When the Whole World Tips: Parenting through Crisis with Mindfulness and Balance

“A wise, welcoming book. Hard-fought and friendly, it provides practical instructions on how to stay centered when our children are suffering.”
—Anne Lamott, bestselling author

Move from helplessness to stability in challenging times through the practice of mindful equanimity. By adopting a spiritual approach to parenting and caregiving, you can protect yourself from burnout, increase your resilience, and develop a greater sense of empathy and balance. Drawn from Buddhist wisdom, this new approach to showing up in overwhelming circumstances is about slowing down, letting go of the illusion of control, and caring for yourself so that you can be a presence of love and support even in the most difficult moments.

We love our children more deeply than our own selves, yet are powerless to keep them from pain. Drawing from her own experience parenting her children through clinical depression,  suicidal ideation, and physical injury, Celia Landman guides parents at their limit back from helplessness toward stability through the ancient practice of equanimity, or balance.

Contemporary neuroscience and developmental psychology research demonstrates how a parent’s state of anxiety is directly communicated to the child and can intensify their pain. When the Whole World Tips is rich with real life examples from parents in the midst of caring for children in crisis, plentiful resources, and helpful exercises. Each chapter offers accessible practices for parents to care for themselves in order to remain present for their children.

Landman gently guides parents to restore their own balance by keeping their hearts open and their hands loose on the wheel of control as their child’s life unfolds. This shift into equanimity can bring relief to both child and parent.

Woven throughout are practices to help parents experience how their emotional state of being is as important as what they do; when we recognize that being a presence of love and care is already doing something of great value, we can reconnect with purpose and restore our trust that we are capable and enough.