Episode 121: Mindful Content Creators and the Quest to Curate A Perfect Childhood with guest Stephanie Cunningham

Hello, hi! Today’s episode features a returning special guest to Medium Lady, my friend Stephanie Cunningham. Stef can be found on instagram @steffski where she role models real-life living, sharing both the highs and the lows of homeschooling, intergenerational living and breaking the “highlight reel” so that her friends and followers feel like they can share in the chaos of this season of life.  

Episode Summary

• Stephanie’s guiding principles about what she shares online are about authenticity and serving her own interest first, which is such a refreshing point of view when we see overly curated or highly produced content online
•  We discuss how much our attention might be drawn to “online perfection” while we also desire seeing, meeting and building connection with people who are “just like us”
• A really amazing part of our friendship is that we’re both creating content online: Stephanie and I reflect on where we’ve become more mindful about creating content even when it’s hard to resist the pull of “virality” we acknowledge that it’s not good for us and it’s not good for our communities
• Through thoughtful exploration time and time again with my audience I have been teasing apart the nuance of guilt experienced by women. What comes up time and time again are the concerns and worries that women have about their motherhood: am I doing enough of the right things for my children? Am I giving them the childhood they deserve? If we all want to give our kids a magical childhood where does that desire come from? How is it affected by curated motherhood content online?
• Our kids also have their focus drawn to content online and just like us, they have desires to bring that online content into their real lives - this changes the stakes for how we manage their expectations, and ours.
• Part of our desire for our children to have a magical childhood comes from the emerging conversation about how much our parents’ choices affected us, and why we might feel compelled to make sure our kids never have similar experiences. “Cycle Breaking” happens when you’re willing to get off the pendulum and acknowledge that your parents did the best that they could and sometimes they made mistakes and those mistakes affected us.
• The best way I’ve heard this said was listening to advocate and speaker Prasanna Ranganathan when he said his parents were “always careful to protect me while never limiting my opportunities.
• Curating childhood as millennial mothers also includes awareness of screen time and how we help our kids interact with screens 
• Our job as parents is not to make sure our kids are happy 100% of the time…. But what about the holidays? The pressure increases to curate a perfect childhood around the holidays and this can be exacerbated by what you see online.
• One KEY question to ask yourself around making memories this holiday season is “What do I want our family/my kids’ takeaway to be from this season?” and maybe, (probably) that will mean going against the mainstream in some way or another
• Stef and I also chat about the days that aren’t “holiday” and the specialness of Ordinary Time - most of our days are these sacred ordinary days and there are plenty of opportunities to bring mindful celebration and gratitude to those “regular old” days.
• You don’t have to do this on you own! Stephanie and her partner Craig make time to plan and work out their intentions together before they get too deep into the season

Other Episodes you might like:

Episode 119: 9 Small Things I’m No Longer Feeling Guilty About

Episode 117: Medium Effort Advice - “Help! I’m Doing Too Much and None of it Well!”

Episode 87: Cultivating your Aspirations with guest Stephanie Cunningham

Episode 23: In the Interest of Realness with Stephanie Cunningham

Medium Lady Reads Episode 30- Would You Try a DNF Challenge?

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