I know a thing or two about

Hi, I'm Abigail Wald.

RESILIENCE.

This is a picture of my 6-month-old son playing with wires from his open heart surgery. Thank God, today he is a strong and happy 17-year-old who hikes and bikes, loves motorcycles, and wants to fly a plane someday!

Throughout these years, he, his brother, my husband and I have all had to learn a lot about what it takes to overcome adversity.

Once we were mostly out of the woods, I quickly learned that "regular" parenting was hard too! We had to learn how to work with anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, both of my kids' strong-willed and highly sensitive temperaments, and my own intergenerational trauma

It was not easy but I was determined to have our family rise up to the occasion. We all learned how to build resiliency, and cultivate a growth mindset. Today, each of these challenges has made us better, kinder, more whole humans.

I have spent the last 18 years researching how to transform adversity into JOY by cultivating resilience.

On child development: Gabor Maté and Gordon Neufeld
On connection: Patty Wipfler and Hand in Hand Parenting
On play: Larry Cohen
On brain development: Michael Gurian and Dan Siegel
On inner work: Carl Jung, and Naomi Aldort
On growth mindset: Carol Dweck
On the explosive child: Ross Greene
On negotiation: Chris Voss
On neurodiversity: Barry Prizant's Uniquely Human lens
On ADHD: Ned Hallowell
On "flow": Michaly Csikzentmihalyi
On habit building: James Clear

Some of my favorites, that sit on my shelf, within arm's reach:

Even when we weren't in a hospital, "regular" parenting was hard too! We had to learn how to work with anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, both of my kids' strong will and highly sensitive temperaments, and my own intergenerational trauma.

It was not easy but I was determined to have our family rise up to the occasion. We all learned how to build resiliency, and cultivate a growth mindset. Today, each of these challenges has made us better, kinder, more whole humans.

Sometimes our kids are struggling, AND We CANNOT JUST "LOVE" THEM OUT OF THEIR sTUCK PLACES. As parents, we ARE THE first responders in the face of THEIR CHALLENGES, And WE need support to learn the leadership skills we need IN ORDER TO get our families over the line!

A kid struggling with YEARS of potty training problems (that no neurologist they saw was able to fix) gets dry in just 2 weeks!
A boy who says "no" to everything and spends his life hanging out on a screen takes up soccer and and now plays five nights a week
And this Mom, who will tell you in her own words what this work has meant for HER RESILIENCE...