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How to Find the Spark in Your Adult Relationship as a Parent with Melanie Bonk · The Spiritual Parent: Mindful Tools for Raising Spiritual and Conscious Kids

• 0:01
  Melanie: passion isn't organic, like that's.
• 0:04
  Melanie: I think that's a big misconception.
• 0:06
  Melanie: That media for sure portrays movies, television, everything that like, oh well, once you find love, it's going to be passion forever.
• 0:14
  Melanie: Uh, take it, takes work in it, takes energy in, it, takes creativity, uh, to create that novelty which is such a big turn on and, and you know, big part of life, I think.
• 0:28
  Melanie: And yeah, so just keeping it a priority, understanding that relationship.
• 0:34
  Melanie: For me, relationship always came first before the kids.
• 0:36
  Melanie: So that's, I think, where I differ from a lot of my friends when we were having kids.
• 0:44
  Carrie: Welcome to Heart to Heart Parents.
• 0:45
  Carrie: Let's connect with our kids and learn together.
• 0:48
  Carrie: I'm Carrie.
• 0:49
  Carrie: I was a former teacher and speech therapist.
• 0:51
  Carrie: I'm also a parent of two spirited, gifted, highly sensitive kids.
• 0:56
  Carrie: I was quickly brought to my knees as a parent when I thought that I would see a rosy lens version of parenting, just as they present on Instagram, but I quickly learned that's not real life.
• 1:07
  Carrie: I will provide real life experiences and transform them into moments for connections and change for you to use in your house.
• 1:15
  Carrie: Hi there and welcome back to Heart to Heart Parents.
• 1:19
  Carrie: I'm Keri.
• 1:20
  Carrie: I'm your friendly guide and intuitive here, and I'm here with a friend, melanie Bonk, and today I just wanted to give a heads up that her name does not lie.
• 1:31
  Carrie: We are going to be talking about some love, relationship, intimacy and sexuality in relationships, because we are parents and this is part of our lives too.
• 1:42
  Carrie: So I just wanted to make sure, if you have any kids in the room, that this is just your heads up today, and I'm going to get started by telling you a little bit about Melanie.
• 1:51
  Carrie: So I met her recently and right when we connected, I was like I have to interview this lady.
• 1:56
  Carrie: She is so fun and she's a VITA certified somatic love and relationship and sexuality coach and please, melanie, stop me if I say something incorrectly, I don't mind.
• 2:09
  Carrie: She infuses her lived experience in a 25-year passionate partnership with trauma-informed training and a unique coaching container for couples to level up their communication, emotional intelligence, intimacy and sexual richness.
• 2:28
  Carrie: And Melanie, oh my gosh, 25 year passionate partnership that's amazing.
• 2:33
  Carrie: I love that.
• 2:34
  Carrie: Thank you, holy cow.
• 2:36
  Carrie: Oh, my goodness.
• 2:37
  Carrie: And she is here to help us bonk better.
• 2:39
  Carrie: I like that line.
• 2:40
  Carrie: Yeah, so fun.
• 2:43
  Carrie: So you have a somatic uh therapy experience background and you're using that to help people in their relationships better.
• 2:52
  Carrie: What does, what does that piece of the puzzle look like?
• 2:56
  Melanie: Yeah, it's somatic coaching Um a little bit different than therapy, um so somatic means in the body.
• 3:02
  Melanie: Um, so, so talk therapy is usually kind of in the head.
• 3:05
  Melanie: You're going to talk through a whole bunch of stuff.
• 3:08
  Melanie: My coaching is more in the body.
• 3:10
  Melanie: So our nervous systems, our entire bodies, they carry all the imprints, they remember certain things, and so my coaching is diving into the body with love, with compassion, with honoring.
• 3:25
  Melanie: It's just a.
• 3:26
  Melanie: It's just a kind of like a different feel.
• 3:28
  Melanie: And when we go into the body with that love and compassion, we listen to where restriction, where fear, where nervousness lives and you can really like, oh, I'm feeling.
• 3:42
  Melanie: I just had a client yesterday and she's like I feel it in my right jaw and it's going all the way up to my ear.
• 3:48
  Melanie: And she and you know that for her that piece was other people's opinions, other people's influence, other people's words that got into her body and that she started to believe.
• 3:59
  Melanie: And so, like we met that jaw tightness with so much love and compassion and then we were still working towards her goal.
• 4:07
  Melanie: So then we're you know, we we let that part have a voice and then, even with just letting it have a voice and with acknowledgement, that part in her jaw really loosened up.
