We surrender.

To them, and to our unruly garden that got very little love (from us) this year.

A voice I used to enjoy reading and listening to is back online after taking a hiatus: Brooke McAlary. She used to write The Tortoise (re: slow living) and is now back with The Tortoise & the Hare (ie: not so slow, not so fast), and listening to her first podcast, my initial thought was just how predictable all of it is. Not her return…but the collective shift happening in a lot of spheres from absolutism to something a little more nuanced. I can relate to her, because we both speak about shifts and identity as if they are personal revelations, born out of unique life experiences. But when many people are coming to the same conclusions, at the same time, at some point you have to ask: why?

Slow living was born out of the slow food movement. Basically in 1986, Rome was about to get a McDonald’s near the Spanish Steps and author & activist Carlo Petrini was so horrified that he organized a demonstration. The McDonald’s opened anyway, but his efforts sparked a larger movement around local food traditions, sustainable farming, and conscious eating. Over time, people began to realize that this approach to food really applied to everything: how we dress, how we work, how we parent, how we travel, how we consume anything and everything, and how we live our lives.

And then with the help of internet culture we did what we do with a lot of ideas- we transformed slow living from a radical, authentic practice into a performed, monetized, highly produced, content machine where it became a shell of an idea, with nothing slow about it.

So we have influencers performing slow, AI performing fast, and from the vast ocean of in-between, people pushing back against both in pursuit of authenticity.

Slow isn’t what we’re after - it’s truth.

Brooke & Ben cite analog living, or “more of what you had in the 90’s, please and thank you” as the latest iteration of slow. And yea, I’m guilty of feeling nostalgia for that time, too. At our house we had forts, forest, freedom, barn kittens next door, country roads AND tv, internet, a landline and Nintendo. We had it all, in balance. I wouldn’t call it slow, but I would say, now, it was unmediated. Our devices weren’t in between us and the world.

But also: there wasn’t anyone providing commentary on the lives we were living. It’s only now that I can look back and say: how ideal. An unqualified life.

The truth is…it wasn’t actually all the things we’re calling it, now. There was a lot of shit happening in the 90’s, too. But we were living without being told how we were living, and maybe that’s what we miss?

Our family got rocked by an autoimmune diagnosis this past week: celiac disease, which has turned our baking-loving house on its head. I will admit (apologies in advance), but prior to learning about this, I was totally that person eye-rolling away, like omg, just eat the bread, already. I can be knee-jerk about extremes in all areas…food included. (The irony. Someone should have called me out for my bread extremism…)

However, when you learn that gluten is the thing triggering your kid’s white blood cells to attack their small intestine, damaging it to the point where it’s no longer absorbing nutrients for them to grow…the gluten-free world (and the non-gluten-free world, for that matter) looks very different.

It is humbling, illuminating, and once again, kids are the greatest teachers of all time.

It’s also ironic, that in a I-don’t-wanna-be-extreme-about-anything mood, I suddenly find myself having to be extreme about this thing, because it’s literally the only medicine my kid has (Also, doing a lot of self-educating. This! Super helpful).

But again, is the attitude of “I-don’t-wanna-be-extreme” just an invitation for another extreme? Sort of like how slow living just made us obsess about all the ways we can chase slow?

I’ve been thinking a lot about our cousin who has type 1 diabetes (my kiddo got tested for those antibodies too, post diagnosis), and how much her phone mediates her treatment by tracking her blood sugar. It is seriously AMAZING, and every time we’re with her, I’m reminded that tech is not the problem.

Fast can literally be life saving.

And slow can lead to death.

And the reverse can also be true.

So whether it’s fast or slow or plugged in or out or mediated or not….

The narratives we let in matter, just as much as the narratives we keep out.

Driving through Kansas once again. It’s a sauna now, as opposed to the frozen world it was when we last met. The two weeks in between our last trip and this one were a hilarious jumble of broken things (phones, cars, air conditioning) and unstructured nothingness, that didn’t really serve my kids or me super well, but I just had to surrender to it, as there was no way I was going to work hard to rhythm us only to throw it all away again. We’ll be back in it all, soon enough.

A couple things have surfaced lately…

The first of which is that a few of us in the Counter community starting hearing whispers of a second by-Gregg company, called Beecee, for the teens and twenty something’s of the world, launching in a month. I’m not sure why it had to be an independent thing, and I’m not clear what her ask is of us (like is she hoping we will sign up over there, too? Am I too old? 💀 😆 But what happens if they bring back the Cococream Cleanser over there only? Okay, even writing these words is hilarious to me, because it sounds SO TRIVIAL. But bear with me…existential whirlpool coming.)

The landscape in which I started selling products online, and made, by all accounts, a pretty successful online thing for myself (thanks to many of you 🙏)….is no longer the landscape. And it is wild to think about where we were, physically and digitally, when it was. The twenty-tens were a heyday for affiliate marketing. Suddenly everyone and their mother was selling something, and for someone like me who was leaving one life for another, it was a total God-send in terms of creative, flexible, fun income potential and community. The pandemic forced everything online, which was glorious for some things until it wasn’t. And now, in a super saturated, AI, only-getting-more-and-more-expensive-and-less-and-less-real-world, I (like many) am trying to figure out what presence online, amidst a sea of bots, looks like. And as much as I love and respect Gregg, and plan on leaving my Counter link open (I’ll give it the occasional shout), and feel like I have an allegiance to Beautycounter in all its forms, joining a sister company is not in the cards for me right now.

The second: I got a notification that my Little Tree website is up for renewal and after some thought I’ve decided to not renew. Substack is imperfect, but it’s free to use and I like it here.

Why am I sharing all this (and why here)? Well.

