Hello and welcome to Day to Your Ego Mariosol Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Fina, and I am an ego and soul enthusiast. We can no longer be strangers to our egos and how they function. So come join me as we find out why and how this philosophy of dating your ego but marrying your soul is true and useful for you.
One of the subjects close to my heart is that of ego traps. I find when I'm consciously aware of my ego and its various traps, I'm able to stay more in control of my own happiness. I'm more in my flow. What can I say?
Life is happier. Anyway, one of these traps for me is the parent trap, something we all can get caught up in both as parents and as children. Now the world of parenting opens up so many new rules for us, the biggest one being that of a carer, provider and nourisher. While this can bring out the best in us, it can also force us to become close comrades with anxiety, worry and exhaustion.
To have a discussion around the matter, I have with me today Holly Holden, an interfaith minister here in London, England and an expert in conscious parenting. Well, hello Holly and welcome to our show. It's a real pleasure to have you. How are you today?
I'm really well. Thank you, thank you for inviting me. You're welcome. Holly, I first heard about you through a workshop on Facebook titled Parenting and the Spiritual Path.
Could you tell me a bit more about the workshop and use that to tell us a bit about yourself? Yeah, so I mean I think I would say really that the title says it all because about where I'm at with parenting, which is that when I first became a parent, I think I saw parenting as lots of things. So I think I saw it as something I had to get right. I think I saw it as some way that I could compensate for the things that maybe I felt were lacking in my own childhood.
I looked around and I saw that people thought that parenting was a really hard job to get done. I saw that people thought that it was something where you were supposed to mold people into well behaved, certain orientated people. And I really, as I deepened into my parents and journeys, I went along, I really deeply, deeply got that parenting is actually a profound invitation to really deepen our spirituality. And this came to me because many people would say, I was into my spiritual teachings, I listened to people and I heard a couple of people say, well, you know, obviously if you have children, if you become a parent, if you create a family that will take you away from your deepest spiritual truth, people were saying, because you know, you need to be in silence for two hours a day, you need to be doing all these things and going to Ashrams and whatever.
And I remember thinking, hey, this cannot be right that I'm about to go on to a journey for like basically my whole life. Let's say that, you know, but essentially those really early years thinking that I have to somehow put my spiritual life on hold while I parent, but it didn't feel right to me. And so I began to really look into how to integrate my parent and journey with my spiritual life. And I think, you know, from speaking to you earlier, so I feel that this is where you're interested in, you know, like where the two really meet and combine.
Absolutely. And what I realized was that as I deepened into bringing my spiritual practices to my parenting and also seeing my children as these amazing, these people I love so much, but also these amazing mirrors that bring up, you know, and show me all of my stuff, all of my own childhood stuff, all of my, you know, it's an enormous healing path. If you can keep the soul in it, you know, if you can keep your presence with you just about enough, if you can ask for help, if you can get deeply supported through healing, what comes up in your parenting rather than just kind of going with the current conditioning that you, that you're listening to, and it's profound and really exacting spiritual path, you know, the ultimate monastery life in a way. Yes, yes.
I can hear that in your words and in your voice. It's just astounding that I've connected with you because these are questions I've been asking on myself because I do my meditation every day and the mothers tend to talk to your routine, etc, etc. And I have been worrying about it, so this is speaking directly to all of my worries and I'm sure there are listeners there who are wondering if this is possible. I'd love to ask you, I believe you conducted the workshop with your mom, Eevee, in an interview with her, which I loved by the way.
You mentioned becoming a parent is as much an opportunity for us to be loved as it is for us to love and care. Could you elaborate on that in the light of what you've just mentioned? Yeah, I mean, I think I learned very early on. I think I learned the hard way in the way.
I thought I could just pull my love into my daughter. She was my first one child. I thought, right, I'm just going to give her everything. I'm going to give everything I didn't get.
