1. What is the title of your book? Tell us a bit about it.
Soul to Soul Parenting: A Guide to Raising a Spiritually Conscious Family provides a framework for parents who desire to infuse greater spiritual awareness into everyday life within their own family. It offers 22 methods and 15 universal, life-affirming themes to get started, including many tools—such as books, music, movies, and activities.
2. Tell us a little about your background.
Always a reflective child, I grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, but have lived in the Chicago-area for the past eighteen years. I graduated from DePauw University in Indiana and received my Masters in Education from DePaul University. I am a former elementary school teacher who took ten years off to raise my three children, now ages 14, 12 and 10. I re-entered the workforce as a professional soul nurturer—one who helps others awaken to their own truth in all aspects of life by providing the tools and encouragement to look more closely at their inner world.
3. You call yourself a soul nurturer; can you explain that title?
Officially, I have been a soul nurturer for over five years. I created it as a career as soul nurturing has always been the most natural aspect of who I am. A soul nurturer helps others awaken to their own truth in all aspects of life by providing the tools and encouragement to look more closely at their inner world. She assists others in viewing their life from an expanded perspective by helping them to remember their divine, creative, intuitive, eternal nature and how to integrate this knowing into their life choices. A soul nurturer's primary role is to inspire others to listen to the voice of their own soul so that direct divine connection can become fully accessible within daily reality.
4. Is this your first book? Yes!
5. What led you to write Soul to Soul Parenting?
Spiritual development/personal growth has been my greatest passion since I was nineteen. As it has brought such joy , purpose, gratitude and liberation to be truly comfortable within my own skin, I desired to take my children with me on the journey. I began to break down my spiritual insights and teachings into digestible bites for my own children, and conscious parenting became the most important aspect of what we offered them. Other parents noticed and started asking for guidance so I began speaking on the topic locally. Soon it became apparent that there was a book inside of me ready to emerge.
6. What was the most challenging part of writing the book?
The most challenging part of the entire process was finding an agent and then the publisher. Through referrals I found an agent, and he found my publisher. It took several months for both. I trusted the process and through many rejections and rewrites uncovered much about myself that I will always cherish. The whole process has been very empowering.
7. For you Annie, what is the difference between soul to soul parenting and traditional parenting?
I feel that soul to soul parenting seeks to move beyond simply the physical realm to understand the child from an energetic (soul) perspective, too. The current human suit is viewed as only one aspect of the child’s totality as an eternal, infinite spiritual being on one leg of his/her journey. From this widened vantage point, everything is different—there is a core belief that there is so much more to the child and all of life than what meets the eye, and the parent becomes willing to allow that larger perspective in regards to life choices, priorities, thoughts, words and deeds. In other words, in soul to soul relationships, one feels for the underlying texture of all that occurs rather than simply the rational, socially acceptable aspect of it.
8. Why do you think conscious or soul to soul parenting is on the rise now?
I think conscious parenting is on the rise because more and more parents themselves are becoming self-aware and honoring their authenticity. Due to the joy, freedom and empowerment derived from such interior knowing, parents desire, above all else for their children, self-realization and comfortability within their own skin. There is a growing belief in the world today that enlightenment is very possible for all who deeply desire it. Many parents are seeing that the family unit offers a magnificent opportunity for personal growth in both the parent and the child, simultaneously. We are wonderfully clear mirrors for one another, and parents are beginning to utilize family relationships as the gift that they truly are as we move into wholeness. Parents desire a safe place for children to work through challenges and release negative emotions as they occur rather than stuff down, deny or save for later creating a tremendous amount of unnecessary baggage and psychic debris. Instead there is a growing shift to help children live true as soon as possible so that children can get on with what they came here to offer the world in their own special way. Essentially, as parents become more conscious, they cannot help but desire that for their children. The grandest hope for their children is not that they fill their lives with endless accomplishments that require a total focus on doing, but rather that they come to know themselves experientially as a unique part of the divine whole through an increasing number of moments of pure being—illumination.
9. What are you reading right now?
I am reading The Soul’s Journey: Discovering the Real Meaning of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born by Robert Schwartz, a fantastic book about the soul agenda of which we are often not consciously aware of until we choose to dig a little deeper through self-exploration and inner work. This book, like so many others in the metaphysical field, dramatically shifts the way we perceive ourselves, our children, and the world at large opening us to new possibilities. I have been reading parts of it aloud excitedly to my family, and my fourteen year-old daughter will
be reading it next.
Thank you Annie for sharing an insight into who you are and your inspirational new book with us!
Carol Lawrence & Stacy Toten
~ Prizes! ~
