Live Accompanied
Healing Families Through Compassionate Connection
Our Mission
We're dedicated to empowering parents, caregivers, and mental health professionals with the tools and practices needed to boost the well-being of both ourselves and our loved ones.
Decades of child-development research and wisdom have taught us something profound about what children need from adults: to feel seen, safe, accepted, understood, and loved.
Accompanied begins with another question: What do adults need in order to offer that kind of presence to the people they love?
Parents and caregivers aren’t simply the delivery system for children’s well-being. They are human beings with nervous systems, histories, needs, and inner lives of their own. They, too, need opportunities to receive care, experience belonging, and strengthen their capacity for connection.
Accompanied exists to care for the people who care for others—so that care can continue to flow through families, relationships, and communities.
How We do it
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
“Pooh,” he whispered.
“Yes, Piglet?”
“Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw,
“I just wanted to be sure of you.”-
-AA Milne
Our approach integrates five elements:
Relational Mindfulness
We practice noticing our internal experience and receiving and extending care through mindfulness, imagery, attention to the body, and embodied awareness.
Science + Understanding
We make accessible what psychology, neuroscience, attachment, compassion science, and related fields teach us about stress, emotion, connection, and well-being.
Relational Skills
We practice concrete ways of responding to emotion, staying connected during difficulty, co-regulating, repairing, setting limits, and caring for others without abandoning ourselves.
Community + Belonging
We learn in relationship rather than alone. The group itself becomes a place to experience connection, shared humanity, and accompaniment.
Connection to Something Larger
We cultivate experiences of awe, beauty, nature, meaning, interdependence, spirituality, and wonder—reminders that none of us has to hold life entirely by ourselves.
Our Story
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
“Pooh,” he whispered.
“Yes, Piglet?”
“Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw,
“I just wanted to be sure of you.”-
-AA Milne
In 2015, while serving as the Director of Counseling and Learning Support for a middle and high school system, I was invited by an organization called Call to Care to bring my team on a retreat. During this retreat, I met John Makransky, a Boston College professor in Religious Studies and the founder of Sustainable Compassion Meditation. John’s work with Sustainable Compassion Meditation profoundly impacted me, awakening a deep sense of abiding love and realizing I was loved. This experience went beyond my lifelong meditation practice, revealing the "me" underneath the stories and trauma.
Completely committed, I immediately enrolled in the yearlong training led by Makransky.
Eager to share this transformative work, I initiated a small practice group at my school after completing the training. Initially, the parents were strangers, but quickly they formed a tight bond. When the class was over they asked if we could continue meeting, everyone had found salve and comfort in being together, learning to deepen in care and compassion, and felt safe to show up authentically.
I began adding more classes. And they quickly filled. Clearly, there was a need I was filling.
Parents said things like:
"This has changed my life."
"I realize I’m not alone."
"I am finally able to open up."
Recognizing the magic of community, they urged me to make these classes available to a wider audience. Before expanding, I wanted to incorporate concrete skills for caregivers dealing with challenges in parenting. Around this time, I discovered Dr. Adele Lafrance and her emotion-focused family therapy (EFFT), which was the perfect addition to creating a genuinely useful program for parents.
Training a select group of parents from the original cohort as facilitators, we birthed what we then called "Parent Care" – a 10-week social-emotional curriculum that combines relational science, contemplative practices, and practical skills for caregivers all within the safety of community. This year, we have changed the name to Accompanied for Caregivers, but the heart and soul of our original curriculum are the same. In changing our name, we hope to widen our umbrella of services and the populations we serve in the future.
Collaborative Partners
Nahal
“I would recommend Accompanied to every parent interested in improving the relationship with their kids.”
Kiki