Hey there. I am trying on substack for size and will be sharing most of my writing over in that space for the time being. I have been needing to reorganize myself for a while and this feels like I reasonable option. So, this space will be quiet for the time being. Please do stay connected with me via my newsletter and substack.
xxx,meg
One potential way to deconstruct childhood and generational trauma is to get very close up to how the damage was done. Recreate the scene and then shift the script. I think that is what Chris and Eider are doing as they walk this high school lacrosse path together. The intersection of passion and expectation is full of pitfalls and leg traps; near-constant vigilance is a requirement. Chris must consider each move before he acts, assess the value as it relates to the service and the aim.
What is the big picture? What is the intended outcome? Beyond a capable and inspired athlete. How is this practice serving his humanity and the path of practice and purpose of the man he will become?
We have a family value placed on learning, on practice, on studentship, on mentorship, on teaching and coaching. We understand the implications of both the successes as well as the failures in these domains. We have seen a few things. And have tested some beliefs and ideals.
One requirement, that we are seeing get stronger in our son every day, is baseline humility. The ability to receive and then integrate feedback is essential. This is not to say Eider is not a cocky little 15-year-old, he most certainly is. But he has the capacity to turn it off and humble himself to the resource of the person with more experience as appropriate and as needed.
Even so, grief and joy are like conjoined twins; pull too hard and the whole thing tightens or unravels, the beginning of one and the end of the other become too indistinct. I understand that these are the motifs most of us have to work with over the course of things. My big prayer here is that this experience is healing for Chris and clear for Eider; that our kid is growing and developing in ways that do not include him carrying the weight of his father’s wounds.
So far so good I think, but I am skeptical of our ability to really know in these efforts. I do not think sports are the be all end all way to make a good person but I wholeheartedly believe in practice. Much of what eider is applying here he’s learned from music education and independence in learning via his approach to home education. He knows that practice makes progress and that the way you show up to challenge and adversity teaches so much about who you are. I am so into the intentionality and collaboration of all of this. The best work. And a joy and honor to witness.
Seems to me there are lots of reasons to visit old places and friends. And also just as many or more reasons to avoid ever doing it. I think I am watching everyone, including myself, make some of these choices, with all distinct and specific motivation, or for no real reason at all. Life is funny and strange and as oddly predictable as it is unpredictable.
Maple and I had been throwing around the idea of a big road trip back to Wisconsin and the small towns we lived in for a number of years. But it just felt too big. Too far. Too many complex feelings to wade through. But the clock worked her magic on us and we went from having all of the time in the world to only one more spring with our girl home and if we didn’t make the journey now, who knows when the window would present itself again.
Chris couldn’t come. Work and animals. And I do not think he feels the pull in the same way. It is more faint for him, a distant hum. Eider thought he might but then staying with dad and all of those sweet lacrosse drills in the afternoon held bigger appeal. Even though I miss him mightily, especially when we were in Mount Horeb, where he was some sort of kid king of the neighborhood hooligans. Freddy would come cuz where I go he goes and I also I want so badly for him to feel a sense of belonging in these places where we lived without him. I want him to feel his place in the big fabric that weaves together our family story.
Maple was the impetus. She had a pull and there was never any doubt that this journey was most certainly for her. I think it makes sense. She is standing on the edge of her big launch and the desire to retrace the path that led her to this point seems like the most natural longing in the world. She wanted to see the faces of her first friends, wander the streets that she memorized before all others, and feel herself both little and grown all at once. So we brought her to her first home. And her second.
Mount Horeb is a far easier visit. Less complicated. Not too loaded. We loved living there but we were never meant to stay. Visiting with our favortie people and places there is so enjoyable and we all jump right in like no time has passed. Viroqua is not this way. It is complicated and has all the feels of something more subterranean. We have to be willing to dig a little. It is strange to visit the place that I thought I would stay forever. And when I didn’t live some place where I felt the same, the visit is a dark trigger. Murky and muddled and mixed up.
But now we do, or I do at any rate- live in a place I whole heartedly want to live- and that same complexity is not with me this trip.
We are staying with one of my oldest friends here. A part time witch who always has something casually occult for us to run our fingers through. This morning in was runes. Maple drew one first and would you believe she pulled the Journey rune? Everything leading up to this particular pilgrimage and all of the significance of what is to follow emblazoned on one small mark, on one small stone. Of course she did. She is on track with herself more deeply than I can have any sense of. She knew she needed to come here, connect with these distant parts of her histroy and shed what she needs to shed in preparation for her first big solo act. It is all so perfectly clear.
I drew the partnership rune which seems like it may have been my only option. It had to be. The symmetry of the space I hold and occupy and serve in direct relationship to my spouse and to myself is the central context, the mood that underlies all else. Everything has been leading me here and I think loving and being loved by Chris was always my path to the divine. I have no idea how something so magnificient was built out of all that raw material we started out with, but the privilege to continue to choose to walk along him and share our work in the world is the heart of everything that matters most to me. It is the essential, uncondtional grace of my life.
This morning he took himself into the ER. Over 1000 miles from where I sit. He was uneasy with some chest pain and aware of his medication’s particular side effects. They are running all of the tests and looking deep and monitoring him. It sounds like he is fine, but scared, but second guessing the messages his body tells him because he has learned he has to. That is the tricky game of cancer. Do you know or don’t you? Is this real or is your mind taking you for a spin? He is ok. He is headed back home. And I am sitting on this hillside in my old hometown watching my child who never lived here bounce on my oldest friend’s trampoline. The one she got for her grandkids. Maple is at her shop on Main Street up to her elbows in vintage and happy as a clam to be fed as much canned fish as she can stomach by her first auntie/mentor/substitute mother. Life is strange and continues to reveal and reveal and reveal all of these parts and how they had to break apart and grow back together and it was all always supposed to be just like this no matter how good it feels or how much it hurts. What a perfect journey.
my little play and joy teacher.
On Sunday, we took advantage of the warmth and the sunshine; Freddy dressed as a little blue elf with his shiny new harmonica stuffed in his pocket; and headed to a local playground for the first time since the fall. He was thrilled. Especially when he saw how many other folks had the same idea. He ran around that whole big park stopping in front of every cluster of people to play them a little ditty. Loud and clear. He told me later with pride that a few folks clapped for him. I am trying to channel his bravado, his uncompromising courage, into every pocket of myself these days. I want to be that undefended, that open, that confident in the Grace of my actions.
The following night Chris and I took Eider into the local Emergency Room after he had passed out and then fell backward down the stairs. He was lightheaded and woozy after a 24-hour stomach bug and we just couldn’t get a sense of the extent of it as we hovered and peered into his face in the moments following. Was he just shakey or was he having a seizure? Hard to say and I think Chris and I are now of a mind that it is always better to go to the ER and find out it is nothing than to have it be something and wish we had gone in. We try not to second guess our fear anymore.
And holy hell were we both well and truly afraid. Eider is such a steady eddy, a solid and stable force in our sphere, and this sort of out-of-the-norm presentation is unnerving. He is also incredibly difficult for me to read because he is such a consummate empath and caretaker. He always sidelines his response as he tries to feel out what others need. He wants to be no fuss. He wants to be the easy one. Cuz he kinda is.
When we got there, 10:30 on a Monday night, the folks on were reassuringly thorough in their examination of him. They did an EKG and then monitored his heart rate for several hours. They gave him an IV with some anti-nausea medicine in the mix and he rested and recovered until we were sent home in the wee hours. Chris and I did our best to simultaneously self-soothe and model self-soothing to our son. I think we did ok. Pretty good but with infinite room for improvement.
We have been in much deeper consideration since the onset of Chris’ illness of the ways in which we regulate our nervous systems especially when the scary shit is happening. How do we practice being with what is while also tending our human bodies? There is a fine line between a dissociated neutrality and a conscientious calm presence and I am trying to be honest and clear with where I am within that spectrum. It is pretty easy for me to separate and detach. But that is antithetical to my values and I am challenging myself to keep my core values of Love and Honesty and Respect front of mind. Especially when I am suffering, especially when my fear is activated.
This work of relationship, to self and one another, is central for our family, my parenting, and my partnering right now. I think I am living one of the most connected times of my life. I have never felt more anchored in gratitude and love. I have never felt more exposed and revealed. The work of my marriage is full of so much reward and I am steeped in a rich and connected love with my partner that it infuses all else. My love and respect for him, and his for me is the very ground we stand on. It is the context of everything. We live inside of this well-built, well-tended love. It is the essential nourishing force that we offer our children. It was here and this was ours well before cancer moved in. But cancer has perhaps strengthened my awareness and devotion toward nurturing this context.
Sometimes I try to put myself in our kids’ shoes and imagine what it would be like to have a strong home with two parents who love and respect each other so well. What might it feel like to live inside of that sort of security? How does it affect the ways they move through the world? Honestly, it is a mystery to me. To Chris as well. It is outside of our experience. I think that it must be good. Living inside the clarity of values. Their solidity and stability. I think it may give our children a sort of superpower that I know very little about but am enamored to observe in them.
When Maple and I were in New York City at Chris’s Aunt Lucy’s a week or so ago, she found this collection of letters that Chris’s grandfather had written to his grandmother during WW2, while he was stationed in the Pacific. Chris’s cousin Weezy is an archivist and she had put this incredible amount of correspondence together into a book. Maple devoured it while we were there. It is almost entirely Angelo’s letters to Twinkie, part updates and part love story. He was so articulate; clear and beautiful, expressive of both humor and vulnerability. It was clear, that despite whatever havoc time and circumstance wrought on their family, the foundation was a big L O V E. It was the context within which many lives were built.
I find some sweet comfort in that. I have begun to consider our relationships as part of the legacy we leave our family. Especially Maple and Eider and Wilfred, but it is bigger than the three of them. The work of trying to be a good person, to love well, to seek to improve in action as well as response, to stay awake to the growing and changing truth of being alive in the world; this is where my life is firmly seated. It is my incredible good fortune to receive the gift of this life, these people, this place. I am so thankful for each additional day I get to practice here. For each moment in which I get to try again.
