Claudia Rautenbach Holding Space

20/02/2026

Beautiful visual!

WellbalancedOT

17/11/2025

😮

It sounds harsh — and it is.

Because this work isn’t gentle. It asks you to look at the parts of yourself you’d rather ignore.

The anger that comes too quickly.
The control that shows up when fear creeps in.
The silence you learned to survive with.
The wounds you carry from when you were small.

And if you don’t face them — not blame them, not hate them, but face them — they don’t disappear.

They simply pass down, shape the tone of your voice, guide your reactions, become the lens through which you see your child.

Your child doesn’t just inherit your smile.

They inherit your patterns.
Your fears.
Your unfinished business.

That’s why this work matters so much.

Not to be perfect. Not to “fix” yourself.
But to pause long enough to ask: Is this mine? Or am I about to hand it to them, too?

Because when you dare to meet your pain with honesty, your child gets something different...

They get a parent who chooses awareness over autopilot.
A home where emotions are felt, not feared.
A legacy that doesn’t pass on the hurt unexamined.

So no — we don’t have to be flawless.
But we do have to be brave.

Because the things we avoid...
They don’t vanish.
They just get handed down.

And our children deserve better than that.

They deserve us. Whole, aware, evolving.

One conscious choice at a time. ❤️

13/11/2025

In the 1950s, every kindergartener knew the ritual: crayons down, lights low, and the soft hum of a record spinning through the air.
Naptime wasn’t a break — it was part of learning.

Teachers dimmed the lights, tiptoed between mats, and whispered, “Close your eyes.”
Kids rested, dreamed, or just stared at sunbeams dancing on the ceiling — learning something we’ve since forgotten: that rest is part of growth.

Then came the tests.
The “readiness.”
The race to get ahead.
By the 1980s, naps were gone. The mats rolled up. The lights stayed on.

Today, five-year-olds spend more time in structured lessons than third-graders did in the 1950s — no pauses, no quiet, no chance to just be.
And we wonder why they’re anxious.

Maybe it’s time we remembered what our teachers once knew:
You don’t grow by running all the time.
You grow in the stillness too.
Even big kids need naptime sometimes.

13/10/2025

How we feel and the emotions we experience are a central part of our mental health. Conversely how we respond to emotions is critical for our health, mental and physical. While they can perplexing, stubborn, frustrating, annoying, frightening and downright depressing at times, emotions are a fundamental and necessary part of brain functioning. In fact, they are central to being human.

Unfortunately societal beliefs often tells us we shouldn’t have emotions or some emotions are bad. Telling your brain it shouldn’t have emotions is like telling your heart not to beat or your lungs not to breathe, and it doesn’t make your brain very happy.

Emotions don’t always feel nice and can make us want to run away from them. And like any avoidance, short term this seems to work, we feel relieved. But inside your brain is feeling pretty annoyed at trying to hold it all in.

How you respond to your emotions is important. Research shows suppressing, berating and shaming emotions doesn’t help us deal with them at all and just creates more stress and make emotions feel even more difficult.

Naming, validating, expressing and recognising emotions seems to help us process them and help us become friends with them, rather than them having power over us. It seems to soothe those emotions and instead of adding a layer of more stress and difficult feelings, helps us deal with the ones we have.

read more about the science of emotions and how we can help our emotions in my books
📕‘A Toolkit for your Emotions’.
📚 A toolkit for modern life
📖 A toolkit for happiness

03/10/2025

Your feelings don’t make you broken. 🌿✨
Grief means you loved. Anger means you cared. Fatigue means you tried.

These emotions are not flaws—they’re proof of your humanity. Proof that you’re alive. Proof that you’re still moving forward, even when it feels heavy. 💫

You are not broken—you are becoming.

29/09/2025

27/09/2025

Here’s the thing: apologies don’t need a but. The moment we add one, the weight shifts off our shoulders and back onto theirs. Instead of healing, it sounds like justification.

Does that mean we ignore the behaviour? No. But accountability and correction are not the same as an apology. One is about us, the other is about them. When we blur the two, the repair loses its power.

Apologising to a child doesn’t mean excusing what led up to the moment. It means owning the way we showed up. Later, when calm has returned, we can — and should — talk about their choices. But not as part of our apology.

Because what our children need to hear, without conditions or caveats, is this: your behaviour may not have been acceptable — but neither was mine. And for my part, I am sorry.

No buts. No shifting the blame.

Just the clear message that respect goes both ways, and that even when we lose our footing, we are willing to make it right. ❤️

Quote Credit: ❣️

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23/09/2025

Let's be parents who model accountability, growth, learning, and change for our children!