Hands Free Mama: A Guide to Putting Down the Phone, Burning the To-Do List, and Letting Go of Perfection to Grasp What Really Matters! Author: Rachel Macy Stafford | Language: English | ISBN:
B00DL10HF8 | Format: EPUB
Hands Free Mama: A Guide to Putting Down the Phone, Burning the To-Do List, and Letting Go of Perfection to Grasp What Really Matters! Description
'Rachel Macy Stafford's post 'The Day I Stopped Saying Hurry Up' was a true phenomenon on The Huffington Post, igniting countless conversations online and off about freeing ourselves from the vicious cycle of keeping up with our overstuffed agendas. Hands Free Mama has the power to keep that conversation going and remind us that we must not let our lives pass us by.' --Arianna Huffington, Chair, President, and Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, nationally syndicated columnist, and author of thirteen bookshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/ DISCOVER THE POWER, JOY, AND LOVE of Living 'Hands Free' If technology is the new addiction, then multi-tasking is the new marching order. We check our email while cooking dinner, send a text while bathing the kids, and spend more time looking into electronic screens than into the eyes of our loved ones. With our never-ending to-do lists and jam-packed schedules, it's no wonder we're distracted. But this isn't the way it has to be. In July 2010, special education teacher and mother Rachel Macy Stafford decided enough was enough. Tired of losing track of what matters most in life, Rachel began practicing simple strategies that enabled her to momentarily let go of largely meaningless distractions and engage in meaningful soul-to-soul connections. She started a blog to chronicle her endeavors and soon saw how both external and internal distractions had been sabotaging her happiness and preventing her from bonding with the people she loves most. Hands Free Mama is the digital society's answer to finding balance in a media-saturated, perfection-obsessed world. It doesn't mean giving up all technology forever. It doesn't mean forgoing our jobs and responsibilities. What it does mean is seizing the little moments that life offers us to engage in real and meaningful interaction. It means looking our loved ones in the eye and giving them the gift of our undivided attention, leaving the laundry till later to dance with our kids in the rain, and living a present, authentic, and intentional life despite a world full of distractions. So join Rachel and go hands-free. Discover what happens when you choose to open your heart---and your hands---to the possibilities of each God-given moment.
- File Size: 1322 KB
- Print Length: 228 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0310338131
- Simultaneous Device Usage: Up to 5 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
- Publisher: Zondervan (January 7, 2014)
- Sold by: HarperCollins Publishing
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00DL10HF8
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,049 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #8
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Parenting & Relationships > Family Relationships > Motherhood - #27
in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Family Relationships > Motherhood - #62
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Women's Studies
- #8
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Parenting & Relationships > Family Relationships > Motherhood - #27
in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Family Relationships > Motherhood - #62
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Women's Studies
I really really really wanted to like this book, but I just don't. It's not so much a guide as it is a compilation of personal anecdotes about moments the author enjoyed with her children "hands free." And as a mother, I find the credibility of these moments to be questionable. Or maybe it's just the other moments that are missing - the real ones - the ones that all parents experience that aren't sparkly and quiet and loving and fun. The book is seriously lacking in reality. If I took the book at face value, and adopted all her suggestions, then I would never have time for sleep or for myself. I would be spending all my time (all 3ish hours I get with my kids after work) gazing into their eyes, and snuggling with them on the couch, and kissing their sweet smelling heads (which would require me to give them a bath), and letting them help me make the salad for dinner, and talking about each and every paper in all 3 of their school folders all the while postponing "unnecessary" tasks. Then I would read them extra books at bed time, and give them an extra snuggle, and then come down stairs to gaze lovingly into my husbands eyes while we have a meaningful conversation or sit together to do something that doesn't involve watching television and THEN I suppose I would tackle all those "unnecessary" tasks like dinner dishes, lunch packing, and laundry. But, according to Stafford, I am also supposed to get 7-8 hours of sleep a night. And none of this even accounts for my kids' mood at the time. Her children are seemingly perfect, because there is no mention of how to gaze into the eyes of a first grader who is having a melt down because she is tired.
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