Chris and I went to a movie last night, the first I have been to in years. I checked in with Moo when we got back to see how putting Freddy to bed went for her; she always has such cute little moments to share from their time together. He was quite tired and so ready for sleep that he cut her off from reading and told her that he didn’t need to snuggle and that she could go to sleep in her own bed. What a goof. After that, we checked in about today and what was on the agenda in terms of family logistics. I reminded her that I had a mammogram in the morning and would be driving them to school cuz we needed both cars. She was like “ok mom but I really need your mammo to be uneventful, I do not have the bandwidth for more.” She’s not alone but damn if that is just not how life works.
I crawled into bed and shared what she had said with Chrissy and he concurred. Like yep yep meg’s health needs to stick to the AOK please for now. We are all doing so well right now, most days it seems like we’ve turned a corner and have moved out of the acute difficulty phase, and yet we are also at capacity. I think we all are, but maybe especially Maple and Chris. The boys and I might have a little spare room for some bullshit but the two of them are at a max and I would love not to see them adjust to take on more. No thank you.
After more than a month of dragging my feet and intermittently ranting about the broken healthcare system, I finally made a GoFundMe for Chris’s recovery and uncovered medical expenses. Chris fought like crazy for us to have incredible health care through his employer after years of bouncing around between Medicaid and the Marketplace, all while making miserable financial choices to make sure our family was covered to at least some degree. I am so thankful for the plan we have now and even so, it is incomplete. It took me seeing a GoFundMe set up for the husband of an ER doc’s cancer treatment for it to fully sink in that it really is a meta-problem, and unfortunately in our country healthcare is a for-profit system and the only way we have devised to cover the rest is through crowdfunding. Like that is the plan, the expectation now for most of us.
I like to joke that our fundraiser is called the “Sending Cancer to College Fund” because we are so focused right now on figuring out how the heck to pay for college for moo next year. We only started saving for college for our kids a little over four years ago, it seems plain to me that if we weren’t saving for that, we probably were not saving for cancer either. When I shared this hilarity with Maple she was like “well, is anyone actually saving for cancer?” To which I replied that indeed some folks are, however not many that I know, and instead of calling it their cancer savings account it is generally called saving for a “Rainy Day”. Which of course is an umbrella term for all of the sideways shit that is slated to befall all of us at unknown times and to varying degrees and so… ready or not.
I wish we had saved. For any or all of it. But I also forgive us for the impossibility of that as we have moved through life. We made the choices that felt well suited to what we were working with at all points in time leading to here. More guidance would have been cool but I cannot really lament that at this point. Hindsight is a real bitch and so I prefer to leave her alone when I am able.
Mostly, today, I am profoundly humbled by the donations that we have received from so many people. Truly. I am speechless. Rendered. People from every corner, every chapter of our lives are adding their names to the list of donors and I am so grateful and awestruck. I hope in equal measure that each of you never need it and also that I can reciprocate in kind. This process is so much more emotional than I anticipated and I am incredibly moved by the kindness, generosity, and sheer beauty of the human capacity for care and empathy and love. It all feels so infinite to me and I can only hope that I am able to keep that awareness close even in the moments when life’s delicacy is not so bright in my mind.
The other big life event in our world currently is supporting Maple as she decides where she will be heading off to for school next year. It is so big. So momentous. Witnessing her process has been lovely and revealing and I am outrageously proud of the path that she is allowing life to co-create with her. I find it hard raising kids, and especially teens, without seeing the map of my own youth in comparison and contrast to the moments and milestones as they arise for my kids. I was steered so far away from my passions and talents as a young person and it was hard to know who I was for a long time. I think I was in my thirties before I began to feel like me. Somewhere along the line, I learned that what I wanted to do wasn’t good or wasn’t right and I spent so much of my young adulthood in direct relationship with self-doubt and a pervasive sense of inadequacy.
This is a much bigger thread to pull on and maybe I will do so at some point. For now, what I have a stronger mind to convey is the privilege of watching our daughter grapple with her ability and her talent and the various pathways that present themselves in response to these distinct, sometimes but not always, overlapping parts of herself. She has had to get very clear, ya know? She is so brilliant. A capable academic. And she is also an artist. Through and through. She is constantly creating and making and has an inner world that is full of inspiration and possibility. So, yes, she will be going to art school. It wasn’t always clear but now it is and the relief that I think we all, but certainly she feels, in relationship to this knowing is real and big and profoundly palpable. We do not know which art school yet, but we will soon. She is getting close.
Ok. That is all for now. That and thank you thank you thank you. Gratitude gratitude gratitude. This life is stunningly beautiful and what a gift to know it and see it and feel it like this.
More soon. xxx,m
Maple took this candid picture of Chris this week at his Thursday blood draw. I love the open honesty of him here. So real. So revealed.
I am not sure how to pick up the pieces here. I have been avoiding this space, for specific and obvious, as well as non-specific more disordered, reasons for months. Well before Chris was diagnosed with Leukemia. It is tricky with a personal blog. Which is what this is, after all. A personal blog, with relatively few regular readers and a handful of random or intermittent ones. And while nothing that I share in this space is intended to reach anyone in specific, it is intended to be read. There is something about this circuitry that is essential to the function of this space as a creative outlet for me.
Cuz that is really what it is; a creative outlet. While avoiding this space I have been scratching the itch here and there with longer Instagram posts of prose and poems, my occasional newsletter, and then also the updates on Chris’ Caring Bridge and whatever way that helps me to feel some relief through the mechanical “words out” process of writing there. None of it has really been cutting it in terms of what I am looking to access within myself through writing, but it has been better than nothing.
I am a huge believer in the telling of personal experience and reflection as a means for authentic and vulnerable connection. How the specifics of personal stories tap into universal truths to which we can all see aspects of ourselves, or touch some truth inside of us for which we couldn’t find the words or the insight on our own. I am a big fan. It is foundational to how I move in the world, as a person, as a parent, as a partner, as a learner, and as a teacher. However, the intersection of personal and private is not always so easy to navigate and I have found myself stuck in space for many months now. Many of the things that are alive for me in my life now are coiled around the dynamics and the dysfunction of relationships for which airing too much, or the wrong thing, could be potentially injurious to a few here and there readers.
This is dicey and I don’t know how to deal with it so I have just stayed away. However, the problem with that is that writing in this personal yet public way is how I digest much of my experience and without it, I find the bits and pieces of various hurts fermenting in my belly in a way that keeps the pain leaking out into the rest of me at a steady drip. Better out than in is a motto that applies well to my relationship with feelings and writing, and yet, I am also interested in protecting myself.
I have spoken with many writers about the less-than-savory reality regarding the need to let certain players die before the writing that really needs to happen can happen. It is gross to even write down, but true nonetheless. How do we navigate that as creatives? How do we do no harm when our silence becomes injurious to ourselves? And yes, talking with a therapist is very helpful and I do and even still… this is my medium. The words, permanent and indelible, are my craft. So what then? I have always said that I am most interested in what abides, outlasting the flashy and transient in favor of the long game. Well, here we are meg. Here we are.
One of the unexpected parts of Chris getting sick that has come up for both of us is the way that family members have or have not shown up. There are some relationships that feel bolstered for which a healing has been ignited for us as well as for our kids. It is beautiful. The people for whom loving them is complex and frustrating but hot damn do they show up when we need them and in so doing teach us to hold the difficulty with more grace and understanding. And then there are those whom we haven’t heard from in years and years and years suddenly making an appearance, who have expressed zero interest in the incredible children we are raising or the lives we have been living. Their arrival now, when they are afraid that they may lose Chris without any resolution to whatever conflict they believe themselves to be suffering, reads only as selfish. That is for them, noot for us. Certainly not for Chris.
And then there are the ones who do not say a word. Close family whose silence only reveals the lack of care that we have felt, but tried to deny, our whole lives. Their indifference makes us question our own felt and lived experience of reality. Doubt our own internal compass, the one that we have meticulously built around our personal values, what holds meaning and worth and truth in these lives that we have been crafting together through two decades.
I grew up with a parent who discredited my reality, denied my feelings, told me time and time again that I was wrong, and that I was a liar. I grew up with zero safety inside of myself because I had no sense of what was real if I was not. I was the kid and young adult who could not express an opinion or a preference because I could not find any answers inside of myself. I lacked the confidence to believe that I could know myself. I was taught to reference everything externally. My adult life has been about deconstructing the myths of my childhood as well as creating healthy boundaries and the trust necessary to reparent those wounded parts of myself. And I have done a marvelous job. I really have. But this moment in my life, in our lives, as we consider our connections and our resiliency amid tragedy and trauma, has reopened some wounds and I am sitting in that discomfort now. With adult eyes and perspective but also with the hurt pieces of my younger meg’s heart.
It is so difficult, as a parent, to conceive of being ok with wounds of this kind living in my own children. Especially wounds of my own making. And to be clear I am by no means naive to the damage that I am undoubtedly responsible for in our kids. With more to come I am certain. However, I have never parented them with the notion that I am the immovable object around which they must bend. I am a work in progress here too. Growing and learning and changing as I go.
I think this may be where I leave it today. I am here and also, in a way, not here. But I am not, as I had considered for weeks, retiring this blog. Not yet anyway. I am working on myself. Always. With my humanity. With my grief. I am orienting around love and truth and trust and the messy imperfection of my life and its contents. I am continuing to place value on honest relationships over image or reputation, and I hope that in so doing, what shines through is the heart of a real woman.
This is the year she launches. Class of 2024. And I’m kinda shy to admit it, but in this moment, I feel more ready for this reality than I ever imagined I would. I know, I know, check in with me again come summer and it might be a different song I sing. But for now, I am here. Some of this readiness comes from knowing that Maple and I are on more solid footing in our relationship with one another than I had once imagined we could be. Most of it comes from simply knowing how ready she is. It is no surprise that I adore her to no end and I will miss her with every single scrap of my being. But I also feel confident in my ability to mother her well into her adulthood; into and through her flight from our nest.
I arrived at this ready place through the slow and methodical step by step sequence of the countless days and years spent observing the child in front of me and repeatedly efforting to repair my inumerable mistakes. I continue to earn her trust and her respect every day. It is the heart of my daily work as mom. I have learned that as her mother-as anyone’s mother-neither is given, and I have come to believe that our children owe us absolutely nothing. If I want to stay relevant and a function as a meaningful source of support in her life, I must continue to work on me and stay adaptive and flexible and above all honest and humble.
