I am feeling the sea-change in the air, and for quite a while now, I’ve been deeply contemplating the form and format of the ways I contribute in terms of both Aware Parenting and The Marion Method.
Here are my initial musings about it, with the sense that in this time of big change, the ways and places I contribute will keep changing too.
A summary of what I’ll be sharing here:
I started working in-person with Aware Parenting, and I gradually moved online and developed my work there, including The Marion Method. Then I worked completely online for quite a while, and I’m now moving back to working in-person again in my local community, with some changes in the online platforms that I will still continue to utilise.
Here’s my journey in more detail.
Part One ~ The Longing that Started it All
One of my most pivotal moments that inspired my willingness to do all that I’ve done in terms of Aware Parenting over the past 24 years was a moment that I remember as if it were yesterday.
I was at a local mothers’ group, and my now-24-year-old daughter was about six-months-old. I had bought a box of copies of Aletha Solter’s book “The Aware Baby” and had shared them with a few parents.
In that mothers’ group, I saw mothers practicing many different forms of parenting, and no-one seemed to resonate with Aware Parenting.
I remember going outside, whilst carrying my daughter in a stretchy sling, and crying and crying.
I felt such a profound longing for a community of other parents who resonated as deeply with Aware Parenting as I did.
That longing became a profound willingness that led to each step on my Aware Parenting journey, to be part of a community of parents practicing Aware Parenting.
And the effects have been bigger than I ever imagined.
(As I returned this week to my first in-person talk to a pregnancy/mother and baby group for many years, I was in awe, seeing the journey.)
Part Two ~ Creating my First Aware Parenting Mothers Group
After crying on that wall 24 years ago, I took my next steps.
I bought more copies of “The Aware Baby” and Aletha’s then-Aware Baby workbook, and I made some flyers, which I put up on all my local health food shop noticeboards.
I asked to talk at the end of mother and baby yoga groups and singing groups. Anywhere where mothers who thought a bit out of the box were likely to go who might be open to Aware Parenting.
I then set up an Aware Parenting group for mothers of babies who were interested in learning about Aware Parenting.
I still remember the first circle, in my home, which about 10 mothers and their babies joined.
Varying numbers of us met every week, and at the beginning, we studied a chapter of “The Aware Baby” each week, also using Aletha’s workbooks.
The group continued for some years, and some of the women became dear friends, and we went on to practice homeschooling together alongside Aware Parenting.
Having those few families who were also practicing Aware Parenting made a profound difference for me in my Aware Parenting practice.
In more recent years, I’ve focussed on emphasising the effects of culture, society, and community – and I frequently remind mothers that our ancestors would have been part of a wider community, caring for babies and children together.
My early experiences as a mother were part of me realising that.
Every time I connected with other Aware Parenting families, even if it was just one more mother and child, I noticed that my own presence increased. I had more emotional spaciousness to listen to big feelings and to offer attachment play to my daughter and son, and to the other children too.
Over time, secure attachments happened between the then-toddlers and other parents, just as alloparenting would happen in a community-based culture.
That was so helpful, particularly when breastfeeding control patterns had become entrenched, and it was hard for the then-toddlers to share their painful feelings with their mums, but were willing to do so with other mothers there that they had formed connections with, while their own mother was still present.
Part Three ~ My DIY Website and Yahoo Group
A few years later, in about 2006, I created my first website (a DIY one!), where I wrote articles about Aware Parenting.
I also set up a free Yahoo group for parents practicing Aware Parenting, called Parenting with Presence.
Those two early online experiences were life-changing for me and met sooo many of my needs.
Writing and sharing about Aware Parenting on my website (back then, writing one article took me many months, and I shared every one with Aletha Solter first) helped me deepen my understanding of Aware Parenting, and how to communicate about it in different ways. I loved the clarity and the contribution that I experienced.
Sharing and contributing with women all over Australia, and to some mothers around the world, in the Yahoo group, met my needs for community and belonging. ‘
Through being a part of the Yahoo group, when I walked around my local community and saw parents practicing parenting practices that were very different to Aware Parenting, I carried in my body a sense of belonging to a community of parents. This made a big difference to how I felt. I’d internalised that belonging and I always had it with me.