These choices, as well as some other ones like closing shop on yoga teaching, and Peace Pod, and RJ volunteer work…have presented me with less of a business quandary, and more an identity one. I just realized, it has been a DECADE since I started being online in a more business-y way. And I am 100% clear that my in-person weekend job is a direct result of that work (funny how the world works). But what this means is that online me doesn’t have to show up in the same way. So now I’m in this process of shedding and shifting focus, where like… I just want to be here with my cup of coffee, meeting you with your cup of coffee. Without a structured learning pod where I tell you what to read, without paid yoga classes where I tell you how to move, without skincare videos where I tell you what to put on your face…I just want to exist online, inconsistently, and share stories, and the view through my window.

The trickiest part, however, is rediscovering what I have to say independent of having an offering. I didn’t start sharing my words online until I had something else to share, online, so my business taught me how to do all this but it also made me build an entire self around always having something to offer. I think this mentality is why the last two years of my life have looked the way that they have (ie: attempting offering after offering out of habit, overcommitting in a big way)…I’m unlearning not only what I’m sharing but how I’m sharing it, and retraining my brain to not let “usefulness” be the criteria.

To be a writer, just writing, without having to defend any sort of identity…or are all writers doing that, anyway?

Business or not, we’ve all been told how to behave in this space. How to like. How to comment. How to pose. What to post. And I guess I’m trying to remember who I was before the Internet mediated me, myself and I. Before I was given a free platform, and then taught how to optimize that platform to make money.

How to be a person who has things to say. And how to let that be enough.

London was three weeks on the 21st floor, with glass overlooking the city. Windows like television. And sirens; so many sirens. Every morning we got up and got out. A double decker bus, a train…multiple busses…multiple trains, or our own feet carrying us wherever we needed. There was always somewhere to be, and there was a lot of patience, people watching, heat, and hand holding to get there.

To be an introvert in a city is to be overstimulated at pretty much all times. To be aware. And yet, to be a part of something. Inherently, you feel it. I was reminded of New York in that way. And Tokyo. Sardines on subway cars, moving in many directions and the same direction all at once.

In cities I walk a little faster. Stand a little taller. Sweat more. Sunglasses, more. I handle it because I have to. When I first started spending time in a bigger city (Chicago), I remember downloading, from somewhere, that I just had to look like I knew what I was doing at all times. I would say the same is true when navigating with three young children in tow, but there’s less time to figure it out, the walk is slower, and you have witnesses.

Despite my great-city-pretending, the core of me remains: I am a treasure seeker. On the beach, it’s seashells, sea glass, and cool rocks. In cities, seashells are playgrounds, pastries, and parks…bookstores, experiences and escapes (out of the city 😅) that allow me to see the world through my kids’ eyes. What they love, I love even more, because I get to see them love it.

I think we all became our best city-selves, in London. Alter Egos, unlocked.

Norway was Oslo for three nights (a city, but not London-city) and then rural, coastal farm life for a week with second, third and fourth cousins.

Speed, slower. Nowhere to be but outside and with each other. Wide open space. Ocean. Forest, with wild blueberries as snacks. Literally life goals. City self went to sleep, and the real me emerged, except a million times more peaceful than I am on a daily basis because I was so relaxed.

Here, community is family, my ancestors, and nature. I walk a little slower. Eat a little slower. I think I hear actual silence on the front porch at 10:30 pm, even with the sun still making its exit. I am aware of the way the light hits the trees, the ticks, ripe strawberries in the garden, open windows, the cat, the smell of bread in the oven, hearts on doors, red as a symbol, and the hands behind Freia chocolate always being in the hiking backpack.

I went to Norway for the first time when I was 21, and it felt like home immediately. I can’t explain it except to say it makes me understand who I am. And it makes me remember how important place is, in shaping who we are. I actually wrote at the time, I feel like I should have been born here. In cities I am a version of myself. In fields I am a version of myself. But which self do I actually want to tend? And how does one recalibrate a life around that?

Iceland was just a couple of sweet, foggy, wet, stunning days. The color palette of my dreams. If I was a visual artist, everything I created for the next several months would be various hues of green with purple. Moss, Lupine and Fog forever.

We were there for some of the “best” days of the year weather wise and still, the need for resilience was evident. Beauty and harshness, hand in hand. I felt like Arya Stark was around the corner, and then - when we hit the most insane fog I’ve ever experienced - the White Walkers. Sulfur water, epic waterfalls, exploding Geysers…on day one my husband was like, “I want to live here.” And on day two he was like, “No, I don’t.” And that sort of sums it up. Surreal.

Coming home, I’m reflecting on the me that has been built by America and for the last ten years, Colorado, and what I’ve been trained into thinking I want, vs. what I actually want, which has very little to do with big houses and stuff. Even though I know we’re all in little bubbles, traveling reminds you just how much you’re worrying about things that likely don’t carry the same weight or urgency, somewhere else. And that’s not to say those things don’t matter, but I think some of our worries and desires are local. (And maybe they should be.) But similar to social media’s echo chambers, travel exposes the echo chambers of geography, and language. Class. History. We think our reality is it until we enter another one. And then, it’s clear: we know a place by leaving it. And we know ourselves by encountering others.

Hello from London.

It’s our 17th day here and we survived what is supposed to be our hottest day yesterday with air conditioned bookstores & free museums.

Some things I’ve been mulling over, in no particular order:

• Gratitude. I really love traveling, and I feel super grateful to be doing it again.

• Many things feel simpler and more manageable here. To be fair, I’m not worrying about school. Or work. But what I mean is, I’m not overwhelmed by the daily life stuff that usually overwhelms me at home. I packed us super light and the washers are small and everything is air dry, so laundry is just the ritual of a small load a day and that’s that. And afterwards, it doesn’t sit on my floor in a clean heap; it gets put away immediately because there’s not much of it. We don’t have all our spices and usual food-stuffs so cooking is simplified, which makes dishes simplified….there are not copious amounts of toys to clean up…. will I get home and get rid of everything? 😅 TBD.

