Paris, Nov. 13, 2004


Dear Friends and Clients:

In late summer, I spent a few weeks in Bamberg, Germany (in Bavaria), visiting my friend Maria, with whom I traveled in the summer of 1998. I hadn't seen Maria in four years and by now she had a little one named Theresa Sarah.

This was my first experience of getting to know an actual little kid (as an adult).

Well, I was floored.

I could not believe the intensity of her awareness, I wanted to understand all those sounds she was making, and I have never, ever felt a love so protective and embracing come from me toward anyone.

During the three weeks I was there, Theresa was nine months old; she had just learned how to stand up, and was in the phase where she would try to eat the coffee table. Watching her go crawling across the floor at full speed was, I don't have the word, cosmic. She would kind of breathe in rhythm to the crawling, vocalizing her enthusiasm. So this is what a little kid is! What a fragile little powerhouse.

Her eyes were pure love and curiosity.

Maria had a lot of questions about being a mom. She kept running them past me. Various psychological questions, stuff about her relationship with the dad, stuff about nursing, and questions about all the astrology charts involved. I spent a lot of time with everyone's charts, actually, and this seemed to be quite valuable information as it was coming into the space.

After having these discussions day after day for three weeks, it occurred to me that we might not be the only ones having them. And having decent information or a good working theory seemed so relevant to Theresa's life.

That's where the idea for Planet Waves Parenting came from. I've been mentioning this new newsletter project for a couple of months, warming up the territory as the saying goes, and now we have some tangible information for you, in the form of a letter explaining the project, and an invitation to pre-subscribe. That's at the link below.

Planet Waves Parenting will be a monthly Planet Waves newsletter that offers a hybrid of journalism on important parenting subjects, and articles about astrology of family, kid's charts, relationships, and the changes involved in growing up. It will take a little practice to establish the balance between the astrological and the non-astrological -- though I think we're going to lean toward the spiritual side of things. For example, yesterday I had the idea for an article on interpreting the dreams of small children as a tool for figuring out what's going on with them.

However, we have plenty of non-astrological plans, as you'll read. I have taken an interest in responsible babysitting, for example, and my friend Karen Pardini, a midwife and midwifery teacher in New York (as well as an EMT teacher and paramedic in training) has developed a database on how to train babysitters, all of which I can share with you.

Train babysitters? Gee, Karen that is brilliant. Were I going to leave my child with someone, I would want to know they knew exactly what to do in the event of a small or large situation. Karen sent along the whole Power-Point presentation and said, "Go for it."

Then there are the really big questions: what's the best way to help kids through these rather scary times we're living in? What are their concerns? How can we best meet their needs?

As an astrologer who has focused mainly on family situations (I never planned this, it's just what developed in the course of a very surprising and very short decade) I have quite a few findings to offer. Discoveries about family patterns; information about situations where there are two sets of caregivers (such as adoption); and how to read a child's chart from an advocacy standpoint and get a clear sense of what this child needs.

Like everything else at Planet Waves, the new PWP project is a publishing experiment and proposed adventure. We're going to take the lead of our subscribers whenever possible. Some of it will be written by a small team of freelance writers I've been recruiting the past few months, though I will be the editorial director and give everything my seal of approval before it goes in. I will be guided in this process by the various elders and teachers who I keep around me, and by the good judgment of the my friends on the Planet Waves staff.

And I'll be doing all the astrology writing -- including the Cosmic Child Horoscope, the first horoscope I know of about how kids are affected by the planets.

The first edition comes out around Jan. 10, 2005.

If you would like to pre-subscribe, please give Chelsea a call after 9 a.m. Eastern Time at (877) 453-8265. Or just respond to this email -- and I'll get you signed up. Gift subscriptions will be available, with holiday cards. Just let us know that's what you want.

Existing Planet Waves subscribers can sign up at a nice discount, and you can pass this discount onto your friends and loved ones.

Here is the link:

http://PlanetWavesParenting.net/

Very truly yours,

/efc/

Eric Francis
11:11 am in Paris


P.S., the lead article of the first issue will be about Growing Up Now. I will be circulating a letter soon asking parents to ask their children a few questions about what it's like to be a kid today, and hear it in their own words. All we'll need is the quote, their age, gender, and locale. Thank you!