I am really up for this task. Maple woke me up to my life’s greatest devotion as her and her brothers’ unconditional love source. Over the course of her life thus far I have learned that none of that looks like what was shown to me in my own upbringing. I am not an immovable force. Loving my children wholly puts every part of me on the line, including and maybe most especially my outdated ideas of the function of a so called adult authority.
I am no such thing. I am a grown guide. Still moving on the path of my own becoming. Further along than my offspring perhaps but just as malleable and fallible as anyone else. I am a work in progress and I think in this way I continue to model to our children the persistent nature of growing into the best versions of ourselves. I am not a done deal. And as such it seems only fitting that the story now can be one in which we each get to grow into something new.
Maple’s departure has the opportunity for all of us to also depart and likewise arrive. Which is all of life really, isn’t it? Chapters, and seasons, and eras. The closing of doors doesn’t mean we leave everything behind each time we walk through a new threshold. There is so much we each carry with us. Often more than we wish and typically more than we need, but I think we get to choose a bit in that crossover too. My hope is that through a culture of personal and collective consideration, along with an earnest curiosity into the wonders of living and learning and loving, that we continue to walk along with one another, sometimes in near and sometimes in remote ways, for as long as the road can carry us.
I am so excited for her. And that eases some of my trepidation about not having her under my wing every day soon enough. This last year has taught me a thing or two about trust, a few chapters within the larger tome of letting go, and I am not so reluctant to break as I have been in the past. This breaking will be my next becoming. I mean, obviously, right?
I think it is so incredibly perfect and poetic that the last full year that we had all of our children in our home with us was also the last year in which I fed our children with my body in this lifetime. My physical body departed from the shores of ‘first home for children’ this past year and set a course out into the broader terrain of life’s path toward an inevitable dissolution. I am releasing myself into more of the matter of space, so I can move out into the world more, as they do. I will travel on breezes, over hillsides, through crowded cities, galleries, theaters, playing fields, across shorelines and out toward horizons.
So, for now, OK. It is ok. This was always the plan and we are living it. Just because we are here now, does not mean that we no longer see. Sending love.
Without much plan about it, I was working through sets at the gym on Tuesday and noticed myself reflecting on the past year. I have not ever been one for resolutions. My relationship with definitive goal setting in general is somewhat convoluted and ineffective. It is not so much my thing. I do, however, love losing myself in a mood of diffuse reflection. A little bit of looking back and looking forward. In general, I feel myself to be steady state in terms of my day-to-day living and what I am trying to accomplish and maintain, I’ve no big ambitions that I want to tackle anytime soon. I am primarily interested in holding the course through Maple’s last year home with us, making sure that we all feel supported and connected as we prepare for big familial change. So, I was a little surprised when I paused to take note of where I stand now versus where I was situated a year ago. The changes that have taken place in one year have turned out to be much larger and more significant than I ever set out to create for myself.
On Christmas Eve, it will be one year since I stopped drinking. It wasn’t the plan, it was just what wound up happening. Our whole family was so sick for so much of the fall of 2022, it was awful. Maple missed so much school that I received a letter regarding her absences from the truancy office. Over Thanksgiving, we were all down for the count with some retched cough that came along with a round of really gruesome pink eye. At Christmas, I had the flu and by New Year’s I had RSV. And by the time I was feeling somewhat myself, near the third week of the year, I figured I might as well make it a Dry January.
Ok and before I continue, here is the drinking and sobriety back story, which I know I have shared before at some point on the blog or somewhere but just to get up to speed and make sure the context is clear. I have never ever been a big drinker. Even when I was “drinking regularly” that would look like a glass of wine or a beer several nights a week. Covid of course saw an uptick in that, but it was one I tried to pay little attention to at the time. It felt like the least of my worries. Drinking at all has never felt great to me. It disrupted my sleep and left me feeling groggy and sluggish in the mornings. I was kind of lukewarm about it forever.
When I was freshly 30, just before getting pregnant with Eider, I remember going to some yoga event and staying with Christina and she wasn’t drinking at all at the time. I don’t think I was either but not on purpose. Just because that is how I often was through much of my 20s and 30s. She said that she had decided when she turned 40 to give herself the gift of not drinking for the year and I remember thinking at the time that that sounded so intriguing. The idea that it was a gift that she could give herself. It has stuck with me.
Often, over the years I found myself returning to that idea as something I would like to do, gift myself a whole year off of drinking. I am somewhat embarrassed to say that it was hard to go for it because of two primary factors: social structures and my husband. It is difficult to bow out of the most culturally enforced recreational pursuit that exists for adults in our country, which has been normalized for us since birth. It was even harder to shift away from something that was reinforced in my home as it held more value for my spouse than it did for me. Now I look at that and see all of the enmeshment and codependency there and I have a little bit of remorse but mostly just a lot of compassion around the fact that it can be very difficult to go it alone. So now is probably a good time to say that Chris hasn’t had anything to drink since last Christmas either. It was inadvertent for him too at the start. But then the changes that transpired for him when he let it go have been so significant and striking that it completely upended everything that he and I believed to be true about recreational consumption and societal norms.
It is a bummer to know that I needed him to stop in order for me to stop. However, his relationship was more nuanced than my own; he had all of the pleasure and none of the negative feelings tied up in it that I did. I grappled for years. Wanting not to drink but still feeling like I had to for some dumb reason. He just enjoyed drinking and perceived no significant implications. Until, of course, he stopped. And stopped for longer than 30 days. 30 days is fine. I think it is good to do for sure. But I also now think that you don’t get any of the deeper feedback around not consuming alcohol until after 90 days. Then the data really begins to land. At 90 days, my human organism began to feel fundamentally different. My cells reorganized. I was clear and steady and feeling good in ways that had felt outside of myself when I was still consuming from time to time.
Giving up alcohol was something that I had flirted with for years and years. Even with infrequent use, I find that it is a tangled web to unwind and I had my own difficulty and reluctance in doing so. Like I said at the start, the end for me was inadvertent. I had kind of thought that I would just go the year. I wasn’t committed to any grandiose moratorium on alcohol for life. And in many ways, I am still not. I think Chris is. Who knows. Life is long and uncertain. But I am not going to pick it up again in the foreseeable future. Of that I am certain. I like my life and the world without slowly poisoning myself. My attention has turned even more completely toward feeling good for as much of my life as possible. I want to live long and live well. I want to function to the best of my potential.
And so, the other piece that unfolded for me this year, also inadvertently and yet not at all accidentally, is that after years of wanting to get more organized around my strength training and conditioning, I finally did. I have loved lifting weights since the very first time I touched a barbell in a CrossFit class in 2016, but I had a growing sense that my desire to improve and build my fitness and ability was going to need a more organized structure than a group class can provide. So a few pivotal things landed exactly what I was looking for right in my lap. First was that I had been going to the local gym, Deep Roots Fitness, since May 2022 and found the community and support I had been craving in a health and wellness-oriented environment. Second, is that I began teaching yoga there in April of 2023 which opened up access to the gym for my personal use. And then third, one of my longtime students, turned friend, turned coach, began programming progressive strength training blocks for me at the end of July and I have been holding steady with them ever since. This regular strength training behavior has been transformational for all parts of me.
The whole thing feels like a lotta stars aligned vibes and I am just really pleased to find myself in this space at the close of the year. And honestly, I didn’t plan on getting here. I had no goals set around any of it. But I will tell you what I did have: a shitload of longing, a ton of candor, the ability and desire to talk about what works, along with a clear vision of the woman I want to be for myself, my family, and my community. I think what happened this year is that I began to live into a lot of my values and in so doing, some of the superfluous bits began to fall away. The question most days now is not what I should be doing or not doing, but how I want to feel and what choices I need to make to be in service to my desired feeling state.
So many lovely outcomes have arisen by virtue of that singular intention. My body and mind feel better than they ever have, I have more patience, I have more peace, I am having great sex with my husband regularly, and my communication feels better and more productive in the majority of my relationships. I am playful and creative and motivated. I feel a profound sense of gratitude throughout most of my day. I am enjoying my life and I am inspired by the opportunity to keep on living it.
So that is it. Some of the deeper recap of my year. And funny enough, I almost didn’t pause to take any note of it at all. It all seems like such a fundamental part of who I am today. It is incredible to reflect on where I was a year ago. I’m glad I took the time for it. Thanks for reading.
I am a slow learner. I am also stubborn. And forgetful. I learn and relearn lessons on repeat through the eras. So, when I am of a mind to make a statement such as the one that has been rolling around on the back of my tongue for the past few days it is very likely that I have made it, aka learned the lesson, a time or two before already. So it goes I suppose. This transient-minded life. Or perhaps it is just that everything is on a loop and I keep turning back and back and back each time, I can only hope, unearthing a deeper and more meaningful recognition of the lesson at hand.
So, here is what I know right now. Multiple days of yoga, in the hot room, surrounded sometimes by friends, sometimes not, with instruction delivered skillfully, is familiar in the most beautiful way. Like a language that every cell of my body speaks. It also has a progressive impact. The third day in the hot room was far better than the first, with more of me receptive to the ask. It was a lovely remembering for me, this mini immersion. The postures, supported by the wisdom of my breath, feel like light in my body. Expanding luminosity. Like all of the threads that make up the entirety of my physical self are all turned golden by the light of what animates the me that is most me.
Over the past year or so, probably much longer, I have been sitting with the bleak expanse of loneliness that yoga has become for me since my departure from regular teaching and practice in community. Covid offered this hopeful, albeit incomplete, respite from the loss. Renewed contact through all the zooms was a lifeline through a dark time, but was far too etheric to fill the space left in the absence of the physical pleasure of moving, breathing, and unfolding, bodies.
In an act of deep self-preservation I have turned to where the people are. In the strength spaces. I have moved away from the grace of the practice toward the push and pull of building muscles. I do not mean to imply that it is one or the other, a this or that thing. It is just that I have been untangling some longstanding beliefs regarding what yoga is capable of providing in terms of longevity and healthy function. I have been learning the value of progressive overloads and resistance training on my not getting any younger body. And also soaking in the clarity that these efforts have on my mental, emotional, hormonal wellbeing. If yoga makes me feel like Light, building strength makes me feel like Power. Dense with the fibers of my expanding strength.