I'm going to give everything I know from my spiritual kind of deepings and I'm going to just pull my love into her. That lasted for a little while. Then at some point, of course, I know this now, but at the time I was a little bit confused. At some point, I really burned out because I was just giving, giving, giving, giving, giving.
Giving everything away. I didn't take time for myself. I wasn't in the receiving mode. I thought I could just give endlessly.
On one level, at the beginning, quite honestly, that is just what you have to do. The truth is when you have a tiny little beat in your arms or learning the ropes or figuring out how to create a family, it's deeply, deeply selfless work. At some point, and I believe we can do this right from the start, actually, at some point, we need to learn how to take care of ourselves while we take care of our children. Actually, the increased awareness of that that has come to me through parenting has increased my needs to find ways to feel more loved and cherished and cared for.
Not only by the world and my relationships around me, but also by my practices and directly by the design, by whatever words you want to give the source of love that is our true identity. How do I come into a relationship with our voice? For me, for example, I began to write and writing became this absolutely vital practice in my life to receive this loving voice. I would start off writing, this is what's going on and I'm feeling this and this incredible wave of love would come through me and I would end up writing what I mostly needed to hear, or learn, or receive in that moment.
That's just one of the ways I feel that I have needed to deepen into those types of practices so that I'm not just teaching my children, this is how loved you are. If you're teaching them and this is what it is to love someone, you must also be in receipt of love. You must also be caring for yourself and in direct contact with love. That's what it's really taught me as I've gone along and it's what I'm still learning.
I think it's important to respect yourself and to see your children as your guides that have not only come to teach you how to love in that selfless way, but also to love yourself in that selfless way. This brings me to one of the topics that was mentioned on the page to your workshop, which is how relying on inner guidance is more important than focusing on our children's behaviour. This is such intimate work with the individual themselves. I'd really like to understand this more.
Yeah, I mean that is the big question. In one sense, there's that view of children, they're kind of empty buckets and we need to fill them. And it's in my experience, it's true. They're overflowing with wisdom and alignment and sense ofness, actually.
If they're allowed to be children and if they're allowed to flourish according to their own nature, one thing a metaphor that I like to use, for example, is that the parent is kind of like a gardener. I don't know about you, but I'm not that good at gardening, but I've learned a few things about it, which is that one of them is that if you plant a bulb that's meant to be a true lip, you can't then sit around or winter hoping that in the spring a rose brush is going to appear. And yeah, we know it's going to be a true lip, right? Because that's what's in its essence down there, under the ground.
That's what's going to come up. And yet with parenting, we spend so much of our energy, I think, in the modern world, trying to change our children rather than work with who they are. And one of the most profound ways that I know to allow them to be themselves, and to keep the bank, you know, there's also boundaries and there's also a matter topic. Of course, it's not just, you know, people will see conscious parenting sometimes, I think, wrongly as something very fleet-free flowing, you know, one does whatever they like.
It's not true at all, children need really clear boundaries. But the point is that I can set those boundaries and I can help them feel safe and I can allow them to be themselves and allow them to stay as who they are by managing myself, you know, whereas a lot of the parenting books these days that I've looked at, you know, in my research, it's all about how to manage the child's behaviour, how to make them behave, how to get them into a routine before they're ready, all this kind of stuff. But actually, you know, my interest is getting in tune with myself, healing my own childhood, so that I'm not just constantly throwing my own conditioning at my children, my own rules, that kind of if I question them, what even is that? Where's that come from?
And actually getting more in tune with this loving voice inside me that actually knows the way and knows who they are and knows how to navigate things really wisely, really well. The problem comes, I get all of my stuff and my super ego comes in and I compare myself and I do all the crazy stuff that everybody else does as parents. And I start to get away from what's really true for us as a family and for me as a parent and for my children. And so I guess what I'm more interested in is just kind of coming home to ourselves, you know, having enough support for example, having therapeutic support, and taking our stuff to places, saying to somebody in your life like, my God, I'm finding myself so angry about this.
