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Hi! I'm Carrien.

I help parents raise resilient children, without feeling overwhelmed, so that they can be brave to try hard things.

I'm a writer, parent mentor, and resilience coach. My passion for helping parents to protect their children and raise them to be resilient has extended to creating resources that have helped thousands of refugee and migrant families on the Thailand/Myanmar border through my work with The Charis Project. - I am also the mother of 6 amazing and rather resilient humans, who have managed to thrive in spite of their unconventional upbringing and being dragged around the world by their parents. - Join me here for words to heal and fill your parent heart and shape the words you give to your children.

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Featured Post

Come Home to Your Body

Helping you become better friends with yourself ~ Body & Mind Five Years Ago My living room was almost completely dark, illuminated only by the soft glow of the Christmas lights that I hadn’t gotten around to taking down yet. I didn’t want to turn the main lights on. I didn’t want anyone to see what I was doing. My children were all asleep. My husband was already upstairs for the night. I was alone. No one was watching. Earphones in, music queued up, I started to dance, all by myself, in the...

3 months ago • 4 min read

CARRIEN BLUE When something hurts, our first reaction is usually to stop moving. For example, “My back hurts too much to take a walk today.” Or, “I feel too sore and stiff to workout.” “It hurts to lift my arms above my head.” So you stop lifting your arms and find other ways to do things instead. It hurts. Life just hurts so much. "Maybe if I stop moving, avoid doing anything that triggers the pain, maybe then I can protect myself against it." This is the exact opposite of what we need to...

6 months ago • 3 min read
person sitting on top of gray rock overlooking mountain during daytime

CARRIEN BLUE Writer, Parent Mentor, Coach I failed at least five times before breakfast today. (I haven’t had breakfast yet, so that number could change.) You see, I want to be able to hold a handstand for at least 30 seconds. I try if every day. After my morning Yoga practice I position myself next to the wall, (because I’m still scared to try it without a wall) and kick up into a handstand. I'm trying to get up without touching the wall for balance, and hold it for several breaths. Most of...

7 months ago • 6 min read
build strength

CARRIEN BLUE Parenting Coach & Writer “This is as far as I can go.” You’ve probably felt it, that moment when you bend over to pick something up, or reach to touch your toes and your muscles just… stop. You can’t go any farther. You may feel pain and tightness. You definitely feel that you have extended yourself as far as you can. What you may not know is that a lot of that tightness is neurological. Your nervous system is constantly sending messages to your muscles, and that dictates how far...

8 months ago • 5 min read
woman in black tank top and blue denim shorts standing on road during daytime

CARRIEN BLUE Writer & Coach Sometimes we find our story shifting in such a dramatic way that everything feels like it’s upside down. Our identity was wrapped up in a set of circumstances and relationships, and as those circumstances change, and those relationships shift, we find ourselves completely off balance, not sure of who we are anymore. At first, it’s terrifying, unmooring, destabilizing. We fight to keep ourself anchored, to try and find something solid to hold onto that we can orient...

9 months ago • 4 min read

CARRIEN BLUE Writer, Parent Mentor, & Coach When my oldest daughter was 14 months old she finally took her first independent steps. She tottered down the whole length of the hallway, the handle of a plastic bag grasped tightly in her chubby little fist, completely unaware that she was walking independently. She was convinced that the plastic bag was helping her stay on her feet. She had been capable of walking on her own for quite a while before that. She had the leg strength and the balance...

9 months ago • 4 min read

CARRIEN BLUE Parenting Coach & Writer Today's thoughts come from a moment that happened just earlier this week. I am standing on one leg on a mat. I am holding the toe of my right foot and it’s extended out in front of me. I feel the wobble coming into my standing leg. My muscles burn. My thigh muscle on my extended leg is almost cramping. I feel the words I can’t creeping into my brain. But I know better now. Those words are often not true… unless I believe them. I push them away from me and...

10 months ago • 4 min read

CARRIEN BLUE Parenting Coach & Writer Dear Reader, Part of why I’m thinking about courage right now is because I’m parenting another child through the process of figuring out what she’s going to do with her next step. She’s finished high school, and she’s got a whole world of possibilities open to her for what she decides to do next, literally. There are schools and jobs and possibilities everywhere she looks. The hard part is deciding what she wants. Actually, the hard part is deciding...

10 months ago • 4 min read
Courage looks different for everyone

CARRIEN BLUE Parenting Coach & Writer Dear Reader, Last week my daughter showed me a video last week of a man speed climbing a cliff face with no safety gear. He looked like he was practically running up the side of this mountain. (Here’s the link, if you want to watch it.) I was fine watching it until he jumped. While hundreds of meters up in the air on a vertical cliff face he leaped, his whole body in flight for a few seconds, before his hands gripped the edge and he hauled himself up. It...

11 months ago • 3 min read

Dear Reader, Here in northern Thailand, just after the rains begin, a type of winged termite emerges from whatever holes in the ground they’ve been in all year, and swarm. They flock to whatever light they can see, flying into everything and invading houses by creeping through any gaps in doors or screens. In the morning we sweep their dead bodies into piles on the porches and balconies where we forgot to turn off the light and attracted swarms of them. For a long time I thought nothing of...

11 months ago • 4 min read
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