Exploring Unschooling

EU406: Foundations: Open and Curious

For this week’s episode, we’re sharing the next Foundations episode of the Living Joyfully Podcast with Pam and Anna, Open and Curious. Open and curious is a helpful mindset shift for navigating relationships and challenges. In this week’s episode, we dive into Pam’s mantra and some of the many ways that it has proven to be so valuable in our lives. Being open and curious takes us back to beginner’s mind and allows us to see possibilities and question limiting beliefs that no longer serve us. We hope today’s episode sparks some fun insights for you! THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player. EPISODE QUESTIONS How does it feel to think about being open and curious about the people in your life? What do you discover through that lens? Try being open and curious while navigating a conflict this week, rather than jumping right to the solution you have in mind. What felt different? Think about something in your life that you’re feeling stuck around. What bubbles up when you approach it with openness and curiosity? What other possibilities exist? Next time you’re judging something your partner or child is choosing to do as “bad,” play with the question “Who would I be without this perspective? What would I do instead? How would that feel?” TRANSCRIPT ANNA: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. Thanks so much for joining us as we explore relationships, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world. If you’re new to the podcast, we encourage you to go back and listen to the earlier episodes. We started with some foundational relationship ideas and have really enjoyed how they’ve been building upon one another. And if you’ve already been enjoying the podcast, we’d love it if you could leave a rating and a review. That definitely helps new people find us. In today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about being open and curious. This is something you will hear us say a lot. I first heard about it from Pam and I find myself saying it daily at this point. When you think about the opposite, it’s being closed and disinterested, so it’s pretty easy to see why we both love it. I don’t want to move through the world feeling closed and disinterested, and it definitely doesn’t help us solve problems or to connect with the people around us. Being open and curious serves us in our relationships on a lot of different levels. When we’re open and curious about our partner, we want to understand them, what’s important to them, why they see things the way they do. We want to set aside any judgment and really lean into connecting with the person in front of us. When I find myself not understanding something they did or said, I can remind myself to be open and curious about it, to not jump to conclusions, to not write a story, like we were talking about last week. That gives us the best chance to avoid a misunderstanding. And part of being curious is asking questions and listening. PAM: Yeah. I love this so much. I have found open and curious to be such a helpful lens to bring to my relationships. For me, it’s a quick way to get to beginner’s mind, which is a place where I don’t feel like I have to know the answers, and I’m just curious to learn more. I often feel a sense of wonder and a childlike energy when I can get there. And it’s not childish. Childlike. There’s a big distinction. So, when I’m open and curious, I’m attentive and I’m interested in hearing new ideas and new perspectives. I want to learn how the other person is seeing things. I want to learn what they’re interested in and why it lights them up. And, of course, that doesn’t mean forgetting about who I am. To me, beginner’s mind is about understanding that the world is richer than just my story. My story, the one I tell about myself, is definitely a vibrant thread, but it also weaves alongside the stories of the other important people in my life. And it reminds me that their story is theirs to tell and I want to listen. I want to know them, not my version of them. And to take that metaphor just one step deeper, being open and curious reminds me to explore the tapestry of my life, which includes the people I love and care about, not just the thread of my story, thinking it’s the one right way to move through the world. It’s a tapestry of unique people and stories that weave together to create the bigger picture of my life, which leads us nicely into the next aspect that we wanted to talk about, doesn’t it? ANNA: It does. Because being open and curious also really serves us when there’s a conflict. So often, when we find ourselves in a conflict, we have in our mind the right answer, how this needs to resolve for me to be satisfied. And unfortunately, It just rarely works out the way we plan. If we come into the conflict pushing our agenda as the only way, we put the other person on the defensive and we end up spending a lot of time defending ideas back and forth, really rarely hearing the other person’s perspective at all. And if we come into the disagreement with this open, curious mindset that we’re talking about, we aren’t abandoning our ideas, like you said, we’re just remaining open to hearing the other person’s perspective. That energy is felt by the other person, and then they are so much more likely to join us on the journey to understand and figure out options. We’re going to be committed to finding something that works. We’re going to get there faster by remaining open and not tunneling in on our one perspective or idea or what the fix should be. PAM: I know, for me, when I first heard the advice years ago to listen to my partner, it made so much sense. So, when we were navigating a conflict, I listened. But eventually I realized I was still holding tightly to my right answer, and my listening was mostly focused on picking up the pieces that aligned with my solution, right? Everything else just kind of flew by. I truly wasn’t hearing their perspective. I wasn’t hearing their story. I was only taking in what I thought I could use to support my agenda or my solution, that tunnel vision that you mentioned. And unsurprisingly, we often ended up at an impasse that way. Each person trying their best to defend and convince the other that their interpretation of the situation and their proposed solution is a right one. Our conversations were energetically draining and steeped in a power dynamic that definitely strained our relationship. So, once I came to recognize what was happening, I chose to instead try to bring an open and curious mindset with me into our conversations. How are they seeing the situation? What parts of it feel important to them? What parts feel especially challenging to them? Does that make sense alongside what I know about them as a person, all the things we talked about way back in episode three that make them the unique person they are, their personality, their strengths, their weaknesses, sensitivities, all those pieces? And in these more open conversations, with defensiveness down and curiosity up, there was space for me to share my thoughts and perspectives, not with the energy that this was the solution, but as more information to consider. And without that grasping and no longer feeling like the only choices we have are their initial solution or mine, we could often find a third or a fourth or a fifth path forward right through the situation that took each of our perspectives and needs into consideration. So, it turns out that open and curious mindset not only gave me the space to learn more about what was going on, it also gave me more space to get creative in finding a solution that worked for everyone involved. The process is like a muscle that gets stronger with practice. With each experience, where shifting to being open and curious helped us creatively navigate a challenge or a conflict, it became a bit easier to shift the next time, and then the next. Over time, I found myself shifting more quickly from defending myself to trusting that we could find a way through together. Being open and curious just helps me in so many ways, in so many situations with so many people. ANNA: Oh my gosh, yes. I see it in so many different ways and I feel like it’s one of those tools we can cultivate that gives us something to do instead of taking things personally when we’re in a conflict. And that is so key when we want to navigate those conflicts with more ease and connection. And this idea is also really important if we find ourselves stuck or with some limiting beliefs. Often this involves outside voices or some cultural constructs that maybe aren’t serving us. And if we bring that open and curious mindset to it, we can start asking questions. Where are these ideas coming from? Are they serving me? Who would I be without them? What other options can I find? But we can only get there if we open up our minds beyond the parameters that are being applied to us by forces that don’t know who we are or what’s important to us. This allows us to start questioning these societal constructs. So, if I’m in a job that I don’t love, why am I still here? What’s stopping me from leaving? What would life look like if I made a different choice? How would that feel? And also things we view as “have tos”. We talked about this a few episodes ago as well. We can start to question those have tos. And being open and curious allows that exploration to move us away from things that aren’t serving us, the things we’ve just accepted even if we don’t like the way they feel. “Relationships should be this,” you know, “School looks like this,” “Being successful looks like that.” All these ideas are worth questioning, especially if we’re wanting to live our best life, a life where we can truly thrive. PAM: Yeah. When we realize that we can question everything, that we can be open and curious about all the possibilities, I swear it just feels like the whole world opens up. I feel so much lighter. And it’s fun that you mentioned that. One of my favorite thought experiments is to play with the opposite perspective to see how it feels, particularly when I’m feeling stuck or frustrated. So, say the story I’m telling myself is, I hate that my kid wants to play video games all the time. In my head, it’s fascinating to explore the question, “Well, what if I was a person that loved that my child is excited to play video games all the time?” So, being open and curious means letting the likely immediate reaction of listing all the reasons I think that’s a silly perspective just float on pass, because that’s definitely not being open and curious, and then just noticing what comes up next. How would I feel in those circumstances when I saw my child happily playing? Well, I think I’d be happy too, because I like this. I’d probably have a big smile on my face. And then I was like, okay, so then what would I do? If this was something I loved and I was excited about, I’d probably join them, sitting with them, and watching them play. I’d listen attentively to what they shared. And they’d probably be really happy that I’m showing an interest in something that they really enjoy. I’d cheer with them when they beat the boss or finished the level or solved a vexing puzzle, and we’d celebrate together. So, I have that vision in my head, and then maybe it would occur to me to ask myself, so what’s wrong with that? It sounds like I’d be seeing their game playing through their eyes, which definitely helps me better understand who they are. And it sounds like a very connecting thing to do, which is something that I want to do. So, when I play with that thought experiment, so often I discover that things aren’t as bad as I imagined them to be on the other side. And I can ask myself, why was I holding on so tightly to my fear and judgment of the thing? It’s just a great tool for me when I’m feeling stuck around what often turns out to be a conventional message that I’ve absorbed, that once I take some time to play with it and dig a bit deeper into it, I discover it really doesn’t make so much sense to me in my life in this moment. ANNA: Exactly. And I think it’s so interesting that we can find ourselves defending and enforcing ideas because we think we’re supposed to, yet, when we choose to examine them, we find they don’t serve us or our relationships at all. And that open and curious mindset allows us to tune into ourselves and evaluate ideas related to who we are and how we want to move through the world. Another time I use this idea a lot is when something bad happens, especially something that I might initially label as bad. Instead I can say, hmm, I wonder what’s going to happen here. I wonder what’s coming next. I don’t have to have all the answers. I don’t know all the things. So, being curious allows me to look for new directions around things that might first be considered roadblocks. I don’t want to be shut down by what happens to me and around me. And the fastest way for me to avoid a spiral is to start asking questions and look at the issue with a wider lens, not jump into the judgment about it. PAM: Yeah, that makes such a big difference. When you can just know that there are other possibilities. We talked about that tunnel vision, and we can especially feel that when something is going wrong or bad around us and we can get really fixated and pulled into that. But when we can take a step back to start asking questions around it and just looking a little bit bigger picture, that really keeps the possibilities bubbling. ANNA: Right, and I think it’s related to the things we’ve talked about with time. There’s plenty of time. Because that’s the other thing. You feel the expansiveness of that open curious mindset. So, when something happens, instead of locking in and the judgment, you can feel that expansiveness of, hey, I can take a few minutes to kind of look at this from the wider perspective. So, I like those inner things that we can find energy shifts, because that’s what can help us move through any of these challenges, bumps, conflicts, whatever, with a little bit more ease. PAM: Exactly. The energy is the whole thing, because the energy is, is ours, but it’s also the energy that we’re bringing to our interactions with everybody around us. It’s so helpful. ANNA: So, here are some questions you might want to ponder as you explore the idea of being open and curious this week. How does it feel to think about being open and curious about the people in your life? What do you discover through that lens? Number two, try being open and curious while navigating a conflict this week, rather than jumping right to the solution you have in mind, and then look at what felt different. How did that change how that conflict played out? Think about something in your life that you’re feeling stuck around. What bubbles up when you approach it with openness and curiosity? What other possibilities exist that maybe you didn’t see at first? And next time you’re judging something your partner or child is choosing to do as bad, play with that question. Who would I be without this perspective? What would I do instead? How would that feel? So, hopefully you’ll take some time to think about those questions and about what an open and curious mindset could bring to your life. And we really appreciate you listening and being here with us today, and we will see you next time. PAM: Yes! Bye.

