Hey, welcome back to the Mother-Daughter Relationship show. I'm your host, Brittany, In today's episode, I'm gonna share a new offer that I am bringing to the business in 2026, and I wanted to share it with you guys first. I have spent a lot of time talking about how healing happens in community, how healing alone and isolation is a much slower process. It's a harder process, and it's lonelier, and that community is where you go to be seen, where you go to feel heard, and. Be witnessed and be supported, healing and community happens so much faster than it does when you're healing alone by yourself. And so next year I am offering groups and I'm really excited to bring groups. It's something I have thought about for a while, but I just couldn't figure out how I wanted them to look or How they would be designed or what you as a potential group member would get out of it. And I finally figured it out. So 2026 is gonna be the year of many groups. So I have four groups outlined, and so I'm gonna share each group and its own podcast episode, but just so you know what to expect, the groups are safety and sisterhood. Women, parenting small children who find their mother wound is being triggered. Number two is raising teens differently. Mothers who want to stay connected to their teen daughters through the push and pull of adolescents. The third group is Bridge Builders mothers whose adult daughters have pulled away or cut off contact and are now estranged, and the mother wound circle for any woman who has been hurt by her mother and is carrying a mother wound. So I'm excited that all four groups will be offered in 2026. And I can't wait to fill them and support the group members inside of a community. So this episode is gonna be all about the first group that is happening in 2026, and that is raising teens differently. If you are currently raising a teenage daughter, or will be raising a teenage daughter. In the next year or so, depending on her age, this group is for you. And so if you're listening and you're not in that category, but you know someone who is, who could maybe use the support or might be interested in it, please share the episode with them. Raising teens differently is for any mom who is raising a teenage daughter and wants to keep her close, wants to keep connection strong and might be struggling through her teenage daughter pulling away. You might be struggling with your teen daughter. Wanting more independence, but the way she's going about it might be confusing you or frustrating you. She might be testing boundaries, like there could be many things that's happening in these teenage years that are causing you guys to either separate making the relationship struggle in any way, or just starting to feel like you're losing her and you're learning less and less about what's happening in her life. This is for you if you want to keep her in constant contact and communication with you so you know what's going on while also learning how to manage your expectations too. Actually set healthy boundaries to understand that independence is normal for a teenager to seek out and to search for, and that it's not anything against you or your parenting, but you wanna make sure that the independence she's trying to get and that you're also going to give her is healthy for her and respectful for your home and the rules and expectations that you have. And also, this is for you if you want your daughter. To be a partner with you in her becoming a young adult. You want to teach her how to be a productive member of society, but also a young adult that trusts herself. A young adult that can use her voice and stand up for herself. A young adult that is confident in who she is, and also a young adult that knows that she can return back to you at any time because you're gonna be there to help her, and you prove that through her teenage years. So the trust was already built and it wasn't lost in something that you have to learn to rebuild as she becomes an adult. This is the perfect group. If you want to be in community of other moms who are in the same stage as you can probably share a lot of your same stories and you can learn how to either break out of the negative dynamic that you may have fallen into. Or you can learn how to not let that happen or how to troubleshoot when the conflict does arise between you and your teenager. Because conflict is absolutely going to arise because it's normal in any relationship. So it's going to be normal. And a relationship with your teenager doesn't feel good, but it conflict is normal and it's not a sign of a relationship not being healthy. You just have to know how to navigate the conflict and how to get through it. And. How to keep it healthy. Okay. Teenagers pull in, push away from their parents for many reasons. So let's go through a few. One, she might be forming her identity, your daughter's, figuring out who she is, what she believes, and how she fits into the world. this process can naturally include questioning authority. Including yours. I know it's probably frustrating, but that's how she builds a stronger connection with you is she can learn to trust you. She's craving independence. Maybe she wants to make her own decisions, even if she's not fully ready for all of them yet, that desire for autonomy can come across as defiance, but that's not usually what's happening. She just wants more independence, and that's where you and her have to be in a partnership together to figure out. Where can it happen safely? Where do you need to put some boundaries up for her? And how can you guys work together to increasingly give her more independence as she grows closer to adulthood? Next, her brain is still developing. The parts of the brain that handle emotional regulation and decision making are not fully developed. You have to remember that this is why she may act impulsively or have really big mood swings like our teenager's brain is almost close to our toddler's brain and. We remember that it's not a fun stage. The next one is she's navigating school stress. Okay? Academic pressure, friendships, figuring out her future. All of this can feel overwhelming sometimes. What she needs is a break versus another lecture from you. if you want her to grow closer to you, always have connection at the forefront of your mind. Next, she might be influenced by social media. Constant comparison and online interactions can shape how she sees herself and how she feels about herself. This can cause insecurity, anxiety, and irritability. You as her mom, can help to keep her confidence up, help to keep her trusting herself and believing in herself and