• Something that came up in my interview with Wayne - which I have yet to share…it’s coming - but their fam has been world-schooling for years and he was talking about the unsustainability of world-schooling as a sort of never-ending vacation, which is not what it is, but is often how it is portrayed. Just because we are homeschoolers traveling doesn’t mean I’m suddenly calling us world-schoolers, either. (Also, because school is still in session here, my kids have gotten asked three times by strangers, “no school today?” Which is such an interesting phenomenon. Like they’re standing in front of you, so clearly they aren’t in school 😆). That said, we are away for an extended time which makes it feel a little more like living and less like visiting. That’s not to say we aren’t doing touristy things, too. But, that’s one thing I’ll say about traveling with kids (especially younger ones): they plug you into the simple things that make travel feel more home-y. Playgrounds. Groceries and markets. Impromptu fountain play. Sitting on bookstore floors. We actually have time to return to our favorite bakeries. “We’re baaaaack” - it’s the best. (AND constipation, and small spaces, and no alone time, which is why I’ve tried to write this like 14 times and am just now getting to it. You know, all the things.)

• There’s an outdoor World Cup viewing party every night that we’ve got a bird’s eye view of through our windows, and the joy and literal song when England beat Croatia was magic and reminded me that people are mostly good.

• And on that note, I really really think humans are better than robots. I keep thinking about AI, and I’m struck by how much it has infiltrated discourse even in the last couple years. I took a course on it in grad school, and at the time I wasn’t really hearing much about it (even though it was everywhere). Now it’s everywhere AND everyone is talking about it. It feels Trumpian in that the more we talk about it, the more power we give it (which is why I’ve been resisting). But also Trumpian in that we can’t pretend there is no impact. After playing around with it for a couple months, I’m back to where I started with it which is that I really think the chat-gpts of the world are no good for us. I guess the pro of playing with it for a time is you understand how it works and you know what it looks like. But it’s also depressing as hell, because it gives you the intel to realize that some of the interactions you think you’re having with people are actually completely mediated by AI. Watching myself use it, I was struck by how quickly my brain shifted to a feeling of dependency. Like wow, it can crank out a sample curriculum based off these things in seconds and it takes me hours and hours to come up with something like that. And also, how it made my need for validation even more pronounced. I don’t have to bug my husband to read this, I can just ask AI if it’s clear and good and be on my way. I felt like I was losing my ability to trust myself and problem solve, and my connection with people at the same time. And I wasn’t even using it that much. To be on the receiving end of it, via people’s emails, newsletters and/or texts, is equally isolating. I just keep going: Where are YOU?!

• This, by Sarah Wilson, popped up in my feed and it’s where I’ve landed. Why? Why are we doing this? And she actually, in an indirect way through that article, called me out on something I had expressed earlier, too…which was the incorrect and wildly hopeful notion that it’s on us. That we have a moral responsibility in how we use it, and that if we’re nice and curious people to AI it will be nice and curious, back. More and more I’m realizing how twisted that actually is. I wanted to believe in the middle ground - that it’s good for some things, and not others. But maybe our responsibility is actually to not use it at all. To, instead, trust our slow, creative, intuitive brains…not worry about output and speed…To believe in our own power to make decisions, including the fumbles and missteps along the way. You would never advise a child to “ask AI.” You would problem solve with them, and encourage time and uncertainty as allies (at least I would).

Anyway. Things are really old here, and it’s nice. 😂

xo

Ooookayyy. The time has come 😅 I’m rounding out season one, and turning the tables on myself. Life pre-kids/how homeschooling became a thing for us/what I love/what’s hard/ya knowwww. This is the only episode that is not also watchable on YouTube cuz that would have been REAL weird. So, enjoy the audio only :)

And then this little podcast is taking a summer hiatus! I’ll still be writing here on the stack, but season 2 won’t kick off until September, likely. Please subscribe, share, and holler if ya wanna have a conversation. Maybe you don’t homeschool, or you’re anti-homeschool…that could be interesting too 👀

💛

Resources shared:

Home rhythms - my previous writing on this topic

This conversation is near and dear to my heart - my bestie! Liz lives in Minneapolis and has two girls, 10 & 7. We’ve only shared physical space one time, but we talk just about every day in some form or other. She’s a magical human and I feel super grateful to be on this big blue planet at the same time as her; not to mention, homeschooling and parenting alongside, too.

We cover everything from pandemic kindergarten to rhythm in the early years, the magic of getting to learn how kids learn, the spiritual hyper-drive of homeschooling, listening as community support (vs. advice giving), and much more.

Enjoy ☺️

Resources shared >

Pinwheels

Fran Liberatore

If you’re in Minne, too - yoga with Liz

Watch this conversation on YouTube

March 2020:

“I guess you could say I’m used to making things and then having them disappear.

Growing up in theatre, you build a family, work hard to create something together, and then months later, it’s gone.

Sometimes, that’s the best news and you just feel sorry for the people who saw it. Other times, leaving that group of people or that character or that story feels like a massive loss.

The hope is that, for the audience, there’s a lasting imprint. But it’s not film. It can’t be watched again and again. It lives and dies.

People ask me sometimes if I miss theatre or if I will act again or if I have anything on the horizon. To be honest, I don’t always know how to answer those questions.

What defined me for most of my life hasn’t defined me the last couple years.

And yet..

I’m building a family, we’re working hard to create something together...and one day it will be gone.

That’s it.

And that’s everything.”

I went through old notes looking for this because lately I’ve been having the same sort of realizations around all the mini side projects I’ve created over the years. I said to a friend last week, “Maybe they’re like theatre. Like they live for a short while and then die. Maybe that’s just how I operate.” I’ve left the form, but I haven’t been able to leave the form, or something.