And I know that's not the truth, I know that's something from my past, can you help me? And being in those types of spaces rather than just this constant thing of I'm right because I'm the parent and you do what I say, end of the story kind of thing. So it's a whole learning, but it's a whole way of coming into our presence, coming into our connection with our children and finding that actually many of the answers we seek are within and are there for us in this deeper place, beyond our conditioning. Wow, okay, there's so many things there.
I want to just ask you about because you're the perfect person for anybody out there that's going through what any parent goes through really and the mother goes through particularly. Tell me a little more about inner conditioning because as far as I can see and what I've seen from my sisters as mothers and my own mother and my extended family, I grew up in a joint family, is that inner conditioning is almost treated like a little jewel that you give your children. I also feel that when parents stamp their own conditioning onto us, in a lot of ways they are trying to protect us from people, outsiders, and at the same time from society as they know it and have grown up in. There's a fine line there between making your child just like you and protecting your child, isn't there?
And you then spoke about the Super Eagle. It seems to me that the Super Eagle is in charge of this decision making that goes on inside each of us, what is going to be best for this child, what is going to be safe for this child, but at the same time, it's also about what is going to be best for us as a family, how are we going to seem the best, how are we going to be seen as a safe and secure environment, how my kids going to seem to their friends. It's just all sort of mixed up in there, isn't it, with the Super Eagle? Yeah, I mean this is where for me personally, another system that I rely on moment to moment is the Enneground, I don't know if you know about the Enneground.
I do, yes, but please do tell us about it. So the Enneground is a very, very beautiful system when it's used properly and the way we learn it with the teachers we are learning with. It's very beautiful. It's about your essence.
Your essence has everything available. We already have what we need, we already know we are in office, we are, that is the deepest truth of us. And the Enneground shows us all the ways we get stuck in our thinking, in our rules, in our conditioning, in what we picked up much other. Because remember that in a family, you may have two parents who are not getting divorced and then something happens and then he's a very strong as a curve.
Each child from that family, depending on who they are inside and what their orientation is, will experience that family entirely differently. I come from this so many times that you have the same upbringing and everybody has a whole different story about it. And so the Enneground is really about understanding what we do with what life gives us. And then it becomes extremely important in parenting because we then get to see, like, oh, I met for example what you were just sharing then with something that an image type.
There are, you know, points two, three and four on this system are image types, for example. And for image types, it's really painful if your children, for example, have a tantrum in a shock. Or if your children are just not behaving the way you need them to behave. I had an amazing conversation with a friend one time.
She is, Enneground wise, she is very much an image type. She wants to do things in a beautiful way and have everything look lovely. And she just wants things to be smooth and great. And her son is very, very different to her.
And he's much more interested in, like, he focuses on one thing at a time. That's what he does. He's not very sociable. And she was taking to him, to these groups where all the other children seemed to be doing what she would like her child to do.
And socializing and being, you know, sharing the toys. And he was in the corner just hammering this piece of work for like the whole time. And she came away and said, my God, I was so mortified. I felt like, you know, what's going on with him?
Who is he? If I've done something wrong, he wasn't making any friends. And through just a little bit of inquiry into the interview, I'm able to get very quickly to this place where her need of him is completely different, his need in the world. And so she's seen things completely through her conditioning, through what she sees as a successful human being.
Actually, he was doing the most appropriate thing with a whole room of new people, with his temperament, with his, you know, I said to her, you haven't still done him. Such trust that he can go with what he really needs. That he went and did in the corner what he really needed to cope with so many people, because for him it would have been totally draining and overwhelming to go straight into that group. Do you know what I mean?
So that's like just one example of where understanding is like a lens we have on our perception. Once we get to see what that's made of, we get to love the other person as they are. It's like the love can flow. You know, my children are extremely different.
They need extremely different things. If I was expecting them both to be one way, you know, and I didn't know my own tendencies and my own kind of desire for certain things. I didn't know those things. I wouldn't be able to put them aside and choose really seeing them and really being with them and really seeing myself and being with myself.