• 4:17
  Melanie: She's like, wow, now it's so loose, it feels, it feels a little bit different.
• 4:20
  Melanie: Okay, so now let's give it the microphone, let's let this body part have a voice, let it have, let it speak what it's doing, what it's carrying, and then, more importantly, what it needs to let go, what it needs to move on, and then what it needs to become like a superpower, because our wounds can really become our greatest superpowers If we are conscious of them, if we move into loving, compassion, relationship with them.
• 4:46
  Melanie: Wow, yeah.
• 4:48
  Melanie: So then I just that one particular client.
• 4:50
  Melanie: I dipped her back in then.
• 4:51
  Melanie: Okay, so now here's the goal that we're working on.
• 4:53
  Melanie: Here it is, and her particular goal was loving herself, loving herself with authenticity and finding pleasure in loving herself.
• 5:00
  Melanie: Especially for women, I find that's so hard to do.
• 5:03
  Melanie: Yeah, and then it was tightness in her shoulder.
• 5:06
  Melanie: So you know, we just like follow the body, and that tightness in her shoulder was something completely different.
• 5:12
  Melanie: But yet it was blocking her from getting what she wanted to get.
• 5:15
  Carrie: Wow, that's wonderful that's, and I, I, I feel you so much in that.
• 5:21
  Carrie: It's really interesting because I feel like voice has really come up a lot for me lately.
• 5:25
  Carrie: I've been doing a lot of chats with it on Instagram and such with voice and finding our voice, so it's interesting to hear like pains that develop if we don't vocalize and get our messages out.
• 5:39
  Carrie: I love that.
• 5:40
  Carrie: Yeah, yeah, and I love how you're working with people to help empower them and to help us feel empowered in our relationships.
• 5:51
  Carrie: Do you have any advice for us in that?
• 5:57
  Melanie: Um you know I'm so, oh, go ahead.
• 6:00
  Melanie: I'm so passionate about working with couples, with parents, especially because it's a trickle down effect.
• 6:06
  Melanie: If I am in passionate love with my husband and we have this high vibe energy and we're just like in love with each other, in love with the day, in love with the being together, it trickles down to the kids.
• 6:20
  Melanie: And when we're in fighting, when we're not in the same path, when we have conflict, it absolutely trickles down to the kids.
• 6:30
  Melanie: So my, I think my biggest like guiding light in this work is I grew up in a household that was defined by divorce, defined by separation, defined by unintegrated wounds.
• 6:42
  Melanie: So when I did come together with my husband 25 years ago, we started creating consciousness around each other, around each other's wounds, and we always put each other first.
• 6:54
  Melanie: And I just had a different kind of mindset, I think, when it came to our relationship.
• 7:00
  Melanie: So, keeping it a priority.
• 7:03
  Melanie: You know, passion is an organic like that's.
• 7:06
  Melanie: I think that's a big misconception.
• 7:08
  Melanie: That media for sure portrays movies, television, everything that like oh well, once you find love, it's going to be passion forever.
• 7:17
  Melanie: Uh, take it, takes work in it, takes energy in, it, takes creativity, uh, to create that, that novelty which is such a big turn on and, you know, a big part of life, I think, in a yeah, so just keeping it a priority, understanding that relationship.
• 7:36
  Melanie: For me, relationship always came first, before the kids.
• 7:39
  Melanie: So that's, I think, where I differ from a lot of my friends.
• 7:43
  Melanie: When we were having kids it was like kids in the bedroom, kids.
• 7:47
  Melanie: You know, there's all kinds of different ways to do it, but my partnership came before the kids.
• 7:54
  Carrie: Yeah, I think I've.
• 7:55
  Carrie: I've heard a lot of people say, like my kids are my soulmates and things like that.
• 7:59
  Carrie: I I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 8:01
  Carrie: What about your husband or your partner?
• 8:04
  Carrie: What we have to think about this because one day they're going to move out and move on.
• 8:09
  Carrie: And this is the core, this is the core of the family and we have to keep keep focusing on that.
• 8:16
  Carrie: And you're right, I totally agree.
• 8:18
  Carrie: Like you, bring in that novelty.
• 8:20
  Carrie: I recently asked my husband like I need you to step up some of the dates.
• 8:24
  Carrie: I need you to step up some of the you know, the gift giving.
• 8:28
  Carrie: It doesn't have to be like a gift gift.
• 8:30
  Carrie: It could just be like unload the dishwasher, that's a gift.
• 8:32
  Carrie: Like I need you to step up some of the romance for me and here's a Pinterest board of how, because, like I was specific, like this is what I'm going to need and it was really helpful.