building that connection with you can really keep her grounded. And I just wanna remind you that she still wants connection. Even if she doesn't act like it, like beneath the eye rolls and the cold shoulder, your daughter wants to feel understood, accepted, and loved unconditionally by you no matter what she's actually saying out loud. Teenagers want their parents. Sometimes they just don't know the right words to get what they need, and most of the time what they need is connection. So this group is going to be all about that. How do you build and create and keep connection with your daughter? How do you pull her close and build that trust with you that she knows she can come to you for anything, no matter how big, because you're gonna be able to handle it. And you're gonna be able to help her through it without your big emotions coming into the room. You can have them, but she doesn't need them. So you learning how to manage that in front of her and then go into the proper supports for yourself to be able to talk about it. She wants structure and guidance, and so how do you do that while also battling her fight for independence. So knowing that teenagers want structure and security and guidance, but also act like they don't, when they're fighting you for independence, how do you as a mom manage that? That'll be something else that we discuss and work through in the group. Learning how to pick your battles. Not everything that happens with her needs to be a fight. Some things that she experiences and goes through should come with natural consequences. All of them don't have to come with consequences directly from you. I am gonna teach you how to find common interest with your daughter. You guys should be able to enjoy time, especially quality time together. How can y'all find an interest that you're both. Interested in, that's gonna create more connection and more buy-in and more trust. And lastly, like we're really gonna talk and chat about how you take care of yourself because teenagers are a lot we know, but they mean well. And so if you can take care of yourself. Have your own support system and be there fully to support her and her emotions. You're gonna have a relationship with her for the rest of her life. But if you can't create connection, you guys are always fighting. You're always pushing and pulling right along with her, and you're not a steady source of security. Your relationship with her is going to struggle because there's no trust or connection. She doesn't believe that you can be the person that she can go to. It's up to you to create that. And so if this interests you, this is what this first group is going to be about raising teens differently. How do you keep her close? How do you build trust with her? How do you take care of yourself and have your own support system so you can fully be there for all that life throws at teenagers and teach her that she can trust you? Okay. This group will be starting in February, 2026, and it'll meet weekly for eight weeks. Once the group begins, no new members are able to join. I'm gonna keep the groups closed in order to create trust amongst the members that we don't have people coming in and out. When new members join a group in the middle, it can break up the cohesion that the other group members have built over the weeks that they had already started. And I don't want that to happen. Trust is so important and it's part of what we're going to talk about in the group. And so I wanna make sure that I'm also creating trust amongst the members. The group will meet weekly and will run for eight weeks. And along with learning and being able to ask me questions and just having access to me, to. Work on your relationship with your teenage daughter. You're also gonna get to create relationships with the other group members, the other moms who are on the same path and in the same stage of their mother-daughter relationship as you, everyone in that group will be raising a teenage girl, and it makes all the difference to have people. Who get where you are, who understand what is happening with you, and you guys can give each other tips and feedback and what you did during a certain stage and what you tried that helped. Like having a community, it just almost feels like a hug, like it feels like. Love, like support and feeling seen and knowing that you're not the only one going through this. And there are other people who have been here. There are people who are also going to be in this stage, but you are the one in it right now. And so for you it feels like a lot. So instead of hearing from somebody who's been through and it's like auto, it'll end, or that's just how teenage girls are, or you know, buckle up because this is coming. Or whatever else you're hearing. You just get to be in a group and in a community of people who get it right now, who understand how social media is affecting our teenagers who understand how COVID affected our children and how that pushed them behind socially, who understand what's happening right now in our world and how it affects raising our daughters. You're with a group of people who are in it right now and who can get all the nuances of everything else that's influencing your teenager and then will have an impact on y'all's relationship and how you handle it. So if this interests you, I want you to go to the show notes and click the link in the bio to go to my website and learn more. And from there you can fill out. The interest form, and I will email you and we will chat. And if you want to join the group, you can join. the group will be capped at a certain number of members. That way everybody feels like they get a chance to talk and be heard, and it's not too many people in there to where it just feels overwhelming. So if you are interested, don't sit on it and wait. Join me now and in February you can be a part of this group with me. I'm really excited. I hope that you are excited if you are raising a teenage daughter at the moment. And like I said earlier, if you're not, please share this episode with somebody who is, maybe they would be interested. But that's all I have for you today. In the next episode that I share about the groups, I will share with the next group that's going to start I am gonna give you four episodes of all the groups so I can talk about each one, know what to expect, know who it's for, and see if this sounds right for you. I'm really excited for 2026 and the offerings that I'm bringing to you and how I wanna support women next year. So I hope you continue to be on this ride with me. Thank you for listening, and I will catch you in the next one.