Phone: 01825 769000 | Email: info@springharvest.org
Phone: 01825 769000 | Email: info@springharvest.org
Speaker and Author, Malcolm Duncan introduces us to the Flipped theme and the book he wrote on this theme. The video and PDF of questions is a great way to explore Flipped with your small group, bible study group or congregation. Watch the second part of this video series below. The discussion questions PDF for session 4 can be downloaded here.
Another Mother is a podcast on faith and motherhood from My Spring Harvest and Emma Borquaye. Subscribe to hear conversations full of practical wisdom to help you on your journey of raising little ones, the way that God intended - with all the joy!
For each episode of Another Mother, Emma has pulled together some helpful resources that run alongside her conversations. They will help us explore the themes from the podcast more, whilst seeing what has inspired Emma and her guests.
In episode 7 of the Another Mother podcast Emma speaks to Nicky and Sila Lee, the founders of The Marriage Course, The Pre-Marriage Course and The Parenting Children Course. They have been married for 46 years and have four children and ten grandchildren.
Nicky and Sila share honestly about their marriage and what it was like when they first became parents, and give some practical advice and wisdom around healthy habits, what to do if you’re feeling distant from your spouse, and how to navigate disagreement. If you haven’t heard the episode yet you can listen here or watch here.
One of their key tools for marriage is healthy communication, and they suggest having regular conversations where you can ask open-ended questions, allowing one another to practise the art of listening well, whilst the other speaks honestly.
Here is a helpful format you might wish to follow with your partner called a ‘temperature reading’ it can be done daily, weekly, monthly - whatever works for you.
Set aside 30 minutes for this conversation, it may be good to set a timer to give the conversation clear boundaries.
Sit facing one another. Start by taking 1-2 minutes to silently contemplate how you are feeling in this moment about yourself, and who you are with. You will then go through the 5 sections, taking as long or short as you want on each part.
Take turns to say what you appreciate about each other. Be specific and precise.
E.G: Instead of ‘I love being with you’, try ‘I love the way you call me at lunch time to see how I am, it makes me feel cared for.’
Do not argue with, or bat-back an appreciation, you can just say thank you. Do not put a ‘but’ on the end of an appreciation or try to sneak in any complaints.
Take as many turns as you like.
This section is about sharing the events of your lives as well as being open about your moods, feelings and thoughts and what is affecting them. It is important to keep one another up to date about what is happening to you.
It can be objective information: ‘I have a doctors appointment tomorrow’, or subjective information: ‘My back has been hurting me this week and it has made me feel like I’m getting old, this worries me.’
The point is to say what is in the foreground and keep it real even if you haven’t worked out what you are feeling and thinking yet.
This is an opportunity to examine our assumptions and ask any type of question. E.G ‘what time are you leaving tomorrow’, or ‘The door slammed yesterday, did the wind catch it or were you angry?’
Asking questions does not mean you will get answers. It is important to be patient.
Complaints or worries should only be aired with suggestions for how it might be addressed. Without attacking, blaming, name-calling, interpreting, or criticizing. Describe the behaviour that causes you concern, and then explain how it makes you feel, not think - and then say what you would like done differently.
When you receive a complaint, try simply to listen and not defend yourself. You do not have to alter your behaviour, although you may choose to.
When you receive a complaint, it can be helpful to remember that it is rarely information about you, instead it is information about the person making the complaint, and how things make them feel.
Sharing our hopes can make us feel vulnerable, so support your partner with encouragement. Sharing our vulnerabilities increases the connection between us.
Speaker and Author, Malcolm Duncan introduces us to the Flipped theme and the book he wrote on this theme. The video and PDF of questions is a great way to explore Flipped with your small group, bible study group or congregation. Watch the second part of this video series below. The discussion questions PDF for session 3 can be downloaded here.
Another Mother is a podcast on faith and motherhood from My Spring Harvest and Emma Borquaye. Subscribe to hear conversations full of practical wisdom to help you on your journey of raising little ones, the way that God intended - with all the joy!