• 8:43
  Carrie: It's, it's been.
• 8:44
  Carrie: I feel so loved and it just, it just cycles in our family.
• 8:48
  Carrie: So I love that what you were saying, and I love.
• 8:51
  Melanie: I want to reflect back to you Like I'm celebrating that you gave him specific things that he could do, because we could tend to be like I, I need more romance, and then we leave it there.
• 9:01
  Melanie: Yeah, like I hear crickets quick, quick, quick, quick, quick quick, because if you don't tell your partner exactly what it is that you need, they don't know.
• 9:11
  Melanie: And here's the thing is that we don't know.
• 9:13
  Melanie: Our bodies change every single day, so our needs today could look totally different than they did a month ago, a week ago, a year ago, yeah, yeah, so bringing that in it's good job, girl.
• 9:25
  Carrie: Oh, thank you.
• 9:25
  Carrie: I totally agree on our needs changing.
• 9:28
  Carrie: I never can choose a favorite color because I'm always like, what is my mood?
• 9:32
  Carrie: Maybe it's blue, Sometimes it's plum, I don't even know.
• 9:35
  Carrie: So yeah, I agree with you.
• 9:37
  Carrie: Like they're trying to read what's going on, I I do.
• 9:40
  Carrie: There's what is your feeling on this piece of femininity?
• 9:45
  Carrie: And then also bringing in the romance, Cause I feel like my husband, he's, he's a scientific minded person, and so he gets a little confused.
• 9:53
  Carrie: Sometimes he's like do I open the door for you?
• 9:55
  Carrie: But I know you're an empowered female, so like what, where's the boundary?
• 10:00
  Carrie: And he's asking me I'm like you know that's a really good question.
• 10:03
  Carrie: I'm curious what your thoughts are.
• 10:05
  Melanie: I love that question and I'm the same way.
• 10:08
  Melanie: My husband is a scientist and so he's he's definitely kind of in the same boat but yet at the same time I think he he relishes in the role of being my caretaker, of being my like alpha male, and that definitely it took him a while to step into into that role and now that he's in that role as a King, like he's a King of his life as well, as he's my king and I am the queen, so it just I think there's some acceptance in that femininity, right Like flowing with that feminine.
• 10:45
  Melanie: I know when I was, my babies were all in diapers.
• 10:48
  Melanie: I was not in my feminine, I was just in the masculine.
• 10:51
  Melanie: Like, oh, holy cow, we've got three babies in diapers.
• 10:55
  Melanie: What like this has to get done?
• 10:57
  Melanie: Then this, then this, then this, then this.
• 10:59
  Melanie: There was no really room for flow.
• 11:01
  Melanie: And as, as they've gotten older, I've tapped in with my own practices, to my femininity, to that flow, and now I can see that.
• 11:13
  Melanie: I can see like, oh, you're holding the door for me, I love that.
• 11:15
  Melanie: Whereas when I was in my masculine survival mode drive I would have been like, why are you doing that for me?
• 11:21
  Carrie: I can hold these babies and open the door.
• 11:23
  Carrie: I am mama.
• 11:25
  Carrie: Hear me, roar, I know.
• 11:27
  Carrie: Yeah, I remember that period and I think part of it too is that that, um, hormones that I had spiking through to came to like I've got this, I don't need your help, but yeah, that's beautiful.
• 11:38
  Carrie: I love that alpha male King piece of the puzzle because I think it's it's hard in American culture too, Cause we want I think we want to wear the several hats and we should be allowed to wear several hats.
• 11:50
  Carrie: It's okay to want to have the feminine energy and also still be strong and powerful.
• 11:55
  Melanie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:57
  Melanie: And I feel I actually feel so much stronger when I am in my feminine, like when I am rooted in that I can really trust my intuition.
• 12:04
  Melanie: I can I have such a different like calm strength as opposed to like masculine, where it's like more heady and more like da, da, da, da, da, da, da da.
• 12:14
  Carrie: Interesting.
• 12:15
  Carrie: I love that.
• 12:16
  Carrie: That's really interesting.
• 12:17
  Carrie: I agree with that.
• 12:18
  Carrie: Yeah, the intuition piece comes into play a lot and I've just been.
• 12:24
  Carrie: I think I was going through the masculine period too, when my kids were little and very, very needy, and now I have time to kind of like regroup and kind of heal a little bit myself and come back into the person that I want to be more where you're, more in like a survival mode.
• 12:38
  Carrie: So now I yeah, I love that.