Part Four ~ Aware Parenting Talks to Pregnancy and Mothers’ Groups
As I worked towards my own certification as an Aware Parenting instructor, and became certified as an instructor when my daughter was three-years-old, I then started giving talks about Aware Parenting to local pregnancy groups and mother and baby groups.
I remember the many hours of preparation I put into these.
I created outlines for the talks, and handouts, which I printed out.
I remember feeling scared when I was driving there, thinking about what I would say.
I also remember driving home, and judging myself when I remembered something I hadn’t said, or thinking people were judging me, or feeling big painful feelings if someone didn’t resonate.
Until one day, driving back along the side of the golf course, feeling full of shame and guilt because of all these harsh thoughts about myself, I decided that I was no longer willing to do that to myself.
I made the decision that I was going to choose to perceive that if even one person went away with a curiosity about Aware Parenting, that I would celebrate that, and not judge myself.
(Fast forward to this week, and that first in-person sharing about Aware Parenting to a pregnancy and mothers group that I’ve given for all those years, and it was a powerful demonstration of how much I have transformed, through practicing Aware Parenting, and how much that means I’m now able to contribute. I’ll share more about that later, or in a later musing!)
My in-person work expanded, and with each step, I felt fear from past experiences bubbling up to be heard and loved.
Part Five ~ From at-home Consultations to Skype Sessions
I offered Aware Parenting consultations in my home. My daughter’s dad would look after her when I was with parents. But once our son was born, that became harder for us, since our home is quite small.
So I switched to Skype sessions for 1-1 work from about 2007.
Again, I’m so grateful for those apps – first Skype, and in about 2016 or 17, I moved to Zoom. They were so helpful for me and our family.
Working online for 1-1 sessions made a huge difference as a mother, and later as a single mother. It offered loads of flexibility for our family.
I no longer tidied my house and cleaned my bathroom before sessions! That met my needs for ease, so much!
And once I was a solo parent, it meant that I could work with parents when my children were asleep, and when they were older, when they were reading or watching something and happily engaged in what they were doing (we continued homeschooling all the way through their childhoods and teen years).
That is one of the major ways that online platforms can be soooo helpful for parents – because of course, it was similar for the mothers I was working with.
Having online sessions meant them not needing to travel, and if they had a baby, protecting their baby from the overstimulation of travelling and going somewhere new.
As someone who also takes in a lot of information, I also found that I was also much less likely to feel overwhelmed, working on Skype and Zoom.
I loved, and continue to love, how much ease online 1:1 mentoring gives to both me and my lovely mentees.
I was amazed to see how powerful the sessions were too.
I found that I had the same experiences as I did in person, such as picking up on what they were feeling by feeling those sensations in my body, and experiencing intuitive senses of things that they later told me were accurate.
Later on, I also started adding voice note messaging to my mentoring – and again, that was so helpful, in that as mothers, my mentees and I could send messages at any time of the day and night, in whatever part of the world, including in the middle of when they were feeling big feelings. I still offer voice notes as part of my mentoring and will be continuing that.
And, I also acknowledge that online connection isn’t exactly the same as in person connection, and not everything is transferrable.
Part Six ~ More Focus on Mothers and Their Own Journeys
After a few years, I started offering what I called Love Being a Mother groups, for mothers practicing Aware Parenting. Each group usually consisted of five mothers, and continued over six weeks. One of the groups continued for some years.
I offered Aware Parenting information when the mothers wanted it, but the focus was a lot more on them as mothers – and their relationship with their needs, their feelings, their ways of suppressing feelings, their childhoods, their thoughts about themselves, and their willingness to have fun and do what they loved.
I remember feeling so scared before the first one of these that I ever offered.
And I went on to LOVE THEM SO MUCH!
Over time, my own Marion Method work came into form through the experiences of these.
Part Seven ~ My Own Journey
My own healing journey moved in parallel with each of these steps.
Before becoming a mother, whenever I spoke in a group, I connected with old fear and terror from my past.
This continued for me once I became a mother.
However, as I kept following my longing for Aware Parenting community, and my calling to share about Aware Parenting, and to support mothers with their journeys with Aware Parenting, I experienced profound healing of the past experiences where the terror had come from.
