A New England Author Wrote a Mindfulness and Meditation Book For Kids

The cover of The Lemonade Hurricane. Image provided to bostonmagazine.com

For Licia Morelli, a practicing Buddhist, mindfulness and meditation are parts of daily life. For her 5- and 7-year-old kids, not so much.

“I knew from my own experience with my own kids that having them sit down and instructing them to sit still and pay attention to their breathing just doesn’t work,” Morelli says. “I think a lot of parents out there are tearing out their hair because they’re trying to instill these concepts in their kids, but there’s not a lot of great ways to teach it.”

Morelli, a Maine resident and professional psychic—she quips that she’s “the psychic to skeptics” and says the best compliment she ever received from a client is that she looks normal—wanted to change that. To do so, she teamed up with Massachusetts-based illustrator Jennifer Morris to write The Lemonade Hurricane, a book subtly teaching mindfulness and meditation for kids. The book is on sale now.

“I thought, ‘What if we had a story out there that was just a story about mindfulness and meditation, just something that parents could read to their children, and we could show kids in a non-didactic way?'” Morelli says. “It’s just a story with the after effects of being able to talk about it.”

The Lemonade Hurricane tells the story of two siblings: Emma, who is quiet and calm, and her energetic younger brother, Henry. Throughout the story, Emma teaches Henry how to be still and aware of his surroundings—a simple message that Morelli says instills important values in kids.

“I feel like when I was growing up, we had a lot more time for spaciousness. Now I think kids’ lives are a lot busier,” she says. “I think it’s important, at young ages, to show children that it’s important to pay attention to one moment rather than what’s next.”

It’s a goal that Morelli says she also tries to teach her adult psychic clients, emphasizing intuition and awareness through daily meditation and mindfulness.

“My whole goal is to help people access their own intuition,” she says. “If I had been taught this aspect of allowing space in my life early on, I would have been able to access my intuitiveness and ideas and I would have trusted them a lot earlier.”