As I reflect on the past three months, I see this period as being a period of preparation and expectation for the CMM Institute. I see us as being in a position similar to the pulling back of a sling shot before it is launched, or the revving of a racecar before it takes off down the track, or the winding up of an arm getting ready to return a tennis ball on the court. We are gaining energy and anticipation as we get ready for what is next!

So, let me share with you some exciting things that are ‘next’ for us!

One of our projects that continues to hurdle on at full speed ahead is our CosmoParenting podcast. We have now completed 8 of our 12 months and themes! We are currently working our way through ‘Communities,’ which will culminate in our third ‘Relate’ episode, where we reflect on the relationship between the previous themes in the context of parenting—in this case, Structures, Power, and Communities. I am excited to be joined by Anokh Goodman, a previous conversation partner on Stories Lived. Stories Told. and champion of CMM in his context as a systemic therapist in the UK.

In further expansion of our CosmoActivities efforts, I was able to attend the Elevate! Educator Conference on behalf of CMMi this June. We were invited by keynote speaker, co-collaborator for CosmoParenting, enthusiastic user of CosmoTweenz and CosmoKidz, and gifted educator Stephanie Higgs. I had an amazing time meeting educators from all over Tennessee and beyond. I was able to share CosmoActivities with quite a large number of people that passed through over the course of three days, sharing links to our online resources and hosting a raffle for attendees to win box sets of our CosmoKidz and CosmoTweenz activities. As I see the reaction on teachers faces when I explained that everything is offered for free, it reaffirms how important that is. These teachers care so deeply about providing the best educational experience for their students, and they often spend their own money to make that happen.

August saw our return to hosting virtual events! We hosted the ‘Communication is Bioactive’ webinar featuring friend of the Institute, Dr. John Parrish-Sprowl. What a turn out! And what a generative conversation we had together! For those who missed the event, but want to join the conversation, we will be making the recording available to access for a small fee in the coming months, so you can keep an eye out here for when that goes live! This event was the first in our ‘Communication Creates’ Series of Webinars. Our next event will feature Barbara McKay and John Burnham on ‘Creating Magic Moments: Embodying Coordinated Management of Meaning as Practical Theory and a Theory for Practice.’ You can register here to join us at 1 pm EDT/ 6 pm BST on Tuesday, October 14, as Barbara and John will actively demonstrate how practitioners can use CMM as a conversational scaffold with therapeutic potential. Social workers, therapists, and systemic practitioners can extend their repertoire of skills to magnify and elevate ‘shy’ episodes in relationships into ‘bolder’ self stories with generative relational potential. We hope you will join us for this event and stay on the lookout for our next events as well! We hope to demonstrate the expansiveness of CMM through these events, so if you have an idea for a webinar topic, or have a specific field you would like to see CMM applied to, reach out to us!

We are also proud to announce the release of a new Intro to CMM video, which can be found here on YouTube or here on our Substack. Please use this video in your teaching of CMM and/ or pass it along to others who are curious about getting to know CMM! This video has been a labor of love for us, and represents just one way of talking about CMM. How do you talk about CMM? What is it about this theory and practice that got you ‘hooked’ in the first place? What do you see others resonate with? Let us know here.

Finally, the ultimate preparation of the past three months has been leading us toward an exciting opportunity this October! The CMM Institute and I will be heavily involved at this year’s Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD14) Conference throughout the month of October! Below are all the ways you can interact with us: