Living into Nondual Parenting

Walking into a school building a little over three
months after giving birth, my body still tender and
bruised, a swirl of conflicting feelings churned in
my stomach. It felt unnatural when I left our new
son Ari for the afternoon so I could work with
teachers and students on developing social emotional learning skills (a task I, Alicia, had dedicated
the last five years to with great passion). I wanted
to be home with this new, unbelievably precious
being, present to the moment-to-moment miracle
of his awakening to the world. Reverence for life
had never been stronger in me, and while I knew
my work in schools was important, it suddenly
paled in comparison to being with my son.
Given my state of unease, a moment of insight
took me by surprise. As I walked past a lunchroom
full of babbling children, I saw each and every child
as an Ari, each child as someone’s unfathomably
precious baby. The urgency of deeply caring for
and providing these magical beings with quality
learning opportunities suddenly became even
more pressing. When I later stopped at the grocery
store on the way home, the insight broadened
even further and I saw each adult wandering the
aisles as an Ari—as someone’s precious baby, however long ago they had been born. No one was
separate from him.
While I was holding this insight of interconnectedness with tenderness, Owen and I were
navigating the reality of new parenthood within
the hyper-individualistic, dualistic, nuclear family
model pervasive in US culture. The juxtaposition
between this felt sense of interconnectedness and
the relatively isolated nature of our parenting experience was too hard for us to ignore; it laid bare
how flawed, unrealistic, and at times inhumane
our US cultural norms around family life can be.
Neither of us have immediate family nearby,
and while we both feel deeply fortunate for the incredible and rich communities we are part of, the
collective consciousness seems to have imparted
to us an expectation that we should be able, willing, and even happy to go at this alone, no matter
how exhausted, strung out, or unprepared we are.
We are told we are separate families with separate
children, and we need to largely handle this immense responsibility by ourselves. The struggle of
the absolutely exhausting and relatively isolated
first year of parenting is often bizarrely framed in
our cultural mythology as an unavoidable rite of
passage for new parents, who compare their “war
stories” in sympathetic jest.
In contrast to our lived experience, we began
to dream of the possibility of raising a child
We have to practice
mindfulness as impulses
to control, discriminate,
and judge arise.
Living into Nondual Parenting
Alicia LeClair and Owen Zinaman explore
their insights into building a community of care.

within a community of care, where people lived
into not only the practical benefit of supporting
one another, but also the greater truth of our
interconnectedness.
We have come to believe that one of the biggest
gifts we can possibly give our child is to imbue
his nervous system with a sense of safety in early
childhood. That way, as he grows older and inevitably encounters challenges, he will always be able
to regulate back to a strongly rooted emotional
foundation. Through deeply looking at ourselves and our situation, it became clear that in all
likelihood, our siloed, nuclear family existence—as
loving as it is—may not allow us to truly offer this
to Ari. Without having the experience of a safe and
nurturing community, how could he come to believe that he himself is safe in the world?
Our guiding question became: How do we
stop just talking about this and actually start doing
something? How do we start living into a life of a
more nondualistic existence? As the practice has
reminded us time and time again, and as a piece of
paper on our refrigerator regularly reminds us, the
how is Now. We take care of the future by taking
care of the present moment.
Even before we had Ari, at times to the surprise
and momentary social discomfort of the people
around us, we were already experimenting with
playfully acting as if a more interconnected way of
being were normal and natural, curious what the
results would be. When one set of neighbors was
down a car, for example, we insisted they use ours
to cover their needs for over a year. We regularly
help with house projects that could be considered far outside the normal scope of neighborly
aid, share our food with those around us, and on
the evening of Ari’s first birthday, we had twenty
neighbors from our block over to celebrate. In this
broader social experiment, we found that many
people (after momentary awkwardness or
confusion) were more than happy to lean in and
reciprocate in kind—all we had to do was act like
everything was completely normal.
The other dimension of leaning into a more
interconnected existence was finding ease in receiving from others. Our cultural narrative had
taught us that any help received could be an imposition on others and potentially a breach of a social
contract that insists upon our self-sufficiency. To
resist this, a family rule we established after Ari was
born was: “Say yes to all help that is offered.” By
forcing ourselves to say yes to help, we have been
humbled not only by the generosity of others, but
also by how much help we, as two new parents,
actually could use. This has further solidified our
feelings that something is amiss in our mainstream
cultural narrative.
These practices helped us both see that the
seeds of community care and a more nondualistic
way of being exist within all of us. Everything we
need is here already. But in our society, sometimes
we must resist certain cultural norms in order to
encourage the watering of these seeds.
Our many trips to Deer Park Monastery to practice with our beloved spiritual family helped reveal
the next step on our family’s path toward more
nondualistic parenting. When Ari was surrounded
by a large community of safe, regulated adults at
the monastery, we realized he was experiencing
that felt sense of community safety we so wanted
for him. We also gleaned some insight into the
immense benefits and practical challenges of community life and the importance of our core Plum
Village practices in fostering and maintaining
harmony in the community.
In the spirit of trying to bring a slice of Deer
Park back home with us to Denver, Colorado, in
December of 2023, we invited a fellow Sangha
By forcing ourselves to
say yes to help, we have
been humbled not only by
the generosity of others,
but also by how much help
we, as two new parents,
actually could use.