I wouldn't be able to choose that. I couldn't see my particular ways of getting away from that. Does that make sense? No, absolutely.
I mean, I have a brother and a sister and the way the three of us react to life is very, very different. And the way the three of us react to our own parents and things that have happened to our life, the way they've affected us, are just completely different. And I think the one thing that having a spiritual path has helped us do is have acceptance and awareness for each other's journeys rather than judgment. There was a lot of confusion to begin with.
But then, like you said, we all react in the way that is best for us and we have to be able to trust that. Because if we don't, then you sort of get into this zone of violence and confusion and mistrust and then that's not very healthy as a family. But now the Aniram is something I'm very, very interested in and I'd like to learn more about and I've been actually having at the time to seek out a teacher and a practitioner. I know I know a few people in London, but I haven't had the opportunity.
But I will as soon as I have some time. It would be a good point for people listening to know how to connect with the side of themselves. You know, we've talked about inner guidance. We've talked about seeing parenting as an opportunity to be loved and parenting as a spiritual path.
How does someone who hasn't had a spiritual path get in touch with us? What's the simplest way we could do that? Well, I mean, it's a great question. And at the same time, I would say that usually it's like, you know, life finds a way to reach you.
That's why it's my experience. I mean, I met my first, who I would class as spiritual teachers through my mum. My mum started doing some trainings with him and I began to connect with him and then I went and did work with him. And one thing I ended up doing, I ended up doing a training so many years and doing a lot of my healing work with him through my 20s.
I feel like that very much came to me. And I think the thing to do is just take the first step with somebody else who you really trust a name. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be in this anymore.
Most people will not go towards change. You know, parenting as a spiritual path sounds really lovely. It's not. It's really hard.
It's really challenging. You can't just go. You can't just kind of. I actually think the other way is more painful.
Your conditioning. You need a reason for that. Nobody comes to our workshops or our spaces or reads our stuff. You know, this is me and my husband and I who teach all sorts of things like this.
Nobody comes, you know, just because they fancy it because they didn't have any better to do that weekend. You know, we come because there's a deep question. There's a deep desire. There's an inquiry.
But we can't into you. And maybe that's because something painful happens. And just the right moment, you hear an interview like this where you realize there are spaces where you can be received in your pain and your pain can become, you know, a catalyst for deeper growth and knowing yourself more fully and truthfully. Maybe that's what happens.
Or maybe, you know, you have just the right conversation with somebody at just the right time and they say, hey, I'm going to this training course on the weekend. You know, it's about changing my mind about my life and about being happy. Would you like to come? You know, it's like, but it's first of all opening up to the fact that you even have a desire to change the blueprint that's been passed down to you for generations.
And you know, it's just down to you for generations in your family because I believe that that's what parenting actually is. You know, we're bridging our past with the future as in we're standing at the point where our family past meets the possibility of a different future. And, you know, there are a few people in the world who maybe don't need to do that because they have the idea of bringing in their passing on only goodness. And that's all great.
I haven't come across that many times. No, so really our work is to stand in our constellation and be very aware of the fact that we bring with us, you know, all of the power of the baggage from not only our parents, but our grandparents. We lived in our grandmothers wounds physically. We were actually in there.
And when you begin to really realize that, realize that the amount of trauma that goes on in these systems is that at some point, we have to wake up and say, I don't want to keep passing this on to my children in the form of whatever condition I'm imposing on them. You know, I don't want to be that person anymore. So I mean, yeah, it's a really good question. But I would say that the willingness is the biggest key, you know, the desire to change something.
And I think for me personally, when I do take on in a work and there's a work for me in life, in material life, it translates into confidence and empowerment, especially in situations when I'm really vulnerable. When, you know, I don't want to turn to the system that my parents have passed on to me and I don't want to turn to the system that society is trying to tell me to turn to, or that my ego is telling me to turn to. As you said, there's always a catalyst. There's a painful situation.