Even though I am well-learned in the dance of both/and I find myself still so tempted to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I can think and process with some degree of nuance, and yet… there is a part of my mind that wants to discard my knowledge of the potency of practice. It would perhaps be easier. Save me from this lonely efforting. For the past 20 years, I have lived in places with no teacher proximal that I have wished to yoke myself to. I have traveled to study and traveled to practice. In both Viroqua and then later in Madison, I took it upon myself to make my practice all the way my own and also to train people to practice with me. Through classes, through mentorship, through regular group practice. I loved both the effort and what it yielded. It is still something that I feel such a mix of pride and gratitude around.
I haven’t wanted to make that same effort in Vermont. Even as I suffer the absence. It is sad and also is its own self-fulfilling prophecy. I am where I am for a reason after all. Maybe it is that mix of rural lifestyles and motherhood’s code switch, but each path I have begun to dig out in the direction of group practice has flopped in on itself. It is strange how mothering inside of a life of practice has an inherent loneliness. I think it is probably akin to motherhood in America in general. Outwardly exalted and revered and then abandoned and left out to dry in real-time. I have always held two communities, my mom one and my yoga one. What a loss that has always felt like. No mama mentors walking the path of practice before me, at least very few within my reach. Some of my students have become parents over the years and I love that so much. I strive to be there for them in ways I longed to have someone for me. Even if it is from a distance now.
Just yesterday morning in Wisconsin I took a gorgeous 60-minute class with a well-seasoned teacher and mother of four. We flew to each other like moths to a flame, magnetized by the depth of that shared, impossible to articulate, understanding of the dance that makes a mom a yogi and a yogi a mom. Those contacts do happen. As rare and hard to hold as they are.
And so, I do not give it up. I won’t. How could I? When I am on my mat, 90% of the time it is me slogging through a plan I laid for myself in a moment when I must have trusted my deeper knowing. But there is maybe 10%, probably way less, where I am on my mat and in my body and in my breath and I am sublime. I am inside the heart of my own awakening. Even as so much else has caught my attention, the truth of that is still just as crystal as ever. The practice of yoga alights a path of deep and fundamental recognition. It is not the only practice to do this by any means. But for me, it has perhaps always run the deepest. It does even still. And yet, I will forget this and remember it again, as long as there is life in my blood, most likely. I am so forgetful. Making loops back into myself. I still love yoga. It still tells me the story I most long to hear.
What follows is a description of my work, as it is right now, both for my own processing and truth telling and also for the sake of transparency in all things. I have been working very little as of late, not sure how best to use the time that I have and sort of spinning my wheels in terms of what is next for me. I am also trying to take a step back and see what structures are in place with some clarity. As most of y’all in this space know, I essentially work two gigs. Two gigs that pay that is. Ahem. Ah, mothering and educating…
Those two are Beautycounter, which is sales; and Yoga, which is mostly also sales with some breathing and stretching and shape shifting on the side. Yoga barely has a pulse for me these days and most certainly is something that asks me to give it near-constant mouth-to-mouth to keep it running. Beautycounter is something I give a little attention to a couple of hours a week, here and there when I feel like it. And yet, in the last 4 years, I have yet to get a paycheck under $500 any given month. In fact, eight days into this month I have already made $226 in commission not including anything I earn from what the rest of the people on my team have going. Granted, it is November and this will no doubt be my biggest month of the year and I intend to do my very best (focus, meg. F O C U S.) to make it big.
I think about this layout a lot because I said yes to Beautycounter on a whim and there have been many times over the course of the last 4.5 years that I wouldn’t have said yes again, if this gig weren’t already rolling. But good grief am I grateful, over and over, that I did and that I’ve gone ahead and poured energy into it when I have had it to give. Even sometimes when I haven’t had it too. And while I am not working it so much right now, I do go through seasons in which I do quite a lot and I continue to, month to month, see the fruits of that. It ebbs and flows no doubt. $500 a month is a far cry from what I have made many months and yet, it is nice to have that be more or less my do-nothing baseline.
Yoga, since moving to VT, has been a lonely pursuit for me and in the day-to-day is break-even at best. My most joyful moments teaching have been during the summer weeks in Islesford and in the small near-annual retreats. I do make more cash during these times but it is not without a massive output. Whereas Beautycounter is something I have worked while waiting for a kid’s activity to wrap up or when waiting in the car with a sleeping child. I have tucked it into my life, whether that is showing up on social media or messaging a new or existing client and building relationships of care and connection that in turn support me in the contributions I make to my family economy.
It is so interesting to me. And yes, I really do hope to teach more in person and I haven’t given up hope that something about the local yoga community will eventually click for me.
In the meantime and throughout I am so grateful for this other income, that ebbs and flows, but also stays relatively steady in my life. Anyhow, just a consideration. I know that the idea of direct sales can be confusing for folks at first. I get that, I really do. And yet, I also believe that most everything at the end of the day is sales of one sort or another and we might as well support each other and those we love as they endeavor to make ends meet. I didn’t really think this was for me, some days I am still disoriented to find myself here. But it is working and I am so relieved by that and also really believe that it isn’t unique to me, not by a long shot. It could be for anyone interested in sharing nice things with the people in their lives, who value honesty, integrity, and connection. And isn’t that almost everyone?
rest position feet in line, scroll in front that’s mighty fine. check your bridge cuz it should be, peeking out at you and me. now it’s time to take a bow, ichi ni and san is how.
When we were in the process of moving from Wisconsin to Vermont in 2019, one of my closest friends and a fellow home-ed parent, when reflecting on the plan for Maple to begin eighth grade in a public school in our new home, said something along the lines of “I bet once Eider begins school, and this little one is old enough, that they will go to school too. I can see you choosing not to home-school this third child.” I have thought about this small, innocuous comment so many times over the intervening years. I’ve sat with it. And in the beginning, I think I even really considered the possibility of that reality. But as time has unfolded, and in many ways as I have remembered myself at different ages and stages as a mama, I am more excited to have Freddy home with me through his early and middle education than I ever remember being with the bigs. This enthusiasm has only grown as I have witnessed both of my homeschooled kids thrive in their own big and magnificent ways in high school. It has been such a massive reward and boost for all of the years we endured not really having a sense of how we are doing- the plight of many a home educator.
The other piece that I keep reflecting on when I feel myself getting pumped to be Fredzo’s primary educator is that there are a sweet few things in my life that I have prepared myself for ahead of time. Almost everything has been me responding to a stimulus or jumping in when an idea is still in its hair-brained stage and far from hatched. I certainly haven’t come to much in this life with an established set of values and a whole lot of trial and error under my belt. I have such a good sense of things now. Especially having lived in Vermont as a home educator for three years before Eid began school. I have a lay of the land and a hologram of a possible map inside of my head that I feel so fortunate to live into with our littlest.
And no, we are not really starting on things yet. I am still on what I like to think of as my sabbatical. He is whole-heartedly enjoying his two big days at Forest Preschool and I just feel so grateful every day that we are able to give him this experience. I do not mess with any sort of “curriculum” plan for a 4-year-old. Indeed, I will try my darndest to keep that out of the equation for as long as possible, instead keeping an eye on enrichment and joy and learning how to learn.
Earlier this fall, Freddy began a weekly violin lesson. He has been interested for ages, witnessing his big brother practice his instrument since conception. I think that it must seem so regular to him. Having walked the road of musical education with Eider for the past decade, I have a sense of the path and the progression and so it has felt both natural and casual to take steps with Wilfred. Violin, and the Suzuki world in general, is something that we fell into in Madison, completely unplanned and unprepared. I had no idea what we were getting into and as is often the way it is the things that catch you by surprise that end up being absolute gold. Indeed it is the Suzuki community in Madison; the program, the teachers, the culture; that are the things I miss the very most about living there. In a lot of ways, my introduction to that pedagogy marks the beginning of my deeper understanding of myself as a yoga teacher and then later of home education and my approach in that space. I have learned more about practice and its development and implications through Eider’s musical education than I have anywhere else.
When we first walked into Eider’s teacher’s home studio what caught my eye immediately was a banner on her wall that read: Practice Makes Progress, a quote from Shinichi Suzuki. As obvious as it seems now, I had never heard practice referenced in that way and I was certainly intrigued. In the decade since I have found the roots to the truth of that conviction, in all of its straightforward simplicity, to have become so rich with meaning in my own life and in the lives of all my people. Especially Eider. Having grown up with lessons every single week of his life; for many years weekly group lessons and annual institutes and now weekly orchestra rehearsals; I have watched him apply what he knows to be true about practice to every single part of his life. For a while that looked like building mastery in Apex Legends, but in more recent years I have watched him apply his trust in practice to make progress to his love of history and especially as of late his passion for the sport of lacrosse. He knows what it takes to develop real skill at something. It takes practice.
In yoga, practice is often referenced as something that we become established in when it is done regularly, and with devotion, over a long period of time. That is the context. I have experienced the truth of that in my own life, indeed it is the framework for everything but perhaps that is either so obvious that it doesn’t bear mentioning or it is beside the point. But if you want to really witness this concept made manifest, watch someone, yourself or another, learn to play music.
When I was wavering in my commitment to getting Wilfred started on lessons because I was overwhelmed with scheduling and driving and the expense of it all, even though my kid was clearly signaling his readiness, it was Eider who emphasized the importance of this path for his brother. He helped me to hold the course even when I struggled to find any teachers in our area who would begin lessons with a kid under the age of six, knowing that beginning when they demonstrate interest is so crucial. Eider reminded me that it wasn’t about becoming a great musician but about all of the other things you learn and become along the way. It is the direct experience of learning to live a life of practice and how that becomes something inside of you that can be applied to almost everything you want to learn and do in life. As our old luthier said to me once: Suzuki doesn’t guarantee you build an amazing musician, but it sure does help you to grow an incredible human being.