EU405: A Field Guide: Choosing Unschooling

Welcome to a new series on the podcast that we’re calling A Field Guide, in which we’re working our way through Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. We’re using the chapters of the book as monthly themes in the Living Joyfully Network, which is bringing everything top of mind for us, and got us excited to share our thoughts here on the podcast as well. The book, framed around the hero’s journey, is a weave of myths, contemporary stories, and tales from Pam’s unschooling journey. The monomyth of the hero describes an individual who somehow stumbles upon clues to a truth that lies outside of conventional belief, and begins a quest—physical, spiritual, or both—to understand and eventually embody that truth as their new way of life. Sound familiar? Unschooling unquestionably lies beyond today’s conventional wisdom around learning, parenting, and childhood. And through our journey to understand unschooling, we will learn and grow and change as we come to embrace this new lifestyle. It’s an inner, or spiritual, journey and, by the end, we will see our ordinary world in a new and extraordinary way. And while no two journeys are the same, there are similar stages and characters that you are likely to encounter in some form on your unschooling journey. This is where a field guide shines. In this first episode, we’re talking about the initial phase of the journey: Choosing Unschooling. We talk about the initial call to unschooling, which looks different for different families. We also explore what it looked like to find our guides along this path, describe the threshold guardians we may meet as we cross the threshold into the world of unschooling, and share what it was like to find ourselves in the metaphorical “belly of the whale.” It was a fun conversation and we hope you find it helpful! THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE Learn more about Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid discussions about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Come and be part of the conversation! Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling. So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT PAM: Hello everyone, I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and I am joined by my co-hosts Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hello to you both. And today we are starting a new series on the podcast called A Field Guide. So that means we will have these episodes being released alongside our ongoing foundation series and our journey conversations with other unschooling parents and any other ideas that bubble up for us along the way. We definitely like to go with the flow that way. For this series we’re going to be working our way through my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. We’re also working through it in the network, our online community, which is bringing everything top-of-mind for us and got us excited to share our thoughts here on the podcast as well. So the book, it’s framed around the hero’s journey. It’s a weave of myths, contemporary stories, and tales from my unschooling journey. The monomyth of the hero describes an individual who somehow stumbles upon clues to a truth that lies outside of conventional belief and begins a quest, physical, spiritual, or both, to understand and eventually embody that truth as their new way of life. So, I think that probably sounds familiar to most of our listeners. Unschooling unquestionably lies beyond today’s conventional wisdom around learning and parenting and childhood. And through our journey to understand unschooling, we will learn and grow and change as we come to embrace this new lifestyle. It’s an inner or spiritual journey and by the end we will see our ordinary world in a new and extraordinary way. My body is full of goosebumps right now. Anyway, as I explain in the book, we’re calling this series a field guide. That’s in the title because while no two journeys are the same, there are similar stages and characters that you are likely to encounter in some form on your unschooling journey. In this episode, we’re talking about the initial phase of the journey, which I call choosing unschooling, and the first stage is the call to unschooling. So our journey begins in the ordinary world. I think most of us grew up absorbing the conventional messages around learning that kids have to go to school because that’s where the trained teachers are and to learn something they need to be taught. The call to unschooling is the moment when we catch a glimpse of this new and mysterious world, that world of unschooling, and all of a sudden our ordinary world looks a little bit different, maybe a little less tolerable. And what I find interesting is that it doesn’t mean that we’ve never heard of it before. You may have heard the term unschooling or homeschooling in passing, but this time for some reason something has caught our attention and we are curious to learn more. That’s the call, the individual call to unschooling. ANNA: I love the reminder that each journey is so unique and really each calling to unschooling is so unique. I think sometimes it can be this really organic thing that just kind of unfolds and other times a crisis point brings us to a place of looking around and seeing that message that, like you said, maybe had passed by our view before but we thought it didn’t apply, and now it does. I think for us our call came very early on when we realized school would not work for our oldest. She was a deep diver from the start and we could just see that she really wouldn’t be served by kind of going backwards into this slower linear progression that someone else defined as learning. We had never planned to homeschool. I was aware of it. It was big in our area, but it just wasn’t our plan. And as I started my own deep dive, I found all these different methods. I can’t even remember all of them. There were so many books that I read at the time and there were bits of each of them that I thought were interesting, right? But they didn’t really seem to line up with the child I had in front of me. And then I read John Holt’s book, Learning All the Time, and it was this full-body yes. Not only did it validate what I was seeing in our daughter, but it felt deeply true to me on another level related to David and me and how we learned all the time and how we like to engage with learning in the world and how unique that was, even between the three of us, that ultimately became the four of us. Our priority was this child who had been through so much, medically, already in her very, very short life because this was probably around three. So, stepping out of the well-worn path really wasn’t an issue for us. Our focus was just on her, on her survival, her thriving, and ultimately it helped us to create an environment where all four of us could thrive, which was, just it was really beautiful. ERIKA: Yeah, I love thinking back to that beginning when I first heard the word, first heard of the idea. And it’s been fun to hear people on the network also share how they got that first call. I just remember, when Oliver was a toddler and a young kid, when he would see other kids playing, he would avoid them. He wanted to be off to the side looking, to have some distance for safety. And then, if all the kids are going to do this one thing, or everyone’s doing this, he would go the other way. I was just like, okay, that’s going to be really challenging in school where the whole thing is to get everyone excited to be doing the same thing. If everybody was doing the same thing, he didn’t want to be there. That has kind of changed over the years. But that was my first little peek into thinking that I don’t know that this is really going to work. And I had this vision of people judging him as not doing the right thing, when to me, he was amazing and perfect and doing everything he needed to do. And so that was where it began for me. I really was just looking around, in a way that I hadn’t before, for alternatives. And I remember learning about different kinds of homeschooling. We didn’t know quite as much about neurodivergence at that point either. But I understood that I can’t make him do any particular thing, it just wouldn’t work. And so, I was trying to support his interests. And then when I heard about the idea of unschooling, it was like, oh, okay, people are doing something that’s completely different than anything that I had experienced as a kid. But also that just made so much logical sense to me. And I thought, this kind of life is something that could really work for him. And then when Maya joined the family, we were already kind of thinking that this was the way we were going to move ahead. And so, it’s interesting to see a lot of us get to some of the same thoughts, but from different angles. I really like that part. PAM: Yeah, for me thinking back to when my kids were young, I did not even know homeschooling was a thing, that it was legal. So, I was deep in trying to help my eldest work with school. I was actually doing a lot of research around neurodivergent and stuff. And there was not as much as there is today. But that’s where I was exploring and trying to work with the schools to try and create an environment that worked for him. And I was doing a lot of work with teachers and with principals, trying to figure out things that would work for him. We tried another school, etc. It was finally through that research into neurodivergence, where I found somebody’s article who mentioned homeschooling as an option. I was like, what the heck, and I think it was an American article. And oh my gosh, that quick search to see if that was legal in Canada, is that a thing. And I was doing that research and prep for a meeting with a principal at the private school we had transferred to. And I went and talked to the principal. And she’s like, Oh, yes, we will look at what you brought. And she was amenable. And she’s like, well, we’ll look for ways to work with him. Well, she said, ways to look for his gifts. So I was like, Oh, thank goodness. And I went home and I thought, well, jeepers, he’s been there for months. If you haven’t yet seen him shine, because that’s what I was looking for, because, for me, seeing how he was at home and how he learned and just how he had so much fun during his days. And then the sharp contrast to who he had to become to marginally get through a school day. We’re just so different. That’s why I was always trying to help the school because I didn’t know there was another option. So as soon as I learned about it, there was maybe two months between that discovery, and me going up to each of the kids individually and just saying, “Hey, I just learned that you don’t actually have to go to school.” Because I had said that. You have to go to school. Let’s try and figure out how we can make this work? It was my approach for a few years. And then they all said, absolutely. I’d rather stay home. But yes, that call, I’m still thankful to the principal, just for pointing that out to me that, okay, yes, you’re wanting to work with me, but that what you’re telling me is already telling me that this environment, while better than the public school was not as good as we had at home. Because that’s where I could see those gifts and that shining every single day. ANNA: You didn’t have to search for the gifts, right? They’re just there and apparent when he’s in an environment where he can thrive. PAM: Just so bright and amazing and wonderful. And it was like, Oh, we could just do this. That’s cool. Okay, so then the next stage I called finding our guides, because you’ve chosen to accept the call. Also, I will point out that it is perfectly valid to reject the call. There’s oftentimes when like you were saying, maybe you’ve come across it and thought, that won’t work for us. But this is the point where you’ve chosen it. So you’ve chosen to accept the call and embark on your unschooling adventure. And at this point, your thoughts naturally turn to the road ahead. You’re fueled with anticipation, you’re more than ready to take your first steps. Sometimes, however, the questions and the fears swirling through our minds threatened to overwhelm us. This is something so different. How will I stay on the right path? Will there be clear signposts to guide me? What if I need help? What can I do? As with many tales that I’m sure we have all heard, read, been through, watched, etc. When we begin our journey in earnest, a guide appears. You know, when you’re ready, the guide appears, the teacher appears, that is such a common thing. Anyway, so mythologically speaking, guides do tend to be elderly, experienced, think Dumbledore, think Obi Wan Kenobi. But in a fun unschooling twist, as I looked back, I really discovered that the most important guides for me on my journey were my children. And I think that is such a fun twist. Dumbledore and Obi Wan and those elderly masters and guides have gone through a huge life process to boil down to the essence. Whereas children, they haven’t been inculcated with all the conventional messages like to fit in, etc. And when given the space and the freedom to follow just their human instincts, their curiosity, their joy, their fun, oh my gosh, they just do it. And for me to look at them helped me see what’s possible, right? What kind of a life we could have and how interesting that is. I just found them to be the most useful guides for me in my journey. Whenever I was getting stuck in my head, it was Oh, go back and hang out with your kids, Pam, go do that for a while. And then things would become so much clearer. ANNA: As I mentioned earlier, our focus was our daughter, and her survival. How do we create an environment that works for her and then add in her sister after she got here. They were so clearly the guides from the start. And I think it’s like you said, because this process, it’s a lot of unlearning for us as adults. It’s a lot of excavating and peeling off all these ideas that were handed to us. And I mean, I feel the weight of it, even now just thinking about it. And what I saw with them was a lightness, an excitement about the world, this ability to just explore and take it all in. I think everybody’s seen it in a toddler but it’s there in the five and the seven, the 10 and even the 15 year olds. There is this excitement about the world that I think it’s kind of tamped down, as we try to fit into the path and take that linear path. They really were the guide, because they were the only ones around that really had that organic piece of just following their heart, just being excited about something and going with it and not putting filters over it, which I saw a lot of adults doing, myself included. I was lucky to meet mentors and fellow travelers along the way that absolutely enriched my journey. I think they helped me understand myself more, maybe put some things into context. Each journey is so unique, but it was helpful to see, to have those fellow travelers. But really, it was the kids that were the real guides, because they just knew what they needed. And we could see them thriving. And we could see that the environment worked. It was interesting because it not only worked in great times, when we were having fun but it really worked in the hard times too, because that connection, that focus on relationships, that was a big part of our family. It really helped equip us with what we needed to get through those hurdles that life would throw at us. And so it was just really interesting, like you said, it really turned it on its head to think about like, oh, we don’t need the expert. The clear message for myself was, I don’t know better for someone else, ever. Not my kids, not the neighbor, not my spouse. As soon as I could get there, then I could be more open to really hearing what they know about themselves, what they know about how they want to move through the world. I love turning it on its head and seeing just how much they can teach us. ERIKA: Yeah, I love that. I think that was why I was drawn to Pam’s work at the beginning of my unschooling journey, just because there was so much of that, redirecting my attention back to my children, because that’s what’s happening. The reality of our situation is what they’re interested in and what works for them. But it was such a huge paradigm shift. I do remember at the beginning, just doing so much reading and maybe it was almost like a search for some guidance, at that time to just be like, this is so different than anything that I have thought about before so different from my experience as a child. And so I had not done much questioning of anything. I mean, maybe in the back of my mind, but I hadn’t actively been like, what’s bad about school? What’s wrong with this situation? And school was challenging in ways for me too. And so it was just a lot of learning and a lot of just questioning all the things I thought I knew, all the things that I had been told, and just getting a new understanding for myself. And I think I needed to do that. And really read from the experience or listen to the experience of people who had already been questioning this, because it helped me kind of leap forward along in my own thinking. And then once I did start that process of questioning things, it was very fast. It just made so much sense to me. And it was so fun. My mind was just like, this is so great, things that didn’t quite make sense to me as I was growing up, it was like, oh, yeah, because that didn’t work at all. It was really validating for