And if we're not aware and we don't catch it, we could be mirroring back things that don't even belong to us, you know, and find ourselves in a little hole that then, oh God, it takes years to dig yourself out of. But this is all such great stuff. So I want to thank you mid-interview. It's fantastic.
I'm really enjoying this chat. Getting on to the practical side of things. And I know parents are there listening up, I think, oh my God, I'm socially deprived. How do I even begin to think of this stuff?
You know, it's very practical. It happens to everyone. And would you like to make a comment on that? You know, parenting is just extreme territory.
Because, you know, even when you think, like, okay, everyone's kind of sorted. They've kind of got to a certain age and find against a night's sleep. Some people get like a vomiting bug and then you're up for three nights in a row and you're fine just so I'll go, you know, being blown around by life. And that is what parenting is, I mean, I'm watching my sister and my parents, my nephews right now.
And they're tiny. You know, they're three and one. And, you know, the fact is she's pretty exhausted. And, you know, she is, she, yeah, she has to ask for a lot of help.
And the good thing is that she has people around her who she can ask for help from. And I would say that for me the biggest piece, the biggest learning for me, apparently, has been to really learn to do that with grace. Like, to really say, actually, hey, I'm struggling. My own chance of stuff is coming up right now.
I'm completely exhausted. Everyone's driving me crazy. I just need to go to a walk. How can I make that happen?
How can I claim that time for myself that actually is the most profound gift I can give to everyone around me? Because once I become more centered and I fill myself up, then I can come back to my life with more presence and more ease and more patience or whatever. I mean, my joke with my husband is that someone says, you know, this isn't so much anymore, but it was when they were younger. It's like, oh, we need some milk from the corner shop.
I think everybody would say, oh, it's okay. I'll go. And then he'd say, no, no, it's fine. I will do it for you.
You know, because it was this joke of like, who was going to just kind of have the space? Yeah. And I would say, you know, I would say, and I'd come back and go, and I literally take ten minutes to do the whole thing. And I'd come back and say, how are you?
And I was like, well, that was my spa day. You know, today with that was my spa day because actually life is very full right now. And all I managed was ten minutes, but I did it consciously. I walked out.
I noticed my feet on the floor. I took in the trees. I stopped. And I kind of snuck the roads, maybe, which is what I like to do.
Or I did something that filled me up. I maybe got into conversation with another adult in a shop. And I was like, oh, so what kind of day are you having? And I kind of reconnected with normal life before I went back in.
And that took me ten minutes, but it really saved me. Or sometimes when it's lying down, and it just sounds crazy, but I had this big break through where when I was tired, I would think, oh, my God, I would have got to bite against this. But what I would do is I would lie down. I would say to the children, my mommy needs to lie down, you know, for a little while.
And you can play me, and you can be right next to me. You can even sit on my lap. It doesn't matter. I need to rest my body for a moment.
Or maybe just read something and have a cup of tea and get it used to just even stretching them out minute by minute. Like, I need to do this for myself, like taking that space. And, you know, I'd say all of this in the context of many of us in certain stages of parenting, we just don't have the space. But there isn't a space where we have to just kind of create little tiny pockets.
And for example, I love to, I love to chant. And I learn, I learn short chants because what happens is then I begin to harm them and I begin to sing them while I'm making a dinner or while I'm doing a school run or while I'm doing things. And what I love about that is it's like it's a meditation in motion. So I don't have to stop.
I don't have to schedule an hour to be in my own run away from me. I can bring my presence. I can bring my real lining forces for me is what I experience when I chant. I can bring that to to chopping the carrots or whatever's happening.
And then interestingly, the reason that children have just started to sing them in full, they can sing these really long chants. It's not even in their language. And they can just sing them because it makes me realize I do it much more than I even am conscious of these days. Those kinds of things I develop along the way, I still get to express myself as a soulful, spiritual, wild woman, while I'm swabbing things and picking cheese up off the sofa and that kind of stuff.