So Freddy has started his own journey, with his tiny 1/10th violin. I am remembering so many bits and pieces here and there that I learned with his brother as I supported his journey, now with much less stress and a lot more faith than I held in those early years. I know how to encourage without pressure and I have developed enough musicality of my own over all of these years that I can see what he is doing well and witness that with love and celebration in a way that was once outside of my understanding. He is taking to it with all of the interest and attention and stamina that we had a hunch he would and I can see the way in which this practice is constructing a scaffolding that will hold up so much of what he endeavors to explore in the years ahead. So yes, for this and so many more reasons I am over the moon at the opportunity to create the container for another child’s education. With far less trial and error and far more trust than I could have imagined in our first go-round.
It is in this mood that I feel this journey beginning for us. With a greater conviction in the power of this path than I could have ever known before I had lived it. I feel so lucky to embark from here. So thrilled at another opportunity to be with and support one of our children in this way.
I have had an impossible time sitting down to write for a while. Not because the words aren’t in there. They’re there. But it seems as though over the past couple of months as my body has gotten stronger, everything inside of me has gotten softer. Everything that can move like water is loose and moving in me now. And I worry that what might come out when I sit to write is more than I can manage and might carry with it a little bit of collateral heartache in terms of how the personal truths I have to tell may present themselves. It is a dicey time in that way for me for sure right now. And in that way for most of us, I imagine, if the waters of emotion are able to move freely inside of these strong bodies.
There is something about raising teens consciously that stirs up all of the parts of the wounded teen that is so close at hand within me. I think I am doing a good job of staying awake to the tumult and beauty and particular magic of these one-of-a-kind years. It’s so gorgeous, this becoming. And so completely personal and private. As I try to hold that precious with our teens, I am returning to the stories of my own teenage years with all of the empathy and love and enthusiasm that never felt afforded to me. On one level it is incredibly healing, and on another, it fills me with fire at all of the hurt I had to undo from those years once I made it into my middle twenties. I just try every day to parent them and reparent myself and I think holding that intention is helping me to rise to the call of my kids. It’s so high. Maybe the highest call I’ve ever had. And so, not so much writing about what is provoked and all the rest of it just now.
Another reason that I have been withholding my writing from myself is because I leverage it as a reward far too often. Until, like now, the words start to push up at my chest and I start to feel the anxiety of their need. I hold writing over me like a prize for checking all this shit off my list; all of the tasks that I have told myself are more important than the luxury of this time for myself. It delights me so much; sitting to write. But there are always a million things left to do, like pick up the fell apples, plant the garlic, put the garden to bed, stack wood, and always always always more and more laundry to sort and wash and fold forever and ever. So, like, the writing, no matter how good it makes me feel, can wait and wait and wait.
If you have read this far, the song I’m gonna pair with this if I turn it into a reel (tbd what this becomes) is dedicated to a feeling Chris invokes in me more and more these days in that middle-aged, raising kids, making a living, keeping house, and 1000 unfinished projects kind of a way. Like quick daytime sex dates when all the kids are out of the house and not rolling the dice with the zero fucks to give (all literal) at the end of any given day. I hope and pray that this is a IYKYK situation and that everyone has the good fortune in middle age and after so many decisions and pathways have been laid, to delight in the person they share their efforts with. It is everything. Even if we never stand a chance of getting it all done. And I will try to coax myself into believing that I can sit down and give myself to the sentences even if I couldn’t clear the list of shit.
So, that is it. And just like that, something else on deck. About practice of course. What else?!
by maple
I have been cuddling with Freddy most nights as he falls asleep. More now that he’s out of his crib. The bigger two, who were never in cribs and always in my bed, curled up with me as they drifted off for years and years and years. My body, as it rests with my youngest snuggled into the c-curve pocket between my torso and legs, has been remembering the feel of Maple and Eider in their long outgrown little bodies tucked into the same small pocket.
I have especially been remembering Maple’s little self tucked into me. My first. Once my only. It seems almost impossible to find now amidst all of her strength and force and unbound potential. That she was once so small. But my body remembers.
She’s been pacing a bit lately. She’s getting too big for her nest and knows that her time here with us is limited. As she walks her series of lasts, the year both interminable and impossibly brief, it is the tether that holds her to her brothers that is tugging her tighter and tighter. So many parts of her feel ready to go, and yet they hold her to them in this way that is only for and of them. I can see it. And I can feel it. But I’m not quite sure I can ever really know it.
She does though. Maple knows that many parts of her, and all of our lives right now, are turning pages of final chapters. The last moments when things are just so. But try as I might, I can’t remember the last time she snuggled up, and fell asleep inside the curve of my body. Some lasts are like that too. Bittersweet in their absence of awareness. Passed over in the everyday nature of the season.
I think I’m mostly ok with this lack of remembering. I just know that that’s part of the gig at this point. Perhaps this is why nostalgia plays such a big role in my day to day mothering. What I do remember, and hopefully always will, is the care that lives inside of most of these moments. Forgotten or no, there was deep care in so much of it.
Maple is taking AP Art again this semester, challenging herself with a 2-D concentration. She is using cyanotype, a long UV exposure technique, to reimagine some old family photos. The other night, she trapped me in the bathroom, as she does, and shared with me some of these big feelings. About being ready to move on, like she is at the end of something; but held here by the flow of life with her sibs who are both very much not at the end of something. They are in their middle, more and less.
Then she showed my her first print and it’s this image I took of the boys when Freddy was like two weeks old. Little ten year old Eider is holding him in the rocking chair in our bedroom. They are both so small in their own way. She added some feathers to the image so that it looks like they are in a nest. Her home nest. But she isn’t in there with them. The image is so beautiful on its own but inside the heart of it there is this sister’s love for her brothers even as she prepares her departure. Like this quality of looking back and looking forward at once. Which I suppose is the heart of nostalgia. Like the ghosts of all the past and future forms of my babies that I carry in and around me.
Sometimes I think maybe this sentimental longing is how I try to protect myself from all of the future grief. That maybe if I stay cognizant of the gravity of it all that when it comes it might hurt less. Of course I know the impossibility there. The fantasy. And yet… My little one that I lure into sleep nestled in the arc of my body today somehow interchangeable with the young adult applying for what comes next tomorrow. I think I will likely still see it in somewhat of the reverse whenever that day comes too. Another funny fold of time back onto itself.
I have been in and out of water all week. In part to keep cool through this one and only perfect summer heat wave, but mostly to float through this liminal moment in between two versions of me. This shift crept up on me; with all of my attention directed to the changes all around me, I didn’t give much thought to the changes about to begin inside of me. And yet, maybe I did.
August brought the end of a decade’s worth of nursing my children, and it looks like September has brought the close of 24/7 days with one of my charges. So much of my speculation has been pointed in the direction of how Freddy Thistle will navigate the change and weather the transition. And of course some thought to the list of all of the things I can attempt to get done in the long stretch of time that I am not directly caring for him on these days. But I had given very little attention to the more subtle, below the surface, metamorphosis that would begin to unfold in my bones and in my blood.
So instead of attacking my time and my list and doing all of the things that I can do with an efficiency not afforded me when I have a four-year-old in tow, I spent much of my time floating in water of one form or another. Keeping cool, but also keeping a little bit formless, a little bit undetermined.
A friend of mine asked me on Wednesday evening something along the lines of: Did I relish my time on my own? I stumbled on my answer because in truth I do not love not having my kids with me. I never have, I sense that I most likely never will. Her follow-up question was to ask if I do not like to be alone, which caught me a little bit by surprise and I have been sitting with the feeling of that internal response since she asked.
I actually really love to be alone. I feel the same amount of loneliness inside of myself whether I am physically alone or surrounded by people and I generally enjoy my own company quite a bit. I am skilled at entertaining myself and my practices around presence tend to be the same whether I am solo or no. Of course, I have much more time and experience clocked not alone and very much in the company of one or more of my children. But the spaces between that togetherness feel relatively seamless, so long as I am not overscheduling myself and making myself or someone else late, which is another trait of mine that I have to claim.
But being alone isn’t what made my response to her question so difficult. Freddy had such an incredible week, better than I could have hoped for honestly, even in all the heat and humidity and his very inherited tendency to be a very Sweaty Freddy. He rolled down hills, he baked mud pies, he ran through the woods. No, it was something else entirely that felt like it started to take place inside of me. Something that I can’t map in quite the same way that I can chart his development. There is a new chapter beginning for me, one that I haven’t looked too deeply toward.
My intention is still to stay the primary caregiver and educator for Freddy, through adolescence if not longer, and so this particular shape of two days without me is pretty much the height of time apart that I can predict. And yet, what is moving out from the center is his own growth and development. The autonomy that is his to claim as he begins more and more to author his own life. He will need me in less consistent ways. It will become a pulse of him moving out into the world, back to me, out into the world, back to me, as Maple and Eider have been doing for years.
There is an unpredictable predictability to the whole thing. I can’t really know when or how I am needed (look alive!), and that is the work of it. And I think, also the immense fun of it. Parenting continues. In its unending and ever-changing state of being it becomes once the doing starts to recede. I am an ever-present force for my children. An energy field that they know they can return to when they need to put down the pen from time to time. I am the one who will pick up the reins when they falter and point them to water when they are dry.
I think that is who I am becoming now and for the length of eternity. I am bleeding past my bones and past my skin and out into the wild world where I can be found anywhere. I am becoming the ocean. Which is maybe why I have been so diffuse this week, so loose and uncongealed. I have been organized and direct just enough to find my way into the next body of water. So I can float. In the space between me and me in which the home I am and will always be can lose its teether enough to occupy this bigger, and infinitely more vast, terrain.
Maple will be home on Sunday. Finally. And Eider the following Sunday. So it feels like we are on the back end now of this strange summer of separation. And yet, I really have to say, or rather I want to admit, that the last 2 weeks home with just Chris and Freddy have been a blast. In so many ways. Freddy and I have been an inseparable pair, more so than usual, and he has been so fun and funny and agreeable, especially to all of the gym time that has been on the menu for mom since we got home from Maine. He’s just the best and this age is such a party and I just love hanging out with him and knowing him and loving him. I think he pushed pies for the very last time the other morning and while that is bittersweet for sure, I think it marks this next season in his life quite nicely. Like he and I get to transmute that particular bond into something else and that has a new sort of sweetness.
