A Power of Moms Retreat for Deliberate Mothers!

This weekend was a dream come true!  As those who are long-time members of valuesparenting will know, we have always advocated the important role of mothers. Thirty five years ago when I was a very young mother with four little children, I realized that Motherhood was much harder and much more important than I had realized!  It was my goal to spread that word and to help mothers to hone their most important career as mothers. Whether or not a mom has another career, everyone would probably agree that Motherhood is by far the most important, long-lasting one. It requires among other things, thousands of hours of not only blood, sweat and tears (literally) but also searing soul-searching, creative counseling, organizational wizardry and magnificent multi-tasking.

 
Over the years, first through our Homebase organization and then through our website here at valuesparenting, we have occasionally sponsored one-day Home-Career Seminars at hotels in the area. We knew that Mothers need some “job training” since no instruction manual comes with those little bundles of joy who are brought home from the hospital.  “Sharpening ones saw” in the business of Motherhood is not only important but crucial. We need to be deliberate about our mothering with goals and plans, ideas and plans of how to implement them.

Little did we know when we started our own journey of parenthood and sharing ideas with other parents that our own children would take our dream and make it even better!  All three of our married daughters have “taken up the banner of motherhood” in their own way.  Shawni, our second daughter has a very popular refreshing blog for mothers at www.71toes.blogspot.com. Our third daughter does her part to spread the joys of motherhood through her thought-provoking blog at www.BostonShumways.blogspot.com.  And our oldest daughter Saren along with her partner April Perry have started a remarkable website for Mothers at PowerofMoms.com. They have gathered a remarkable following of outstanding mothers who want to be not only good but deliberate mothers who are working to produce children who will be ready to contribute to the world with enthusiastic optimism and confident humility!

This weekend we had a Power of Moms retreat at our home (which we built with the idea of having gatherings just like this).  Not to be left out, our youngest daughter Charity who is not yet married, did a great job as the event manager.  She is a mother in-the-making as she also shows her enthusiasm for life at www.drippingiwthpassion.blogspot.com. Together we had so much fun with 100 deliberate mothers! The pictures below shows all of us sharpening our motherhood “saws”. In fact as April said, “Really working at our skills as mothers helps us not just survive but thrive” in this most important career.

April and Saren (pictured below) did an excellent job of instructing and presenting.  April specialized in a program called “Mind Organization for Moms” on Friday and Saren and her sisters concentrated on “Family Systems” on Saturday. Because they couldn’t accommodate everyone who wanted to come to this event we have decided to hold a similar event on May 21st, again at our home. If you are interested you can register at powerofmoms.com. We’d love to see you there!

 

Here is the powerful Power of Moms board:

Somehow we got 100 women into our “great room”.

 

Here are our darling “presenter daughters” left to right: Saydi Shumway (Boston MA), Saren Loosli (Ogden UT) and Shawni Pothier (Gilbert AZ).

Richard and I did a little presenting too, with the help of our newest (21st)
grandchild Peter James Shumway

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Could there be a more joyous experience than having all of your daughters to share such an amazing event?  We are truly blessed to see a dream come true!