• 12:40
  Carrie: That's beautiful.
• 12:40
  Carrie: So do you have any tips for us mamas?
• 12:45
  Carrie: Cause I feel like it can often, as we're my husband and I have very sensitive and very gifted and spirited kids, so we're often in like survival role, which is like grab this, grab that, brush their teeth, and it can be day to day, can kind of dwell on us, and sometimes at the end of the day we're pretty exhausted.
• 13:07
  Carrie: I know I'm emotionally drained sometimes at the end of the day if it's been a hot headed day with my kids then'm like, oh geez.
• 13:15
  Carrie: So do you have any tips for moms and dads out there?
• 13:19
  Melanie: Yeah, for sure I know.
• 13:21
  Melanie: For me my practice is to give myself some kind of care in the morning before I meet anybody else, so that's even before I meet husband, before I even wake up the kids, and it's quick and simple, it doesn't need to be like one of those huge things on your to-do list.
• 13:37
  Melanie: So I meet myself with self-touch.
• 13:41
  Melanie: I rub my skin, I say I kind of like hello body, I give my body gratitude, I give myself some like arm hugs.
• 13:50
  Melanie: Sometimes I'll hold my womb space.
• 13:53
  Melanie: I have that little moment of connection with me first, because once I do that I'm so much more connected to my truth, to my heart space, and I can show up better for everybody else throughout the day.
• 14:08
  Melanie: And then in the evening I go ahead and come back to me again.
• 14:13
  Melanie: So I am a shower at night.
• 14:15
  Melanie: I love to use the hot water to kind of cleanse off the day.
• 14:19
  Melanie: Um, usually I always have music on.
• 14:22
  Melanie: If my husband and I tend to take showers together, and sometime if it's at night, I always say I'm like I need five, five minutes alone, Like this was a great shower.
• 14:30
  Melanie: I'm like get out now, Um, and I.
• 14:33
  Melanie: I take that time Again.
• 14:34
  Melanie: I come back to my body I come.
• 14:37
  Melanie: I have to come back to my body because as parents, we're so much in the brain getting everything done, getting all the tasks done, getting the kids to and from that when I come back down to earth, so I do that by feeling my feet on the ground.
• 14:52
  Melanie: I really root into the sensation of the ground, I move.
• 14:55
  Melanie: I always have music on and it's some kind of like really woman empowerment, woman embodied type music so I can actually move my body with a little bit of dance in the shower.
• 15:06
  Melanie: And then when I come out I treat myself.
• 15:10
  Melanie: I don't just like I used to just kind of rub lotion on and kind of like slap it on my skin, Like you know, like it was in our job to do.
• 15:17
  Melanie: Um, so just I really became conscious of actually what I was putting on my body.
• 15:24
  Melanie: I got rid of the chemical lotion and I use oil now, Um, and I put the lotion on or put the oil on my body Like I was a goddess.
• 15:33
  Melanie: I'm worshiping my whole body and just really slow, conscious, coming back to me, coming back to what's true for me, coming back to who I am, because I'm the only one.
• 15:43
  Melanie: Like you said, those kids are going to go fast and they're going to fly, fly.
• 15:47
  Melanie: I'm still, I'm still left with me, and so keeping care of me along the way is really our biggest gift we can give ourselves me along the way is really our biggest gift we can give ourselves.
• 15:59
  Carrie: Yeah, that's wonderful.
• 16:00
  Carrie: I love that.
• 16:00
  Carrie: I'm writing that down so that I can try the night shower too, and I think that's empowering.
• 16:04
  Carrie: I think it'll wake me up and kind of like re-energize my senses too.
• 16:08
  Carrie: Yeah, I love that.
• 16:10
  Carrie: I do like a meditation cleansing with a shower, so I think I could totally add that in at the same time while I'm there.
• 16:17
  Carrie: So that's a great one, yeah, yeah.
• 16:21
  Carrie: And so you?
• 16:23
  Carrie: So you're using that to help the sacred sexuality, the feminine those are, those are reclaiming that femininity throughout your day before and ending.
• 16:33
  Carrie: I love that, okay, yeah.
• 16:35
  Melanie: And I really feel like you know that it's kind of like I tuck the kids in.
• 16:38
  Melanie: I still I mean, mine are like big hairy teenagers and I still go down and I give them a hug and kiss every single night.
• 16:44
  Melanie: I tuck them in, even if they're still working at their desk, and I say goodnight, and then that's the step.
• 16:50
  Melanie: I walk upstairs, I close my door, I start the shower and in that walk I can feel myself getting lighter and lighter.