With each new experience, offering talks, facilitating groups, working 1:1, I also experienced reparative experiences.
Just like the developmental stages in childhood, I had in-person direct experiences, which I then built upon with my online world experiences.
The early experiences of not belonging, and of being judged, compared, punished, and shamed, were replaced by experiences of contribution, belonging, meaning, purpose, and deep connection.
Part Eight ~ My Next Online Steps (social media)
I am so grateful that I got into the online world when I did.
I remember the exact moments I joined both Facebook and Instagram.
With Facebook, I was in the UK, and an old friend asked whether I had joined Facebook, and I had a yes to doing so. Given that I was last in England 17 years ago, it was at least that many years ago.
In the first few years on the platform, I shared photos of my family and wrote little quotes about Aware Parenting and life, and also wrote posts that were influenced by my deep dives into Nonviolent Communication and The Field Project.
I joined Instagram in 2013.
I was away on a retreat and a dear friend, who had originally been an Aware Parenting mentee, asked if I’d joined Instagram. I joined it then and there, and started posting that weekend.
I love that these invitations to join these platforms both came from significant friends in my life.
As far as I know, I was the first person to be sharing about Aware Parenting on Instagram, and I was the first person to use the hashtag #awareparenting, back in the days when hashtags were all-important.
In those early days, I experienced those two social media platforms as exciting places to be.
I’d already loved sharing completely authentically and honestly with my Yahoo group, Parenting with Presence, and I continued that quality as I started sharing in more detail on FB and IG.
One of the most significant things for me about social media was being able to connect with the small percentage of people all over the world who resonate with paradigms that at the moment only call to a very small proportion of people, because they are so different to our mainstream cultural conditioning.
When there are a large percentage of people who resonate with a particular approach or paradigm, it’s often easy to find plenty of people in one’s local community who will resonate, and to gather together and connect in person.
Yet, with Aware Parenting and The Marion Method, these resonate with a much smaller percentage of people. (Particularly 20 years ago!)
Even in my local community, which is one of the most alternative places in Australia, there were still only a very small percentage of parents who resonated with Aware Parenting. Practicing Aware Parenting, particularly with a baby, asks A LOT of us, particularly in a culture where there is so little support for the feelings and needs of parents.
AND, I’ve seen a big change in the percentage of people who are ready and willing to explore these paradigms over the past couple of decades.
Back then, the number of like-minded parents lessened as I also looked for families who were also homeschooling, natural learning-style.
However, online, my sense of community mushroomed, from the Yahoo group, to an even deeper sense of being part of a worldwide community of parents passionate about Aware Parenting. Many of those families also resonated with homeschooling.
Part Nine ~ Creating Online Groups Based on Deep Compassion
Connecting with a larger group of parents practicing Aware Parenting was a profound experience for me.
I experienced that my needs for belonging were even more met.
I felt excited, seeing how many parents were indeed practicing Aware Parenting all around the world.
I saw a massive potential for change, and for Aware Parenting becoming much more well-known, via the power of the Internet, including Facebook.
That’s why I soon became a part of the free international FB group which had been set up by Pat Torngren, an Aware Parenting instructor in South Africa. I’m so grateful to Pat and all that she did, and continues to do.
For years I was part of that group, as were others, such as Chris Muller, now another one of the Aware Parenting regional coordinators.
I became passionate about creating online groups that met the participants needs for both deep safety and profound compassion.
I have put a lot of care, time, diligence, and dedication into this.
For example, with the free group, which I started facilitating (with Pat focussing on a group for people completely new to Aware Parenting), I focussed on what would bring about safety and compassion. We stopped one group and started another one, with new foundations. We created a team.
I stepped back for a few years, and then, when one of the instructors, Danni Willow, came with particular questions and invitations, I stepped back in again to facilitate the group to become even more of a team.
Over the years, we have become a team of Aware Parenting instructors who have set up all kinds of behind-the-scenes practices so that the group is a place for clear information, emotional safety, and compassion. I’m so grateful to every one of the members of the team, past and present, who are also all mothers with their own very full lives.
When I went on to create online courses, my passion for compassionate groups online deepened.
Often, people told me that they had not believed it was possible to experience such a profound sense of community and compassion in an online group!