myself to realize that the environment is so challenging and does not work for most brains. And so I think, finding people who had already thought a lot about it, and we’re writing about it was really helpful. I’m thinking about John Holt. And I read John Taylor Gatto’s very angry books about education. They were really helpful just to be like, wait a second. It got me pretty fired up. But then moving forward, definitely Pam’s reminders to just look back at your kids, that was the most valuable guide along the way, as we continued our journey. PAM: Yeah, I feel that, because they’re both sides to it, right? I found wonderful communities of experienced unschoolers, because I needed that so much. I hadn’t even heard of homeschooling, that was how my world opened to the possibilities. I soaked it in like a sponge, just to see what other people were doing, what their experiences were, how they were approaching things, how they were thinking of things. That was all brilliant, that helped expand my context, expand the possibilities for what I could bring. And then, you were saying, when challenges come, having to go back to my kids or when my mind started spinning and wondering and questioning, and I wasn’t getting anywhere. My kids were my guides, because I could go back to them. And that’s what was happening in our lives. You’ll hear that through the podcast for years, people are different, who are my kids, my kids aren’t their kids. But go back, if you’re newer, I hope you can go back to the unschooling rules series and the unschooling stumbling block series that we have on the podcast. Because that can happen nowadays. When you’re first learning about things, when you’re looking to people who have experience, you’re kind of looking for the rules, well, then how should I do this? It’s something completely. How should I do it? But if you don’t bring that back into your lives, into your kids, into you as a person, those are bound to rub. Somebody’s generic rules about how we do this thing are going to rub because they’re not your people. They’re not your family. So, when things come up, and we’re looking for guidance, looking to our children, through the lens of the possibilities and things that we are bringing to mind, and we’re thinking about what might work for us, engaging with our kids and seeing it in action. That’s where you really feel the truth of it. So, as guides, when you’re in a tough spot, they’re such a lovely place to go. Okay, so the next stage of this choosing unschooling phase of our journey, we are now crossing the threshold into the world of unschooling. In many myths, the hero encounters one or more threshold guardians as they cross into the mysterious new world of their story. These guardians are often gatekeepers like Cerebus, the three headed dog of Greek mythology who stands guard at the entrance to the underworld. So for me, these guardians were things like, family and friends who were pointedly questioning our choice to not send our kids to school. Kind of testing my resolve to leave the ordinary world. And we were speaking of unschooling communities and finding experienced unschoolers. But there are some, at least, at first that seemed rather dogmatic about what unschooling “done right” looks like. So it felt to me like they were kind of testing my quote worthiness to enter this new world of unschooling. What if that doesn’t seem like something I would ever do? Does that mean I can’t enter this world? And then there was also navigating the more official guardians, like getting permission to homeschool from our local Board of Education and finding out what those regulations and things were and how to meet those. It was also helpful to find local communities and see how they were doing that as well. So learning those pieces. These can feel like things that are kind of rubbing, they’re getting in the way of us moving into this new world of unschooling. But moving through them is kind of all part of the process. Learning about those pieces, learning why, why do I still want to do this, even though family and friends, with all the love in the world, are not wanting us to go outside of the ordinary world that they know, and they don’t understand that. So it’s scary for them. And recognizing the part of the role that I’m playing and giving them that authority to be telling me that. How I’m taking it in versus how they’re sharing the message. Anyway, so yes, the guardians can be very different for different people, depending on where you are. But those were three that I definitely encountered on my journey. ANNA: Yeah, I think most people probably encounter those. Maybe one is going to weigh heavier than the other. But I think the imagery is really helpful here, because it does provide that bit of separation, it puts us in that analyzing part of our brain where it’s not so emotional. It’s like, oh, look at these guardians. They are giving me some information. And I think it can help us see that well meaning friends and family members are really just giving us information about who they are, and what’s important to them. And people can be very attached to their paths. And they feel best when they keep everybody on their path, because that’s their validation, right? Well, if we’re all here on this path, then it must be the right path. People are still in that paradigm. And so I think it just helps us to recognize that it’s not about us, and that we can stay focused on what’s working with our family, just like we were talking about a minute ago, look back at your kids, what do you actually need? And then that big piece of that is trusting that it’s okay if it looks different, that they don’t need to be on our path, we don’t need to be on their path. We don’t have to convince anybody, it’s okay for it to look different for everyone, we’re all learning different things throughout that journey. For number two, you know, I’m not a big fan of any kind of dogmatic ideas, whether it’s around diet or education or anything else, because we’re so unique, and each journey is so unique. There is not one right way. Okay, maybe I am dogmatic about that, people probably get irritated with me about that! I think the idea that there’s a right way really can feel comforting, I do totally get that, that it feels comforting, but to me it’s just so short-sighted, and the rigidity of it really restricts our growth. That’s what I saw in myself, because I’ve had my dogmatic days, especially when I was younger, and what I saw was that I just shut out so much when I was so focused on there being this one right way to do something. I feel like a whole world opened up when I realized, oh there are lots of different ways to do things. We’re each going to choose what works for us, and then change and pivot and do it again and twirl it around. It was just so expansive for me, and I loved that expansive feeling, versus feeling like I needed to put myself on rails, to do either unschooling right or something else right. I just really loved that, and so just understanding there isn’t the perfect path, that it’s all growth, it’s all learning, it’s all context, it’s all building our web. And then just quickly about the laws, I just want to encourage people to really understand the specific laws in their area, so for us it’s States, there’s provinces, you know, all kinds of different ways that it’s handled in different countries, but know exactly what’s there, and I mean read the statutes, because many times these kind of governing bodies will ask for way more than is actually legally required. When you can truly understand the statutes of your area and be able to speak about them, it will help you feel grounded and empowered because you know what we’re dealing with. I lived in a state where they required annual testing. But when you dig into it, you don’t have to send the test to anyone, you have to keep it on file for X amount of time. There were all these nuances of the specific laws that I was like, oh, okay, we can make this work. It doesn’t have to be timed, you don’t have to do a specific level, and so there were all these different little nuances. And so I loved what you said Pam too about local groups. It does really help, I think, even if a local group may not fit you in all ways, to just check in with them, because they’re navigating those same laws and can help calm you and help you understand what’s really required. They will share some ways to make that work for your family and your specific kids and their brain. So, just spend a little bit of time with that, because I think it can feel a little shaky if you don’t know that and you don’t know if you’re on solid legal ground. And so just me taking that time helped me feel really confident in any environment that what we were doing was legal and in compliance. ERIKA: One thing I like about this guardian section is how the different areas kind of require a slightly different approach, but they’re all manageable. Once you wrap your head around what’s going on here. So, for the official stuff, shout out to Nance from Florida unschoolers, she is serving this role for Florida unschoolers, just reminding us of what is required. And it’s not a lot. She runs this big umbrella school that just makes it really easy for families to avoid having to do extra documentation that’s just not required by law. There are people in every state who have figured things out and are working to look at what’s legally required and making sure that we can do it as easily as we can. And then for those family and friends, I think it’s so unique. I love hearing other people’s stories about this, because there are some difficult families out there with a lot of expectations of their kids and grandkids and people who have been in education their whole lives, and they think they know everything about it. And I think that adds such a layer of difficulty to this. When you’re facing a guardian that is that intense, and that feels so confident that their information is the right information, it’s tough. Fortunately, for our family, we didn’t really have to deal with much of that at all. And I think just personality wise, I come in with a lot of confidence about what I’m doing. And so I haven’t really had as many people questioning. But when I hear about people who have those really close family relationships, where it is very intense, and people are thinking this doesn’t feel safe. And I do love going back to just remembering, that’s based on their experience in their life. And what they’re telling us about our life is really just telling us about themselves. Where they’re feeling judged, or where they’re feeling, well, if what you’re saying is true, it kind of makes everything I believe fall apart. That’s a very scary feeling. And so people will really hold on tight to these beliefs that they have, like you were saying, Pam, at the beginning, well, you have to go to school. And if that’s not true, then I don’t know, that starts to feel a little scary for some people. How could that not be true? I had to go to school. This is the belief that everything we do is based around it. It just helps me have a little bit more compassion for them, because it’s too scary for them to be able to go there. But we are each on our own journey. And so that’s okay. It’s okay if it’s different. And I did come across those dogmatic unschoolers as well at the beginning of my journey. And that’s just another thing that I think it helped me learn, it helped me kind of clarify, what are the things that feel true to me right now? What are the things that I see working for my family right now? There were ideas that I thought, you know, we would never get to that place of like, what they were calling radical unschooling back then. That sounds like too much. But then over time, the learning and things just naturally evolve where it starts to make more sense than it does at the beginning. But I do think it can be a little scary for unschoolers at the beginning of the journey. If they see people who are doing things that are just wildly outside of their comfort zone. But I think that’s why I really like the vibe that we have on the network, because it doesn’t feel like that to me. It feels like everybody’s sharing experiences, but there’s no judgment about where you are along the path. I just feel like that kind of support where you can see people doing things differently. But it doesn’t feel like a threat. And I really appreciate that type of environment. ANNA: Something you said, I just want to jump on real quick and that was that confidence piece, because I really do think that coming into those family environments with just a confidence, just a calm confidence, not an aggressive, I have to convince you confidence, but just a calm confidence makes such a difference. And I think one of the things that’s really helpful with that is to be a part of community, whether it’s a small group of friends or joining something like the network, where when you have the doubts or the questions, which are going to come up for all of us, you take it there to a group of people that are going to hold it lightly. They are going to let you examine it without the judgment without the fix being, well, put them back in school or put them in their own bed or whatever the thing is. And so, because I think, especially those of us that have good relationships with our family, we came to them with things, we asked them for things, but this may feel outside of their comfort zone. So just keep that more about connecting with the grandparents or connecting with the aunts and cousins and asking your questions in a place that really knows more about what you’re trying to do. Because it’s not about that there’s an answer or a path, but I just found it so helpful to hear from people that at least had the same priorities that I did, that we’re prioritizing the relationships and we’re prioritizing this path. It feels really different. And I think that helped me have confidence in those other areas because I didn’t need to be asking them questions about it. PAM: And you know what, I mean, this is exactly why I was originally inspired to write this book in the first place, as in a field guide, as in our journeys don’t look the same, but chances are there are going to be some challenges when people start to know that we’re not sending our kids to school anymore, right? Some challenges when we start looking for more information. Just understanding that shift that what they’re sharing is, even though the way it’s shared often feels like a judgment of us, actually, it really is all about them and where they are in their journey. And understanding that piece can completely help us shift how we engage with them. Like you said, we have more compassion for them because we understand, we see through their eyes why they’re thinking this. We don’t feel as much the need to defend because it’s okay, they’re really stuck. I can’t change them. My goal is not to try to change them. If they’re curious, this is a seed that’s planted and they can come and ask questions. So now I don’t get defensive and keep trying to share and convince and tell them I’m right. It’s like, this is working for our family right now and we’ll see how it goes. We’ll see where it goes. And pass the bean dip. I don’t need to engage in this conversation because this is about their need. And we know they’re struggling with all sorts of questions. So give them time to process and to choose which questions they want to actually dig into. That was something that really helped me to eventually just not get engaged deeply. It doesn’t mean ignoring them. It means having other conversation starters in my back pocket. What’s your favorite movie that you saw recently? What are you doing for fun? That was one that I used to love all the time. There are so many other possibilities. But just having a guide to the journey that can let us know these things are popping up. Help us recognize because so often we’re just so busy and stuck in our days. We really don’t have the opportunity to think bigger picture. Anyway, okay. So our last stage of this choosing unschooling phase of the journey. We have stepped across the threshold. Hi guardians. I embrace you and now I’m moving past you. We are now going to be embracing beginner’s mind. And I will say I love how Joseph Campbell in The Hero’s Journey describes this stage. He writes it as the hero instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died. So, when I first read this book, Hero with a Thousand Faces, when I got really curious about how the unschooling journey fit in, this was years after, right? But oh my gosh, this hit so hard. Being swallowed is a popular image in stories that symbolize a transition, right? It describes the hero’s figurative death in the ordinary world and their rebirth in the new one. It’s about shedding our preconceptions and assumptions that made sense to us in the ordinary world and embracing beginner’s mind to learn about the new one. This stage is also often described as the belly of the whale, right? In storytelling terms. And I just found that such an apt metaphor. And the whale comes in all shapes and sizes too, depending on the journey. When I was looking back, I just found it fascinating how well it described what happened for us, which is a long season of cocooning. For us, the whale was definitely our home. I found we spent a lot of time at home as we transitioned away from our ordinary world. Home felt like a sanctuary for all of us. And it was free from judging eyes for me. And it was a place where the