• 16:58
  Melanie: In that walk Sometimes I'm like I am exhausted, I've got.
• 17:01
  Melanie: I've got nothing to give my partner tonight Cause I'm so bushed.
• 17:04
  Melanie: But by the time I get out of that shower, by the time I've cared for myself, I'm like a whole nother person.
• 17:09
  Melanie: I like walk into the bedroom.
• 17:10
  Melanie: I'm like, well, hello lover, I'm back again.
• 17:14
  Carrie: Yeah, you feel your soul connected again in your body.
• 17:18
  Melanie: Yeah, yeah, that's wonderful.
• 17:24
  Carrie: I'm excited to try that one out.
• 17:26
  Carrie: Yay, let me know how it works.
• 17:28
  Carrie: Definitely, I love that.
• 17:32
  Carrie: So.
• 17:32
  Carrie: So you told me once this is a random piece of info, but I was just curious I didn't know you had teenagers.
• 17:35
  Carrie: Wow, this is what teenage life looks like, do you guys?
• 17:38
  Carrie: You, you packed everything up and you guys left and moved on the road.
• 17:43
  Carrie: Is that correct?
• 17:44
  Carrie: Are you guys still living out on the road?
• 17:46
  Carrie: Are you moving around?
• 17:47
  Melanie: That is correct, yeah, we did.
• 17:48
  Melanie: Um, I got this witchy intuition, which is another, um, I would say, reclamation of being connected to your body and your womb space, in 2000,.
• 17:58
  Melanie: It was early 2019.
• 17:59
  Melanie: I'm just like um, hey babe.
• 18:01
  Melanie: I know we have our dream property, and by dream property I mean we were out in the country, on a river surrounded by mountains organic orchard like dream property I'm like.
• 18:12
  Melanie: But we want to travel and our kids are young now and they still think we're really cool, they want to hang out with us, and so we decided in 2019 to put the farm up on the market and in January of 2020, we bought our truck and our trailer and then, within the first five months of COVID, we were, we left.
• 18:35
  Melanie: When we got to be out in wild, my oldest at that point was an eighth grader, and then I have twins and they were in fifth grade and my youngest was in second grade.
• 18:47
  Melanie: Wow, so we, we just like, we randomly chose the right time in the world, in the planet, to escape and be wild and free, and so we kind of unschooled and outschooled and yeah.
• 19:02
  Melanie: And we spent two years on the road.
• 19:05
  Carrie: Two years?
• 19:05
  Carrie: Okay, I was curious that's.
• 19:07
  Carrie: That's perfect timing to just be out there and living free as everybody else is locked down in their house, like I love that you had that intuition to that was the right timing for you guys.
• 19:18
  Melanie: Yeah.
• 19:19
  Carrie: That's really cool, wow, thank you.
• 19:21
  Carrie: Yeah, I love, um, when we're connecting and we can really hear the, the pieces of what's to come and what feels, what feels energetically for us, like that's, that's that part of that feminine energy.
• 19:34
  Carrie: That's so wonderful.
• 19:35
  Carrie: Yes, yeah.
• 19:38
  Carrie: So what are some?
• 19:40
  Carrie: How do you, what do you guys do in your house as far as when you're having, you have kids, and how do you emotionally connect and what are?
• 19:49
  Carrie: Do you have any of the tips for that piece?
• 19:51
  Melanie: Yeah, yes, for sure, I would say we're in a conscious partnership, but we're also consciously parenting and it's a really big part of our family unit.
• 20:01
  Melanie: We do in the morning when my husband is home.
• 20:06
  Melanie: He works shift work, so it just depends on if he's home or not but every single person is in the kitchen and we're all eating in the same room.
• 20:13
  Melanie: Being in the same room, all eating in the same room, being in the same room, we were all the common goal of getting, you know, getting everybody healthy food and getting out the door.
• 20:19
  Melanie: No-transcript, I would say, out of the 30 days of the month, we probably don't eat dinner together, maybe three or four times.
• 20:34
  Melanie: Like, it's pretty rare that we aren't together at dinnertime.
• 20:36
  Melanie: Um, so that's really important.
• 20:39
  Melanie: That's that's like 45 minutes to an hour of time where we are together without any distractions.
• 20:46
  Melanie: Um, during that time I I realized in my work how celebration and gratitude quickly transform any kind of pain, any kind of um you know what might be considered negative, even though there are no negative feelings.
• 21:03
  Melanie: Um, no matter what.