I will always remember these words from Brett, who was at the time, and for many years, an Aware Parenting instructor. He had also been a part of the original Parenting with Presence group. He said: “Marion is a rock star at facilitating connection and support in virtual villages!!”
Part Ten ~ From Flying Around the Country to Working from my Kitchen!
Once my children were older, I extended my in-person work and started regularly flying to Sydney, and sometimes Melbourne, to run workshops on Aware Parenting and the Love Being a Mother work (which eventually became The Marion Method).
I’m so grateful to now-Aware Parenting instructors such as Helena Mooney in Sydney and Georgie Bancroft and Emma Rogers Dumas in Melbourne, who set up and organised workshops for me, and whose homes I stayed in. I loved meeting, and getting to know, more Aware Parenting families.
AND I sometimes felt overwhelmed, travelling in this way. I remember more and more often, leaving my lovelies with their dad, seeing the blue sky and the countryside as I was setting off for the airport, and wanting to stay, rather than travelling to cities.
I’d had a clear calling on the 21st of December 2012, at the Uplift Festival, to focus on working with mothers, and in 2013, the calling came to write an online course called Love Being a Mother, based on the workshops I’d been teaching, which I went on to do.
It wasn’t until 2014, and doing Jana Kingsford’s Launch a Little Course, that I learnt how to actually make the tech side of online courses.
Back in those days, we set up a whole new site for each course, with a huge long invitation page, and a plugin called OptimizeMember. It was a massive amount of work for each course!
Part Eleven ~ Deep Diving into the Online World
I absolutely loved those early years of creating online courses, although at that time I was still coercing myself and not listening to my needs, so I also felt really tired and overwhelmed at times, especially because of the amount of hours I was working!
My first courses: Love Being a Mother, and Love Being a Mother at Christmas, were (clearly) focused on mothers.
I was already passionate about supporting women to get free from what I now call Disconnected Domination Culture consciousness, particularly in:
Understanding the historical context of mothering;
Learning about prehistorical cultures where mothers were revered;
Understanding that guilt is a cultural construct (from Marshall Rosenberg), and getting free from it;
Inviting mothers to see their conditioning in relation to their needs and feelings.
Later, all of this also became The Marion Method. But back then, I wasn’t yet calling it that.
I’m so grateful for those years, because working online continued my experience of:
Sharing Aware Parenting with families all around the world;
Developing my ideas and practices, which became The Marion Method;
Meeting my needs for like-minded community and creating deep friendships;
Making a living whilst also being a single mother, looking after my children, whilst practicing natural learning;
Going from being terrified to share my voice, my thoughts, judging and shaming myself, and not valuing what I did, to deeply healing experiences, so that now I absolutely LOVE sharing my thoughts and practices, and deeply value what I do.
In particular, my choice to step away from academia and psychotherapy, to focus on being a mother of natural learning children, my needs for recognition, appreciation, and being seen and heard were met by events like 3.3 million plays of the old Aware Parenting podcast, big “launches” of my courses that brought in more money than I’d ever dreamed was possible, and becoming a best-selling author of eight books (three Aware Parenting children’s books and counting; which was a dream ever since I was looking for books about feelings for my own children).
These all met old unmet needs and changed my beliefs about myself and what I was capable of.
Back in 2014 and 2015 there was a sense of freshness, newness, and excitement in the online world.
Following Jana Kingsford’s lead, I made an online course every month for the first few years from the end of 2014.
I got up two hours before my children 360 days of the year, and we all had an hour and a half of screen time in the afternoon, when I worked too. I also asked their dad to look after them at weekends, and worked all weekend for many years.
I loved learning all the tech things to create websites (I made about 25!).
As a child, I’d loved art and design, and so much of that creative process was met for me every time I created new colours and designs for each new course.
I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT.
I loved the deep compassion and community shared in the Facebook groups that went with each course, and in the live calls, first on “webcasts”, later on Facebook livestreams and group Zoom calls.
I loved the magic that happened in those group calls.
It was a golden era of creative expression, community, contribution, meaning, and purpose.
Facebook and Instagram were places where I shared authentically and practiced changing my long-form academic writing into the core concepts.
I developed maps of three about Aware Parenting, to help parents remember core elements easily.
I learnt to think more clearly, as I learnt to write more concisely.