And maybe instead of trying to fight the form, I can just acknowledge that I am going to create things, and they are going to die. And this is going to happen over and over again, until I die.

The term “unworking” popped into my head. I wasn’t sure if it existed, yet, but of course it does. In a modern sense, it’s the same principle as unschooling with kids, but applied to work, for adults. Essentially, in the same way that the trappings of school can trip up naturally curious children, the trappings of work can trip up naturally curious adults.

It’s why I left every “real” job in between theatre that I had relatively fast. And why I was perfectly fine with “temp work” - I knew it wasn’t going to last, and that freed me up to do the best work I could for a short amount of time.

It’s also why, in the online dimension, I delete things every now and then. If the form won’t let me be impermanent, I’ll manufacture impermanence. Honest to God, I think this would be my biggest hurdle in ever writing a book. Within a few years, I’d need to track down every copy to burn😅

I feel like I’m in my own little swirl of unworking over here, and what I mean by that is I’m detangling myself from the web I inevitably got caught up in; the web where all that’s rewarded is the what, regardless of the how. Tangible > intangible. Quantity > quality. Paid > unpaid. Stuff that I just, point blank, don’t believe in, but was accidentally manifesting anyway.

What is work, if there’s nothing to show for it?

Like I actually want to know - what is work, then?

Khalil Gibran would say, “love made visible.”

Which implies that work has to be seen, proven.

In that case, who decides what work is? Is it the person who does it, or the person who sees it?

All of this brought me to unworking in a philosophical sense. 20th century French philosopher, Maurice Blanchot (who yes, if you google him was controversial but hear me out) helped popularize the term. For Blanchot, désoeuvrement meant moving away from the relentless capitalistic and modern drive to produce and accomplish. Basically he was critiquing the idea of anything ever being “finished” while at the same time questioning the relationship between work and worth. To him, unworking was a state of suspended potential. You weren’t bound by what you made, but instead free to possibility.

Jean-Luc Nancy expanded on this idea in relation to community. He argued that people are joined together not by a shared, productive goal, but by their mere existence and vulnerability. And in fact, when we try too hard to organize, or fuse; when we try too hard to form a collective “we” identity instead of recognizing each other’s individuality, the result can be nationalism, authoritarianism, and violence. True community, in other words, doesn’t need to DO anything. We can exist as we are, without trying to band together…and maybe when we do that, we’ll recognize our true bonds.

I find this faaaascinnnattttingggg.

Especially in an age of constant optimization and community activism.

What would it mean to embrace the “inoperative [or unworked] community”? To - dare I say it - resist the community “build” and instead look around and be like, oh. I have one.

We assume we can’t “work” with that person because they believe completely different things.

But if there’s no “work” to be done…then what?

This week’s convo is with my friend Jo, who is a mom to two (8 and 5) and who was homeschooled herself, from start to finish. She gives honest insights into her experience, and how, in many ways, it taught her ahead of time what she “didn’t want to do.” We also chat the image of homeschooling today, the mindset of “constant adjusting,” some of the pressures felt being a homeschooling parent, and much more.

I will say, it was interesting to listen to this again in prep for posting it (several months after we recorded) because our back and forth about what you give up to homeschool, and the reality of not being able to do it all…really resonated with me at the current juncture I find myself in. Just goes to show that the constant adjusting that we are doing with our kids is constant adjusting in ourselves, too.

💛

Resources shared >

All About Spelling

This didn’t come up but, Jo has an Etsy shop!

Watch this episode on YouTube.

Sharing a convo with my virtual bud Meg this week. Meg and I have known each other since 2019, but have never met in-person. She lives in Vermont and has three kiddos: a sophomore in college, a junior in high school, and a six year old. She’s the first person I’ve interviewed who a) doesn’t live in Colorado and b) has older kids, so I’ve been excited to share, because she’s done the thing, is doing the thing, and her story is a reminder that you can’t predict the path. Also: all of it is temporary and fleeting; a window of time you can’t get back.

She speaks to the winding road between public school, homeschool, public school, college, and homeschool hybrids…echoing some of what Amanda (ep. 9) shared: that one of the gifts of homeschool is that her older kids had a solid sense of self by the teen years. “They knew who they were, they know who they are.”

And I gotta pull this quote, too:

“Part of that betrayal was my own, like I was learning in real time that the idea that I had had that someone other than myself and Chris were responsible for our children’s education….that that was never actually true to begin with. It was just an idea that I had absorbed through the culture.”

Oof.

It’s so good, Meg is so easy to talk (and listen) to, and I find her perspective a breath of fresh air.

Thanks for listening 💫

Resources shared >

Orton Gillingham

Singapore Math

Mathhelp.com

Brave Writer

Meg’s substack and website

Watch this interview on YouTube

Sharing my conversation with Tiffany this week, who is homeschooling her 9 year old. I love a lot of things about this convo, but one of which is the way Tiffany describes homeschooling….as something that is creative, technical, philosophical, humbling. A multi-layered project. She talks about the relationship with her daughter as the most important thing (“8-10 more years of orbiting her center”😭) and shares candidly about their “re-upping” moments.

We talk introversion (and the polarity of that with an extroverted kiddo), she shares some of their sweet practices (Morning basket, Mail Mondays, beginning & end of year letters, Yule School…) and she also talks about her experience of being a “gifted and talented kid” and the ways in which that, ultimately, didn’t serve her. This is also the first convo that dives a little bit more into the homeschooling requirements in CO, specifically the third grade test requirements.