Yeah. I mean, this is just mirroring what my mom did with us. She had a little temple space in her bedroom. I remember she was doing the Rudra Mantra, Triamwaka Mantra.
It's from the Rig Veda. And it's dedicated to Lordship. And I remember I couldn't sleep and I was really tiny. And I went in.
She just made me put my head on her lap. And she would just chant this mantra. When we were all this meant to be asleep, obviously I wasn't. And I remember I knew it.
I knew it like I don't know if it was the next day or that week. But I knew it and that's how I learned it. And it's such a nice memory for me as well. You know?
Well, that's brilliant. I love everything that you're talking about, by the way. But I don't want to get through these questions. So I do want to ask you this question about ego suspension and parenting, especially right at the start.
I do feel post birth, whether you're a spiritual mom or normal mom, whatever you are. You do forget all of that pain and those nine months of pregnancy, where you go to all kinds of things. And I do feel that is a complete union with the soul that allows the strength that we have, that we gain in that moment to suspend our egos temporarily. And I wanted to ask you about that, given all your knowledge.
What do you think about that? I'm just curious. So I mean, first of all, I think I've sort of come into a relationship with my ego where I'm not trying to cut it off or make it wrong. So I feel like it's really important for me personally to say that so that I don't see it as like I'm either doing really well because I'm feeling really thoughtful or I'm doing really badly because my ego is like, it exists for a reason.
It came about for a reason. And so, and actually the ego, although we talk about it being like a separate state as opposed to maybe like a unicorn, like a union versus separation, whatever. Actually, it's weird. It's like it's that separation that allows us to have these experiences.
It's like it's such a fine balance. I mean, you know, much of my life is about this inquiry. It's not something that we can cover in this interview. But the point is, is that, yes, in those moments after birth, I think what happens is it's a dissolution of the grip that maybe the ego has on your experience.
So for me, it was like this completely unbelievable miracle that I was suddenly holding this child in my arms. This baby, this being, I didn't really believe existed if I'm honest. I'm like, no, this can't be because my tummy's out there. Just cannot possibly, even though I'd seen it hundreds of times with other people.
Somehow it didn't kind of compute that there was really a soul. I mean, for me though, I would say that I'm personally, I had the experience very strongly of my children before they even conceived I was in relationship with them on the soul level. I didn't choose. I didn't try and cultivate that.
It was just so strong. So for me, when I met them, it was like, oh, yeah, of course, it's you and here's the body you chose. It was so beautiful. And yes, I say this, knowing that many people I know didn't feel that.
Many people I know didn't have that experience. They were too tired. They were quite traumatized by the type of birth they had maybe. And so there's also the other side of this is that there's pressure to feel that sometimes.
And so I would say that yes, there's definitely an expansion. There's definitely a mess of opening. You keep coming back to that level to go through your parents. You keep coming back to.
I remember when I was going to a hard stage when they were really little and I was just quite kind of ragged and tired. And for example, when they were asleep, I would go and lie down next to them and just really be with them in their seat and reconnect with them in a more sober way at the end of the day. Because in the day, you just have so much going on. And it was like, I think now looking back, I was recreating their faces when I could just go direct with them or I could go for my sister there.
So I would say that it's not just a one-off moment, but it is the initial crack that we need maybe to sustain us and remind us why we're doing this because honestly, it's a pretty hard job. And so we need these sustaining connecting moments to carry us through. So yes, I totally agree with you. And I think there's complexity to it is the answer.
Okay, well, no, thank you for speaking on that. Now, one question dedicated to all the daddies out there. Yeah. Can we talk about soul-led opportunities for men, please?
Are they the same? Are they the techniques the same as well? So I think the most useful thing that I can tell you is that between me and husband, we have very conscious talks about what do our children need right now? And can we get our own needs out of the way so that we can be with what they actually need?