Chris and I have been enjoying the evenings without any kids once Freddy is in bed, which is early now without the nap. He hung on to that for a long time and it was totally one of those things that was just right for all of us until one day it wasn’t anymore and well there you go. Time to shift. It sure is nice to be done with mom mode after 8 pm, especially knowing that the bigs will be back soon and those hours before bedtime in many regards become prime time. And so. We’ve been taking advantage of the time for just the two of us with lots of sex and snuggles and Ted Lasso. It has in many regards felt like this strange at-home vacation. Ba! The progression of parenting in a nutshell: when one kid at home feels like a vacation.
It has been an odd time too though. I have been feeling as though I am on pause or suspended relief between what was and the unknown that is coming so soon. Liminal and unclear and in between. When Maple returns this weekend, it very well may be the last time she returns home in this manner. Her senior year is just about to begin and with it all of the unknowns of college applications, navigating scholarships and financial aid, APs, and then a whole lotta lasts stacked on top of that. In other words, we have some work ahead of us and this pause between seasons feels even more stark. I have no idea what is coming for us. And yet I know that we are on the precipice of massive change, the type that is going to be wildly altering no matter how much fun I have had over the course of the last two weeks. I am feeling big feelings that is for sure. Sometimes they are at the forefront and sometimes hovering at the back of my awareness, but always there. Good grief as much as this time has been surprisingly joyful, I miss my girl, and the thought of just always missing her is hard to stomach.
So, all of that. And also, almost as the perfect real-life metaphor, everything around here is breaking or in some persistent state of disrepair. Our fridge, our washing machine, the vehicles, the window screens (hellooooo flies), the driveway… Chris and I bounce back and forth between denial and squeezing our eyes shut as we hand over the credit card. So it goes.
As I mentioned, I have been playing hard/working hard with a new strength training program Shelly Denholm is designing for me. I am still hopping into Crossfit classes 2 or 3 times a week cuz that is just fire. And all of the other ways I can conceive of being active in VT in the summertime, which are many. Yesterday I slammed into the wall of my own capacity and recognized that I couldn’t shortchange myself on rest, which I simultaneously love and hate to do. It was kind of rad honestly. I could not muscle (with my body or my mind) my way out of it. I was just done. Cooked. Kaput. Toast. Lol. Fun to get there I guess.
I am teaching a pop-up class on the zooms this morning for the Islesford yogis, riffing off of a mermaid and pirate theme as folks on the island (including my kid!) get ready for launch tomorrow. It is an all-hands-on-deck situation, the lead-up to launch, and it feels good to throw a little energy that way even from afar. After that Freddy and I have plans to hike up Elmore today, strangely for the first time all summer. It should be slow and steady and awesome and I will report back. Other wrapping up this time tasks include all of the trips to the laundromat (boooooo) and the blueberry patch (huzzah!) along with finally getting Freddy’s little sleeping nook underway. He’s still happy in his crib, believe it or not, but I think he will be quite pleased with his little makeshift closet nest.
That is all for now my loves. Thanks for reading yet another installment of meg’s public journal. xxx
If you track me on the socials, you have probably seen that I am working on these weekly Instagram lives to share my Beautycounter why with the whole gd world. As if lol. At any rate, I was in a coaching and accountability group for 5 weeks this summer and my particular coach, who is seriously just right for me, challenged me to be more direct and less middle-aged white lady apologetic and yowsa as much as this endeavor hovers right on the edge of cringe for me and for sure on the far end of my comfort zone I am also 100% here for the push right now. So, doing it. We shall see for how long and what happens from it but it seems to me that the more that I can center myself inside of authenticity and truth I should be ok. I think I am ok.
Anyhow, yesterday I mused for a moment on an aspect of my why that revolves around information sharing and my deepening connection to what a big value that is for me. In all things. I mean, at the heart of it that is what this blog is all about. Sharing info and also just like upending my guts from time to time. But maybe that is information sharing too? Perhaps a stretch but maybe just normalizing feelings and experiences is useful to share.
So here we are. And in the past few months, I have been chewing on some of the foundational component pieces of choosing much of what I have chosen in this life. As I interact with more and more folks that are more on the front end of their parenting journies, it has been helpful for me to trace a lot of my choices back a bit. From engagement in a yoga asana practice that is mostly a solitary pursuit that takes place in the privacy of my own home; to home-educating our kiddos past and future. I am on pause from the latter in a sense rn and these considerations seem to be much of the work of the season. And what I have been more and more aware of is the way in which there is a fundamental question that must be asked and answered before the decision to stay home is ever made, to begin with. In homeschooling certainly, but I think that it can also be applied to the pursuit of a personal practice that lives primarily at home.
It is very much a practical question that sets theory aside, and one that is most likely only asked once the endeavor of caregiving has commenced. It is this: does the idea of sending my kids off for much of the day most of the days of the week sound amazing or can I not even fathom not seeing my kids most of every day? That is it. It is a super basic, incredibly straightforward question and in my experience, the answer generally presents itself straight away. (It is a little more abstract when we ask a similar question as it pertains to yoga but I will do my best to craft the connection.) Hopefully, it is at least mostly clear that this is also a question that cannot be answered until the kids have arrived on the scene. We can theorize til the cows come home about what we may or may not do as parents before we actually are, but I do not think that we can know for sure until we are looking at and loving our small charges in the flesh. There is simply too much at play to feel it for real until we have them with us.
I certainly had no thought of homeschooling really at all until the time came to not have them with me for most of our days. Now, put all other advantages or disadvantages aside regarding homeschooling- this is not that conversation. This is simply the very first question to ask and answering it honestly will tell you everything you need to know to choose wisely for you and your fam. How do you feel when you think about them going off to school for most of the day? How do you feel when you think about being together all day for most of every day? And however you answer is perfect. Truly. No shade. Homeschooling may or may not be for you based on how you answer and that is excellent information to inform your decisions. It really is. It is the prerequisite. I suppose the parallel question as it pertains to yoga would center around your personality and how you find restoration or nourishment. Perhaps centering your practice efforts at home on your own is best for you if you are an introvert. Maybe that space and quiet creates the perfect context for you to most effectively digest what you are learning from your teachers as well as explore the laboratory of your own inner workings.
The second question is, if you decide to keep them home, can your family economy support that decision? This very well could be a black-and-white answer depending on what phase and stage your life is in. When we first had school-aged kids we were at the front end of any career building and so we shaped ourselves around our lifestyle desires. Also, all of our initial examples of families that were homeschooling had each crafted their working lives to be flexible and adaptive in order to support the choice to stay home. Many families had their own businesses that both partners were working at different intervals. When Chris and I first were parents we had no cash for childcare, or much of anything at all tbh, and we just traded off. When he walked in the door, I walked out, and vice versa. By the time Maple was preschool age, Chris’ work had filled out substantially and I had to get childcare in order to still have time to teach- but also to simply have time for me, which is essential when you are on your own as a caregiver most of every day. But we always have had to do the math around the work choices that we make for me in terms of there being a profit or not. If my leaving the house to teach only breaks even with the cost of having someone care for the kids during those hours, then it is generally not worth it for our family. Much of my career choices have been shaped by that question. This is why the work that I can do at home and mostly in the presence of my kiddos has evolved and grown over the years- but that is another post!
Again, this is an important question and one that needs to at least mostly be addressed when considering home ed. Because if you answer the first question and realize that yes indeedy do you are gonna lose your shit if you don’t spend the majority of your time with your kiddos during the brief (yet unending) window of time that they live in your house… well then you may want to consider revamping how you make a living in order to support that. However! You may not have that luxury and/or level of privilege and while that may feel like it fucking sucks, choosing wisely here may be the absolutely most loving choice that you can make for your kidlets and also for you. Single parents, I see you.
As it applies to yoga, the choice to practice at home may very well be a financial one and may indeed be the difference between whether practice happens or not. Or just getting crafty and thrifty about how it can happen. And also by checking in with teachers and studios about scholarship and trade options. Of which there should always be some, and if not, find a new teacher/studio.
That is all. I hope this helps. Basically, just don’t overthink it. Answer the first question honestly and go from there. More soon. xxx,m
For the past few summers, as Maple has been working more and more on the island and becoming more and more independent and capable in so many ways, I have found my role with her to be on the massive shift and requiring a higher “keep my eye on the ball” sort of focus. The past few summers I have felt myself shaping my plans and the texture of the family schedule around the events and adventures and opportunities and obligations of the big kids. They have gotten busier and I have needed to clear space in a different way to accommodate that busyness than I do during the year. It’s like inside of the independence and autonomy there has been this far greater need for invisible and somewhat ambiguous support structures. So I have been running support. So has Chris. It has been a little bit of a divide and conquer paradigm, with me and Freddy here in Maine with Maple for as much of the summer as we can be and Chris back home with Eid, making sure he gets to lacrosse most days and then eventually to camp.
One of the things that I began to get a sense of last summer, but am certainly learning this year in hi-def, is the way in which the kids still need my help in recognizing and establishing appropriate boundaries. Especially my eldest. Of course, I mostly am learning this through my failure to do so. Playing catch up as always to what parenting is asking of me in any given era, on any given day. Maple is working too much. Which on one level would be fine, is fine, save for the reality that she generally always has too much on her plate and does her very best to give her all to most of it. During the school year for certain, and for the past few years during summers as well. She is tired and tender and wondering when she will find rest. Will the three weeks that she has after launch and before the start of school be enough? She still has her summer AP work to get through in preparation for the year. And it is fine and she can do it as she generally always does, just tbd the toll it will take.
I am reminded of the parents of some kids that would babysit for Maple when she was quite small and how I thought it was so strange at the time the way they would swoop in for their children sometimes and say no to something on their behalf that the kid had already said yes to. I remember feeling annoyed and a little put out that they couldn’t just let the kid determine it for themselves or that their work ethic wasn’t up to my own particular standard. Like if your kid said they would do this thing for me then they need to stick to it and you as their parent need to make sure they do. Not tell me they can’t. Or some other sweet bullshit. And yes on one hand I do stand by my sense that many parents (myself included) can be far too precious about our children and end up doing them a significant disservice in an effort to shield them from the gore of life. But in these instances, I guess I just couldn’t know then what I am learning now, and hindsight is 20/20 and all the rest. My learning curve in this gig continues to be incredibly steep. Consider this my decade and half delayed apology. Whoops. Yet again.