For each episode of Another Mother, Emma has pulled together some helpful resources that run alongside her conversations. They will help us explore the themes from the podcast more, whilst seeing what has inspired Emma and her guests.
I have been really enjoying all the conversations I get to have through Another Mother and I hope you have loved listening to them just as much. In the latest episode, I got to speak to author, broadcaster and music manager Loretta Andrews. She is one of the most honest and confident people I know, so I was really keen to hear more about her experience as a single mother and to get her insights on what it means to raise ‘anti-racist’ children, as she’s written a whole how-to guide on it for parents in her book ‘Talking To Children About Race’.
If you listened to the episode, you’re probably reading this now to get some of the children’s book recommendations I promised I’d share with you - these are books that have a non-white protagonist and are not specifically about race. It’s important for children to have access to books that normalise people of all races and cultures enjoying life and learning, not only reading about people who are different from them when it’s attached to an issue such as racism or inclusion.
The Snowy Day
The New Small Person
Where Grandad Lives (Couldn’t help but include my own!)
So Much!
My Beautiful Voice
The Magical Yet
Look Up!
With permission from Loretta, here is one of the family activities from her book Talking To Children About Race:
This activity can be found in Chapter 5: ‘Should our children be colour-blind?’
Why not play this game with your children to aid them in understanding the true meaning of equality. It will also help them to grasp how it may be necessary to provide different things for different people to create true equality of opportunity.
No matter how many participants there are, at least one must have this last piece of paper.
You can use this task to explain that equality may not mean simply giving people the same things equally.
I hope you find these resources helpful for you and your family. Thank you for listening to the podcast, and if you’re enjoying it please do help us spread the word by sharing it with others!
Another Mother is a podcast on faith and motherhood from My Spring Harvest and Emma Borquaye. Subscribe to hear conversations full of practical wisdom to help you on your journey of raising little ones, the way that God intended - with all the joy!
For each episode of Another Mother, Emma has pulled together some helpful resources that run alongside her conversations. They will help us explore the themes from the podcast more, whilst seeing what has inspired Emma and her guests.
In episode three of Another Mother, I had the privilege of sitting down with Anna Smith to get her honest insights on how she navigated raising six children while her husband, singer-songwriter Martin Smith, was often away on tour. She shares many of the lessons she has learnt along the way, including embracing her children's unique personalities, the joy of having an open home, and creating space for honest feedback from her children about what she might have got wrong.
One of the things Anna spoke about was her love of worship music to set the atmosphere in her home, so I thought it would be fun to put together a playlist we can all enjoy with some beautiful worship music to fill your surroundings with as you are doing the day-to-day with your children.
You can find the playlist here.
I really hope you’ve been enjoying the Another Mother podcast so far and you are feeling uplifted and equipped to continue being the parent that God created you to be! Thank you for being on this journey with me, I love that we get to do this together!
If you haven’t had a chance to listen to my chat with Anna yet, you can listen here, or watch on YouTube here:
Speaker and Author, Malcolm Duncan introduces us to the Flipped theme and the book he wrote on this theme. The video and PDF of questions is a great way to explore Flipped with your small group, bible study group or congregation. Watch the second part of this video series below. The discussion questions PDF for session 2 can be downloaded here.
Another Mother is a podcast on faith and motherhood from My Spring Harvest and Emma Borquaye. Subscribe to hear conversations full of practical wisdom to help you on your journey of raising little ones, the way that God intended - with all the joy!
For each episode of Another Mother, Emma has pulled together some helpful resources that run alongside her conversations. They will help us explore the themes from the podcast more, whilst seeing what has inspired Emma and her guests.
I recently read a book called ‘Family Revision’ with the sub-heading; ‘How ancient wisdom can heal the modern family’ and my eyes were opened to a completely different approach to parenting that I had never really considered.
