What I learned

This week I learned that when we are spacious in our time we all get along better. Of course that seems like an obvious thing to have taken me 11 years and four kids but it hit me this past weekend like a lightning bolt. It was a Saturday that held a few errands and a few friends but there was beautiful spaciousness to it all and because of that it all felt easy and it felt too like there was time for a lot of yesses where otherwise there might have been no's.

Now that I have touched and taken this lesson I will try to remember it always. I will remember it when people ask me to volunteer for just one more committe, when we are invited to parties, when we are asked to come and play, when we are taking on projects and whenever we are making family plans. I will say no to the invitation on a Saturday afternoon if there is already something on the calendar for Saturday morning. I will schedule family on a Saturday morning and I will put it on the calendar on occasion so that our time together isn't dismissed as non-essential. I will try not to bite off more than we can chew and I will try to allow ample time for everything that I do bite off. I will try. I will try. I will try.

It may bug my kids on occasion at the time the decision is made. But they get over that quicker than they get over having a freaked out mom. And I may sometimes have no choice in having busy days but there are days too that even when I think I have no choice, I realize that actually, I really do have a choice.

Spaciousness so there is time to see each person. Aaah. Lessons. I love that they just keep coming.

We're getting ready to launch...

...so stay tuned. We're busy creating a series of ebooks and other tools on ways you and your family can intentionally and mindfully slow it all down. Keep your ears peeled and your thoughts tuned to slowing it down one step at a time.

The official Manifesto

The Slow Family Movement is a revolution in the way we think about, embrace and implement family living.

It was born out of our belief that family life is being hijacked by society’‘s messages that more is better, faster is greater and that you and your children are at risk of being left behind, unless you buy in NOW.

It is about allowing family life to unfold in a way that is joyfully and consciously connected. This means slowing it down, finding comfort in the home, and creating the space to see and honor the family as an entity, while simultaneously keeping sight of each member as a unique and valuable individual.

We believe that family life can serve as the incubator for deeper compassion, creativity, love, harmony, humor, appreciation, respect, fun, ingenuity, conflict resolution, peace, friendship, growth, communication and, perhaps above all else, true, unending and powerful joy.

As we intentionally give value and space to family life, we are thereby creating a force — with a sum greater than its parts — that can then flow out into the local and the global communities.
We hold this as truth, that the peace and the harmony we want to exist within the world, can be created within the family first, by bringing it home and lovingly, consciously and intentionally slowing life down.

Family life is not fast. When it becomes so, slow it down.