Renee Trudeau | MomsRising

Renée Peterson Trudeau is an internationally recognized life balance coach, speaker, and author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, US News and World Report, Good Housekeeping, AARP and more. She is the author of the award-winning The Mother's Guide to Self-Renewal: How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate and Re-Balance Your Life and Nurturing the Soul of Your Family: 10 Ways to Reconnect and Find Peace in Everyday Life. Thousands of women around the globe are participating in self-renewal groups for women based on her award-winning self-care curriculum. Renée lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and 13 year-old son. www.reneetrudeau.com

Upcoming Events/Retreats:

New Way of Being: Women's Self-Renewal Retreat on April 29th at Mckinney Roughs Nature Park, Austin, TX. More details here: http://reneetrudeau.com/new-way-of-being-spring-2016
New Way of Being: Women's Self-Renewal Retreat on July 15-17 at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, Lenox, MA. More details here: http://reneetrudeau.com/july-15-17-2016-a-new-way-of-being-womens-self-r...
New Way of Being: Women's Self-Renewal Retreat on October 28-30 at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, Lenox, MA. More details here: http://reneetrudeau.com/oct-28-30-new-way-womens-self-renewal-retreat-page

Blog Post List

January 3, 2017

Recently I returned home from an amazing women’s retreat (an early birthday present!) feeling euphoric and transformed. My husband and son picked me up from the airport. My teen had just returned from a late-night sleepover so my expectations for the evening were low: a quick bite out at our favorite pizza spot and then, hopefully, some time together catching up on the couch. But our night began to take a different course. My 14 year-old was feeling argumentative and I could tell every word out of my mouth was annoying him. I watched as he slid into his recent pattern of constant negative...

MomsRising Together

December 20, 2016

This Wednesday the 21st marks the winter solstice, the longest night of the year and the first day of winter. The solstice is significant on many levels, but for me, it always signifies an invitation to honor and embrace the time of year when nature calls us to go inward. We live in a culture that is perpetually in motion. We’re constantly responding to events, trends and tides that pull us outside of ourselves and into a sea of 24/7 busy-ness. But if we slow down enough to take time to connect with our natural rhythms, we’ll feel a strong tug this time of year to rest and reflect, renew and...

MomsRising Together

December 13, 2016

Maya, my client, is wading through some swampy waters with a nonprofit she’s invested a huge amount of time, energy and money in. Active on the board for more than 12 years, she can clearly see all the challenges that the group is facing and it’s easy to come up with a list of all the things that are not working. While discerning what’s “broken” can be critical to moving towards a solution and helping a nonprofit evolve, there comes a time where you have to stop the complaining and get clear on who and what you want to become. If you’re not mindful, you’ll just keep stewing in the same pot of...

MomsRising Together

December 6, 2016

When my mother died in 2000, the quote my siblings and I chose for the front of her celebration of life program was, “The fruit of love is service–which is compassion in action.” Mother Teresa My mom’s ability to feel empathy, acceptance and deep compassion for those who suffered–particularly her patients–was deeply moving. One time when I was around twelve, I remember riding with my mom on a Saturday morning to visit an elderly man who was dying; we drove an hour to reach his rural home. A nursing consultant, she was “off the clock” but she wanted to see if there was anything she could do to...

MomsRising Together

November 29, 2016

My family and I just returned from a whirlwind vacation in California. I loved stepping out of my daily routine and eating new foods, sleeping in new places and exploring new locales. But when I arrived back home this weekend, I felt a visceral pull to return to my favorite morning practices. Why? Because as a self-care devotee for the last 17 years, I’ve learned that how I “enter” the day is how I “do” the day. Do you flop, race or ease into your day? If we make wise choices, this morning time can set the course for how creative, positive, productive and happy we are in the hours to follow...

MomsRising Together

November 15, 2016

Does the thought of hanging lights and attending holiday work parties make you want to grab your sleeping bag and run for the nearest cave? This year–and especially this month–have been intense for all of us. Additionally, most of us have felt over-scheduled, overworked and unable to unplug. We navigated big career, life and political transitions—and we’ve had little time to integrate these changes. Frankly, we’re exhausted. We’re ready for rest. Not a relaxed evening by the fire, but a serious stretch of lazy days, long naps, walks in the woods, deep nourishing slumber and joyful, easy,...

MomsRising Together

November 2, 2016

I’ve been traveling and speaking a lot over the past six weeks about stress management. As I move through airports, workshops, community centers, companies and gathering places I’ve noticed a buzzy, low-grade anxiety and palpable stress in the air. No doubt you’ve been feeling it, too. Before you claim all the credit ( and think you’re just stewing in your own election-induced malaise ), consider that you may be tapping into what the Swiss-born founder of analytical psychology Carl Jung calls “the collective unconscious.” We are all swimming in the same ocean and are more interconnected than...

MomsRising Together

November 1, 2016

I’ve been leading women’s retreats for 25 years and every single time I’m humbled and amazed by how much I learn and am reminded of by the beautiful women who show up in our circle. (Read why I lead retreats. ) This past weekend I was at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health —one of my favorite retreat centers and the largest of its kind in North America-where I supported a large group of women from around the world in exploring new ways of being and learning the art/science of self-care. Every time I enter our magical retreat space, I try to always stay open to seeing and hearing things in...

MomsRising Together

October 25, 2016

Have you ever experienced a time when you were wronged or mistreated and didn’t stand up for yourself? In my late twenties I worked at a large international biotech company as a communications specialist. My counterparts in our Paris office were impressed with my work and invited me to come work side by side for a year in their European offices sharing US best practices. I was elated! My excitement around this opportunity kept building until I accidentally picked up a transmission off our office fax machine. My boss–for no good reason–had “turned down” the opportunity for me even though the...