kids could dive into their play with abandon. But after I read that, I thought from the outside looking in, I definitely can imagine that it kind of looked like we had died, right? But we were very happily cocooning. So for me, approaching these days with a beginner’s mindset helped me release many of the assumptions about children, about learning, about parenting, that I was carrying with me as truth. This was just the conventional wisdom of what this looked like. But I can now see what they actually look like in our actual lives. And it got me constantly wondering, what if that’s not true? Beginner’s mindset was just a lens or a metaphor for me that really helped me feel more comfortable, just questioning all those pieces. What if that’s not true? I could just play with it, right? It’s not like I had to shift quickly from one strong belief to another strong belief. It was like, ooh, what if that’s not true? And it was just like a mind-blowing season for me. ANNA: I love that. I think it is this really important process to create that kind of sacred space, especially when you’re leaving something that’s so institutionalized and mainstream to really allow space for everyone to settle in and begin that journey of self-discovery, self-awareness, outside of those institutional models. Our call came pretty early. So, in terms of how it looked inside and probably to the outside, it was very similar. We just kind of kept doing what we were doing. But I think for me, what struck me as you were talking is that beginner’s mind piece. I saw that with myself. I may have done my own little withdrawing a little bit, which ended up being a lot of reading, a lot of finding people because of that exact thing that you mentioned. Everything was on the table. I’ve always been a questioner of things, but it’s really discouraged. Which is so ridiculous. It’s critical thinking people, we should not be discouraging it, but it was. And so suddenly I was like, wait a minute. Nobody’s telling me I can’t do it, like they were when I was in school. Nobody’s telling me that I can’t look at all these pieces. And so I do feel like there was a time where I really just cleared the slate and saidy let’s just start putting everything on the table. Do we really believe this? Do we really need this? Does this really serve me? And honestly, I will say, Pam, we say this a lot, but I kind of feel like I do this every decade or two. I’m doing it again now, in my mid fifties. Are these the things I want? Do I need to do this? Do I need to have these same rules? And so I don’t know. I think that’s a really cool vision to create a little insular space to get all the outside noise quieted down, to see where you are, to see where you want to grow. And we come out of it, right? We come out of those spaces. PAM: I just want to pop in for one second, because you said like we cycle through this journey over and over. And I will put in the show notes, my image for the journey. And it is a circle because it is not linear: I was in the ordinary world, now I’m totally adjusted to unschooling and that’s the end of that journey. No, this kind of journey, this spiritual journey of self-awareness, et cetera, definitely is a circular thing that recurs. Anyway, thank you. ERIKA: I love that. And I think it helps us to realize that that’s true, because I think maybe sometimes it’ll feel like a failure if we feel like we’re back at that questioning place again, about anything really. It can be frustrating when it’s like, didn’t I figure this out? Haven’t I already decided who I am? And then now things change. But yeah, I think it’s cool that it is a circle. And we go through many phases in our lives. And I also love the reminder about beginner’s mindset, because I think that helps everything. It helps for all parts of our lives. But especially for this, and that being in the belly of the whale. I don’t know if from looking outside in, if anybody would have described it that way. I think for me, that feeling was more internal, because so much of my life was about academic achievement, doing really well at the things people wanted me to do. And so it was really big, it was like a death of who I used to be, realizing a lot of these things. And I would get little reminders of that when I would be around people from older times in my life, who have this view of me that now doesn’t feel like me. And so, yeah, it’s deep, it’s a deep change that feels, it feels big like that. And then as a side note, every time I read the belly of the whale, it makes me think of in Roblox, those obbies when you end up going in some big mouth. For some reason, I always think of those classic obbies, you always end up for some reason going into some big character’s mouth. So I don’t know, I thought maybe some other parents might have had that similar experience at some point. And I just always get that visual. PAM: Yes, I think it’s very fun. There are different visuals too. There’s the train. So often, there’s a train journey, think Hunger Games, think Harry Potter off to Hogwarts. There’s always just some sort of metaphor, leaving one life behind and going to a new one, etc. So I find it very interesting. Thank you very much to everyone listening for joining us. Thank you very much to Anna and Erica. It was an amazing conversation. And we hope you enjoyed our dive into this first phase of the unschooling journey, choosing unschooling. And we also invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully network to continue the conversation. It really is like we were talking about earlier, about communities that expand the context that introduce questions I never thought of in that way. When we were talking about all the questions that we can put on the tables, maybe some we haven’t even thought that we could revisit yet, and have a place where we can do that without feeling judged. Anyway, it is a warm and welcoming online community of like hearted parents, a non judgmental space where you can steep in these kinds of unconventional unschooling ideas. And just explore as we were talking about earlier, turning back to our guides what that might look like day to day in your uniquely wonderful family. And we are very excited to welcome you. To learn more and join us just follow the link in the show notes or go to living joyfully.ca. And you’ll see network right there up in the top menu. We wish everyone a lovely day. Thank you so much.

EU404: Foundations: Stories

For this week’s episode, we’re sharing the next Foundations episode of the Living Joyfully Podcast with Pam and Anna, Stories. Humans are storytellers. We choose the stories we tell about our lives. In every situation, we can come up with a number of ways to tell the story of it, and they’re all a version of the truth. But we get to choose which version resonates the most with us, which one feels better to us, and then that informs our actions moving forward. Getting curious about the stories we tell can be an amazing form of self-care! We hope today’s episode sparks some fun insights for you! THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player. EPISODE QUESTIONS What stories are you holding on to about yourself, your partner, and your family? Where are the stories coming from? From your parents during your childhood? The outside voices of society? Somewhere else? Do you see the story in your self-talk? How else might you tell that story? How does it feel to realize that you get to craft your own stories? TRANSCRIPT PAM: Hello and welcome to the Living Joyfully Podcast. We are very happy you’re here exploring relationships with us, who we are in them, out of them, and what that means for how we move through the world. And in today’s episode, we are going to talk about stories, both the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we assign to other people, meaning what we think they’re thinking. And yes, it can get very messy. Now, this episode is a bit longer than usual, but we think it’s worth it. Stories are intricately woven into our relationships with the people that we love, and that’s because humans are storytelling animals. It’s how we make sense of our world. In the book The Storytelling Animal, How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall, he wrote, “Story is for a human as water is for a fish – all encompassing and not quite palpable.” I love that so much, because story truly is everywhere. And the language we choose makes a profound difference, because the stories we tell ourselves become our self-talk. That is why we want to be intentional about the language that we’re using. And what’s really fascinating is that for pretty much any situation, we can come up with a number of ways to tell the story of it and they can all make sense and all could truthfully tell the story of that situation. And the thing to realize is, we get to choose which one resonates most and feels better to us, which then informs our actions moving forward, which calls back to our conversation in episode seven about how every moment is a choice. Stories and choice are woven together so well, aren’t they? ANNA: Oh my gosh. So much. For me, truly understanding the role of story has been so pivotal. That awareness allowed me to step back and observe, so, where’s this story coming from? Does it feel real to me and who I am in this moment? Is it serving me? And if I’ve held onto it for a long time, why? Why have I held onto that story? And who would I be without it? That’s one I love to think about. Who would I be? What would it feel like? Because there’s an energetic feeling to that. What do I feel without this story that I’m telling about myself or these people in my life? And those questions really can only come about once you take off the veil and realize that everything is a story. Then I get to dive in and have these questions. And through the questioning, I can hone in on what is really working for me. And then I can start to change my story to be more reflective of me as the person I am now, the person I want to be moving forward. And I could see the role of story more clearly and use it as a tool instead of being held hostage by it, which is kind of how it felt before. And for me, like you said, language is such a big piece of that. I try to be so intentional about my language that I use, whether I’m defining some kind of big event or a very simple task in front of me, because in that language is choice. I’m developing the story that informs my day and tells others who I am. And so, that piece is so critical to me, just seeing it for what it is. And then, how do I want to create my narrative? What language do I want to use to describe it? I like thinking about it. PAM: Yeah. And once you see the scope of it, it’s incredible, because it’s not only the stories that we’re telling ourselves, but it’s understanding that the stories we’re telling others about ourselves and about our lives is the picture that they’re going to draw from. That’s where they’re going to meet us. So, first, let’s look at our self-talk, at our inner voice. Sometimes we don’t think we have control over our self-talk. It just appears in our head, the words over and over and over when we’re spiraling over something, right? But we truly can change that over time as we make intentional changes to the language that we use and the stories we tell ourselves. It is worth taking the time to listen to our self-talk a bit more objectively, to just ask ourselves, is this a helpful story for me? ANNA: Right, because we have the self-talk, and we don’t think we can change it. I think that’s something I believed when I was younger. It’s hard to change or we’re given this story that it’s hard, but I think we may assign it more importance than perhaps serves us. So, I love the idea of really diving into that, because self-talk is just an aspect of our story. It’s no different. It’s no more powerful. And it’s not this boogeyman that it’s kind of made out to be. And sometimes our self-talk is the stories that have been handed to us, perhaps by our parents or past relationships. And what’s so important there is to realize that the stories they told, even if the story is about us, is their story. It’s not ours and we don’t have to take it in and own it. It’s about them, where they were at the time, the stories that perhaps they were handed. And so, that’s the thing, right? We can just keep continuing to hand down these same stories or we can take control of our own narrative. We can look at who we really are and what’s actually in front of us, and then write a story that lifts us up, because that helps us be the person that we want to be and it will inform our next steps in a given situation. And I think that’s what’s so important about it. That’s how insidious stories are. When we carry these stories from someone else, they change our energy and then they inform our next steps, and it keeps us on this same narrow path. But at any moment, we can take back the reins. We can examine the stories that we’re clinging to and we can make choices because yes, Pam, it’s always about choices with me. We’re going to keep bringing that up. PAM: Yes. Definitely. I love the point about realizing that the stories other people are telling about us, especially the stories we grew up with, are just somebody else’s perspective. It’s their story. So, maybe we’ve absorbed the story that we’re too sensitive, or we’re scared to try new things, or we’re very shy. That isn’t our story. It’s their story about us. And we get to choose our own story. Speaking of, it’s also helpful to realize that goes both ways. So, for example, take a moment to consider the stories we’re telling our partner about our day. Maybe we’re more likely to take it as an opportunity to vent. “I am so tired,” or, “So many things went wrong today.” Is that what I want to convey? What will their view of my day look like from my story? Maybe that I’m so tired because I was busy having fun playing with the kids, or deep in the flow of working on a favorite project or knocking a bunch of those tasks off my to-do list. Maybe more things unusual went wrong today precisely because I was working a to-do list that was filled with those iffy jobs, and I got them done in the end. But how will they see my day through my venting words? Probably not as the ultimately satisfying day that I saw. So, understanding that the stories I tell, big and small, live on in the world reminds me to be more intentional. Now that doesn’t mean not venting, but maybe prefacing it with a quick qualifier. Like, “My day was great. I just want to vent about a couple of things.” It means considering who I’m speaking with and choosing my language to better convey the meaning of my story. Is what I’m saying true? Is it how I want to be seen by others? What do I need or want from the conversation? Because stories are the lifeblood of communication. ANNA: Yes. And I think it’s interesting, too, thinking about that. What do I want to get from this story? Because if we do come at our partner with all the things that have happened in the day and then they come back trying to solve things and really we’re like, “Wait a minute, it’s just a story we’re telling about how we had these tough things,” you know? So, keep all that in mind. It’s the lifeblood of communication. I don’t think that’s an overstatement. I think that’s really so true. And so, keeping in mind that others will see our story through their lens, what they know, and that’s okay. Understanding that helps us put their comments or reactions into perspective as well. Back to everyone is different. We see and experience the world differently. PAM: Yes. And that is absolutely a wonderful thing. We have control over our stories and what pieces we choose to share and how we choose to share. Understanding that other people come to conversations with their lens, too, so, not expecting them to fully understand what it looks like through our eyes and not even expecting them to even be curious to understand. We can’t control where they are on their journey. Now, I also want to talk about the stories that we assign to other people, because so often we tend to assume the worst story. For myself and many others that I’ve spoken with, when we’re feeling disconnected from someone or they react negatively to something we’ve said or done, the story we immediately tell ourselves is that we did something wrong, but often that really isn’t true. It’s so helpful to remember that, when we’re thinking about what someone else is thinking, that is a story that we’re making up. No matter how well we know them, we still don’t know for sure. So don’t assume that the first story that we jump to is the same story that they see. ANNA: Yes. So often, we find ourselves putting words into people’s heads, and we will actually play out the scenarios till the end without the other person involved at all. “They’re upset with me. I did something wrong. They don’t like what I’m doing,” whatever the words were saying. Even, “They’re trying to hurt me. Their actions are intentional towards me.” So often, we get that very wrong. We really don’t know what’s happening in another person’s head. I have a friend that will honestly just create entire movies and the challenge with that is, it doesn’t leave room for anything else. Once you’ve created a story for someone, you start acting from that place with that energy. So, if you’ve ever had one of those dreams where it’s so real, your partner has done something terrible and really upset you, and you wake up and you’re still super mad and they’re going like, “What is