I experienced deep connection with like-minded people.
People who were drawn to Aware Parenting.
People resonated with what became The Marion Method.
In creating livestreams and courses, The Marion Method unfolded.
Speaking about it and sharing about it brought more and more clarity.
I often felt deeply inspired.
I am so incredibly grateful for all those opportunities and experiences.
When the world went online in 2019 and 2020, I was already there. When everyone was getting on Zoom, I’d already been there for years.
I’m so grateful that I’d had everything set up to simply continue doing what I loved.
Part Twelve ~ The Hibernation, Book-writing Era, and Menopause
I continued a deeply inward journey, going through an easeful menopause where I felt called to hibernate for years.
Still working 1-1 online, and offering some online courses, I wrote a trilogy of tomes of Aware Parenting books that were the result of my lived experience of the past two decades as a parent and Aware Parenting instructor.
I also wrote other books, including some that haven’t yet been published, and the children’s books of my dreams.
That was a powerful time for me, and in some ways, a completion of that cycle – from in-person, to online, to book formats.
Part Thirteen ~ A Sea-change
However, I’ve had a sense of more change for me for years now.
Last year, I re-emerged into the online world and already so much had changed.
I experimented with doing things the way I’d done them.
A lot was different.
I learnt new things, like Manychat (setting up automations so that comments on a post are sent a message).
I could sense things had changed, but I didn’t quite understand what was happening.
The old ways of doing things no longer had the effects they once had.
In the past year or so, I’ve also experienced LLMs and AI as bringing about deep change in the online world.
From my early experiences of the internet, which were all about community, connection, sharing information, contribution, creativity, compassion, belonging, and making a living doing what I loved, I began to experience social media differently.
From the golden years of 33,000 active followers on three Instagram pages, I started experiencing fewer and fewer responses.
From being interested in whatever the new thing was, like reels, or carousels, I began to have a no to learning the latest thing that the algorithm wanted.
Social media seemed to have lost my early experience of being a place of possibility to something entirely different.
I posted less and less.
And then AI came along, and within a very short time, Instagram was flooded with posts clearly written by AI.
I felt a deep aversion.
In Marion Method terms, I had a Neo No.
And this is what I see The Disconnected Domination Culture does, so often.
Something starts out as apparently about freedom, creativity, possibility, the spreading of information, community, and over time, it becomes something entirely different.
I’ve seen DDC consciousness do this in every area of life, and I saw it again here.
What I understood, at a really deep level, is that the DDC entices people in with something, and then gradually changes it, so it becomes something else entirely.
I had experienced it myself a few years earlier, with someone whose work I was following – watching their videos every day for a year or more – and then realising, with a jolt, that I had been enticed into very different ways of thinking.
I’m grateful for that experience – and for discovering my NO before I went any further – to understand from the inside how this works.
And this time, I’m listening to my NO earlier, and taking action earlier.
Part Fourteen ~ Questioning
When I started seeing more and more LLM posts, like most of us, I saw the early tells – the em-dashes, the three point lists, the not-this, that.
And I felt a repulsion – a no, a turning away.
As a result, I hardly look at Instagram any more.
(Apart from watching reels of animals using “buttons” – which I find interesting, because it’s the use of simple technology to create more connection and understanding between animals and humans.)
For a long while, I wasn’t willing to use Chat GPT, or Claude, but then I decided to dive in.
A year or so ago, I wrote a few PDFs on topics I already knew a lot about (like the history of feelings), with the help of Chat GPT’s research, because I knew when I was being given information that was inaccurate. And because these were topics I knew a lot about, I saw that I was indeed being given information that was inaccurate at times.
After a few months of deep diving, I scaled right back on my use of LLMs.
I do still engage with them at times for research. I also appreciate their help when I need some support for something technical.
I’ve become very clear about how I am willing and not willing to engage with them. And I have long breaks of weeks or months where I don’t engage with them at all.
For months and months, I’ve been sitting in the questioning, the not-knowing, the sense I wanted to move away from social media, but not yet knowing what was next.
It’s become clear to me that as AI increases, and with the trend towards transhumanism that I see one direction of humanity going in the online world, that we each have a choice.
I have a no for reading posts written by AI.