Also - I said I would circle back at the end to the topic of Tiffany not driving and then I never did lol. BUT I did circle back via text. Her response:

“So, I never learned to drive. Never had a license. The way I think about it is this: friction is a tool. It’s not always a bad thing. If I want to adopt a new behavior, I try to remove any friction between me and doing the thing that I want me to do. If I want to discourage a behavior, then adding friction makes it harder to do the thing that I might be tempted to do but do not want to do. Choosing not to drive aligns with my values. It’s one of the ways I care for the environment. I prefer the pace of life. It has a way of slowing things down. Traveling on foot, by bus, or bike, just offers a different view of being in the world. As a homeschooler, it can limit what we choose to do. But, if it is super important, we make it happen. Values-aligned self-imposed limits help you get real clear on what matters and inspires you to get creative. I love not running around. I love that it forces me to invest in the relationships I have with the people who live on my street. I love interacting with people on the bus whom I would otherwise never be in the same space with. I love walking or riding the bike and taking in my surroundings. I can feel the breeze, the heat of the sun, the scent of the lilacs if I am riding by some bushes. More specifically, with homeschooling, I have to say no to a lot of amazing wonderful opportunities. As a parent, you want them to have every and all opportunities. But the best anyone can do in life is have a portfolio of experiences. We can’t have and do it all. And it all comes back to the quality of our time. I give myself permission to not try to give my kiddo everything.”

I admit, I totally romanticize this decision and often think about how different community is, now…when we’re driving 30 minutes to find it vs. committing to our neighborhood. I imagine there are many challenges to it, too (it’s also, on a practical level, part of the reason Tiffany and I don’t see each other as much) but I agree with all her reasons for not doing it and wish, every day, that our country had infrastructure like Japan lol. Why don’t we have more trains, Americaaa?! To me, it’s also a valuable perspective and practice to add into the mix because it does actively fight against so much of what I think many modern parents struggle with…which is the pressure of running & doing, despite believing in the importance of slowing down and helping our kids see that their worth is not tied to their doing.

Anyway - it’s another good one :) Enjoy.

Resources shared >

Life Ways - Waldorf Early Childhood Certification

Montessori, Reggio Emilia, Tools of the Mind, John Dewey and the Chicago School, John Gatto, Charlotte Mason *

Night Zookeeper (Gamified Language Arts)

Homeschool requirements in CO

Stanford 10

Homeschool Boss - NWEA Map Growth

*Note: I get a little kickback from books purchased through those bookshop links

Tiffany writes on substack, too!

As always, you can also watch this interview on Youtube.

This week’s conversation is with my friend Amanda, who is also my fellow Wisconsinite/artist/mindful entrepreneur/dreamer/enneagram 4. She’s my slice of Wisco here in the mountains and I’m super grateful for her presence in my life. Her kids are 8 and 4.

Amanda is the first person I’m interviewing who was homeschooled herself, and who also had an abrupt transition out of homeschool (not by choice), so she carries a deep, unique perspective with her. We talk about her experience, how it informs the experience she’s building for her kids, life as learning, dimmed lights, theory vs. practice, how “the way we do one thing is the way we do everything” and so much more.

So many gems in this one that I’m carrying forward. A gift that keeps on giving.

Resources shared >

Learn more about Amanda’s work as a life coach via her website

Unschooled by Kerry McDonald*

Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie* - neither Amanda or I have read this but it’s a Lauren rec that comes up in our convo :)

*Note - I get a little kickback if you decide to buy books

To watch this interview, click here

This week is with my friend Abbey, whose kiddos are 7 and 4. We name this in the episode but, the reality with literally every episode so far is we’re all rookies y’all 😅 And quite frankly, I think that’s a super-power for our Colorado crew at the moment. We don’t need to take ourselves so seriously (she said to herself…again and again, in all areas of life). Abbey spoke to how easy it is to lose sight of the why, which I could relate to. For example, many of us were drawn to homeschooling, at least in part, because of the flexibility, and in the early years, the ability to keep the wonder, not put so much pressure on, etc. And yet, I think every mom so far has described the pressure and found themselves adding it, putting it on, etc. without meaning to.

We went down a couple rabbit holes, like how philosophies have infiltrated parenting and homeschooling, but also how sometimes those philosophies get watered down and become more of an aesthetic than a rooted practice….and about the busy-ness of homeschool vs. what Abbey dreamily described as “real home homeschooling” 😆 ☠️. For the introverts among us. None a’ that FAKE COMMUNITY STUFF lol.

Abbey went from being the person who was like, “what a cool thing, but that’s not my thing” to it being her thing! And as is the case with all of these so far, I feel like we cover a lot of ground. Thanks for listening <3

Resources shared >

I gave a quick little shout to Outschool

And Abbey mentioned Khan Academy

As per ushe, you can watch this interview on YouTube, too.

Last Friday my 6 year old built a capsule in his bedroom and wore his spacesuit all day. We had spent the week totally immersed in all things Artemis II, and I woke up with an anxious feeling about their return home. I had read too many things about a faulty heat shield, and was trying to imagine what it would be like to be going 25,000 mph; what it would be like to essentially morph into a fireball while re-entering the atmosphere. It was a week of me sitting in the wonder of things my brain literally cannot comprehend. Astronauts eating maple cream cookies in a communication blackout behind the moon. Like. What?

And as is true with a lot of human things, the intentions for going to the moon feel kind of…off. I’m not sure how I feel about building a base. I don’t dig the idea of mining the moon (let her be!) Getting to Mars would be wild. But humans living there feels like an invitation for wars somewhere else. Will space be a place for international collaboration? Or continued competition? Is space a frontier for wonder, exploration and education, or commercialization and militarization?