• 21:05
  Melanie: So every day at dinner we do celebrations and every kid shares and every adult shares a celebration.
• 21:12
  Melanie: So, whether they're, whether we've got people over for Thanksgiving.
• 21:15
  Melanie: We had like 25 people over Thanksgiving and every single person went around and shared a celebration.
• 21:19
  Melanie: So that's a really quick way to create um even more community inside your family, um, and it's a great way to hear what your kids actually do during the day, because you know the conversations can go 50,000 different directions.
• 21:34
  Melanie: But sometimes you feel like you're like I don't even know what you did all day, like so so a celebration from something that they did today and, no matter how terrible of a day you might have, you're alive, you're breathing, you're, you know you can dip into gratitude the fact that we're here together at this table, so that's definitely one.
• 21:52
  Melanie: We have dinner together every night we have.
• 21:55
  Melanie: We have that moment of celebration and reflection together.
• 21:58
  Melanie: Um, and then we usually do no screen Sundays, um, so that's.
• 22:04
  Melanie: That usually involves some kind of hike or you know, um, some kind of family activity, whether it's a game, um, we also do and this this I stole from a friend.
• 22:13
  Melanie: I can't take credit for it, but, um, it was called FFF, forced family fun.
• 22:18
  Melanie: Um, so that's, you know, dragging the kids, sometimes kicking and screaming to go do something, and you're like, oh sorry, it's FFF.
• 22:25
  Melanie: And then they're like, even when they're little.
• 22:28
  Carrie: I can imagine when they're teenagers.
• 22:29
  Carrie: Even when they're little, I can imagine when they're teenagers.
• 22:38
  Melanie: Yes, yeah, I'm going to use that one.
• 22:40
  Melanie: Yeah, in fact, like I can give you, this Sunday was an example of FFF where, um, I, definitely one of the kids was just like dragging his feet and he didn't want to go, and he's like, mom, come on.
• 22:47
  Melanie: And I'm like, nope, we're walking to the park, there's a music festival, we're bringing our pickleball paddles and we're going and it ended up being like the highlight of everybody's weekend, but definitely it was dragging and kicking and you know, so it's, so it's.
• 23:00
  Melanie: It takes that initiative, it takes us parents putting it as a priority and and putting the family first in a lot of areas.
• 23:09
  Carrie: Yeah, I'm hearing that so often from so many mindful families and it's really cool.
• 23:14
  Carrie: Do you feel like you?
• 23:15
  Carrie: You instill any mindfulness or any of the intuitive pieces that you found in yourself?
• 23:21
  Carrie: Are you teaching your kids those pieces?
• 23:24
  Melanie: Absolutely yes.
• 23:25
  Carrie: Yeah, yeah, so I really feel like.
• 23:28
  Melanie: As parents, our job is to create functional, kind humans that are going to go out to the world and make the world a better place.
• 23:35
  Carrie: Yeah.
• 23:36
  Melanie: So, yes, so I am teaching my kids about sacred sexuality.
• 23:41
  Melanie: I mean, when we have conversations around sex, there's always a piece of how are you loving yourself?
• 23:48
  Melanie: I teach them one of the biggest things from Tantra that I've learned is that you self, you're the only one that can love you unconditionally.
• 23:55
  Melanie: My husband has conditions.
• 23:58
  Melanie: I have conditions for my husband.
• 24:00
  Melanie: My parents hopefully have conditions.
• 24:02
  Melanie: I'm hopefully raising my kids to have conditions, so I'm teaching that with them.
• 24:06
  Melanie: Like your body is like this one particular beautiful thing that is yours that you can show up for every day, that you can love unconditionally.
• 24:17
  Melanie: And and it's hard and so like I'll talk about how hard it can be but, like I, when you're looking at yourself in the mirror and you see, like you know they're teenagers, they've got teenage acne, when you see that, take a breath and then think about the science behind that.
• 24:33
  Melanie: What's really happening in your body.
• 24:35
  Melanie: Why is that happening?
• 24:36
  Melanie: It's the hormones.
• 24:36
  Melanie: It's this beautiful phase that you get to develop into an adult here, here, the talk in your brain, but then dip back into your heart space, dip back into love.
• 24:47
  Melanie: So, yeah, I'm teaching them that.
• 24:49
  Melanie: I'm teaching them how to use, how to use their breath, how to ground in the planet.
• 24:53
  Melanie: Um, I learned just to.
• 24:54
  Melanie: Anytime I kind of like learn a new breath work trick or technique.