And I'm talking about developmental needs, right? So child development is another area of massive interest for me, where we actually see that between ages of not to seven, for example, that's a very, very clear age where children are purely in their physical development. And they need to play and they need to dig and they need to be in nature and they need to be outside. That's why my children go to sinus school because sinus will actually understand this stuff and it's really important.
You allow the child to really be the child. The other aspect of that is the child is still very much in the mother's energy system. So really what we decided very early on from the beginning is my husband had to work through some feelings because he was like, hey, I really want them to want me as much as they want you. Of course, right?
But of course, if he's really honest, he would have loved to be the one that they could really snuggle into when they fell over. The fact is that because he allowed them access to me and he, of course, he was still with them and he was still supporting them and carrying them and singing to them. Of course, he did all of those things. But because energetically he acknowledged their need for mother as much as possible, later on, that the trust that that developed, I feel, between him and our children is they adore him and he's been completely hands on.
He's been completely amazing with them. But he's had to buy his time, if that makes sense. We really wanted them to breastfeed. We really wanted to do that.
And he doesn't have breasts. It's physiological. He doesn't have them. It's not installed.
And in other times and in other cultures, it would be very clear cut. So it would be very clear cut. In one time in the West, we talk about we want everything to be equal, both ways. And I think dads can get a little bit isolated, a little bit left out.
Your own stuff comes up because suddenly this woman, this delicious woman, you look with, suddenly giving up all her energy to your children. And that can bring up, there's honestly a required death. That can bring up really big stuff. You're in a child, you're in a car cells, whatever you want to call that.
That can often be a source of really, really painful stuff if you're not looking at that, consciously. But what I would say is that the child needs lots of mother and then they need lots of dad later on. So there's a really amazing author actually that men listening to, dads listening might be interested in a seabed-off. And seabed-off writes about these stages.
He writes about parenting children to these different stages. And he talks about all this. He talks about when that need comes more around that age of like six, seven, where the children need to be. It's like the dad is in this incredible doorway to the world.
He's like the kind of the bridge into the world. The mother is like, if you call the mother in an extended room, the safe arms to come back to. Then the father is the one. He says, right now you're ready to take some real steps into whatever you're going to be doing.
And now this is more my realm. My son will often wake up in the morning and just come straight to my husband and wake him up. He's like, Dad, we've got to go and play with my lego. We've got this whole game set up.
Come on. And he doesn't want me anymore in the same way. But he's still, and he still comes to me much more for comfort or when he's unwell. He'll generally turn to want me.
But the point is that love is the same. But the role has to change as you go along. It has to be really respectful of the child's, where the child is and what they really truly need. And also obviously your system.
So it's to live and go back to work. Some mothers need to go back to work. And Dad takes over. That's a completely different story.
And obviously we can't go to specifics. But generally, that generosity of Dad's to kind of wait. That's our experience. I can only talk about it.
No, of course. And I do want to quickly comment on that and say, all of the ideas we're discussing, obviously, things that we have experienced in our from our world, there are so many possibilities out there. Exactly. Exactly.
So every possibility is perfect. And from everything you're saying, it just makes me so grateful for family and the family set up. Even though it's so complicated and so draining and can get so tiring. I think while the mum is nurturing the babies as they're growing up, until they need the dad, the dad can nurture the mum.
And it is set up for all this beautiful dependency in a healthy manner. It's just about us being aware that that's a possibility. So, well, I think that's it. And I think it used to be the case that the dad would be out hunting the beast to literally feed the mother so that she could produce a mother for the child.
But equally, the woman would be at home with other women, other adults who also had children. And so I think one of the big painful things that can happen for example in the modern world is that the dad isn't hunting a beast. He's sitting in office all day. And the mother is alone.
I know. So it's very complicated. It's what I mean about that there need to be support structures where we find other women. We find, we really move closer to members of our family.
We create what human beings need. We're creatures. And we're creatures and we need our things. And so it's, you know, we're finding our ways human beings.
