I Appreciate YOU!

Happy Thanksgiving to all the Passion Parents! Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year, because it is all about giving thanks. It is not about presents or candy. Thanksgiving holiday, more families are likely to get together. It is the most traveled time of the year. How beautiful is that! People getting together to give thanks for all they have.

I want to express my appreciation for all the people who have supported Passion Parent over the past two years. I especially thank all the friends I have met along the way who encouraged me to rebuild the site after all the past two years content was lost. Thank you Till Shilling (Tappy Bear) for helping me to see the opportunity where one could have turned and only seen loss.

To my readers, I want to let you know that I REALLY do appreciate you. I have purchased the rights to distribute the magazine, Family Matters (enter code 158 to get it for free from me- my banner should be on the left side). Allow me to explain why I chose to pay every month to bring you this magazine….

Family Matters was a paid yearly subscription. It was printed and mailed to people like many magazines. Unfortunately (at the time…. another example of opportunity where some may have only seen loss), the magazine was not financially viable as a printed magazine.

It is now available in digital format through sponsors like Passion Parent and will reach thousands more families than it would have in the original distribution model. What a beautiful example of how we can learn to step back and take a breathe when something happens we think is “bad luck” or “not in our favor”. The world is ALWAYS in our favor if we allow the goodness to come through.

My friend, Till, likes to say, “Now, I wonder what the heck THIS is good for.” Anthony Robbins says that your ego will always give you an answer… so just start asking yourself better questions. I have found this to be true in my life, the less I beat myself up (and we as parents often are pretty good at this… especially you mothers out there), the faster I tend to recover from the challenge at hand. As you gain these skills, you will be showing your children how to handle challenges in a constructive manner. We are the greatest teachers our children have… and they can be your greatest teachers as well! Observe the young children and how they move through frustration and challenges so easily and quickly.

I also want to share with you a tool I used when I was in a funk years ago. I took a small notebook, nothing fancy, and would write five things I was grateful for every day. I wrote in it right before I went to bed. Within 30 days I felt a profound difference in my outlook on things. I found that I was focusing on the things I had to be grateful for instead of what was going “wrong” in my life. I found those things that were going “wrong” often turned out better for me in the end (like getting a call from our renters while I was still in the hospital right after giving birth to McKenna. They informed us they were moving across the street at the end of the month. Turns out, their cats were ruining our house… turned out to be a blessing for us they moved and a disaster for the neighbors).

Thank you for sharing your stories, your lives and your love here. You would be amazed how many times I hear that one of YOUR comments helped another reader. In this age, many feel so isolated, when in fact we are more connected then we have ever been through the internet, phones and planes. Take the time to connect here and share… your story or bit of advice may help someone in another part of the world. We never know how the smallest of our actions can affect someone so dramatically… make your mark a positive one!

Please take a few minutes and write five things (or more) you are grateful for…

Many Blessings!
Christine Hiebel

P.S. For you Black Friday shoppers… take a look at the Bouncers Bounce House special for Passion Parents… you may opt to stay home and order the Little Einstein bounce house, lemonade stand or Adirondack chair instead!