year old’s developmental stage and temperament–and one that created a routinized system for household management–for the entire family–little brother and parents included–one that we rely upon to this day.

My answer to just about any question–media, a friend, the car–is a consistent: “Have you contributed?” (Ie. Have you made contributions to our shared household?)

This approach was able to flex through the shifting landscape of seasonal, school, work & extracurricular activities as well as adapt through the elementary & middle school years, into the highschool & college years.

Even now, as our household begins to rock toward an empty nest with the accompanying pleasures & demands of short and long-term returns, it continues to serve (while also simplifying & sweetening the day to day during those times when my husband and I tend home by ourselves.)

~

Since those early years, this process has been shared with dozens of women (and their families) in workshops and retreats, locally and online.

What I hear echoed, again and again, is that the process serves as a wake-up call–for all.

For some, this process serves in subtle shifts, for others, it gives rise to moderate or radical changes.

With martyrdom aside, along with guilt and uncertainty, conscious collaboration unfolds more naturally in your home seeding the way forward to a more gender-just world.

~

How FULL is YOUR plate online workshop:

Each week over the course of a month, you will receive a new DIY lesson to review, prepare and implement in your household, with my encouragement, insight and support along the way.

Our focus will be in the kitchen–the center of the home–where meals are prepared and shared and where many hands make light work.

Each activity will build upon the previous one, shaping the way forward with growing awareness and appreciation.

Should you want to expand the practice, you’ll be empowered to apply it beyond the kitchen, as well as return to it whenever household management requires renewed attention & invigoration.

This straightforward DIY journey is delivered on a private site dedicated to individual subscribers.

Journeys begin on the 1st day of the month following enrollment.

Questions, connections & insights are welcome along the way, but there is no expectation or any particular requirement of participation. You decide how and when you do it in your home as you see fit.

~

Facilitator, Kelly Salasin, is passionate about seeding gender equity and voice in the home. She is a lifelong educator & learner, author & workshop/retreat leader who frequently assists leading presenters at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Each March, Kelly serves an international NGO at the United Nations where she gathers with women and men from around the world (including her husband and their two sons) at the annual Commission on the Status of Women–promoting gender equity and stewardship of the earth, all of which begins at home.

~

Claim a spot in the next month-long journey: “How FULL is YOUR Plate?”

Offered this SpRiNg on a sliding scale. Claim the rate that fits your budget & priorities, no questions asked. All contributions appreciated as I continue to cultivate creative offerings in service of the greater good.

Range of possibilities: $33.33, $44.44, $55.55, $66.66, $77.77

https://www.paypal.me/KellySalasin/

This friendly & investigative journey will help shape the awareness & appreciation necessary to cultivate greater collaboration in the home and greater equality in the world.

Let’s get started!

Posted in Adult Offspring, Nuts & Bolts

Watching my kids eat…

Posted on by Kelly Salasin


They’re 18 and 23, and they don’t live with me anymore, but if we’re eating together, or worse yet if I’m simply watching them eat, I’m compelled to get involved.

Aren’t you going to finish that?
Do you want more butter?
Does that need to be heated up?
Don’t you like the soup?

WTF!

(I need much larger FONT.)

And it’s not just loving, motherly attention I’m expressing, but anxiety, compulsion, PTSD even.

As a mother of two, and as a lifelong early & elementary educator, and as the oldest of 8, not to mention as FEMALE, I’ve attended to children at mealtimes since I was old enough to talk—from bottle-feeding to spoon-feeding to fixing meals and to taking my youngest siblings (and later nephews & nieces) out to Pizza Hut long before I had kids of my own.

Over the weekend my husband and I went out for brunch–with our grown kids–where we were seated near two different tables, each holding a mother and a young son and no one else. Adorable.

At the table closest to us, the mother had a fruit cup and her child had waffles or pancakes or french toast (one of those). At the other table, it was the child who had the fruit cup while the mother had yogurt with granola. I noticed this and something else when I passed their tables on my way to the bathroom.

The child with fruit was on a device.

“Did you see those two tables?” my husband later said as we were walking to our car. “I felt so sad about the mother who missed out on talking to her kid.”

I paused before I replied, and then I suggested that perhaps my husband had a gender bias/blindness, unaware of how demanding it is on mothers to eat out with their children.

My favorite scene illustrating this parental gender differential is one that takes place at the dinner table with the Incredibles. For years, I dropped this phrase on my husband:

BOB, it’s time to ENGAGE.

Screen-Shot-2018-04-16-at-12.17.48-PM.png

“Maybe that mother and child had a really good connection before breakfast,” I said to my husband, as we crossed the street. “Maybe they’re going out for a hike afterward. Maybe this was the mom’s only quiet moment of the day.”

Our own kids were device free in the world and maybe that had been a mistake. Maybe I would have been more relaxed if they were more fully occupied without my attention.

That said, I have two lasting memories of eating out with my youngest when he was a boy…

The first was the morning that we arrived to the Butterfly Museum before it opened. I had tea and he had waffles.

The second was the first time that he tried sushi and loved it.

I remember being in Japan for work and dining at a traditional restaurant where no one spoke any English and I was served a breakfast on a tray with a dozen ceramic dishes of mostly unrecognizable foods without any directions on how to use or not use the accompanying condiments.

I took cues from the small children at the table across from mine, toddlers really, thinking it more acceptable to stare at them then at a table with only adults.

They ate, like everyone else in the restaurant, almost silently, without a fuss, tasting everything on the tray, for a meal that lasted as long as a fancy dinner might.

Maybe Casey was right. Maybe that other mom was missing out. Maybe she was on the road and needed a break. Both mothers and sons seemed to enjoy a relaxing meal. I admired each of them and was grateful to be eating with grownups.