Be Strong Families has been hosting Parent Cafés and teaching others how to host them since we began in 2012. Our original Parent Café deck of questions was bilingual, in Spanish and English. As we've evolved, we've worked with communities to translate Be Strong Families Parent Cafés into other languages and to develop Parent Café decks specific to cultural needs.

The warm weather of late June acts like a beacon to my family; it draws us Up North for our annual 4th of July camping trip. As a family, we have been migrating to the serene northwest part of Michigan for the last ten years. Fishing, hiking, dune climbing, and playing in the sand and surf fill our days while campfires, s'mores, stargazing and family stories complete the nights.

Eligibility. Intake. Paperwork. “It’s our policy.” Recently, I have been involved in, and heard through others of, numerous situations that highlight the ways in which our human services systems prioritize the needs of the system and its workers—us—over the needs of the people we serve. Our policies and procedures can create barriers to access and inadvertently add to the suffering of people in need.

There is the opportunity to nurture ourselves and to help our children and loved ones to nurture themselves too. To create a place, as parents or caregivers, that has a sense of sanctuary. To grow habits that produce a healthy life and stockpile practices that last a lifetime. This all starts with a move or a shift in your vitality, your life. When we cultivate and encourage this vitality, we allow for new growth in ourselves. A way to do this, is through Journey to Vitality.

At precisely 2:30 p.m. on Sunday May 19, I took my seat along side my family at The Mizzou Arena in Columbia, Missouri and eagerly waited for the graduation ceremony to begin.  As the college graduates began to fill the arena, one by one, I caught a glimpse of my son in his cap and gown and my heart swelled with pride and joy. But when the moment came for him to march across the stage and receive his diploma, pride and joy took a back seat, almost instantly I exhaled a sigh of relief.

As the creators of the Parent Cafés, Be Strong Families is excited to announce that the California Department of Education recently added “expanding parental knowledge of child development through Parent Cafés” as one of the top strategies under their nearly $11 million federal Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B—5), previously announced on January 16, 2019. This announcement follows the inauguration of Dr. Nadine Burke Harris as California’s first Surgeon General. We are longtime admirers of Dr. Burke Harris’s work, including her 2015 TED Talk, “How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime.”

As an organization committed to empowered engagement and continuous learning, we are always looking at ways to deepen our partnerships and strengthen our relationships. On May 10, 2019, the Be Strong Families Board of Directors welcomed four new board members and changed its bylaws to shift towards being more grassroots-driven, diverse, and inclusive.

Human transformation can begin with the simple and powerful act of creating space to listen to a person’s unique and special story of their journey. I recently had the honor of facilitating one of several Parent Cafés with the theme “Trusting Relationships”. We began our Café by grounding, feeling the pressure of where we were all sitting. We felt gravity and a connection to the earth and to the room we were in. I expressed that we are all right here and safe. If parents had trouble closing their eyes, I asked them to see what was in the room or outside the window, the way the shadows hit the walls and floor or the colors of the grains of the wood floor. We also found a way to feel our breath, breathing in deeply and slowly exhaling to let the air out. Once we were all grounded, we placed our hands over our hearts and sensed that the touch was light enough to feel tenderness towards ourselves and safety in the space.