• 24:58
  Melanie: I will will just be like in the living room, like, okay, everybody, put your feet on the ground now put your right thumb on, you know, on your right nostril.
• 25:06
  Melanie: Breathe in through your left.
• 25:08
  Melanie: Breathe out through your left.
• 25:09
  Melanie: Now switch nostrils.
• 25:10
  Melanie: Breathe in through your left.
• 25:11
  Melanie: Breathe out through your left.
• 25:12
  Melanie: Now switch nostrils.
• 25:12
  Melanie: Breathe in through your right, breathe out through your right.
• 25:14
  Melanie: This is something that you can do, you know, because exams are coming up.
• 25:18
  Melanie: So it's like what do you feel like before you take an exam?
• 25:20
  Melanie: I get sweaty and gross and icky, but you can resource quickly.
• 25:24
  Melanie: And then, and then one of the boys was like, well, that would look really stupid if I was in class holding my nose, breathing weird.
• 25:31
  Melanie: And I'm like you're right.
• 25:32
  Melanie: So then let's do a square breath for seconds, breathing in four seconds at the top, holding it four seconds, exhaling four seconds at the bottom.
• 25:41
  Melanie: That you can do and nobody knows you're doing it, but yet you can ground.
• 25:44
  Melanie: You can prepare yourself for that exam, yeah, so yeah all kinds of stuff.
• 25:50
  Carrie: I wish I had that when I was a teenager, because those testing periods, oh man, I would get so in my head I couldn't even think and I couldn't answer the questions.
• 26:01
  Carrie: So I was an awful test taker back in the day.
• 26:04
  Carrie: But yeah, that's wonderful, that's so cool and I love seeing.
• 26:08
  Carrie: It's a projection of what I'm going to see, since I have a six and nine-year-old.
• 26:11
  Carrie: I'm like oh, this is.
• 26:12
  Carrie: I love where it can go next.
• 26:14
  Carrie: We're building the foundation now, but like what the older kids are going to need.
• 26:18
  Carrie: And acting is not what I think of right now, but it's awesome to hear that as a future and where we need to go with it.
• 26:25
  Carrie: One of the things that I picked up when I was growing up was I was 17, 18 when I first started watching Sex and the City.
• 26:33
  Carrie: It was when it was on HBO, so we'd have to like tune in and we were really excited.
• 26:37
  Carrie: We were getting ready to go to college.
• 26:39
  Carrie: But it was kind of interesting because when you watch TV, you think like, hey, I'm supposed to be this really sweet, good girl on this side, and then, as soon as I shut the door, this is what I'm supposed to look like, and I think it just gave me this mentality of not finding my own version, not finding my femininity myself.
• 26:58
  Carrie: But this is this picture version of what you're supposed to look like.
• 27:02
  Melanie: Yeah, you know, I that really makes me think of something I heard someone say and I think it was so spot on, and it's like are you a Charlotte, Are you a Samantha, Are you?
• 27:10
  Carrie: this Someone's like are you a Charlotte?
• 27:11
  Melanie: Are you a Samantha, are you this and someone's like, here's the secret, you're really supposed to be all of them, yeah, and I was like I really am all of them, Like I am Miranda when it comes to things.
• 27:32
  Carrie: Yeah, it's true, I think I used to have a shirt that said I'm a Charlotte Cause, I like thought this is what I identify with and then looking back I'm like what?
• 27:38
  Carrie: No, your name is Carrie.
• 27:38
  Carrie: You were totally Carrie at times.
• 27:40
  Carrie: So, yeah, I love that that.
• 27:41
  Carrie: It's all different pieces of us.
• 27:44
  Melanie: That's beautiful.
• 27:45
  Carrie: Yeah, how we're feeling.
• 27:46
  Carrie: That's why I can't choose a color, right Cause, what?
• 27:48
  Carrie: What am I Charlotte or Carrie today?
• 27:50
  Carrie: I don't know, but we're in this moment, so that's beautiful, yeah, yeah, I think, just like for me.
• 27:58
  Carrie: I was expressing to my husband like dropping this idea and this notion of what movies make, make intimacy and sexuality look like, and having feeling that pressure as a woman to portray what we see on screen, and that was a huge piece of what we see on screen and that was a huge piece of what I thought it all had to look like all the time, even with parenting in every aspect of life.
• 28:18
  Melanie: We think that has to fit into this box of what we're supposed to be and even to like.
• 28:24
  Melanie: Spread that even more when the world of kink, when you hear you know, oh, someone's kinky, you're like right away to go to BDSM or you know something like really extreme but, a kink is just something that you think is kinky, Like it's so per the person.
