Dear friends,

Something very exciting has been brewing here since January, and I’m finally ready to tell you all about it...

I sent The Daily Groove emails regularly for more than a decade, offering advice for parents since my youngest child was only 5 years old. This year she turned 18, which means that my partner Beth and I “graduated” from parenting: both of our “kids” are now legally adults.

That impending graduation was one of several factors in my decision to pause the Daily Groove emails at the end of 2018. I knew that something NEW was waiting to come through, and I needed to create space for it. At the time I thought this process would take a couple of weeks, but it kept shifting and deepening, and weeks turned into months...

The Good News:  I’m back, more inspired than ever, and clear that the underlying purpose of The Daily Groove — promoting partnership principles and practices — is alive and well. I won’t be sending the regular email “grooves” anymore, but the archives will remain online, freely accessible to read and share.

The Even-Better News:  Beth is joining me as a collaborator on a new project to share these principles and practices with everyone! Who better to partner with in a project about partnership than one’s own life partner! :) We’ve been learning and practicing together for 30 years. ♥♥♥

Beth and I met in our 20s, through our shared love of a cappella singing, and when we married four years later, we had the word “Harmony” engraved in our wedding rings. To us, musical harmony embodies the essence of partnership — not only in couples and families, but also in friendships, education, work, community, and beyond — all the way up to the global level.

Our parenting journey reinforced our belief that humans are not merely “social animals,” but that we also have the capacity to create profound social harmony, beginning with ourselves and our most enduring relationships (partners, children, close friends and family of origin) and expanding from there.

At the same time, social dis-harmony — incivility, polarization, alienation — is on the rise, rooted in dysfunctional social institutions and amplified by new technologies. People are beginning to realize that a new kind of “social intelligence” is required to thrive in the 21st century.

Beth and I see this emerging contrast as an opportunity to take what we’ve learned about creating harmony in the family context and distill it into a set of skills that can elevate the social intelligence of any relationship or group. For parents, we see this skill set as the crucial missing piece in the quest for community — the elusive “village” it takes to raise a child.

When our kids were little, we tried to create an intentional community around our partnership parenting values. It didn’t fly, but now we understand what it will take for the next generation of parents to succeed.

And as I said, our new project is not just about parenting, it’s about learning how to cultivate harmony in all your relationships and communities. We’re calling it...

A cafe is a warm and inviting place where people go when they want to connect in real life. We’d love to open a real cafe, but for now it’s just a metaphor. Our new website will offer a variety of resources for growth-oriented people who want more harmony and connection in their lives.

We’ll be creating educational videos, facilitating online courses, and organizing live events — always encouraging people to go offline and get together, face to face, to practice and enjoy the art of living in harmony.

We’re also assembling a global community of people who, like us, feel called to serve humanity by helping others develop social harmony skills. The world is facing major challenges that will require unprecedented levels of cooperation to solve, and we intend to be a part of the solution.

In the coming weeks we’ll launch the website, www.harmony.cafe, plus a YouTube channel and our first interactive offering: the Harmony In Partnership course.

Today we’re inviting you to get on the Harmony Cafe mailing list:

Much of the above sounds quite serious, but let me assure you that Beth and I are 100% committed to having FUN on this journey...

We think you’ll love our playful approach! Subscribe and you’ll find out. :)

In Harmony...

~Scott