And we're just doing our best. And that's all we can ever do. And I know just to be so clear about everything I share, I know you have a share in my experience or experience that I suppose to me. And I always like to add that nobody's life is a formula that can be kind of solved, of course.
Everybody has such different factors in the mix. And the one thing that you could do wrong from this interview is to allow your secret goal to get hold of anything you already said. And to make yourself wrong in some way, to make yourself less than to think that you're not doing it right. Or that maybe you had children long time ago and you didn't do it that way.
Whatever. It's like just having this as an invitation into finding your own truth. That's what we're really talking about. It's finding your own truth.
It's about encouraging authenticity. And you know, I'm glad you spoke to that because this is just a discussion to people are having and draw what you will from it and make your own life in your own way. And that's why the show is called, Dae, you go to marry your soul because your ego is so important. But at the same time, your soul is going to give you the ultimate happiness that you want.
So it's kind of like what the show is about. So thank you for speaking to that. I always ask all of my guests, you know, away from your roles of mom, wife, daughter and teacher. Ali, what is your self-care routine?
My self-care routine, well, gosh, many things. I mean, I am, because I'm a decision I wear my children are a little bit older. I do have a little more space for their school and things. For me, personally, creative expression is huge.
That's the thing that fills me up the most. So I just found this really gorgeous local grocery studio and I go and I literally make like bowls and cups and I have my hand in a clay. I'm so happy. It's just so joyful for me.
And I walk. I really need to spend time in nature. We spend quite a lot of time in the Highlands in Scotland, which is huge self-care for me to just be in that pure pure nature where nature out, nature's us. I've been in London.
I would just tend to go for long walks in Richard Park or whatever. And then also my daily study of spiritual texts. And as I was saying earlier, my chances in my body to practice it, you know, those are the things that really sustain me and keep me sane really. I absolutely love working with clay.
I always have a bit of clay at home. Oh, nice. Oh, when I get stressed out, I just make whatever I want. Yeah, it's so, it's so, it's like such a generous material because it feels like it can absorb as well from you.
It's very interesting. Yeah, I love it. I love it too. Oh, well, before you leave us, please do tell us about your workshops and how anyone that's interested in connecting with everything that you've spoken of can reach you.
Well, so, I mean, I guess one thing that we're doing, I'm just trying to think, I'm not so good on this practical stuff because I'm usually just, um, actually just traveling about trying to figure everything out. So let me just think about that. So in October, I know we're doing a workshop in Vintorn. My husband and I are doing a workshop about love and relationships that can be found.
All of this can actually be found more on my husband's website because we do this stuff together. And I'm organizing a tab online. But so, RobertHolden.org is a really good place to go for our events. And actually, we also have an Enneagram training coming up.
So anybody who was grabbed by the Enneagram conversation, we have a three day in November in London coming up. And then really, you know, my way of connecting people is through my writing. So my blog, you know, which is the main thing is where I share what's relevant. I have many, many of my blogs up there.
It's mainly all on Facebook. And if anyone has connected with anything that we've been talking about and they're a bit shy, they can email you. We just want to have. They can just actually message me through my blog.
So Holly Holden, it's one of the things I love about my GPCOT businesses. It's kind of pretty record. Wow. Okay.
Well, thank you so much, Holly. Thank you for coming on the show. Well, thank you for a great conversation. I just find this conversation so centering, you know, for everyone.
So thank you. Thank you. Well, enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.
Bye. Nobody's life is a formula. Loved that line among so many insightful thoughts shared by Holly. A very useful takeaway for me was also the role that the Super Eagle begins to play for each of us once we become parents.
Why not become conscious of the grip it can have on us and let our awareness of it allow us to keep it at bay? This way we could keep our souls more in the process of parenting rather than our egos. Burnout is a part of it. But if we see parenting as an opportunity to love and nurture all who are involved in the process, I think we could just manage to date our ego but marry our soul, even as parents.
Leaving you with a little more love for life. This is your host, Sarah Fina, signing off.