happening? I just woke up. I don’t know what you’re talking about!” But it’s the same when we create a story. We can buy into that energy and bring that energy to the person and they have no idea where it’s coming from. But instead, if we can first assume positive intent, second, we can ask questions and leave space and remain open, then the person’s free to share what they’re actually feeling. And so often, it does not come close to the stories that we’re making up. So, I have a friend and a while back, she shared a story and she didn’t share it as a story. She shared it as a fact. She said that her husband didn’t find her attractive. And she said, “He actively avoids even touching me when we walk each other past each other in the hall.” And I was like, “Oh, wow. Have you talked to him about that?” And she was like, “Well, no.” And then when she did, she found the complete opposite was true. He was trying to be respectful of her space. So, he felt by moving aside in the hall, he was showing respect for her space and honoring her. And so, then they had this conversation around what would feel good to each other and how they want to move forward. And it’s very different now. But she had been telling that story for years and he had no idea. That’s just how insidious these stories are. And I think it’s just really worth examining the stories that we put on others, even when we feel it’s justified, even if we think we know them so well, even if we’ve held onto these stories for years. Conversations are so important. Being open and curious. Leave space for people to tell us who they are. Pre-writing a detailed story does not. You can feel that closed energy when you come in with this pre-populated story and it’s so disconnecting. Even some light inquiry can shed light on what’s really going on and give space for each person to share their perspective. And then we can understand where the communication broke down in the first place and why maybe we’re seeing it differently, but that won’t happen if we stay in our head creating stories. That will only happen with that choice of connection and that choice to have some conversations. PAM: Yeah, sometimes I can get stuck in a really negative story about someone else, and I just don’t feel confident enough to ask about it yet or bring it up. But when that happens, I found it helpful to just remind myself that it’s a story and then start to play with that. How else might this story go? What about this? Does that fit? Maybe this? So, once I think of a few other things, even if they seem outlandish to me right now, I realize that there isn’t just one possible story. It wasn’t just the one thing that I was clinging to and being upset about. That lightens things up for me. And usually, when I’m feeling lighter, now I can get curious. Which one is it? I want to know now. And then usually I can get to the space, the energy, where it doesn’t feel so heavy and I can actually bring up the conversation with them. I can actually go, “Hey, what about this? What did that feel like to you?” On the flip side, moving through that process over and over helped me realize that I really don’t know what’s going on in another person’s life that has led them to make whatever choice it is that they made. That’s their story, their truth. That’s been a very helpful discovery on my journey around stories, just that realization that these are stories. My story, their story, it’s their truth in the moment. And that is just enough. I can be curious then. It reminds me that there are multiple ways that things can go. ANNA: Right. And there are just always more layers, I think, to peel back on our stories, which kind of leads nicely to this last bit we wanted to talk about. We get to choose the stories we tell. And we touched on this back a bit back in the choices episode, but I want to bring it up again. We choose the stories we tell about the big things like our childhood and the little things like the grocery store. And in every situation, there are things that are easier and harder, that work or don’t work. But we can choose to focus on those aspects that make sense and feel better to us. For any situation, we can come up with a number of ways to tell the story of it, and they all make sense in the context of the activity, the situation, the people involved, and they can all truthfully tell the story. But now, we get to choose which one resonates the most with us, which one feels better to us, which then informs our actions moving forward. That’s the power of story. PAM: Right. Especially in more challenging situations, it’s so valuable to take a moment to not just jump in with the first story that comes to mind, which is usually fear-based. And it’s usually the worst one, the worst interpretation of things. And if we just stick with that one, we can get tunnel vision and start spiraling downward in our fears. We can get really stuck there if we only see this one worst interpretation of the situation in front. So, instead, take that moment to come up with a few more stories that align with the situation. If we don’t take the time to consider other stories, we’re not really making a meaningful choice moving forward, are we? You can’t choose between one thing. And choosing more positive stories, ones that feel better to us, isn’t about avoiding the truth, because the different stories all incorporate the facts. But for me, choosing the more positive story is really a form of self-care. Instead of telling myself over and over the versions that make me feel bad, that weigh me down, that pull me into that tunnel vision, I can tell myself the versions of the story that both make sense and feel better. Because from there, I’m in a more open and curious and receptive mindset, a place where I can now see more opportunities. I can be more creative in choosing my next step and my next moment is truly better. And I find myself then starting to spiral upwards, moving through it, rather than spiraling down and crashing and just feeling crushed. ANNA: And getting stuck! So, my oldest daughter and I talked about this so many times over the years, because she is a master storyteller. And, I mean, it’s a gift. It is a gift that she has and it is amazing. But sometimes, it gets the better of her, because sometimes she can spin this really intricate story about someone else or about a situation, and it ends up making her feel terrible. But in the end, it’s just a story. We’re making it up in our heads. And I think once I realized that, I decided, if I’m going to make up a story, I’m going to make up a story that feels good, one that helps me feel connected, that helps me move forward as the person I want to be, which is exactly what you’re talking about. So, I want to examine if my story spirals me into a place of being stuck, or if my story is lifting me. I may not understand all the pieces, but I can feel okay about the situation if I look at it this way, and that helps me move forward as the person I want to be. And like we’ve talked about before, there are situations sometimes where I can get some clarifying information so that I can get a more accurate picture, because maybe there’s someone else involved and I can stop putting words in their mouth and actually figure it out. But other times, like you said, it really isn’t even possible. When it’s not possible, I just always want to choose the story that feels better, because it’s just as likely to be true as the one that doesn’t. And so, I’m just wasting the time in this moment feeling bad about something when I really don’t even know the full story. And so, that’s why I love that you tied it into self-care, because that’s exactly what it is. It really is just this intentional choice to look at what’s in front of me and find a story that feels good. And again, it’s not about pushing the other things aside. It’s not about pretending that things didn’t happen or changing the story. It’s just intentionally using language that makes me feel good about what’s happening around me. So, for me, if it’s a particularly challenging or difficult situation, it’s not about pretending that the difficult situation didn’t happen, but I look for, how have I moved through it? Look at the amazing support I’ve received from the people around me. Look at how loved I am because they’ve helped me through this situation. Look at what I’ve learned about myself from it. Whatever the situation, I can always find a way to frame it to use what can be a challenging situation to make myself feel better and to move forward from there. And so, that’s also an empowerment piece, knowing that I can turn these situations that can completely derail me into situations that just boost me forward and allow me to be around the people that I love and to connect with the people that lift me up. PAM: Yes. And another layer that I think would be helpful for people to peel back, and I am still peeling this layer back, but, why is our tendency to take on that weight? Why does it feel like the more positive spin or the silver lining is it cheat? It really is not. And we can do that work to peel back those layers and to realize that these are all stories, they are all versions of the truth. They could absolutely all be true. ANNA: And I think this part is related to the stories handed to us by society. Things like, life is suffering. Only hard work pays off. Relationships are hard. And so, when you find this cheat, you’re like, “Wait a minute. Maybe it doesn’t have to be this hard. Maybe I can be enjoying it,” but then you might try to stop yourself. Like, “What? But we’ve been told that forever!” But no, set that aside, because we don’t have to make situations more difficult. There’s going to be plenty of things in life to work through, but when you can find joy, when you can switch that focus, see the light, find the gifts in the situation, life is just so much more enjoyable. But we do have to shed some of those stories from society, some of those stories from even other people in our lives, in order to create what feels good for us. PAM: Yeah, I love that. I mean, “Life is hard.” Don’t we hear that all the time? But then, if we tell a different story, the reaction can often be like, “Well, you’re a Pollyanna. You’re not seeing the truth.” Another story. Right? It is just so useful to work through all of that. Now, you and I have both heard, “You guys are always so positive,” and people think it’s weird at first, which is okay, because it’s part of the process of peeling back those layers and understanding that our stories are ours to tell and there’s more than one way to tell the story. We don’t always have to take the negative, life-is-hard bent on it. ANNA: Right. And the reason I’m telling the story is for me. It’s not to put on a show or make anything look different for somebody else from the outside. It’s because it helps me be the person I want to be. It helps me in my relationships. I remember one time somebody said to me, “I get it now. I get that you’re not just a Pollyanna about life. It’s that it helps you have these relationships. It helps you move through these situations.” And I’m like, “Yes, that’s absolutely it.” I’m not thinking about anybody else’s reaction to me choosing joy or finding light in a moment, because that’s my internal work. Now, I’m understanding that it can come across that way as people are listening to it, but I’m like, “Oh, no, no, no. This is just a tool.” It’s a tool that helps me connect with people. It helps me move through my days in a way that feels better to me. And it’s just a choice. And I think if somebody wants to play around with it, they can see how it feels for them, too. PAM: Exactly. Exactly. And I find it helps me be more creative. It helps me come up with more possibilities. And that’s the thing. You can try it out for a while and you see how it goes. And I do suspect you’ll start to see things that wouldn’t have happened in the other mindset. ANNA: Yeah, it’s really true. And I do think it’s so interesting and we definitely get feedback about that. I mean, I definitely get that. “You’re always looking on the bright side!” And I’m like, I feel all the things, but it’s just, again, those stories we create, it impacts how we move forward. It impacts how we see all the things around us. So, let’s talk about some questions you might want to ponder for this week as you explore the idea of stories. First, what story are you holding onto about yourself, your partner, and your family? And that’s a lot. So, that one may take a few minutes, because we have stories that have been handed us from childhood and on. So, there’s a lot of stories there. Where are the stories coming from, from your parents during childhood, from outside voices of society, somewhere else? Identifying where, I think, is so key to realizing and taking your power back there, to realize, I don’t need to own their story. That story’s not about me at all. And so, do you see the story in your self-talk and how else might you tell that story? Self-talk again, it’s kind of this bugaboo that we’re unsure about. How do we change it? But I think the first step, don’t you think, is just identifying it, just recognizing it as a story. PAM: Yes. Recognizing it as a story and, like in the previous question, where did that story come from? Is it really my story or is it something that I’ve absorbed over the years? It’s someone else’s view that I’ve adopted because they can really feel like that’s our story, That’s our self-talk, because we should be more productive, we should be efficient. “I should be able to do this quickly,” or, “I shouldn’t be so sensitive.” There are just so many stories that we’ve absorbed over time that are really somebody else’s view. And to check in and start asking ourselves and see, well, does that make sense to me? Do I feel sensitive all the time? What’s wrong with being sensitive? There are just so many questions and layers do with that. ANNA: And you know I love, who would I be without that story? So, feel that. Who would I be without telling that story about I’m so sensitive or I can’t get anything done whatever the thing is that people have handed to us. So, yeah, so interesting. And finally, how does it feel to realize that you get to craft your own story? And so, I think it, I think that may take a minute, because it’s just realizing, Okay, do I get to write it? Because I think, again, some people think it’s a cheat. But it’s like, no, you really do. You really get to pick the things that you like and craft that as your own personal story, even when there’s tragedy, even when there are bad things that have happened. There are things to look at that we can just say, yeah, but this is who I want to be and this is how I went through those tough times, and this is what was surrounding me during that. And so, that we can hold onto that part of the story as well. PAM: Yeah, and I think that’s one of the big things that I want to share with people is that these are true moments. This isn’t stuff that we’re making up. We’re not saying, ignore all this hard stuff that’s going on around you. It’s, as you said, a tool that can be helpful in moving through those seasons, moving through those emergency moments, all those pieces. For me, it is so incredibly helpful for me to move out of that fight or flight tunnel, which can be super helpful in the moment. But we get stuck there so easily. This is a tool that really helps me move through that. I just find it’s become such a useful tool, because I know I’m more creative on the other side. I move through things with more grace and just more compassion and kindness for other people that are involved when I can help myself with this tool move beyond that tunnel vision and the that whole fight flight emergency response when things go wrong. That’s helped me. ANNA: It will be fun to see what people bring up about stories. So, thank you so much for listening and we hope to see you next time. So, take care. Bye-bye. PAM: Bye, everyone.

The Unschooling Summit, 2026

We are so excited to be participating in The Unschooling Summit again this year! We participated last year and it was such a wonderful event that we want to make sure people know it’s happening again this year. To that end, we asked Summit hosts Esther Jones and Melissa Crockett-Joyoue if they’d be up to join us to talk about it! The Details Join other parents from around the world for three days of inspiration and community at The Unschooling Summit. This free virtual event will feature 90+ unschooling experts and advocates. You’ll have access to interviews with some of the top experts and advocates in the field of unschooling and self-directed learning You can take part in live roundtables with seasoned unschooling parents discussing some of the most important topics that come up for unschooling families (teens, neurodivergent children, self-care, community etc) You can attend live, interactive workshops  You can connect with other parents in community networking sessions You can join a closed Facebook group and connect with other parents from around the world who are exploring a different path with their children Whether you’re curious about how unschooling could work for your family, looking for support on your journey or keen to delve into how unschooling can be a tool for social change and personal growth, there will be plenty there for you! The Unschooling Summit takes place online from March 20th-22nd, 2026. You can get your free ticket here! Note that that’s an affiliate link and you help support Living Joyfully when you use it. Thank you!