And I have little interest to be on platforms which are increasingly AI talking to itself.
I’ve seen the flattening of nuance in fields that I’m passionate about: parenting, feelings, inner work, reparenting, and reculturing.
In the pondering, the musing, the questioning, the exploring, I’ve come to my own next steps, and I imagine that there will be very many different steps over the next two or three years.
My first step is to move back to more in-person community again, whilst still offering online 1:1 mentoring and immersions.
The second is to write long-form musings like this, and to immerse myself back into book writing.
The third is back to my podcasts, focussing on long form videos on my Marion Rose Podcast and more concise ones on the Living Aware Parenting Podcast.
Part Fifteen ~ Creating In-person Community, the Second Time Around
I’ve now lived in this little country town for 27 years.
And a few days ago, I shared about Aware Parenting to a local pregnancy group, where there was a maiden, mothers-to-be, and mothers of young children.
I’m writing more about that experience in my next musings.
In short, I adored it.
I had the sense of returning to in-person community with a wealth of wisdom and experience.
Many of the mothers there were a similar age to my own daughter.
I’m in a whole new stage now.
I felt a fullness, and a sense of so much to give.
I loved giving away my books and cards.
I’m ready and willing to support the flourishing of Aware Parenting in my own local community at an even deeper level. And I’m so excited!
For years, I had the very strong calling to focus on online work, the international Aware Parenting community, the podcasts, and the books. I had a clear no to in-person work.
And now, I have a strong calling to return to my local community, giving the gifts that have come from my online and writing immersion.
Part Sixteen ~ Writing Long-form (like this!)
I’ve been contemplating a lot about where to share my writings again.
Saying no to the increasing speediness of the online world, I feel a deep calling to write in long formats and to also go back to my book writing.
I thought I might share my writings on Substack, where I opened an account many years ago and had never been willing to share.
With the more recent news that here in Australia, and in the UK, people need to prove who they are to access Substack articles, I also have a NO for that.
So, I’m going right back to sharing as I first did.
On my own website, for free, without needing to add your name to anything (HERE)
and to people on my email list who want to read my longer form musings.
If that’s you, I invite you to click HERE
For now, I’ll be sharing these longer form musings with everyone on my email list.
Over time, once everyone who wants to has had an opportunity to join the sub-list, I will just send them to those of you who have joined that list.
I’m excited!
I feel the freshness and freedom of simply sharing with people who want to hear from me!
Part Seventeen ~ YouTube
I have all kinds of mixed thoughts and feelings in relation to YouTube, but I still watch it a fair bit myself, and for now, I’m going to start creating more podcast episodes – both on The Living Aware Parenting Podcast and The Marion Rose podcast.
I love sharing longer form information there, and so I’m also excited about that!
And, I sense a lot more will become clear with this sea-winds change.
Part Eighteen ~ Continuing to Question
And now, I’m asking myself different questions about my work and the online world.
Although I found deep healing in the 3.3 million podcast listeners, and 33,000 Instagram followers, and the bestselling books, and the big course “launches”, in terms of my own inner valuing of what I do, I also felt the strangeness.
I love thinking about how we’ve lived for the longest amount of time, and I often think about how Indigenous cultures live, and how our ancestors lived. Thinking about what we’ve experienced for the longest time often brings me deep clarity.
I’m touched when people come up to me at the market or the health food shop, calling me by name, and thanking me for my books, courses, or podcasts.
I love knowing that I’ve contributed to people.
And I also experience a strangeness in sharing information and sometimes never hearing back from anyone about it!
I think about all the time where, before writing, we engaged with each other only whilst looking at each other, and through talking.
We would have received information straight away from the other person in response.
The gap in timing brings in all kinds of differences in experience.
I’ve been wondering whether I want to keep sharing photos of me online.
I know that it often helps people connect more when they see a photo of someone.
But I also think about how recent photography is.
Even writing is a much more recent way of connecting compared to having a conversation with someone.
And, I’m still very much in the playing-with, making sense of, information-gathering stage.
And I trust where I’m called to go – this morning in my Aware Parenting Infant Observation Immersion, one of the participants, an Aware Parenting instructor, shared a reel from Instagram about babies and sleep, and in result I felt a strong willingness to offer more Aware Parenting information to parents – and who knows, that might be in new ways on Instagram! I trust it will all become clear!
