This book has been sitting on my desk for months. I kept promising the publicist I would get to it and on the first day of August, the stars smiled on me. "Intuitive Parenting--Listening to the Wisdom of Your Heart" by Debra J. Snyder, Ph.D. is a gift from the gods for all parents and all children everywhere.
Dr. Snyder received the wake-up call of her life when her daughter was born with a severe brain anomaly. Her hopes dashed, the news of the doctors was less and less promising until one night when her daughter spoke to her mother's heart and everything changed. Everything. From a panic-stricken, wallowing in fear place, Dr. Snyder and her husband found peace and hope.
They also began a journey which continues to this day. Their lovely daughter, Raegan Aria, will never speak. She'll never go to school. She'll never be married or ride a bike. There are a lot of "she'll nevers," and yet, and yet, the three live a grace-filled, joyous life. How?
By listening to the wisdom of their hearts, following their intuition and staying connected.
It wasn't always this way, and the path has been fraught at times, but Dr. Snyder has worked at it for long enough that she can and does give remarkable advice for parents of healthy children as well as those of specially challenged children. Children are a gift from God, and because they come from God, they have souls, and souls have things to do here on Earth, no matter what forms those souls take.
I relate deeply to Dr. Snyder's work because of my son who died the day he was born of a severe brain anomaly. My Isaac wasn't meant to stay here, but if I learned nothing else from his brief life, it was that children have souls. Had he lived, I might have gotten to walk the path Dr. Snyder has taken.
Dr. Snyder knows the secrets of healthy childcare. The first is that it's all energy. Energy over form. Always. She learned to follow the joyous energy of her little one through a series of steps that she named HeartGlow. Her goal was to develop an intuitive energy protocol for parents to use in their own homes.
"Your life," she writes, "can change for the better when you find perfection in chaos." Amen. A newborn baby, by its very nature, creates chaos in a family's life. Healthy or unhealthy. Mothers of newborns are usually exhausted from living on a 24-hour feeding cycle. Add health crises to the normal course of a newborn's arrival and it's very scary.
Return to the Divine might be a way Dr. Snyder would characterize HeartGlow. She takes us through common energy system understandings -- the chakras, the meridiens, the aura -- and teaches us how to connect heart-to-heart through them. Each chapter has simple, powerful exercises for parents themselves and for parents to share with their children.
"The goal of HeartGlow is to create, increase and support resonance within our shared field as well as to heighten sensitivities and to enhance energy communication and healing," she writes. Parents and children naturally share an energy field. Dr. Snyder's work makes that connection conscious and useful.
Through sound healing, through touch healing, through affirmations, through visualization, through as many techniques as she's used, Dr. Snyder helps parents build a bridge between their children and themselves.
I particularly applauded her chapter on caring for oneself, the parent. A skill and a necessity so often overlooked by new parents. I tell parents at every baby-naming I do that they have two jobs besides taking care of their child: love and care for themselves as individuals, and love and care for one another. That's what makes good parents.
Her HeartGlow way to Intuitive Parenting makes a beautiful flower toward the end of the book. Based on the word HeartGlow, Dr. Snyder touts Honor, Empathy, Altruism, Resonance, Trust, Gratitude, Love, Opportunity and Wellness as the foundations of her system.
If you are a parent, period, no matter what kind of challenges your child faces, you must read this book. It will make your parenting easier. It will make your child grow. And it will heal the families on planet Earth.
For spiritual nourishment, visit Dr. Susan Corso's website and blog, Seeds for Sanctuary. Follow her on Twitter @PeaceCorso and Friend her on Facebook.