EU403: On the Journey with Erin Rosemond

To finish off our month-long celebration of 10 years of Exploring Unschooling, we’re sharing another On the Journey episode! We had a rich conversation with Living Joyfully Network member and long-time unschooling mom Erin Rosemond. Erin is a mom of four grown children living in Canada. She writes about home education on her blog Ever Learning, co-hosts The Virtual Kitchen Table podcast, and offers mentorship and facilitation for families and individuals. We talked about developing self-awareness on the unschooling journey and how it leads to a beautiful place of authenticity. Erin shared about how her ability to advocate for her children strengthened over the years. We also dove into the path from attachment parenting to unschooling and how focusing on the relationships we have with our children has been the thread that connects it all. It was a really lovely discussion and we hope you find it helpful! THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid discussions about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. Come and be part of the conversation! Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. Episode 285, Unschooling Stories with Erin Rosemond Find Erin’s work at her website, https://www.everlearning.ca/ Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling. So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT PAM: Hello everyone, I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and I’m joined by my co-host Anna Brown and Erika Ellis, as well as our guest today, Erin Rosemond. So this month, we have been reflecting back on 10 years of the podcast, exploring what we’ve learned, what’s changed, and what still matters. And we are thrilled to have Erin join us to continue the conversation. We’re going to dive into these three questions with her and I am very excited to hear her thoughts. And if you don’t yet know Erin, she is a long time unschooling parent known online as EverLearning. She co-hosts the podcast, Virtual Kitchen Table, where they share experiences and ideas about family life and unschooling. And she’s been a long time member of the Living Joyfully Network, which we so, so appreciate. If you would like to hear more about her unschooling journey, I spoke with her back in episode 285 of this podcast, and she shared some wonderful insights. So I do encourage you to go back and listen to that episode. But to get us started today, Erin, we’re just going to dive right in. What’s one of the most impactful things you’ve learned on your unschooling journey? ERIN: So, I looked at this question, and it’s such a challenging question, but in a good way. Because there are so many impactful parts, it’s crazy how impactful it is. And I feel like when you talk to other people who are following this path and doing things this way, that’s one of the things that they say is that they couldn’t possibly have imagined how much impact it would have in so many different areas. So yeah, so I was like, oh, where to begin? I had a few different words come to mind. The first word that came to mind was authenticity. And maybe I’ll end up touching on that. And then it got me thinking about the idea of emotional maturity. And that kind of wove me around to where I think I’ve landed at the moment, which is just – self-awareness. And so if I’m understanding the question properly, because I guess I’m thinking about certainly the impact on me, but I also think that’s very impactful on our children, and just generally the people in our lives. And I think that probably isn’t something that I had thought about at the beginning. I think most people probably don’t. Even before school age, coming from more of an attachment parenting, conscious parenting paradigm, that was just about my baby, right? That was about what felt best. You’re operating with what seems to be the kindest, most practical way to parent, and you’re not really thinking a lot about self-awareness. But of course, that’s developing along the way. We do all that early reading, and then it just, I know different people come to this path from different directions, but I think I pipelined in through attachment parenting more than anything. So really, it was just gradual. Continuing to read, continuing to talk to people, hear other people’s experiences, trial and error for myself. And then it gets to a point where you realize, if you’re going to parent in this really respectful way, it’s actually quite hard. It feels like it shouldn’t be hard, but it really kind of rubs up against a lot of what we’ve been taught, what we’ve learned, sometimes what society values and promotes. I just think you end up doing so much self-reflection, because you bump up against these things, and you think, okay, well, what would the conventional response be. It might be taking a privilege away, or it might be controlling this or controlling that. And it’s really hard to be in a respectful relationship with somebody when you’re controlling them. And it’s kind of arbitrary. I mean, of course, as parents, we sometimes have to safeguard things. I’m not suggesting otherwise. But I think it’s that word arbitrary, where we’re just deciding that there’s a different standard because they’re children. And so I think that the amount of self-awareness that we have to develop is actually mind blowing. Because it’s not just about how they learn or our interactions, there’s a ripple effect. They bring in friends, or kids are adults now. So they bring in partners or spouses, and you just have this circle of people that if you want to remain in good relationship with your kids, which I do, you need to think about how do I want to respond in this moment? And what do I want this memory to be like for them, you know? I feel like I have so much more I can say about this, but maybe I’ll just leave it there for a minute. Yeah, it’s just that ability now, I think, to stop and pause before responding, and just imagine all the different ways there are to do something and to think about something. And if I’m having a certain feeling about that, what’s that about? Just getting curious about that. Yeah, like I said, I’ve got a lot, but I’ll stop for now. PAM: Yeah. Okay, I’ll pick up first. Oh, my goodness. I love that that is what you picked. And like you said, there are just so many aspects. One, that bubbled up, is the hard work piece. We’ve talked before on the podcast and network. Do I put in the effort, the work, the engagement beforehand, having the self-awareness to figure something out, right? Or do I choose that it’s going to happen after, if things break down? When we want to put the relationship first, and then we need to repair, because we didn’t put in a lot of the time upfront to look at everybody’s perspective. How do I feel in this moment? What does that mean about me? That’s the whole self-awareness piece. And then being open to other people’s self-awareness, and not even defining it, other people’s choices, other people’s agency, how other people are seeing this moment, right? So we’ve talked about that piece. So, that’s part of the question. But I love even more depth, that’s a choice. And often, we forget about considering, because maybe the relationship breakdown happens a day or two later, right? The next time we try to engage more deeply, and they brush us off, because they’re still upset about what we did two days ago. And that’s when you realize, so it’s hard, it can be hard to connect those two pieces. But even regardless of that, where you got to the authenticity, where you started, showing up in the moment as the person you want to be, as Anna talks about quite a bit, it’s self-awareness. It’s just interwoven with that so intricately, because how can we know who we want to be when we show up in the moment, unless we understand ourselves. I feel like I learned that from watching my kids when they came home, because they could show up more authentically, because they hadn’t absorbed quite as many of the conventional messages yet. Those messages that say, when this happens, you do this. And when in this situation, you do this. And when somebody else does this to you, you do this, you know, we have absorbed so many of those cultural messages in how we’re supposed to respond. And we’re often with great intentions raised by parents who are telling us, in this situation, you do this, or I want you to do this, remember that. It’s something new for us, I think. And that’s why I find what you’re saying about this self-awareness piece being such a huge and impactful part of the journey and realizing it’s understanding ourselves. And then I think through understanding ourselves, we recognize how different we are, how different other people are, and then realizing, oh, geez, everybody has got a unique perspective. And then like you said, then you have more and more people joining the family community. And then it’s just more and more perspectives. But that we, at least for me so far, find I get to enjoy the moments more when I’ve done that work or understand people, because I can be more present in them versus part of my mind thinking, but in this situation, we should each be doing XYZ. And I’m trying to prod people, even gently, to do the right thing, etc. So I loved your answer. ERIN: Well, and something, Pam, just when you were bringing the word authenticity back into it, I think too, there are always things that I’m realizing that I’m working on, always. And right now, it’s with the self-awareness, I feel like in an intentional way, my reaction time is very slow at this point. I take my time. I sit with things, whether it’s decisions or things are happening. And so, yeah, my reactions are now very slow, they’re careful. And so, I think for me, the figuring out right now, then is also that authenticity piece. So how do I show up as myself, and also give my kids and anybody else in my life, that space of non-judgment. So I’m not sure if that’s making sense, but it’s just a little bit of a piece that I’m sitting with right now. I think I’ve gotten pretty, I wouldn’t say I’m comfortable with it, but I’m committed to it. Pretty comfortable being committed to leaving a lot of space, having that slow reaction time, leaving lots of room for the different things that my family members do, right? But the piece I’m still sitting with is how authentic am I being here? Or I’m still trying to figure out, where is the space for me? And nobody is stopping me from being in there, but I’m still just figuring that out, right? Nobody’s pushing me back, it’s just me figuring it out for me. ERIKA: I think that makes a lot of sense, and it’s so interesting. It’s bringing up a lot of different thoughts for me, but really, everyone who’s on this type of journey, it makes sense that eventually we get to a place like what you’re describing, where it’s like, who am I really? How does that fit in, because our intention from the beginning and how a lot of us came to the journey was we wanted to give our children the space to be themselves. And I think in many cases, that means we are taking a step back from asserting ourselves, in order to give them the space to really be true to themselves. And then it’s that pendulum swing that we talk about. But I’m still here, and what is the life that I want to lead look like in connection? And with all these new people coming into your life as well, it just gets more and more complicated. But I just love that deep work. And I think it’s kind of unavoidable. Because we’re not okay with just pushing through our agenda. And I don’t care if you’re upset, that has never felt okay to me as a parent. And so I’m going to have to confront whatever the things are that come up for me, in order to be the parent and the person that I want to be in that relationship. And so learning about myself just has to happen along that journey. And I think it is so impactful. ANNA: I think what stood out for me, there were a couple things, but that piece of, it is unavoidable. I think if you’re really showing up with the intention to recognize how we’re showing up in those moments. And I think that’s so interesting, because that piece of thinking it’s hard. What I found was that the interactions with the kids weren’t hard, because they’re so authentic. It was that piece that when it’s bumping up, wait, wait, why is it bumping up? What’s happening? That means slowing myself down, then figuring out what is coming up in me. And that was hard, because I had to look at where did that come from? Why is it impacting me in this moment? Why am I wanting to control or change this? Because I think in some ways, maybe it is an easier path. I don’t know, kind of like you said, Pam, the back end’s hard, but it can feel easier to just push whatever the agenda is. But the big difference is exactly what you’re talking about, the self awareness, because you can’t really do that. If you’re self aware, you can’t really push your agenda onto somebody else. If you’re thinking, wait a minute, what’s happening here? I think that is a deep, rich part of the journey, and it’s amazing and ongoing. ERIN: Wait, this is not something that you learn one time, and then you’re done? And just if I could say one more thing on this question, just the amount that I’ve learned about myself from noticing or listening to my kids’ reactions to me or the way that they come with the question, is huge.And just to give an example, I think I might have shared it in the Network, actually, a few years ago, but it was just around Christmas presents. And one of my guys came to me with what felt like a very rehearsed sort of speech when you’re trying to launch a marketing thing forward. But anyway, he had this rehearsed set of reasons for his request. He knew he was getting a camera, he was starting to do some wildlife photography. And he had this really well rehearsed set of reasons that it would be great for him to have that camera before Christmas and open it before Christmas. And he was really pleasant about it. But it was almost like, let me get this all out. I’m just going to explain to you where I’m coming from here. And I sat with it later. And I was like, wow, he put a lot of effort into something that was just about a Christmas present. Because it didn’t really matter that much to me. But then when I peel back a little bit, because I said, that’s fine. But then I did kind of reflect about how I was feeling about it. And I thought, no, you know what, I think I have been more tradition-oriented around Christmas morning. And I think a lot of that too, was an aspect of his particular personality that maybe we had a bit of a rub where when he was a kid who wanted to know, what’s happening for my birthday? two months ahead. And so, there was always a bit of a need to slow down, you need to learn self control, like this kind of stuff, right. And so it just, yeah, it kind of made me peel back a little bit and think about, what are the signs that he’s seen of that through the years? Or what are the things I’ve said or done? And it’s just a small, benign example. But I’ve had those things happen with probably more important things too, where I just go, okay, the fact that they’re asking it this way. Or the fact that this already went through my husband, who didn’t know about it. And something’s already been installed. That gives me a clue. We can kind of use these things to kind of get a clue about how we come across to other people. That reflection helps us learn so much about ourselves, like right to that self awareness. Our kids are lovely mirrors that way. I mean, it may not be fun in the moment or whatever. But it really is so valuable and interesting, to just take a moment to look at what might that say about me and how I’m being in the world around them, etc. And it’s because it’s often something that I had never even thought of as a thing. It’s just a habit or just just a way. But to be able to reflect and find those pieces and go, oh, that’s interesting. And just be more self aware, learn more about it. It doesn’t mean changing or anything. But more self awareness that we can bring to a moment. So very cool. ERIKA: I love that story, they shine these little spotlights on our different things. We don’t even realize they are even a belief or whatever. And I love that. So my question to you, Erin, is what has changed over the course of your journey? ERIN: Again, another big, big question. So I mean, obviously, lots of things have changed. I guess I’ll go back to myself again, because I think this is really the theme, right? So much of it is about how we interact in these relationships. I think, well, probably one really obvious, well, it might not be obvious to somebody newer, but I think for lots of people, you quickly realize that your reasons, your ideas about learning and like, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And so I think what’s changed is that I think about things in a much broader way than just, learning to read or learning to I don’t know, what are all the things people worry about standing in line? All the things people get concerned about. And so it just becomes so much broader than that. But then I think, to kind of bring it back to this theme of self awareness, I think what’s really changed is my willingness to put my kids first. I don’t know, there’s something about advocacy, I think that’s coming up. I think I struggled for a long time to put my kids first in the face of, let’s say they were part of a club or lessons or something like that. And it’s not that I didn’t put them first, but I’ve become much, it’s become much easier for me. So I’m just thinking about everything from things that didn’t make sense in college residence to lessons my kids have done where something just kind of hits or rubs the wrong way. And I think where I used to probably indirectly try to steer them toward it not being so big of a conflict, I’m much more comfortable now, just going and talking to somebody, or helping them. I mean, they’re older now. So I’m not doing as much of that, but just even helping them with the language to go talk to somebody. I remember when I joined the network, maybe when I took the course, the Childhood Redefined, my kids were already getting older. My oldest guy was probably 20 at that time. But I think what I was noticing in myself is that there was this, we talked a lot about quitting and letting kids change their mind and do new things. And I didn’t have a problem with that in the way that a lot of people do. I saw the value in them trying different things. That wasn’t the issue for me. The issue was around not hurting the coaches feelings, or not causing conflict with another family that we were friends with, because they didn’t want to be doing the activity with them. For some people, that would be very simple. But for for me, it’s taken me a lot of work to do that kind of thing. So I think for me, it’s just how much more quickly I can be in my kid’s corner, in a really more concrete way than I used to be able to. I think I’ll just say one more thing about that, too. I think, as my kids got older, I realized that a lot of the people, if you think about naysayers, for example, with homeschooling and unschooling, those people don’t always stay in your life. Your neighbors move. We’ve had relatives actually pass away, a lot of the people that you’re hearing all these messages from, whether it’s quitting, or making sure to stick with a musical instrument, or all these different things. At the end of the day, it’s my child that I need to continue that relationship with. ANNA: I love that piece. And I feel like what’s interesting about that is, I feel like our kids really lead the way, because all of us here have come through school, and often, more school and more school. And I think we’re culturally conditioned to think about those things, and to worry about those things, make sure we’re fitting in and make sure things are fine. And I feel like my kids would have these really authentic reactions, recognizing that this environment doesn’t feel good, or I don’t like the way this is happening. And I remember reflecting when they were younger, that I had those thoughts as a kid, but I didn’t ever say them. Or there was nobody listening to me. And so it was interesting to just really see that. And of course, like you’re saying, that’s the relationship that’s so important to me. But I remember having to consciously have that thought of – this is the person I care about. I mean, now, 20 years later, I can’t even remember who those instructors are, or whatever but they’re not in my life. But my children are still in my life. But I remember having to consciously have that thought to reorient myself, because that cultural conditioning was so strong. I just really identify with that one as well. ERIKA: Yeah, the expectations, the external feeling of being judged or feeling that I wouldn’t have been allowed to just leave this activity. And so I don’t have any experience with how to have that more difficult conversation. How do you bring up things that are a little bit surprising to people in the mainstream, but I think when you have kids who are so used to being true to themselves, and listening to what works for them, there’s not really another option, we just are going to have to grow into being confident enough to do that. And I feel like I’m still definitely in the middle of that journey. Because my kids haven’t really wanted to do that many activities and are kind of branching out more and more as they become teenagers. And so I’m being put into those positions now of, okay, this conversation feels hard to me. But it is possible to have respectful interactions with the people at these lessons or whatever the things are, and still say, and we’re not going to continue. And that’s okay, we can make that choice. PAM: Yeah, I found looking to my kids to be so useful. Because at first, I didn’t even realize how much work I did to fit in growing up. It was just a given. This is school, this is your like, extracurricular activity, this is how we behave and what we do at these things. And I just wanted to do it right, right? So, it wasn’t until my kids would be like, oh no, I want to quit. And same with you, Erin, it was pretty easy to quit the thing. But I was holding back, because at first, I could feel myself wanting to explain the broader picture and why. One of my childhood memories is trying to do that with my brother. I guess I was babysitting, and my parents had gone out and they said, he can go out and play once he’s finished cleaning his room. But he didn’t want to clean his room. And I’m sitting there in his room on his bed, like, just do it, it’ll take five minutes. But oh my gosh, now I look back and go, wow. Wow, what a different mindset, that I could not just stand up to that or push back at that age, because like Anna said, whether it was I wasn’t comfortable, or not being heard or listened to. I would just be told I was wrong, or the right way to do it, etc. So, for me, that was one of the big changes that was like the water I was swimming in that I didn’t even realize was water, you know what I mean? It was just part of my ethos. I remember it was quitting swimming when the kids first came home, it’s like, Oh, okay, we’ll go and blah, blah, blah. And after two lessons, they’re like, No, thank you. But I had all this justification going on in my head at first. Oh, but they’ve got lots of people to manage. That’s why you need to do it this way, you know. But because I had started looking to my kids, and really, well, of course, this isn’t a good fit for them. Of course, I am now seeing them all day and how they move through the world. And recognizing that fit, or lack thereof, was now just so much more obvious. But it’s been layer upon layer upon layer, from the quitting right through all these more intricate pieces that are part of our days, and still learning. Well, I think it’s part of where maybe that word authenticity comes back into it just, it does feel so relieving. So if there’s so much relief, and it does feel so much more authentic to just, just do what the kids are actually feeling rather than try to either control them or over explain to whoever else is involved in the situation. And I do think they have more practice with that. It’s always fascinating to me how I’ve thought about this before how our intention goes so far, because they often are able to do things that we are still struggle with. They often don’t have hang ups that we still have. But somehow, just our intention and then being in a different environment really makes quite a significant difference. ANNA: It really does. Just being able to ask for what they need. I think that does come from the environments we created where we’re listening to everybody and where we’re trying to figure out the solutions that work. They go in, I don’t know, and some people, I think, feel like it’s naivete when they go into the world. But what I’ve seen is that they change things, right? They have different conversations that we weren’t able to have, they change the environments that they go into. It’s empowering. And it’s really interesting. I love that. So my question, which I think is also very big, is what still matters? What things have been kind of a through line for you, or things that you really feel like, yeah, that’s still important. That still matters to me. ERIN: This one was actually the one that came to mind the easiest. And I think the through line is that relationship. Because that was from the first days of having a baby, that was what just stood out to me was just having this relationship and this connection. And I think understanding pretty early on, and I didn’t understand it until I had a baby, but realizing within the first couple of weeks that there was going to be a certain amount of that I would have to do differently than I had understood in order to have a relationship with this baby that I wanted to have. I was telling somebody a story the other day that very, very shortly before I had my first baby, I had been working with young kids. So, I’d often be in their homes, maybe three and four year olds. And quite a few of those families were large families, and they often had a baby or a toddler. And I would be in these houses. And over and over again, I’m seeing that the baby is sleeping in the parents room, or there’s a crib or there’s a cradle in the room. And I remember saying to a friend of mine, I don’t know what’s going on with these families. They all have these babies in their rooms. And I just thought it was like the strangest thing. And then I had a baby. I understand this now. And so it feels like maybe sleeping doesn’t have that much to do with this. But I think it’s where I started is just listening to that need, wanting, realizing that if I wanted to have that relationship, I needed to have that closeness, right. And so I think that of course, that follows through childhood. And then I think, again, there’s been a lot of learning for me. These last few years of what that can look like, past 18, or past 20, or whatever. That when I say I want to have a relationship, I don’t mean that I want to be in more of a relationship than they want to be. It’s not about pushing myself into it, or not being able to let go or whatever. But whatever that looks like with each of them, I want that to be respectful. And so I think that really has been the through line for me, even in those areas that I find more difficult, which would be conflict, or people pleasing, or I’m not exactly sure what the word is, but that’s definitely been trickier for me. But that’s the piece that helps me override it. Even just the decision not to put them in school, it would have been so much easier for me, I would have had so many fewer people to argue, not argue with, but defend myself from if I had just put them in school. I could say that about any of that stuff, right, about attachment parenting, it’s not just the school piece. It is really that overriding, just determination to be in a respectful relationship that lets me jump over that last hump of hopefully doing what’s going to be in service to that relationship rather than please somebody else or not look weird, or any of those things. Because I’m past that. So I can rest in the weirdness now. PAM: I will say I love just that focus on the relationship. And I remember one of the shifts for me, an aha moment that took a weight off. Because certainly my kids were in school for a while before I discovered homeschooling and unschooling. And I thought this is what we have to do. And it was so empowering when they came home. But okay, they’re not going to school, how do I replace that? What am I doing instead? Right? So, the shift to recognizing childhood does not just equal school, in whatever form, whether it’s homeschooling, or school school, to recognize that our relationships are lifelong. And that childhood is just a part of it. A lovely, lovely part of it. But our relationships last forever. And school is just kind of this blip, right, that may or may not be part of our lives. And the weight when I could just focus on the relationship, and that this is just a continuous thing. For those of us with kids as adults, there wasn’t a day where things shifted. Right? There wasn’t everybody waiting for this moment when we listened to some of our podcast episodes about the independence agenda and turning 18. Our relationships continued. And like you’ve been saying this whole time, Erin, the self awareness, we continue to grow, we continue to change and develop and learn more about each other. And then when you’re mixing people in, that’s the relationship through line. It always has our focus. It’s not like I figured out relationships, and now I just do it. It’s forever learning, right? ERIKA: I love, I mean, obviously, we talk a lot about that focus on relationships and how that’s a through line. And I think it’s interesting to think about how that really does lead to all the other aha moments that we have. If I am trying to be in a good relationship with my child, I’m going to listen to them. If I’m listening to them, I’m going to learn about the things that are important to them. And then I’m not going to brush those off, I’m going to take it seriously and get involved in it with them. And so everything builds from there, as long as we keep coming back to how’s our relationship feeling? What is the thing that’s going to strengthen that relationship? And that leads us to people are different, it leads us to what is this bringing up for me? Why are my triggers different from their triggers? And all the learning comes from that. And for me, it was the same where it was like having the baby and being like, oh, you know, and just all the aha moments, all those like, this baby is not like me, I thought they would be like me, and they’re not. It’s just such an amazing journey. From that point. ANNA: My path began with attachment parenting, too. And then we had this added layer of medical crisis at the beginning. The piece of that that I’m grateful for was it really honed us in on all that matters is this baby and this relationship. And all of that other stuff is just noise. So, it did make it feel so much easier to make the decisions and to put school into perspective, to put these other things into perspective. Because that was the priority. It is hard to explain until you see it. I was around a lot of kids before having kids and did a lot of work with kids. But it is different. And the things you were talking about too, Erika, you really get a sense of, this is my child. And they’re very different. It’s not just these other kids that are different. Everyone is so unique, and all of these different brains. That, to me, was part of the fun of it. That discovery and understanding, but that through line of the relationship has served me so much as well, because it’s just that North Star. It’s remembering to ask, how is what I’m doing going to impact the relationship? I think about that a lot. And it really helps me in making decisions along the way. ERIN: Just something else that just came to mind for me about relationships, is the distinction between relationship and connection. Because I think I read a lot or hear a lot of people talking about connection, connecting with your kids. And I definitely think it’s important to connect with our kids. But I think the relationship is different, because it’s overarching. It takes time to build a relationship with somebody. It takes situations and it takes experiences together. And I think within that broader relationship, there are periods of time where we are more or less connected with a child, maybe a particular child or children. And I think sometimes that’s just a developmental stage, too. Something that they’re going through, or maybe, maybe it’s us, right? Maybe it’s something or our schedules just aren’t aligning in the same way. So, I can look back through the years and see, almost eras of time that I was particularly connected with one or another. Maybe I had a really common interest. So we were doing a lot of this together. And I was maybe, not intentionally disconnected, but just the way things were going a little bit less connected with somebody else. Or maybe through some of those like adolescent or teen years. I think the idea of kids needing to individuate to a degree, they need to figure out who they are, and who their identity is. So I do think sometimes in unschooling conversations, we can get a little bit overloaded with this, keeping connected, keeping connected. And sometimes kids, they float around, and maybe