Part Nineteen ~ Non-local Consciousness and Connection
And yes, in some ways, I contemplate that these technologies might also be moving us towards abilities I think we all have, and have lost, which veer towards communication via more non-local, collective consciousness-type ways.
There’s so much I have loved and appreciated about all this technology.
For example, I love Voxer for voice notes, as I shared earlier.
I’ve been enjoying it for years with mentees.
I love how it means that we can connect at different time zones, at the time we have available, and in particular how life-changing that can be for mums.
I’ve learnt through profound experiences, such as with Mary Walker, when we were creating The Conversations with Life Course, to deeply trust the timing of responding to messages.
Often we might have listened to a particular message even weeks later, and the timing was always apt.
So, there’s something about these technologies that are trans-temporal in ways that bring beauty, and in ways that can also lose beauty.
I’m thinking all these, and having these conversations, as part of me getting clear about my own next steps.
I’m asking myself: Do I want to keep sharing lots of photos of myself online?
I already share as natural pictures as possible.
At 58, I haven’t worn make up for decades, I don’t dye my hair. But if there are five photos to choose from, I still pick the most flattering one.
In my videos and audios, I share wearing what I’ve been wearing, sitting on my bed. I am passionate about authenticity and realness. But it is still different from hanging out with me in my home.
For now, I’m called to still share occasionally on FB and IG, with posts that point to my longer-form content, as a book mark. Less photos, sometimes videos.
Part Twenty ~ Numbers of People
I’ve been thinking a lot about numbers of people, too.
There’s the research from Oxford scholar Robin Dunbar that suggests that on average, humans are most likely to maintain five intimate friendships, and that natural communities and social networks average at about 150, although we may know the names of 1500 people.
As an evolutionary anthropologist, Dunbar studies hunter-gatherer cultures and finds four levels of group connection:
These layered structures are described this way:
“Human hunter–gatherer social communities, for example, typically consist of bands of 35–50 individuals, which cluster into communities of around 150 individuals, with these in turn gathered into successively higher-level groupings at 500 (mega-bands) and 1500 (tribes) individuals (Zhou et al., 2005; Hamilton et al., 2007; Dunbar, 2020).
I feel so interested when I read this, because I think of my own experiences with online groups over the past 12 years, including the group size of Zoom calls in my offerings over the past five months.
I still want to, and am willing to:
Reach new people who will resonate with Aware Parenting and The Marion Method;
Share information freely with people who do already resonate with it;
Offer deeper group and individual support in these two methodologies.
And I’ll be looking for newer platforms to do that.
Part Twenty-One ~ Looking Forward
So, as I look forward, I’m excited to work with more 1:1 mentees (I’ll be sharing about that soon).
I’ll be connecting more in-person with people in my work.
And I’m going to continue what has emerged in the past five months – online Immersions with a small number of people, on Zoom. (I’ll also be sharing about the next one of these, soon!)
I’ll keeo going to the local farmers market with my son, as we do every week, and then we’ll be at Taiko for the rest of the afternoon and evening. This week, we met so many of the women who’d been at the circle earlier in the week! I LOVED seeing them all!
And I’ve been going to the local gym and doing classes with my daughter. Synchronously, at the first class a few weeks ago, I met a woman who was at that mothers group, all those years ago, where I cried, sitting on the wall outside.
Talk about a full-circle moment!
At my daughter’s soccer match on mothers day, I met a woman and her 24-year-old daughter. She had been a part of that first Aware Parenting circle.
The messages are clear, and the circle has turned. And I’m so grateful for the journey.
Part Twenty-Two ~ An Idea
I’ve been feeling the call to create an online offer for people wanting to create in-person Aware Parenting community, alongside support and compassion for the parallel journey as parents.
It might be one Zoom call, or a few, with recordings available.
It will be either free, or low-cost.
If there’s enough interest, I would love to offer this, as I go through this process again for myself!
If you feel a calling to join, and have any requests, I’d love to read them!
If you’ve read this all, or skimmed it, thank you! I appreciate your time, presence, and attention. True wealth.
Big love to you,
Marion
xoxo
14th June 2026