• 28:40
  Melanie: So we're all kinky about something, but it's it's the.
• 28:44
  Melanie: The spectrum is really what's so so beautiful and so you can lean into.
• 28:49
  Melanie: You're like, well, I'm not that BDSM, leathery, whippy person, so therefore I'm not kinky and therefore it must be vanilla.
• 28:55
  Carrie: No no.
• 28:55
  Melanie: Like there's so much yeah.
• 28:59
  Carrie: We just come into our own and we find our own versions.
• 29:01
  Carrie: And turning 40 this year, it's like all about this femininity for me.
• 29:05
  Carrie: I just I'm still in finishing out my 40th year and, yeah, it's just.
• 29:10
  Carrie: It's so beautiful to be like Nope, I can rip that Charlotte shirt up Like it can be who?
• 29:15
  Carrie: Yeah, Just finding that version of ourselves it's beautiful, yeah.
• 29:19
  Melanie: Well.
• 29:20
  Carrie: Melanie, you have to share with us what is your superpower.
• 29:23
  Melanie: Ooh, um, let's see, I think my superpower is definitely like an open-hearted, empathetic person that I am and that creates so much safety for the people around me, for the people and the folks that I coach.
• 29:39
  Melanie: It's.
• 29:40
  Melanie: It's really a superpower that I've.
• 29:43
  Melanie: I've had my whole life and it wasn't really until probably the last decade where I could really label it and say like, oh, this is who I am, like I always meet people with a smile and meet them with where they're at, and that that creates such a calmness.
• 29:57
  Carrie: I love that so much.
• 29:58
  Carrie: I I've been in tune with that myself recently as well.
• 30:01
  Carrie: I feel like nothing ever fit and career tests, but it's like this is something that's in us, that's so beautiful and wonderful and it can affect so many people around us, so it's it's lovely that you're doing that for others.
• 30:12
  Carrie: Yeah Well, where can our listeners find you?
• 30:17
  Melanie: Yes, Um, my uh website is wwwmelaniebonkcom.
• 30:23
  Melanie: Um, and at Instagram, at bonk better.
• 30:27
  Melanie: Um, I would love to offer your listeners a little treat.
• 30:32
  Melanie: Um, if you go to melaniebonkcom backslash, pod pod um, I will drip in your email box for three weeks, uh, three different somatic practices to help you really get into your body.
• 30:47
  Melanie: Um, so it's like a pod experience and it's a beautiful way to just kind of create that connection with yourself.
• 30:54
  Melanie: Um, treat yourself with a little meditation.
• 30:57
  Melanie: They're only about 20 to 30 minutes, um, and so you can find a little time in your space.
• 31:03
  Melanie: Um, I, I attached like a juicy playlist if you want to listen to a playlist with it.
• 31:07
  Melanie: Um, but yeah, that's uh love to give that to your listeners.
• 31:11
  Carrie: Oh, that's wonderful.
• 31:12
  Carrie: We can put that in the show notes and I am excited to submit my email address for that as well.
• 31:17
  Carrie: That's exciting.
• 31:19
  Carrie: Well, thank you so much for being here today.
• 31:22
  Carrie: It's been an honor to have you on our show, and I've been taking notes the whole time, so I'm excited to continue blossoming into the feminine version of myself.
• 31:30
  Melanie: I love that so much, yes, yes, thank you, blossoming into the feminine version of myself, I love that so much.
• 31:36
  Melanie: Yes, yes, thank you so much for having me and, yes, if you ever need help creating more play, passion or pleasure in your partnership, I'm your girl.
• 31:43
  Carrie: Yes, I love it.
• 31:44
  Carrie: I love following your tips on Instagram.
• 31:46
  Carrie: They're great.
• 31:47
  Melanie: Thank you.
• 31:49
  Carrie: Thank you.
• 31:49
  Carrie: Thanks so much for following along with us on our Heart to Heart Parents podcast journey.
• 31:55
  Carrie: I'm Keri and I am here to ask you for a quick favor.
• 31:59
  Carrie: If you've enjoyed today's episode, would you be sure to review us, rate us and give us a follow on any platform that you're using to listen to this podcast.
• 32:10
  Carrie: Also, we love when you share it with a friend.
• 32:13
  Carrie: That's super helpful.
• 32:14
  Carrie: One other thing we would love is if you would love to contact and reach out with us.
• 32:20
  Carrie: We now have an email.
• 32:21
  Carrie: It's info at hearttoheartlifecom.
• 32:24
  Carrie: Have a great week.