member to live with us and embarked on a small,
humble experiment of community living within
our own home—splitting house tasks, cooking
and caring for each other, practicing together, and
defining family as something beyond the nuclear
confine.
While it has been an experience filled with
much joy and a deep sense of relief not to be
“going it alone,” it has not come without challenges. The seeds of hyper-individualism still exist
strongly within us. Personal practice has been vital
as we encounter our edges. Having another adult
join our home means we can no longer curate our
environment to our exact preferences, for example. We have to practice mindfulness as impulses
to control, discriminate, and judge arise. We often
have had to let go and trust in our abilities to cultivate peace and happiness in ourselves and our
community, regardless of whether our preferences
are being met. We’ve also had to practice radical
transparency, deep listening, and loving speech
at our regular house meetings as we water flowers
and shine light on challenges that have arisen, all
in the spirit of building that felt sense of community safety we aspire toward—not only for Ari, but
also for ourselves and our world.
Outside of our home, living into a less separate
reality with neighbors from many walks of life has
meant practicing openhearted, nonjudgmental
curiosity. In previous chapters of our lives, each
of us has been guilty at times of waiting around
and longing for this thing called “community” to
show up, unconsciously thinking that when it arrived, we would have deep personal alignment (if
not a “soul connection”) with every single person
involved. Through our time spent at Deer Park and
engaging with our communities here in Denver, we
have realized that community can take so many
different and rich forms, and that we need to let go
of our incomplete conceptions of what it means or

should look like.
Our focus on building community and
connection has subsequently involved continuously showing up and offering care in small and
thoughtful ways to those around us, cultivating
relationships slowly with presence and patience,
letting go of expectations, and allowing each relationship to be exactly what it needs to be in any
given chapter. This new approach has allowed
relationships—including those with people we
might not have normally connected with—to blossom in lovely and unexpected ways.
As we sat down recently with a new neighbor
and her children and listened to stories and strongly
held beliefs significantly outside of our own life
experiences, we both had to actively practice
Right Diligence by watching thought patterns
arise that wanted to discriminate between “our
family” and “theirs,” “our worldview” and “theirs.”
Right Diligence has helped us notice when we are
watering seeds of separation with our thoughts
and, without suppressing or shaming them,
choose a different path by turning toward thoughts
that water seeds of kindness, compassion, and
interconnectedness. We have recognized through
this practice that we do not need to be best friends
with everyone to raise children in a harmonious
community with them. We just need to be known
to one another, to show up with care for each other
and our children, to build trust over time, and to
practice looking past surface-level judgments that
reinforce our perception of separateness.
Nondual parenting, to us, is about so much
more than our relationship with our child. We
cannot separate that relationship from our
relationship with each other, from our relationship
with our neighbors and larger community, or from
our relationship with the world. Nondual parenting
feels inseparable from nondual living, and we
aspire to take small steps to live into it every day.
Alicia LeClair, Loving Lotus of the Source (pronouns she/
her), is based in Colorado, US. She is passionate about
helping transform classrooms and school communities
into mindful, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive
communities of care and exploring what it means to be
a mindful parent. Alicia has been practicing mindfulness
since the age of thirteen, when her mother introduced her
to it. She enjoys sitting by rivers, learning from children,
and deeply connecting with those around her.
Owen Zinaman, Wholesome Steadiness of the Heart
(pronouns he/him), is based in Colorado, US. He is a
regular visitor to Deer Park Monastery and is a founding
member of the Denver Wake Up Sangha. Owen enjoys
wandering through alpine zones and practicing walking
meditation in his local botanic gardens. He has spent
his career advising governments and international aid
organizations on the transition to sustainable energy.