MomsRising Together

October 11, 2016

“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” ― Eckhart Tolle , A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose A few years ago I got really tired of juggling and always trying to anticipate/manage the endless details of my life, family and business. I knew there had to be another way so I decided to explore this theme via a telecourse with other men and women who also wanted to live more “in the flow of life.” Through this journey, I unearthed my deepest desire : to feel more trusting, free and relaxed. And to hone the ability to just…let …go. So...

MomsRising Together

October 4, 2016

Last week I was visiting with my brother, a management consultant. He just started a new position based in another state, he has a toddler and a blended family, he travels for work and he’s working in an uber-fast-paced industry. We talked about his struggle to find balance and I suggested he play with a concept my good friend Gail Allen calls incremental self-care. When I was in my 30’s and working in a stressful corporate job with long hours, I would attempt to make it to Town Lake for a walk, to the yoga studio for a class or to my meditation cushion for a 20 minute sit– but then usually “...

MomsRising Together

September 27, 2016

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but your thoughts about it.” ― Eckhart Tolle , A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose Last week my teen son and I were getting along smashingly. He was affectionate, appreciative, communicative and practicing good self-care. But knowing what a roller coaster ride it can be to parent a 9th grade boy, I kept hearing another voice say, “Yeah, this is great, but can you be just as happy when he’s treating you like crap?” I grew up in a sea of emotional enmeshment. I remember often thinking on the ride home from high school, “I...

MomsRising Together

September 20, 2016

When I was thirty and working as a media relations director, my therapist — a wise soul who coached me on stress management and how to understand the connection between my thoughts and my mood- – stopped me dead in my tracks one day with the words, “Beware of a sense of urgency.” My initial response was to think she just didn’t understand how fast-paced my life and communications career were. But over the course of our relationship, she helped me to understand that 90% of the time I was creating a false sense of urgency based on unrealistic expectations or unfounded assumptions I had...

MomsRising Together

September 13, 2016

This week I’m observing my 14 year-old ninth grader attempt to navigate increased academic, sports, extracurricular and social demands (and doing all I can to stay hands-off) , and I’m reminded of a time in my late twenties when the idea of life balance was completely foreign to me. I was working as a public relations manager at a large biotech company. My typical day started with a Dr. Pepper and a steady stream of endless news stories, lunch at my desk (or not at all), followed by long hours at the office, next to no physical movement and a constant feeling of rushing from one thing to the...

MomsRising Together

September 6, 2016

I was visiting with a dear friend this past weekend who shared she’s battling depression. “It comes and it goes. But when it returns, I often freeze and forget what helps me most; all my great self-care practices fly right out the window,” she said. I could relate. Recently I had a bomb dropped on me that sent me reeling into a vortex of anger and betrayal. And while I teach, practice and evangelize about the practice of self-care, for the first 24 hours after this incident, I was paralyzed. Everything I knew about taking sweet care of myself was off sunning on a remote island. Can you relate...

MomsRising Together

August 30, 2016

This weekend I was on the massage table when out of the blue my therapist asked, “What do you do to heal when someone close to you dies?” I thought for a moment–having experienced a lot of loss in my family–and answered, “I do yoga.” I have found conscious movement and breathing–experienced through practices like yoga, qi gong and Nia–have had a profound effect on my emotional well-being and have helped me to feel to heal (read more ), more than anything else. I was raised by yogis and introduced to yoga (ok, forced to do this!) at age 10. For years in my mid-late twenties I did yoga once a...

MomsRising Together

August 23, 2016

It’s 1976. I’m in fifth grade and standing by our front door with my red plaid backpack. My eyes scanning, I watch my four younger brothers dart from room to room. My stomach is in knots. It’s 7:45 a.m. We should have left fifteen minutes ago. Lunches are half-made, my brothers are shooting slingshots and my mom — never a morning person — is admonishing my dad, our morning chauffeur, about forgetting to pay a bill. Our orange VW van pulls up late to the Montessori school and my siblings and I tumble out, rattled. We scatter to our classrooms. I look back for a minute and see my dad hunched...

MomsRising Together

August 16, 2016

Recently while facilitating a women’s retreat at Esalen , I shared my definition of self-care with the group: the art of attuning and responding to your needs and desires moment to moment. And then I asked the circle, “ Do you feel safe with yourself?” The room grew silent … only one person raised her hand, nodding her head tentatively. Most of the women said that almost every day in big and small ways–whether it’s eating when they’re not hungry, packing their schedules too full with activities or staying in a relationship that ended years ago– they abandon themselves. They squelch that still...

MomsRising Together

August 9, 2016

“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.” – Lao Tzu For the last six months, I’ve been hard at work on a new community service initiative focused on supporting parents of teens. I was deeply inspired to create this program based on perceived need, but in doing the legwork to prepare for our fall events–things just weren’t flowing. I wasn’t getting the support or resources I needed and I was...

MomsRising Together

August 2, 2016

“We are not held back by the love we didn’t receive in the past, but by the love we’re not extending in the present.” ― Marianne Williamson I recently spoke at a girls empowerment conference to a group of three hundred ten to thirteen-year-olds. As I was waiting to go on stage, I overheard a small group of four young girls talking about their day. One of them was really on fire after learning about civil engineering, and she was inspired to share her career dreams with the others. I could see her face quickly shift from a state of open excitement and joy to one of embarrassment and withdrawal...

MomsRising Together