Quaker Quicks - Tending Sacred Ground: Respectful Parenting

By Pamela Haines

Navigate through the sacred, the impossible, and the unexpected in these hard-won reflections on parenting with humility, connection, resilience and joy. Tending Sacred Ground: Respectful Parenting is a series of essays, each of which alights on the experience of parenting and is inspired by a Quaker perspective. Pamela Haines shows how to cultivate respect, resilience, humility, connection, discernment, and joy while encouraging and inspiring a wider view toward inclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
• Release date: Feb 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781803410890

Book preview

Introduction

A Tribute to Mothers

We were ordinary mothers on an ordinary block in West Philadelphia, taking advantage of the leisurely sociability of a block party to talk about—what else?—our children. We had ordinary problems—how to decide about schools, how to work and still have time for the children, how to help our teenagers make choices and live with consequences.

Yet there was something about that conversation that touched me, that has stayed with me all these weeks. I think it was the love and strength that I saw. And it was a glimpse of how very much we have in common.

Regardless of our age, our background, our color, our beliefs, we are all doing the very best we can for our children. We are all struggling in less-than-ideal circumstances (at least everyone I know), making compromises in our lives for their sakes. We are calling on resources of love and strength that we may never have known we had in order to do this job. We all deserve so much more recognition than we get. This has been one of the great gifts of motherhood to me. I feel part of a continuous thread stretching beyond my neighborhood, to neighborhoods all over the world. And the thread stretches in time as well, back through the years to other mothers, doing just the same work, hoping just the same hopes, calling on just the same unimagined resources.

I treasure this glimpse of belonging to such a strong, loving group. And I wonder why it comes only in glimpses. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who often feels like I’m doing this alone. Even with a husband (and I’m a great fan of fathers!), even with relatives, even with a neighborhood, school or church community, it’s easy to feel alone in the day-to-day work of being a