When It Hurts to Be a Parent

To understand the pain. To understand ourselves. To understand our children.

A year-long learning process for parents and professionals who want less advice, less flooding with information, and more understanding.

For a year we learn together, in a closed group that begins and ends the path together.

Every week, new content goes up to listen to.

Every week, I meet the questions it raises and answer them.

And once a month we meet on Zoom, to connect, go deeper, and process together what we've learned.

Not in order to know more about parenthood, but in order to understand a little more of ourselves, of our children, and of what happens between us.

Because deep learning doesn't always need more knowledge. Sometimes it needs time.

Join the next cohort

Parenthood doesn't create all of our wounds.Sometimes it reveals them.

The story behind the process

For those who want to understand a little more about why it was born

We love our children more than anything, and we want to be good, gentle, steady, present parents for them.

And then, sooner or later, we meet parts of ourselves we never expected to meet.

We shout, though we promised ourselves we wouldn't.

We pull away exactly when our child needs us most.

We're flooded by crying, by anger, by clinging or by resistance.

We know what the right thing to do is, and still can't manage to do it in the moment of truth.

And then come the guilt, the shame, the helplessness, and with them the questions:

Why is this so hard?

What is the right thing to do now?

Maybe something in me isn't right?

Maybe something in my child isn't right?

Most parents today are not suffering from a shortage of information.

Quite the opposite.

It seems there has never been a generation of parents who knew so much about what children need, and at the same time felt so often that they weren't managing to give it to them.

We know it's better not to shout. We know we're supposed to hold space, set boundaries, regulate, remain the responsible adult.

But knowing what is right to do doesn't always mean we'll manage to do it in the moment when it's hard for us.

The gap between knowing and doing is not necessarily a sign that we haven't learned enough. Sometimes it is a sign that our nervous system is still learning.

I don't teach parents how to be parents.

I help them understand why being a parent is sometimes so hard.

And this is exactly where our path in the community begins.

Not in another attempt to know more.

But in an attempt to understand more.

To understand why we react the way we react.

Why it is our children, of all people, who reach the places almost no one else touches.

What our children are telling us through their behaviour.

And what our behaviour tells about us.

Because parenthood is not a test of knowledge.

It is a living meeting between a child and a parent, between needs and feelings, between two nervous systems, and between the present we are living and the story each of us carries inside.

And when we begin to understand that meeting, something can soften.

Not because everything is suddenly easy.

But because what is happening to us begins to make sense.

What does our year look like?

Not more content to consume. A process to go through.

"When It Hurts to Be a Parent" is a learning community built as a 12-month process.

It has a beginning, a path, and an end.

One group starts together, moves gradually through a sequence of subjects that build on one another, and finishes the path together. That is why enrolment opens before each cohort begins, and it isn't possible to join midway.

I am inside the process all year long: bringing the content, meeting the questions, answering them, and meeting the community once a month.

The three spaces

Spotify

Every week | new content

Every week a new episode goes up on a private Spotify channel for community members, continuing our sequence of learning.

You can listen at the time and pace that suit you, return to earlier episodes, and let things settle.

Every week | questions and answers

WhatsApp is a quiet space that opens once a week for questions, thoughts and connections that came up from the content, and I read and come back to answer at length.

No dozens of messages a day, and no need to keep following all the time so as not to miss something important.

Zoom

Once a month | we meet

Once a month we meet for a live session where we gather what we've learned, connect the ideas, go deeper and process together.

The session is recorded and stays available for those who couldn't make it.

And in between there is also time to listen, to think, to see things inside our lives, and sometimes to discover that an idea we met a month ago suddenly takes on a new meaning.

Because our nervous system takes time to process. And deep learning needs a pause.

The path we'll walk together

We'll get to know our nervous system and go deeper into neuroception, interoception, windows of tolerance and the capacity to recover. We'll try to understand not only how to "calm down", but what happens to us when the system detects a threat, and what allows us to stay inside an experience without losing our connection to ourselves entirely.
Regulation is our capacity to be inside an emotional experience and remain, to some degree, connected to ourselves.
We'll learn to understand trauma not only through the question "what happened to me?", but through what remains inside us and goes on acting in the present. We'll talk about body and memory, survival patterns, wounds, and the ways we adapted in order to keep functioning and stay in connection.
It is a move from "what happened to me" to "what is happening inside me now". And right there, a new way of meeting ourselves can begin.
We'll go deep into the human need for connection, into emotional security, dependence and development. We'll learn key concepts from the attachment-developmental approach, and try to understand what children really need from us, how connection makes rest and growth possible, and why we as adults go on being creatures whose ability to feel safe in the world is profoundly shaped by connection.
Knowledge about attachment, trauma, regulation and the nervous system isn't only there so we can raise children differently. It can help us meet ourselves differently too.
We'll meet the pain that sits beneath the surface of parenthood: guilt, helplessness, the gap between the parent I wanted to be and the parent I manage to be, intergenerational transmission, and the way the gaze we received as children sometimes goes on living inside us as parents.
Not in order to stay in the pain, but in order to give it meaning.
The complexity, the difficulty and the anguish of parenthood are not evidence of failure. They are evidence of how complex the task is.
After giving time to understanding the places where it is hard and painful for us, we begin to turn our gaze to the bond itself. To the question of what allows another person to rest in our presence, and what allows a bond to be a place with enough safety in it that one can also grow inside it.
We'll try to understand what closeness that doesn't erase separateness looks like, how to stay in connection even when there is frustration, anger or difference between us, and how to return to each other after moments when we didn't manage.
Children aren't looking for perfect parents. Their nervous system is looking for a place it can rest.
In the last part of the path we gather what we've learned and move gradually from understanding toward experience as well.
Through meaningful practices we'll work with attention, body and the nervous system, and try not only to understand our patterns but to widen, gradually, what is possible for us within them.
Not in order to "fix" ourselves, but in order to let the system meet more possibilities, and to let the understanding of the whole year begin to find its place inside our lives.

