Podcast Episode 242: Mission Critical – Cultivating Community

We’re continuing our exploration of what it’ll take to make parenting more sustainable, this week with a focus on how critical it is to cultivate community and share our stories. I’m delighted to welcome Kerrie Lee Brown back to the show. Kerrie first came on the podcast way back on episode 108, when she shared the story of how it took having a heart attack to get her to slow down. That was also the subject of her book, My Heart, My Self: A heartfelt guide for women who do too much.

Kerrie has launched a storytelling platform called Red Lily to bring women together to lift each other up. Kerrie and I are going to talk about some of the isolation parents go through at different stages of parenting and why it’s so vital we come together to share the good, bad and seriously ugly.

Here are some resources related to this episode.

My Heart, My Self: A Heartfelt Guide For Women Who Do Too Much

Kerrie’s website

Red Lily Life website

Previous episode featuring Kerrie: It took a heart attack for this mom to slow down

Related Episode: Finding Your Tribe to Share the Parenting Journey

Related Episode: Finding Family Right Next Door

Related Episode: The Beautiful Thing About Gathering Community

What Kerrie Lee hopes people will get out coming to her new website

“I really want people to know that they’re not alone. I know that this is something that we’ve heard in magazines and all that but I really fell like the feel of my site and the feel of redlilylife.com is that it is community-based. And if you read all of the stories, it’s all very different, and even the way they’re written – you could tell that they’re raw. And I think that’s the big thing – I have an editorial guidelines, a submission guidelines, yes – but I really want to keep the integrity of the person’s voice and how they write. I’m not making it all sound like me. I think a lot of traditional outlets would do that. That’s the difference, and I really feel that is the likemindedness that the community is building. It’s building slowly but surely, I’ve had such a great response. I just think that you’ll see different voices.”