There is this other piece to all of this growing awareness around building appropriate boundaries and self-advocacy and young adult independence. Not exactly the elephant in the room, but certainly a growing presence. Maple is headed into her senior year. And whether it is her last year at home or not, it is her last year as a child in our house. As I dance with the dynamic of how and when to push and how and when to protect, supporting her… supporting and loving her while at the same time completely clueless about how to care for myself through this shattering that is happening inside of me. I don’t want to be too dramatic about it. It is the progression after all. Where we have been headed since we first read that positive pregnancy test. But holy fuck I am breaking. That’s normal, right? Like I am enjoying summers less and less these past few years because my family is in all different locations for so much of it and it just feels like my parts are all constantly scattered. I hate it. But that is where we are headed so soon now and so permanently. I don’t know what to say. If you don’t want to read about all of this grief about letting your kids go then probably pause reading this for a few years. Or probably forever. I’m sorry.
I know she feels it too. My sweet girl. She is already expressing some of that push you away pull you close behavior of someone who is beginning to separate. So natural. So gorgeous. So devastating. Yesterday, as she was recouping from end-of-week boatbuilding and childcare fatigue, she came out of her room, tears streaming down her cheeks to show me a TikTok. As one does. It was a narrative of an older sibling getting ready to move out and leave her younger brother or sister and reflecting upon all of the breakfasts they had shared together over the course of their childhood and how going forward the future breakfasts were just going to be an infinitesimal fraction of what they had been. The days and the breakfasts that felt like they would last forever. That were all you ever knew. She is so aware of the end right now. And the awareness of leaving Eider especially is heavy on her. Especially for all of those ways that he cannot yet perceive. He doesn’t see the end the way that she does yet. Or maybe he does but just not with the same magnitude.
Alright, I have to stop now. For now. I can’t see well enough to keep typing. Here’s to continually learning how to love and parent well. Through all of the breaking pieces of my being. We’ve got this friends! Onward.
all here. ha!
Everyone loves to use the mask metaphor in relationship to parenting. Like oh ya know make sure you take care of yourself first, get your mask in place first, then do the thing for your kid, or whatever. But that is all a fantasy as far as I can tell. Cuz the thing about parenting, and masks I guess in this example, is that they actually do not fucking work until you have gotten that mask on and working on every single one of your kiddos. It just doesn’t work like that. Not in these years when they are under my roof at any rate. TBD on how well our release into the world goes and how good a job I will have done at transferring the tending of the task of masks to my offspring. TBD. But no matter what, I am only ever as good as the kid of mine who is struggling the most at that moment. It’s just a fact. And yes I believe in self-care and taking care of me and regulating my own gd nervous system, and yes I am indeed the sun around which the planetary bodies of my children, spouse, and pets orbit. But even so. I haven’t taken this hip that has been cranky for the past 10+ years to a PT because there is someone further up in the line than me. Same with this ridiculous ear that is going on its sixth month of being either boggy or completely occluded. I spent the time and resources that I may have spent, in some alternate universe, dealing with me by instead making sure that my kid got the physical therapy and conditioning she needed for her bum back. It is a moving target but I have my priorities right now and I signed off on them when I decided to become a parent. It is just how I do it.
And while I am at it, here is another popular trope that I say is bs. This idea that our kids, or any of us really, are resilient. Durable, yes. Resilient, not so much. Especially not when it comes to our emotions. We have, however, become expert at compartmentalizing and stuffing away for later, but that just doesn’t really add up to resiliency, does it? Trauma is trauma whether it leaks out today or not, whether we choose to productively address it in this lifetime or no. And again, I do think that this too is part of the deal with parenting to begin with. And why it should forever and always be a choice and it is up to each one of us to be in conscious and dynamic relationship with that choice. It is tricky terrain to be sure. Many of those among us think that they have this whole putting themselves second thing dialed in as a parent and yet that has just been a smokescreen to meeting our own needs via our children in some codependent, shame and blame-riddled act of inheritance. More often than not hidden so deeply from our awareness generally as part and parcel to the belief that we are indeed resilient. I beg to differ.
I guess I take issue with the notion that “we are who we are”. We are incredibly sophisticated, nuanced, intelligent, and profoundly capable creatures. We can craft our behavior around our emotional responses through the repeated effort to stay awake to our lives and to modify and shift our responses per the outcome data. Of course we can. Maybe the update is something like: I am who I am, and also so much more.
End rant for now. Brought to you by a weekend on my own with my toddler, processing big feelings about my teens, and also maybe a lot of cannabis.
hillside meadow and kids and moms and dogs and pollinators.
For the past couple of months, I have been incubating the intention to start exploring caregiver and kiddo informal playgroups. It sort of occurred to me out of nowhere while beginning to observe the ways in which Freddy would be at the much older end of things in existing public playgroups such as the ones Lamoille County Family Center and the North Branch Nature Center run for 0-3ish throughout much of the year. It was also sparked in part due to the below-the-surface and near ever-present nostalgia for the “knitting group” playdates at the very beginning of my parenting days. Those weekday mornings out at Amy Arnold’s or Allison Sandbeck’s or my place with children spilling over everything and no shortage of coffee and popcorn and baked goods and handwork. Those were the days, as they say, and much of my early mothering and parenting philosophies were born out of those easy hangouts.
At the time I remember feeling like they were such a part and parcel of life, that they’d go on forever, a permanent part of our caregiving realities. Now of course I know that nothing is like that and yet I can also see the way in which those hangs in each other’s homes informed so many lifestyle choices, including home schooling, even as the rhythm and shape of those families and connections evolved, dissolved, shifted, or transformed through the years.
Anyhow, it almost caught me by surprise to realize that this is the time to create something similar for my now little. As much as I don’t want to go back in time, I also do not want to miss out on what this time can be for Freddy and for me too, by being so caught up in our older kid's realities and rhythms. That piece is tricky too I do have to say. I mean, I know I have expressed it a little before but it is an area of some struggle and grist inside of myself. I do not need the community of parents of small children in quite the same way as I did with Maple and Eider. It is not so new to me. Not so incredibly unknown. I need them for the sake of connection and consolation, but the support looks so different. I am more in need of the support and commiseration of the parents and families of high school and older age kids. That is where my uncharted territory lies. And yet, most of my days are spent in the current of the preschool age crowd and their caregivers. So strange.
But still so important. Especially when I remember that I may indeed have something in the way of encouragement and support, the casual suggestions or resource, or maybe just humor to offer this newer set. Perhaps. And so, a playgroup is underway. We began by organizing a group of moms with youngsters in a similar area and with the space available to spend our time outside and keep the pressure out of our houses and in some instances off our work-from-home spouses. I reached out to women I enjoy or would like to know more of with kids who are in all sorts of situations from zero to almost six. In part, it is a group who I think may consider forgoing school down the road in which case I am looking toward building relationships with an expanded context through those years, for both Freddy and myself. But mostly, we are country neighbors.
We are meeting once a week on a set day and time and in rotation. Nothing formal or fancy just offer a snack and some instruction around the social niceties of hellos and goodbyes. Keeping it real easy. I am hoping that before too long, familiarity and ease will take over and that the kids will mostly be able to run amok with little tending, and that the parents can clatch and knit (or something similar which is indeed the opposite of hovering) if they like. I like. Of course.
It is tricky though as experience and expectations vary. I find myself to have simultaneously very low and very high expectations. It makes perfect sense to me and yet it is odd. The group of children has all different backgrounds and exposure and so putting them together means working through a lot of differences at the start, something I find myself aware of and yet nowhere near as sensitive as I was in that former life I referenced before. I mean, Freddy is pretty much on the loose. There aren’t many limits we impose upon him and he has free reign of so much of the world in a way that I never would have allowed when Maple and Eider were little. I mean, the kid watches almost an hour of tv every single day. We didn’t even have a TV until I was pregnant with him. Ahem. Maple and Eid were 12 and 9. Lol. The discrepancies of television aside, perhaps a better way of saying it is that the ferocity of the boundaries that I needed to set up in order to claim my space inside of me as the parent I wanted to be and to craft the family culture that was right for us is not gone, not at all. But I am a much more sturdy parent than I was toward the beginning and I have been able to loosen my grip on those parameters in important ways. They are still there. And in many ways, they are more secure than ever. I just do not need to grip them in the way I once did.
However, one thing that hadn’t occurred to me at all -or in a real long while- is the consideration around toys. Before I get into it I just need to be really clear that is in no way me being smug about anything. I mean, look at my TV confession. And it is a perspective that was formed over many years and very much per our family’s experience. My reflection on this was prompted by a moment with the moms on Monday in which they commented on us not having much in the way of toys outside to play with. I mean, we brought out some bikes and there is the mud kitchen- which Wilfred won’t let anyone touch just yet but we’ll get there, and there are swings. But other than that there is OUTSIDE as it exists on its own and independent of any of us. They asked how we play or what we do if we are not playing with toys outside so much. And honestly, it is not all that different inside. I mean, I think we have plenty of toys inside -and yet it’s really not that much- but a big reason I rather stay outside, to begin with, is to forgo much of the guaranteed conflict and subsequent parental governance that toys seem to demand.
Like all of parenting, I did not enter the sport with that perspective but rather arrived there through experience. I found that my kids were never that interested in many toys or that it was such a fleeting interest that it hardly felt worth it. With a few exceptions of course. Blocks, and legos, silks, and stuffies, and Freddy has quite a car and puzzle collection which he adores. But other than that, what there is to play with is open-ended and minimal. And we arrived at that because I just always found that their imaginations were far more vast and playful than any object. Not to say that I do not in fact lust over certain toys on occasion. I indeed do, and there are some really beautiful and exciting ones out there! I am an esthete in many ways… it can’t be helped. And I have, on far more than one occasion, saved up or splurged for an amazing toy for my kiddos only to have them be lukewarm about it or lose interest far quicker than the investment would merit. I also observed the way in which too many toys created an overwhelm in my kids and that it was my responsibility to manage that for them. Since they were quite little that has meant things like keeping wish lists to three things or less and creating boundaries on the shape and size of gift-giving and receiving holidays and celebrations. To this day, Maple and Eider would prefer less. They get very specific about what they want but they keep it minimal, all on their own.