we do, too. And so that’s been kind of fun to see that the relationship is still there. And I go through periods of time where I feel like there’s a real commonality or connection with a kid or two, and then maybe not so much, but it just comes around, I think, when you have that foundation. ANNA: I liked how you said that. It reminds me when you spoke a little bit earlier about us with adult children, how it looks different, right? It’s not like we’re forcing this relationship on them but it’s there. And there are times where they’re off doing their thing. And we aren’t as connected with the day to day or the little nuances or intricacies. And then there’s times where it’s coming back. But I think, because we’ve had this through line of the relationship, there’s a foundation there that’s just very much built on trust that we can come back and that it isn’t a problem to come back and we can circle back and we can change those pieces. So, I really love that, because that just really resonated with my experience, too, that the connecting moments are a part of it, but the relationship is much broader. ERIN:. I think there are periods of time where we have as our kids get older, but maybe even when they’re younger, where the relationship is more about sharing what we’re each doing in separate places. And then there are periods of time where we might really be into a common activity or a common zone with somebody. And those feel different to me, right? One feels like coming together and each person is sharing how this is going for me. And this is what I’ve been up to, versus, other times, we’re in a real common context with somebody. PAM: I want to comment just because it’s bringing up so many metaphors, because we’re reflecting back, right? And ideas that have really resonated with me over the years, like one that I feel like ties in there, Erin, is thinking of ourselves as a family of individuals. That phrase really resonated with me and reminded me that we have seasons. I loved your word, eras. Eras, seasons, where maybe they’re super busy with this thing and so using connection itself as just one measure can get you off course, because it’s like, oh, we’re not literally spending X amount of time each week doing something together. And how you define it, depends on how you define connection. And I love Anna, that you brought up trust instead, but relationship via another metaphor that really worked for me, works for me with relationship is thinking of it as a dance, the dance of a relationship, because I feel like sometimes someone’s leading, sometimes the other one is, sometimes you’re really connected, and you’re just moving together, because you’re doing things together, other times you are apart. And none of them are wrong. If somebody’s asking for more, and, and more could be, it could be more time, it could be more, shared activities, or it could be, especially with kids, it could be more money for an activity that they’re super into right now, that handing over some money, so they can do the thing can be a super connecting activity. But again, it depends on how you define connection, right? So I do love just focusing, that it can help to focus more on the relationship and looking at it through that lens, rather than trying to track the time, or using that to define your connection with them, that especially over the years, seasons, eras, all those bits. All right, our last question, Erin, and just to say, you have been part of the Living Joyfully Network for years, actually, from the beginning, and we absolutely love having you there, and I do think like, Anna, myself, you, we all have adult children now, and I do think some people wonder why we continue to stay connected with unschooling and parenting communities, even though our kids are now all adults, and we’re not technically homeschooling, unschooling, etc. So I was just curious to hear your thoughts about that, what is it that draws you to continue talking about this stuff? ERIN: Okay, I think it’s probably a couple of different things, and first is a lot of the things we’ve talked about. I find listening to other people’s experiences and thinking about different scenarios continues to help me self-reflect. I’ll hear an experience or a story, and I’ll think, oh, what would that have brought up if that had been my child, or it’s not even just children, if that had been my spouse, how would I feel about that? I just think that there is incredible power in people working together. I think what it helps me get really clear about,there’s not like a set of rules, there’s not like a formula that we’re all trying to reach. It’s just putting it out there, getting perspectives. Sometimes people will circle back to something months later, so there’s just something that really makes sense for life, and I think that many people find this when they get to the point that their children are technically not school-age anymore. We continue being in relationships, we continue learning, even that learning angle, continuing to be curious about things, and to continue going after things, and doing things that we enjoy. It just feels very inspiring to me, and so I think continuing to learn is a big part of it. And then I also think that you develop relationships with people, and you want to see how people are doing, and how a particular child is doing. There was just a member that posted about a hockey piece, and I’m like, oh, I remember when he was just starting to get into that, and there’s just something really fun about that, to be able to see where people are going, and what their kids are up to. The other piece for me that I think was originally, when I started writing my blog, for example, which was before the network opened, I just really see the value in home education. Not even, it doesn’t even necessarily have to be unschooling, but just in home education, and creating more opportunities, and more awareness, and just more conversation about it. So, the more people that I experience, and get to know, the more I see how I think it could be different. And I think to circle back to the self-awareness piece, I think this offers our children an opportunity to be quite self-aware. How different could the world be, if people were, it’s almost like living with more of an abundance mindset, rather than a scarcity mindset. And that’s a little bit unusual, I think. I just see a lot of stuff, people grappling for stuff all the time. And I wonder, how does this happen? And so, not that I think homeschooling is going to change the world, but, maybe a little bit. I feel like there could be some pieces there that, so I think I just, anything that I can do to be part of the conversation, or listen to other people, or share anything with other people, or just support things in ways that make sense, I just, I don’t know, it just feels like a good thing to be part of. PAM: I agree very much. For me, it’s the inspiration piece. It’s the reminder to self-reflect, that’s important. And, for us, Anna and I talk a lot about relationships. And that just feels so powerful. And we were talking earlier about how these relationships are lifelong, right? You’re talking about how homeschooling can change the world. I feel like relationships with children, authentic, actually respectful with agency, all those aspects of it, just make a world of difference in our relationship, in their lives, in our lives. And just having conversations with people about that, and the light bulb moments, yes, for them. But also, every time I try to share a story, or try to explain a thought, or an idea, I learn it a little bit deeper, right? There’s another layer of that infinite onion that maybe comes off. And again, more self-awareness. Like we were saying, we’re growing and changing all the time. I find it so valuable to keep thinking about these ideas, and participating, and chatting with people who are curious about them. And with people who have been doing it for such a long time, and finding where we have common experiences, and finding those pieces that are unique to me. Back to the self-awareness piece, right? It’s fascinating and fun. ERIKA: I feel like maybe going through school, we get a message of you’re just with this age group, and then that’s over, and then there’s this adult life. So, I think over this journey, we come to realize, we’re all just on this same journey, it’s all the same, it’s all life. And so there is no sense that I get in the network that someone with younger kids is the beginner, and the people with older kids are the experts. Because it just doesn’t work like that. The areas where I’m growing, I’m able to get feedback, inspiration, and information from other people. And then things that I have already moved through, I’m able to share those experiences with other people. When we focus on relationships, and when we realize that life is just all learning all the way, we don’t stop learning. It just doesn’t make sense to leave, because it still is giving so much, wherever we are along our journey, or wherever we are with our kids, there’s just still so much to learn and to think about. I had another thought, but it is gone. ANNA: If it comes back, then bring it up. But I’ll say, I feel like you hit on the two big ones for me too, Erin. That lifelong learning piece. I still learn so much every day from the network. Again, watching somebody move through a situation and wondering how that would land for me. It’s feeling myself get activated when I read something and then go, okay, where’s that coming from, bringing some self awareness in there. I like those opportunities. I think being around a community of people who are intentional about and like to talk about the nuances is just so fun for me. And I think for me, the other piece is kind of an advocacy piece. For me, it’s like you were saying, Pam, it’s about relationships. But I really have strong feelings about just how amazing kids are. And I love celebrating the hockey game and seeing them grow up because I get so invested in all the kids on the network. But it’s also just knowing, it can be so much easier if we’re just communicating. We have new people that come in that have come from hard situations of burnout and other things. And then watching them just open to life feeling so beautiful, almost like, how can it be this great?! Yes, it can be that great. So there’s that kind of advocacy piece there of just wanting people to have that amazing feeling for this special time. Because like you said earlier, Pam, I mean, childhood really is just a blip on the whole thing. And it does go so quickly. So, those are kind of the big pieces for me, but always, always learning for sure. ERIN: Yeah, I feel like I need a little bit of a caveat just around the idea of homeschooling changing the world, because I know that not all homeschooling has been great for some people, and sometimes school does work really well. And it is a choice that people want to make. But I think just like you’re saying there, Anna, it’s just so exciting to be able to be part of seeing kids be who they are able to learn in the way that’s best for them and explore the different interests that they have. And yeah, so it’s whatever form that takes for people, but just having that kind of broadness and that choice. ANNA: I agree! So many people still don’t know what’s an option, though. So I think it is an important piece, putting it out there. Just saying it can be possible. We like to talk about options and all that’s there. And I’m amazed that there really still are people that don’t have any understanding of home education and certainly not unschooling. And so, yeah, I think that’s super valid. It’s not about that there’s one path, but gosh, here it is. And take a look, because even just understanding it allows you to bring a different energy, even if you stay in school, just understanding that there are options, understanding that there’s not the one right path just brings a different energy to all of those exchanges. So yeah, I really do agree with that. ERIKA: I remembered my last bit. I feel like life outside, if you look at the world as a whole, there’s a lot of stress. And I feel like I can get really overwhelmed with bad things or, it feels like there’s so much bad. And so to me, being connected to people in the network reminds me of these good things. It brings me back and grounds me back into what’s really important, like giving these kids space to be themselves. It’s having these relationships and connections. And I think having it be global also, just gives me this kind of peaceful feeling. There are ripples coming out from all of these families and all of these intentional people, really putting in this work and trying to make the world a better place. And I know, for me personally, in my local community, I have seen my own ripples change things for people. And then I see it in all the other network members. That’s just a really cool thing about being in connection with people like that. PAM: Yeah, I think it is. It is so fun and enlightening and inspiring. And I mean, can go on for another 20 minutes. But that piece that I find so interesting, because I think often, homeschooling is really a great place to meet people. Because kids going to school can be where the first big problems start to show up, right? If the classroom at school just doesn’t mesh with your child, it’s not a good fit for them. And that’s a big time when we can start questioning things and trying to figure this out and trying to fit in all those pieces that come up and that can be kind of our first exposure to other paths. That is what happened for me and that is how I finally, eventually, discovered that homeschooling was a thing and that it was legal in Canada. And that was the start of my journey. And then, as we’ve been talking about this whole episode, learning and discovering the value of relationships, we see the journey happening with people in the network all the time. But when you are cultivating those stronger relationships and really respecting your child’s agency, and their choices and understanding them and their perspective, and I think then you can loop back there, definitely we have members who have a child or two that choose to go to school for a while or for a longer period of time. Because, as we were talking about earlier, school just becomes part of the landscape. That is a possible choice for someone. It doesn’t affect our relationships, right? We can support them in that choice and in that exploration if they want to do that.Homeschooling is a beautiful door. I feel to bring people in, a reason to notice that something is up. And maybe I want to explore some different possibilities other than this one path that I know. Right? And it’s just so fascinating for me to see over and over again, people coming and learning that bigger picture, that focus on relationships, really embracing, working together and living together as this family of individuals that we are. And then all these other choices come home and they don’t feel so confronting or judgmental or any of those pieces. It’s like, oh, yeah, okay, we can see how that fits in and that fits in. And it’s just so very beautiful. All right, well, thank you so much, Erin, for joining us and sharing your reflections. I know it has been a deep, big month as we look back on all this, so we super appreciate you tackling these big questions with us. ERIN: I just need to say thank you for inviting me. It was really nice. It was an honor to chat with you all again. So thank you. PAM: Oh, it was so fun. So fun. Thank you. And we want to say thank you to everybody listening, whether you’re listening in your podcast feed or watching on YouTube. We appreciate you joining us too. And we also invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network. We offer a free month trial so you can just check it out and see if it’s a good fit for you. It is a great place to take the concepts that we talked about today and in the other 400-odd episodes and to dive deeper, exploring. To me, this is the difference. With the podcast and these conversations, they really help more with my intellectual understanding. But I remember I was deep into forums and email lists at the time when I first discovered this. But it’s so helpful to have conversations to better figure out what it looks like day-to-day in your unique family. And to just see how many different unique families all over the world are making it work for themselves. There’s no one right way. There’s no one way that it’s supposed to look. So those are the kind of conversations we love having. To learn more and join us, just follow the link in the show notes or go to our website livingjoyfully.ca and you’ll see Network up in the top menu. Wishing everyone a lovely day. Thanks again, Erin.