Episode 224: A Social Worker also becomes an Aware Parenting instructor with Meg Rankin

I'm so delighted to welcome Meg Rankin on to the podcast. Meg has been a Social Worker for 20 years, and still works in a tertiary hospital setting. She also has her own business offering Aware Parenting support, general counselling, birth debriefing, and supervision for care and health professionals. She also offers women's circles and mother blessings. Meg shares about how she'd known about Aware Parenting a long time before becoming a parent herself, because of being immersed in the parenting world in her work. Meg read The Aware Baby by Aletha Solter, PhD, and it changed the trajectory of her life. She talks about how Aware Parenting resonated deeply with her. Meg talks about the big journey from understanding and starting to listen to a baby's uncomfortable feelings whilst they cry in arms, to really diving deep into presence and attunement whilst listening to those feelings. We discuss the three different types of embodied experience that are so important for parents to go through in order to feel more comfortable with listening to their child's healing crying. Meg shares about her own journey to dive deeply into having an Aware Parenting community. We talk about the difference between dissociation and deep relaxation, and Meg shares how the penny dropped for her when she saw how deeply relaxed her daughter was after sharing her big feelings in Meg's loving arms. Meg shares about how the seed to become an instructor was planted, and also shares her experience of how supportive all the Aware Parenting instructors are of each other. Meg also talks about her understanding gathered through all the work she's done with women with drug and alcohol use, and the process of feeling pain that the control patterns have suppressed. You can find out more about Meg and her offerings at: https://www.instagram.com/meg.rankin.counselling/ and https://www.megrankin.com.au/