So in answer to our new friend’s questions, I responded that way. That Freddy spends a ton of really unstructured time outside exploring the natural world through the lens of his imagination. He likes to be a cat or a bat or a t-rex or a spider. Some of these roll play ideas are certainly things that have caught his interest through media, but just as much through books and stories. Which in many ways circles back to the conversation regarding family culture and home learning environments. There is no shortage of readalouds. (And yet, in full transparency, I am able to sit down and type away right now because he is watching a show.) But, I am a very big fan of seeing what emerges from the idle time that young children have to work with, what world might they create? What new reality have they built? Wilfred is outside a lot these days. Sometimes with clothes on and more often not. Sometimes chasing chickens, sometimes huddled in a perennial chatting to something or someone that my eyes often do not see at first. He has a whole life on this piece of property which is his alone and is more rich than anything I can invest in to support him. And yet, I will probably still try a bit. I am hopeless. The mud kitchen is an example of that. Just like the old palette playhouse in Mount Horeb was a nod in that direction too. I bet we see some sort of tree house or fort emerge in the woods for Freddy in the coming years. For him to share with fairies and hummingbirds and friends of all sorts.
So there you have it. I am excavating older ideas and beliefs and dusting them off in an effort to remember how I went about building them to begin with. It is actually quite enjoyable and affirming. Another reason why this family constellation of ours offers us each so many opportunities for observation, consideration, and thoughtfulness. I love it. So much.
As ever, thanks for being here. Thanks for reading. xxx
I have, perhaps, a little rant bubbling up about the thing we refer to as “homeschool”. Having had a year off now from the formality of the pursuit, with two more years off yet in store (read: in which I am not required to submit anything to the state), I have been afforded the space to look at the condition of home-ed from a greater distance and much more as a whole and not just through my own day-in-day-out-window. More than anything, I am bogged down in the semantics of the word “homeschool” as applied to learning at home and am feeling only an increasing sense of certainty that the words “school” and “learning” have very little, if anything, to do with one another and yet have been inextricably linked to such a degree that we often mistake them as synonyms.
I should probably preface this with a number of things. Beginning with the awareness that keeping your kids out of school is not for everyone, for so very many reasons. Place, privilege, desire, and much more are all determining factors for sure. I also should be clear that the ideas that I want to express here are ones I have come to over the past decade of questioning and opting out of the compulsory school model. I did not arrive with the perspectives that have hold of me now. In fact, so much of what I am thinking and feeling as it pertains to homeschooling now are call-outs to the meg that found herself in the world of home education all of those years ago. I am well deconditioned at this point to the beliefs and viewpoints inherent in our culture when it comes to our kids and school and learning. I have also been able to witness the results of the approach that our family took and the evolution of ideas and family culture in our two big kids, while at the same time refining how I want to go about things with our youngest. It is not formal by any means, and yet I have collected data in my own way I suppose. Enough to begin to make solid some of my beliefs as they pertain to childhood and learning and growing.
I definitely do not speak for all parents of kids who have done the majority of their learning at home. There is just as much variance in homeschooled kids as in their public and private school counterparts. Everyone is a product, to varying degrees, of the influences to which they are exposed, and as much as school is a huge part of that, I think that family culture is the biggest influencing factor. Certainly for kids that are not doing the majority of what is considered their formal learning out of the home. And as anyone who has made the terrifying choice to keep their kids home can attest, finding your people in the sea of other homeschool families is a foreboding, albeit incredibly worthwhile, task.
So, I think what I really want to talk about here are these two things: Learning, and Culture.
Let’s start with learning. And again, I really need to emphasize that I am having these ideas after a decade at home with our kids, it is by no means where I initially found myself. I have shared this countless times before but what sealed the deal in deciding to keep the kids out of school going forward; Maple at the end of second grade and Eider at the end of preschool; was the dawning understanding that whether my kids went to school or not, at the end of the day the two people responsible and accountable to our kids’ education was none other than Chris and myself. I had thought when I became a parent, that educating our kids was something that was outsourced, the responsibility of which I could put in someone else’s hands while I managed the mountain of other tasks that make up raising humans. But when I saw Maple in school, not being served by the model and needing all of this extra help and support on top of a 7 hour/5 days a week school life, I began to question who was in charge here. And as much now as I am relieved and grateful that it is indeed me, at the time I was stunned and pissed. Awe cute baby meg.
I also couldn’t believe the ask on these little people. A whole workweek for school in these lower grades? Did they really need to be there so much? Especially now that I was considering the labor of twice weekly tutoring sessions at 90 minutes a pop on top of that. What was I training them for? A work week that I personally wasn’t ascribing to? And as I said, I recognize the implicit privilege here to even be having these doubts and questions to begin with. I know that it is simply not possible for many if not most families. Especially not in the modern economy. But I also know that Chris and I have made countless compromises over the years and wracked up our fair share of debt in an effort to support the choice to have one primary earner in our family. But what I learned once Maple, and then Eider, began regular tutoring to learn how to read and write, is that the effort that it takes for many neurodivergent kids to build the skills and form the pathways required for them to gain literacy is grueling and exhausting work that is not well placed on top of a seven-hour school day. It is too big a lift. And yet, if kids are even being identified as needing additional services, they are then being asked to add it to a day and a neuro load that is already too big to effectively bear. It is a massive task and one which I found was most effective when it was literally the only thing my kids did in a day, other than enrichment activities and play. But perhaps I digress.
Because it is about giving kids the tools that they need to gain and develop their literacy. Not about what learning is and where it lives to begin with. Which is honestly the jumping-off point for the conversation about Family Culture. Often I hear from parents of quite young children who want to chat homeschool and I always am so interested when they explain all of the things that they are doing to “homeschool” their kiddos and it just generally sounds like good parenting to me. This is a bridge into the discussion around learning for a moment but I really do think that we have become so disempowered culturally as parents to embody all of the ways in which we are our children’s primary teachers. Full stop. Maybe it is easier to see when they are very small and we are helping them to learn their worlds in so many ways but for some reason when they reach an age where we think they could possibly be old enough to send to some sort of school setting we begin referring to the very natural learning that they would be doing no matter what as school too. Isn’t that strange? Isn’t it just good parenting to expose your kid to all sorts of things that may spark interest or if they express interest in something to support their access to it? And not to mention allllll of the many things that we are teaching them day in and day out whether it is how to clean up their toys or how to measure out flour or how to help water the garden. It is truly non-stop. And I just really want to call that raising kids versus schooling kids. Even though they are no doubt learning. But I am so interested in having conversations around Family Culture and all of the ways that we support curiosity and learning in the context of daily home life and being a meaningful part of a family community, of whatever size.
I heard some home education person - I cannot remember who- recently suggest that we consider what culture it is that our kids think of as central to their lives and that perhaps creating a family culture that is enriched and supported by a myriad of other points of exposure, engagement, and involvement by all members and yet serves to support the central nourishing force of family was primary to building a cohesive and healthy functioning family system, whether your kids go to school or not. I think this is so interesting. And I think there are all sorts of basic choices that we can make as parents and caregivers that support that aim. Regular shared family meals; reading books and stories aloud with one another; frequent and meaningful conversations that leave space for curiosity, doubt, divergent opinions, and intellectual exploration are three foundational aspects of our home life that have supported growth and learning in all of us- not just the kids! I do think that this is an aspect of good and healthy parenting, but I also think it is a really big piece in creating a home space that is also a thriving learning environment.
OK and so Learning. It is everything, right? But we undercut it with expectation and fear and standards and doubt and all of the other things that we have so heartily propagated in the brief time since compulsory school became the standard. But really, joke is on us cuz children are truly learning all the time it just may not be along the lines of whatever such and such curriculum had in mind. And that’s real. I get that, I really do. I have lived long hours in the fear spaces of trying to figure out how comfortable I was with how “on-track” my kids have or have not been. Both in school and out. We all do this. It is completely natural given the cultural norms that we exist in. And yet, what if we just let what they are interested be the thing? What if they truly got to go all the way down the rabbit hole of their own interests and fascinations and we all got to see where that might lead? I have seen incredible stuff come out of my kids’ unique interests. And I have seen them learn to a far greater depth that way than when I have tried to teach a subject unit. (I have also noticed that the depth is far less in school since they have started and they have to keep their exploration within an allotted time and it stretches only for so long a date.) And yes it can be a little jarring when one day your kid just gives up something that held their attention and passion for however long- it can feel like whiplash especially if your own feelings were caught up in it too. I know! It can also be frustrating and provocative during the times when they seem to be interested in nothing at all-or at least nothing that you would consider academic or even enriching… even though that might be on you (and me!) as the parent, and the value we do or do not place on something. Those might be the times to get busy doing other things like visiting a museum or park or setting up some fun group activities and playdates or just shaking it up however suits y’all.
I know that it really may sound a lot like I am preaching unschooling and I get that but in general, I am not a fan of the term. In part, because I don’t really know what it means but from what I do know it seems like too many rules for me, and also because I just really want to get away from the word school altogether. I am not creating a school in my home. I am supporting learning which I tend to think happens better at home and out in the wide world, at least until the social drive needs override the learning desires as they tend to do in those tricky middle grades. And even then, I still tend to think that learning happens far better at home and in the world than in the institution of school, but I also concede that those years are a time for social and friend bonds to be explored at greater depth, and for increased autonomy from caregivers is essential. It is a delicate and complicated time and all I can hope is that when my kids take the wheel as they each seem to do at that age, that they have developed a deep and abiding love and learning that will carry them through. Middle school is rough for kids who have only ever learned at home- even if it is just eighth grade- but once they get to high school they seem much more suited to the independence and higher expectations available to them there.
Woof. Ok buds. Hoped you liked my Ted talk. And yes this is just the tip of a very large iceberg that is always living right below the surface for me. Sometimes not so far below… Thanks for reading this far. I would love to hear your thoughts on all of this and/or whatever you care to share. Lots of love and respect. xxx,m