Hi! I’m Ryan.
I’m a parent, educator, writer and consultant based in Massachusetts, U.S.A. I’m fiercely protective of my fellow caregivers, and want to see us break free of burnout and to live happier, healthier, more liberated lives.
In this newsletter, I draw on the following to deliver insights about mindfulness specific to caregivers:
My work as a consultant, supporting many smart people doing good work at the intersection of mindfulness, creativity and education, including folks at Readworks, Tinkergarten, Breathe 4 Change, Global Girls Prep, and RTZ Hope.
My experiences with teaching hundreds of children and adults across NYC, across a wide variety of public, private and charter schools, as well as in spaces like The Brooklyn Kitchen.
My own personal experiences with caring for my family, including battling infertility and endometriosis, surviving perinatal loss and coaching perinatal loss groups, and parenting a child with special needs.
I believe that we who support others deserve more support. Here, we talk about how to get more of that via mindfulness practices and communities that are actually helpful — and how to use these same resources to ease the pressures we face as caregivers to be more and give more along the way.
Here’s what you’ll get if you sign up to hear from me:
Resources on tending your own interior life. Things like this meditation, this journaling prompt, this essay, and pretty much every interview I’ve done here.
Insights from texts and teachers on tending others and the self. Think notes on ancient wisdom, modern-day teachings and teachers, interviews with wise friends, observable everyday phenomena and embodied experiences that can help us when we’re stuck.
Opportunities to create community (sangha) with other people. Especially those who are also attempting to answer the sticky, annoying questions that come up as we try to apply the wisdom we glean from the above to our everyday lives. When you sign up (for free) I’ll send you more information on how you can join in.
You may be asking: How will this be different from all the mindfulness content I’ve consumed before? Some of it is really annoying, tbh.
I too have consumed that stuff. Here’s what I don’t love and thus will not be sending you:
Breathy meditations with distracting New Age music in the background.
Content that is religious in a preachy or jargon-y way.
Content that is whitewashed to the point that it lacks appropriate credit, context or critique when it comes to the specific cultural or historical roots of a particular topic.
Content that pressures you to feel #grateful for your domestic burdens, especially if you’re shouldering an unjust amount. Or content that pressures you to feel any specific way at all.
Content that will fill up your inbox with sanctimommy-esque exhortations to churn your own butter with your children, mindfully, at the expense of your dedicated self-tending time.
Content that is not intersectional — that is, that does not acknowledge the stressors and obstacles faced by mindfulness practitioners and caregivers who experience any marginalized identity, or several overlapping ones. Patriarchy-fueled misbehavior in particular is sadly just as common in the world of mindfulness as anywhere else, so we will be using our critical thinking here to ensure we stay focused on dismantling oppression everywhere, which is the ultimate act of compassion.
If this sounds good to you, you can:
Thanks for reading!
🙏🏽 Ryan
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