I think we are in an exciting time where parenting approaches and family dynamics are evolving, so for episode two of Another Mother I was excited to chat to Gabes and Anna Deku about the challenges of balancing work and parenthood, and making deliberate choices around intergenerational living and instilling the values that are important to them.
They shared some of the resources that have helped shape their journey, including;
In The Meaning of Marriage, co-authored with his wife, Kathy, Tim Keller turns his attention to that most complex of matters: our need for love, and its expression in marriage. Beginning with the biblical narrative, and its pictures of marriage that span the original ideal to the broken to the redemptive, he looks at themes of friendship and commitment; the completion of men and women in each other; singleness, sex and divorce; and ministry and discipleship within the context of marriage.
Jeff and Jeremy take five minutes every day (M-F) to chat about quick tips and encouragements that will equip you as you build your multi generational family team on mission!
Chatting to Gabes and Anna reminded me that parenting is a continuous learning experience, and that by drawing from different perspectives and resources, we can navigate the challenges with greater resilience and joy. If you haven’t listened yet, I hope you enjoy the conversation, and if you have listened and loved it, please do share the episode!
Another Mother is a podcast on faith and motherhood from My Spring Harvest and Emma Borquaye. Subscribe to hear conversations full of practical wisdom to help you on your journey of raising little ones, the way that God intended - with all the joy!
For each episode of Another Mother, Emma has pulled together some helpful resources that run alongside her conversations. They will help us explore the themes from the podcast more, whilst seeing what has inspired Emma and her guests.
In the first episode of Another Mother I sat down with my husband Isaac (also known as Guvna B) and chatted all things family life. We covered a lot of ground, including the birthing pool experience, navigating our differences, and we want to talk to our children about the ones we have loved and lost.
Isaac’s dad, Charles, passed away around 18 months before Ezra was born. In the early stages I had no idea how to support someone facing such a sudden loss so I read quite a lot of books to try and gain some helpful insight. One of the books was ‘Good Grief’ by Granger E Westburg- I highly recommend it! I read that often when someone is grieving, there is a fear that this person they loved so much will be forgotten, which is why sharing happy memories of a person that has positively impacted our lives can be such a helpful part of the grieving process, yet it’s something we shy away from either as the person grieving because you don’t want to impact the general mood, or as the friend supporting because you worry you might make something worse. I took this advice on board so from pretty early on we were intentional about talking openly about all the lovely things we remember about Charles, whether that was watching F1 and saying ‘ah my Dad would love this!’ or ‘remember that day we were playing articulate with all the family and it was your dad’s turn to do the describing and he was doing it so slowly and we couldn’t stop laughing!’
However when I fell pregnant with Ezra, I knew that this new season would bring up different challenges for Isaac as we welcomed a brand new life into this world who would have never had the opportunity to meet Charles and make memories of his own. So, I decided I would write a book that we could read to Ezra, that had all our favourite happy stories in it so that Ezra would grow up with a sense of knowing the man his Grandad was and how his legacy and impact could continue to live on through us all.
Life quickly got in the way and the book didn’t get written, but I eventually told Isaac about the idea and as the ‘make it happen’ kind of guy he is, within minutes he had planned how we could turn this in to a children’s book that doesn’t just help our family to keep the memory of his dad alive, but to help families everywhere have those beautiful, healing, conversations with their children as they share memories of those they have loved and lost.
This is when ‘Where Grandad Lives’ was born! We based the characters on Ezra and his friend Zadie, and the story goes on a little journey that starts with Ezra sharing that his Grandad lives somewhere really special. His friend Zadie is sure she knows where - but when all her ideas of special places are exhausted - she has to ask Ezra to show her... And Ezra shares what it's like when someone you love lives in the good, the bad and the hard to explain.
Our prayer is that this book will be as much of a helpful tool for families navigating grief and loss as it has been for us.
Where Grandad Lives is due to be released on June 8th 2023 and is available on the Spring Harvest store to pre-order now!
Email: info@springharvest.org
Phone: 01825 769000
