Your calls. Our responses.
Sometimes we’re in the same choir. Sometimes our melodies or pitches are different. We’re still just creating a symphony of our lives on this planet together.
Our Framework
Consider this our FAQ page. (We like to call it our call & response page.)
There’s a form of communication called “call and response.” You may have experienced this when you’ve been in a large group with a common goal, like watching live sports or participating in a protest or rally. Typically, one person calls out a statement and the rest of the group responds with their own statement that everyone shouts out at the same time. It’s a powerful experience. The repeated statements weave a thread of shared experiences, shared goals, and shared energy.
Call and response is also a musical term. The technique (or form of musical communication) can be found across different types of music, but we’re drawn to this description from jazz blog, where call and response is integrated into jazz, a form of music that has deep generational roots and is also improvisational at its core (remind you of the experience of being a parent, anyone?):
“The call and response figures we recognize in jazz today originated in African traditions and found their fullest expression in blues music and spirituals. Examples of call and response include direct imitation between instruments, a questioning phrase and subsequent answer, a statement of affirmation from one instrument to another, or variations on a direct call by a series of instruments. Often, this call and response can be improvisational.”
A fairly sizeable portion of being a parent can be improvisational. Your children call on you with a need or a question or by offering an invitation to know them. And we respond, usually without a prepared script to go off of, but with a sense of the tenor of the tune you’d like to play together.
And the roles reverse: we call on our children and they respond. Sometimes our calls and responses repeat themselves (for better or worse); sometimes we adjust to create a more harmonious tune.
repairenting community, we’re all part of this larger song of life. Some of us are playing a similar tune. Some of us are playing in different keys or different volumes or different speeds. At the core, we’re expressing ourselves to try to meet a human need to belong.
This page offers a bit more information about some of the questions we’ve heard or have grappled with in our work. These are your calls for clarity and our responses.
Who we learn from and with.
Our work is rooted in the science of resilience, relationship, and language. We’ve been practicing being present with ourselves and other people for more than a decade in our work with adult survivors of child sexual abuse. We found that we brought our work home with us–and everyone was better off because of it. Practicing being present and offering and receiving repair is a nurturing balm in any relationship, whether or not a person has experienced harm, trauma, and violence. Our brains are just doing their jobs. And the more we found ourselves understanding and holding space for that, the more we experienced internal sturdiness, ease, creativity, joy, and expansiveness. The more we felt we could live more fully.
Here are some of the experts in their fields who we learn from:
Neuroscience of Relationship, Resilience, and Child Development
Dan Siegel, M.D. and Tina Payne Bryce, Ph.D., the founders of Interpersonal Neurobiology
Dr. Sarina Saturn, national expert and researcher on Post-Traumatic Growth
Mari Alexander, PA-C, LMFT, medical practitioner and psychotherapist
Non-violent Communication and Resonant Language
Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D., founder of Non-Violent Communication (Dr. Rosenberg passed away in 2015, but his work lives on.)
Sarah Peyton, author, international speaker, and neuroscience educator
Roxie Manning, Ph.D., Non-Violent Communication and social justice practitioner
We’re committed to equity and liberation–internally and systemically.
Neuroscience indicates that brains like shortcuts. We have a lot of information to process in real-time (and connect to past experiences and future goals) to maneuver through life. It’s. A. Lot. And our brains look for ways to streamline information to make maneuvering through life seem more manageable. But sometimes our brains make shortcuts that are based in biases–and then our brains reinforce those biases. Over and over again. And then laws are passed and systems are created that are rooted in biases. And entire communities of people–who, like everyone else, are just having a human experience–are categorized, isolated, otherized, vilified, and oppressed. And then institutionalized biases oppress generations of people. Until enough people dismantle the biases and structures that stem from and reinforce biases.
Racism. Homophobia. Transphobia. Xenophobia. Sexism. Ableism. Each of these is a form of bias that has been institutionalized in our structures. People who are part of dominant culture (people who don’t personally experience that particular form of bias and oppression) have a form of privilege of not having personal implicit and explicit experiences of systemic oppression. We haven’t been personally present with those oppressive experiences.
Until we are trustworthy enough to practice presence with someone who has personally experienced oppression.
repairenting community, laws and structures can be changed. That’s not the hardest part. Becoming trustworthy enough to be present with another person–that’s what takes consistent practice, learning, and growth.
And the more that people can be trustworthy to be present, the easier it is to create equitable, liberated structures.
We hope you’ll learn and practice with us. We are still–consistently–learning and practicing.
Will repairenting help me be a perfect parent? Or make my kid perfect?
Oh, friend. We really feel this quest (and burden) for perfection that many parents carry. May we sit in this with you for a moment?
We wonder if you’re feeling overwhelmed. Afraid. Exhausted. Bone-weary tired. Wary. Sad. Angry. Anguished. Anxious. Pressured. Uneasy. Terrified.
We wonder if you have a need for connection. Comfort. Care. Consistency. Ease. Well-being (for yourself and your kids). Peace. Mutuality. Predictability. Protection. Stability. To be seen. Understanding. A shared reality. Rest. Sleep. Support. Tenderness. Wholeness.
Perhaps some of these feelings and needs resonate with you. They’re threads that are woven throughout the human experience. And we wonder if we can sit with these together.
Dear friend, practicing the repairenting tools won’t make you or your children perfect. They may bring you more ease in your experience of being a wonderful human in this world. And they may bring you more room to breathe and live more fully. We certainly hope it will. We want this fullness for you.
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