Rooted in Values - a free course for parents
Learn from Beyoncé's personal chef about his experience learning how to share his core values, rituals, and spirituality.
Friends, a brief invitation to launch Rooted in Values:
Are you are a parent trying to share your values with your kids?
Are you looking to be more mindful with your family?
Are you longing for support from other like-minded parents?
Then check out this 8-week course and learn how to share important rituals, stories, and other family traditions to help ground your kids in your core values, outside religion. You’ll be matched into a curated small group with other parents to find your support system as you put ideas into practice, and find a safe space to take care of yourself.
Run by my colleagues at Nearness—this entire offering is free thanks to the generosity of the John Templeton Foundation.
The 8-week course runs from the week of May 5 to June 29 and the deadline to sign up is April 30.
We’re running this course for the second time this year, and so I was thrilled to interview Mike Shand —Beyoncé’s personal chef!—about his experience in the program. He’s just signed up to do it again!
Mike, why did you sign up for Rooted In Values?
I grew up kind-of Catholic. But when I was 11, my mother joined a community which she later realized was a New Age/Buddhist-adjacent cult, so for a long time I was full of disdain for religion. But over the last few years, I’ve evolved. I’ve grown in my spiritual outlook—which was always there—in part because of a really serious snowboarding injury. I’ve realized how malleable my spirituality is; like the use of the word God, for example. I just have a lot more confidence in my own self because, at this point, I’m less afraid of the judgment of other people!
But my wife and I come from very different worlds. I’m a white guy from New Zealand and never go to church; she’s a Black American woman for whom church has been really important. And, as we have a four-year old now, I really wanted a space to figure out what we’d pass on as parents.
And in this strangely connected and strangely isolated version of life that we’re in—there are these big gaps. I felt the need for a like-minded community of people experiencing the same questions in life. I wanted to figure out questions like, ‘What is the name of my spirituality? Does it even need a name?’
So, what was the experience like?
Well, I ended up in a group with three other men and it has been absolutely invaluable. There was space for self-reflection but also a lot of perspectives from the other guys, which really helped me understand the normality of what I struggle with. And also, frankly, made me realize that others are going through something way harder.
And even though none of us had the same situation—we all felt like we had the same experience; like we are daily failures. None of us, whatever we did, felt like we were good enough.
That was a fascinating discovery for us to realize how common that was. So that led to amazing conversations about how can we help each other.
Now, we text each other all the time. We joke that we’re all doing a great C+ job at Dadding :) And I know all of us will stay well-connected forever.