Future worries aside, I felt myself moving through life with more perspective last week. James Baldwin, in my ear: “If I hadn’t gone away, I would never have been able to see it; and if I was unable to see it, I would never have been able to forgive it. I’m not mad at this country anymore: I am very worried about it.” When I spent time studying Forgiveness in grad school, I was struck by the timing of it. For some (like Baldwin) forgiveness required physical distance, and time. For others (a recent public example being Erika Kirk) the declaration is immediate (like a vow, a promise), but - in my opinion- it’s not fully embodied. It’s declared on principle, but it’s still a daily practice of holding yourself accountable to that promise. Both types of forgiveness require perspective, but the perspective comes from different places (in these examples travel and faith).

Watching the crew’s first interview since landing, you can tell how changed they are. You can literally feel the perspective shift (or the “overview effect”), in their voices, in their body language. It’s the feeling many (myself included) are hungry for. Gratitude. Recognition; that we are tiny, and so damn lucky to be here at all. I think it’s why I soaked up every video I could of their journey; I wanted what they were experiencing to rub off on me.

It’s often implied that in order to know something we need proximity, or at the very least, imagination. As Harper Lee writes in To Kill a Mockingbird, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Often we have more empathy for difference in opinion or belief when we meet humans face-to-face who are living those different values. Our perspective comes from intimacy; from being close.

And yet here we have these humans, who traveled farther than any humans have ever traveled before, who saw everything we know, as Jeremy Hansen described it, like “a bowl of Earth just sitting there for breakfast in the sky.” Their perspective changed through extreme distance.

Or, perhaps, proximity to the moon?

Proximity to something greater?

Proximity to each other?

Is it proximity to something, or distance from something?

Or both simultaneously?

I don’t think anything can be compared to being behind the moon, and losing sight of earth. But I do think perspectives like this can lead to more peace-building. (And this is where technology can be peaceful - for those of us who can’t travel far, we can use videos to get close.)

A little round up for when we need it:

About the Artemis program https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/artemis/

About the crew for Artemis II:

Christina

Victor

Reid

Jeremy

This was three years ago:

Some interviews from space:

Crater dedications 😭

Moon Joy

Evelyn has four boys, and at the time of recording this (January) they were 20 months, almost 3, almost 6, and 8 so…are happy birthdays in order Evelyn?! 😅 We talk everything from Wild + Free (which I clearly forgot I ever co-led lol), to her moving from Colombia to Texas at age 13 and teaching herself English, to the realities of homeschooling multiple kiddos, patience, what we value vs. what we’ve been taught to value, taking it one day at a time, and so much more.

I’ll also say, Evelyn works full time in addition to homeschooling and I feel like I need to have a whole ‘nother interview with her to dive into that, specifically. As someone who works part time, and feels stretched in so many different directions, I was curious how she handled it all.

Her words:

“How do I do it? Honestly, it rarely looks as put-together as it sounds.

I’m a homeschool mom and I work full time, which means my days are a constant weaving of roles rather than neatly separated blocks. I’m grateful—deeply—that my job is remote and my team is flexible. That flexibility is what makes this life possible. But it doesn’t make it easy.

What it actually looks like is early mornings with coffee and a mental checklist already running. It’s jumping between math lessons and Slack messages, reading aloud one minute and replying to emails the next. It’s planning school around meetings, and planning meetings around the parts of the day when my kids are most independent—or at least occupied.

There are a lot of “in between” moments. Work squeezed into nap times, quiet reading time, or the rare stretch when everyone is focused. And then there are the evenings—where I pick up what didn’t fit into the day, trading rest for catching up. Some nights feel productive, others just feel long.

The hardest part isn’t the logistics—it’s the tension. When I’m in meetings, I feel the pull of not being fully present with my kids. When I’m deep in homeschooling, there’s a quiet awareness of what’s waiting for me at work. There’s guilt in both directions, even though I know I’m showing up in meaningful ways for both my family and my job.

But it’s also full of small, grounding moments. Being there for a question, a breakthrough, a story in the middle of the day. Building a life that, while messy and stretched, is intentionally close.

I don’t do it perfectly. I do it by adjusting constantly, by letting some things be “good enough,” and by reminding myself why we chose this in the first place. It’s a rhythm that shifts daily—sometimes hourly—but it’s ours, and we’re making it work the best we can.”

I could reaaaaally relate to this. The weaving of roles, all the in between moments, pockets of days, long nights, etc. And the guilt. I often feel bad that I can’t seem to stop working, even though I chose this path. Homeschooling and being with my kids is what I love most, but I also like using other parts of my brain and being of service in other ways. And, quite frankly, we live in an expensive place. And we love traveling, and giving our kids experiences that cost money. And then there’s just like… gas and groceries. So even though I don’t make nearly as much as my partner, I know my financial contributions matter, and I’m proud to be able to contribute in that way.

I think it’s assumed that people who homeschool must give up career pursuits to do it, or that it only works if there’s a partner who’s a bread winner so that the other person can stay home and not work. There are a lot of factors. And we are privileged. And also, some of us keep working! Both because we want to, and because we have to.

Meanwhile, there is a quiet (and sometimes not-so-quiet) narrative that’s like: if you choose homeschooling, it should be your whole identity. Or: if you’re working, something must be getting shortchanged. And especially for women, it often becomes: you should be able to do it all, but also feel peaceful while doing it. And if you aren’t picture perfect calm 100% of the time, then something’s wrong. (And maybe that’s true some of the time, but also…maybe there are just seasons where it’s a lot. What happens when we let that be okay, without feeling the need to scrap everything?)

The reality is it’s not easy. And there are sacrifices. And stress. And pressure (from myself and society) and sometimes impossible expectations. For me it was meaningful to talk to someone who, despite all those things, seems to agree that she wouldn’t have it any other way. Finally a voice that’s like… yes it’s hard, to balance homeschooling and career, but also here’s what it gives back. And you’re not a bad person, for wanting both.

Resources from this episode >

Wild + Free - (Another thing Lauren conned me into doing was co-leading a Wild + Free group that she took over 😅 We left being officially W+F and are now just planning things for our community.)