Who is this community for?

For parents who feel that parenthood meets them in places deeper than they expected, and who want to understand themselves and their children beyond one more piece of advice or method.
For parents who have already learned a great deal, but find that knowing doesn't always manage to come with them into the moments when it is genuinely hard.
For professionals who want to deepen their language of understanding and to connect attachment, trauma, regulation and development to the work they do with parents and children.
And for those who love to learn slowly.

To return to an idea.

To hold it.

To test it inside real life.

And to give knowledge time to become understanding.

The next cohort

The next cohort of "When It Hurts to Be a Parent"

12 months of learning together

₪95per month

The process lasts 12 months, and payment is made monthly throughout it.

Enrolment is possible only before a cohort opens. It isn't possible to join midway through the process.

I want to join the next cohort

During the year:

New content every week on a private Spotify channel for community members
A weekly WhatsApp space for questions and my answers
A live Zoom session once a month
Recordings of the sessions
A sequence of learning that builds gradually over the year
A closed group that walks the path together from beginning to end

And why "When It Hurts to Be a Parent"?

Because I don't think our goal is to stop hurting. You cannot love without being vulnerable, you cannot attach without taking a risk, and you cannot raise children without sometimes meeting the painful places inside yourself.

But we can learn to know that pain, to understand where it comes from and what it is asking to tell us, to carry a little more of it, and not to be so alarmed every time it appears. We can learn to stay close to ourselves even in the moments when it is hard for us, and out of that closeness sometimes find another way to be with our children.

I don't believe parenthood is a journey toward perfection. Children don't need parents who never get it wrong, never break, never get angry or withdraw. They need adults who can carry their own humanity and their children's, and a bond in which there is a way back even after we didn't manage.

And perhaps we need exactly the same thing.

Not a perfect parent.But a parent who stays.

To understand the pain. To understand ourselves. To understand our children.

Join the next cohort

Who am I?

So — it's very good to meet you. I'm Nadine.

I'm married and a mother of three. About two years ago we moved as a family to Austin, Texas, and from here I accompany and work over Zoom with Israeli families in Israel and around the world.

I'm a social worker (B.A.), hold a master's degree in infant and early-childhood mental health (M.A.), am a dyadic therapist specialising in trauma (CPP), a graduate of attachment-based parent guidance, and certified in Polyvagal Theory.

What members write

From messages sent by members of the group (translated from Hebrew).

Ina M.Attachment-based parent guide

Your knowledge meets reality in the most sensitive and empowering way there is. Thank you for what you bring.

Hodaya N.Clinical social worker, CPP therapist

Each week I look forward to the new material — it deeply enriches my clinical work, and on a personal level it brings me to more depth and precision in the role of my life: parenthood.

Efrat M.Attachment-based parent guide

You really conceptualise there, simply and accessibly, very deep movements of the psyche. I feel that this is your genius — taking subjects the heart already knows intimately, and reordering them so clearly, so accessibly, so understandably and step by step.

Dorin V.Attachment-based parent guide

It's so intricate, fascinating and deep, and it gives meaning to our existence as parents, and to my existence as a mother. It's truly like taking a journey into the psyche. These are depths I would never have been exposed to if not for you.

Yaela L.Attachment-based parent guide

For a few months now I've been listening to what you have to say, and each time I feel how a few more specks of dust and grime are cleared from my heart…

Liron R.CPP therapist, therapy for parenthood

Every week Nadine goes deep into attachment subjects, clearly and eloquently and with examples that I don't think a single parent could fail to connect with in some way.

Tehila A.Attachment-based parent guide

You let me connect the pain to life from within life, and to know that this is it — part of a package deal, and the moment we accept it and stop pushing it away, we receive all the rest of the intensity and the good things there are.

Keren N.Attachment-based parent guide

What's so special about the material — that it isn't classic parent guidance — is the looking inward at the mother you are, the person you are, with the situations with the children only reflecting your triggers back to you.

Mira A.Attachment-based parent guide

And that is simply a treasure. Because I know I would never have come across this important knowledge any other way.

Anat Z.Attachment-based parent guide

…allows exactly the pace at which my mind can take in new ways of looking that bring a lot of order and widen the view, without falling behind.