The Call of the Wild + Free*

Hunt, Gather, Parent*

The Coddling of the American Mind*

The Good and the Beautiful - math and language arts

Tapping. + a video.

And finally - those beloved transformer toys* 😂 . (We don’t have the exact same ones, but we have these and these which are a similar concept and also very loved.)

Note: I get a little kickback for all the * links if you decide to shop.

As always, you can watch this video on YouTube, too.

Chaz is a mom of three (ages 7, 5, and 18 months). Our conversation covers everything from balancing work and motherhood during COVID to following her intuition through birth and into homeschooling. We talk about her values - slow, secular, nature-based- and how to stay grounded in those values in a fast paced world.

I appreciated Chaz’s vulnerability in this conversation, and got the sense that she is often checking in with herself, re-evaluating whether her life actually reflects what she values or not, which felt deeply relatable. Like if you say you want to slow down, but you’re driving more than you’ve ever driven in your life, are you doing it?

I think there can be a tendency to overcommit in homeschool circles, in part because our kids have wide-open days, and we feel a responsibility to fill them with enriching experiences - to expose them to as much as we can. Every year as my kids get older, I feel this pressure to “ramp things up”…yet that instinct runs completely counter to why I chose homeschooling in the first place, which had nothing to do with how much we accomplish in a day and everything to do with having time and space together. That said, Colorado is currently a very homeschool friendly state, and I think we’d all rather live in the need-to-dial-back vs. the opposite, where there is no community and no outside support.

I’m still chewing on a lot from this convo; I hope you enjoy it.

Resources from Chaz >

Wild & Free - an online homeschool community with in-person groups worldwide

Ina May Gaskin’s Guide to Childbirth *

Blossom & Root - the main curriculum they follow

*note - I get a little kickback from books purchased through this link

As always, you can watch this episode on YouTube, too.

So Maggie Rogers joined substack, and I don’t know why it has meant more to me than other people joining substack, but this post felt refreshingly legit, in the way that this video from ten years ago (!), that launched her, was also just legit…and needless to say, I’m in a swirl of her music again in a way that I haven’t been in a while and it’s pure girlhood.

It feels akin to watching Jessie Buckley and crying, and watching the Eras Tour and crying, and watching Simone Biles and crying, and watching Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and crying - it’s like these bursts of super artistic femininity and strength and power that meet me at moments and leave me unearthed.

Maggie wrote, in regard to her going back and tracing the beginning of her career, “What that really did for me is debunk the myth that I was better at the start of my career when I was all young confidence and blind instinct. The albums are great, and I’m so proud of them, but I’m 100% clear that I’m at my best right now. And there’s something really exciting about silencing the noise of nostalgia.”

Today is my birthday, and for the past several years I’ve felt like I should be turning older than I actually am. Not in a flattering way - like, oh how mature. No, I think I just feel old. 😂 And I feel it most in these moments of recognition, when somebody else’s art reflects one version of myself back to another. Or, when I see someone doing something so authentically that it rearranges me. I feel old in my responsibilities, and young when I think about what I still want to make. And while I used to think the overflowing emotion was nostalgia, or a sort of grief, I think it’s actually the feeling of being young-old all at once. The feeling of a ticking clock, and unfinished business. And not having a lot of clarity on what that business even looks like, but knowing - in my being - that I’m in a better place to make it. This juxtaposed with the fact that through motherhood, I’ve made the best things I’m ever going to make. So it’s also THAT. My greatest works living alongside me in human form, watching me fail over and over again even though my greatest desire is to not fuck that up, while simultaneously being driven to put the other parts of me out there, and fumbling within the limited space I have to make it all happen.

I loved one thing for a long time, and was validated for that one thing, and to leave that for a world of many loves and little validation… I’m still learning (almost 8 years later) how to live in the expanse of that.

It reminds me of running. Which…I just ran for the first time in 5 months and holyyyy buckets that was humbling, too. I feel like I’ve said this before somewhere but anytime I run, it’s like all the versions of me that have ever gone running, and all the places I’ve ever run, and all the people I’ve ever run with, are running alongside me.

I think that’s what happens when things feel true, too. When we can name something as authentic, it’s not just honesty we’re talking about - it’s familiarity, and the bending and transcending of time. There’s a lot of talk about presence but when I’m the most present, it’s not singular. It’s not “the moment.” It’s a feeling of many moments colliding and aligning all at once, and a deep knowing that I’m not alone there.

Birthdays are that for me, too.

Thank you for reading my words and being in my life. To the many meeting, and continuing on.

This week I’m sharing my conversation with Marisol. She is a mom to three kids - an older son who has autism (and who deeply inspired parts of her journey including becoming a special education teacher in public schools), a 7 year old who she’s homeschooling, and then a sweet, brand new little nugget who was with her for this entire interview (hence my high pitched oh em geee look at herrrr voice lol - it was my first time seeing her!)

We talk about advocacy, homeschooling with an infant, the learning that happens all the time (and the knowledge that isn’t valued as much - like knowing your poop type lolol), de-schooling our brains, the confidence piece for homeschooling parents of trusting you’re enough and that you are capable of teaching your kid(s) (whether you’re a teacher or not), and so much more.

I’ll close by saying this (since you mentioned your homeschool room, Marisol): I totally created a homeschool space in our basement in 2023 mainly because I was tired of stuff being all over the house. And guess what? Stuff’s still all over the house, and lately we’re only down there to play piano, have dance parties, and build with legos 😆. So yes, relatable. The learning happens all over. It cannot be contained. Parts of this convo reminded me of Julie Bogart’s “stages of homeschooling,” one of which is “playing school”. She says,

“We recreate the classroom we remember: bulletin boards, workbooks lined up in magazine files, color-coded schedules. We’re trying to make learning look official, because that’s what we know. Over time, though, we notice a gap between the tidy plan and the messy reality of family life. Someone melts down, someone’s sick, someone’s building an elaborate Lego world during read-aloud time—and, secretly, we’d rather join them than fight it […] Eventually, we arrive at a place we might call “us schooling.” We’re no longer trying to fit someone else’s mold. Instead, we’ve pieced together an education that reflects our family’s values, capacities, quirks, and dreams. It’s not perfect. There are still hard days and unfinished assignments. But there is a growing sense of calm: we know our kids, we know ourselves, and we trust the learning that unfolds in the middle of real life.“

Resources from Marisol >

Logic of English - the reading and language arts curriculum she follows, though she supplements with lots of things, including these books:

Singapore math - one of the math curriculums they use

Khan Academy - according to her, the app is for younger students, web for older kids. They use both.

Teach your monster number skills

Mia academy - her “right now” solution, with a newborn

Also, this is the Shambhala center :) Meditation in Boulder.

As always, you can also watch this episode on YouTube.

All residents got a message from our town’s Director of Utilities, saying that we cannot turn on our irrigation systems, not because of the drought, per se, or new development, but because of “seasonal operational limitations.” In other words, we’ve been hitting record March temps of 85-90 degrees, but we aren’t in our summer water supply yet so if people use the water now, we won’t have it.

It is the latest reminder, in a sea of them, that we (as a collective) are not doing well…and there’s very little I can do to make it better.

So I’m going where I go when things go wrong; circling back to wisdom that’s already been shared, and I found myself sitting with James Baldwin, again. I wrote a huge paper about him in grad school, and started it by saying, “To write about him feels intrusive. What can I, as a young, white, straight, middle class, mother living in 2021 possibly illuminate about him that he did not already illuminate himself?” Some people say he “never forgot or forgave” (America, and white Americans for racism). He, himself, was adamant about not forgiving, at times. But I wonder if forgiveness was actually a constant presence, for him. He wrestled with it, but you can only wrestle with something that’s there.

In The Fire Next Time he said, “there are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves,” implying that whatever we do not face in ourselves, expands, distorts, and reappears in the world around us. The systems we live in are not separate from us; many are built from the parts of ourselves we refuse to know.

Joan Roshi Halifax, in her Ted Talk on Compassion, quotes a line from the Mahabharata, the great Indian epic: “What is the most wondrous thing in the world, Yudhisthira?” And Yudhisthira replied, “The most wondrous thing in the world is that all around us people can be dying and we don’t realize it can happen to us.” Baldwin in The Fire Next Time said, “Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.”

I might not be able to stop wars or fix things, but I have to be willing to see things and in that seeing ask myself: where are my blind spots? And this goes both ways. Am I ignoring the global suffering? Or steeping myself in it and denying myself the beauty? Am I blaming others (those people using water) or deciding to live in it with everyone, thereby letting myself be an active part of the solution?

It is so dry and so brown and at the same time, a mystery tree popped up in our backyard. A mystery tree that is bright green, and doesn’t seem to miss the water at all.

And even though I might remove it, and let it be our Easter tree (thank you squirrel), it’s been (yet another) reminder to notice everything, not just what’s wrong.

I dk y’allllllll, I feel like we’re all spiraling. I wish I had some sort of answer or offering and I don’t. But

I’m grateful for water.

And family.

And safety.

And health.

And homemade lemon poppyseed muffins.

And mystery trees, and Santa squirrels.

And a rejuvenating week with company.

And Nepalese food.

And my kids’ imaginations, which are giving me a little breathing room today.

And many, many, many other things.

Baldwin was a master of holding it all. Our “gratituding” (as my son called it recently), has to live alongside the suffering. Not as a way to escape it, but as a way to stay.

This is where I return, when things feel hard. I have to remind myself, too.

Today’s conversation is with Megan, who lives in Colorado and is a mom to two boys. Megan worked in the public school system as a Special Education teacher, and was inspired to homeschool by her husband who was homeschooled from start to finish. (Side note: she’s also a great Irish dancer. She led our kiddos in a mini class for St. Patrick’s day last year 🍀 )

We chat about everything from obsessively planning field trips, to flopped lessons, obedience and what it means to be a “good student,” the importance of building community (with ideas on how to find & start one) and more.

Thank you Megan for sharing your time and insights 🙏

Resources she mentioned >

Free Forest School

The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins*

*Note: I get a little kickback on books purchased through this link, if you decide to check it out.

This episode is also available to watch on YouTube.

This week is with my friend Elena, who lives in Colorado and is mom to two boys. In this conversation we cover everything from the windiness of parenting littles, to public school in post soviet Russia, patchwork quilting curriculum, the balance between discipline and play, the pressure we put on ourselves and the projection of that onto our kids, how it feels to actively build community vs. just being a part of one, and more.

I will admit, I can be defiant about parenting books/theories/advice/etc. but there are a lot of little gems in here, too, for how homeschooling and parenting inform each other. Are they different things? Or one and the same?

She is so intentional and thoughtful, and I feel like those qualities come through in this interview in spades. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed chatting with her.

Resources for things that came up >

Early on, with her first baby, she was inspired by Waldorf philosophy, and read books like: You are your Child’s First Teacher: Encouraging your Child’s Natural Development from Birth to Age Six by Rahima Baldwin Dancy. (Her favorite piece of this was the “Head, Heart, Hands” idea)*

In terms of schooly stuff, they’re currently big fans of Blossom and Root.

P.S. Windy days writing, from the archives, from the first part of this conversation :)

Housekeeping notes:

*I do get a little kickback from books linked through bookshop.org if you decide to shop.

I officially linked to Apple Podcasts, too, and with the RSS you should be able to listen wherever you listen to podcasts.

Video is also available on YouTube.