An Open Heart

Love is a crazy thing. In modern society, we are brought up to believe that love is a strong word...a word to be used with caution. We are taught that it is acceptable to like a thing but not to love it. 

I remember the example I was always given: "You may like an orange, but you can't love it." I never really understood that. Why can't I love that orange? Why can't I see it not just for being a tasty fruit that's filled with vitamin C and sugar but also for its role as a beautiful individual organism in this incredible biosphere of ours?  Is that not worthy of love?

It Ain't Easy Being Mom

This year, the J-Rex and I have had a difficult time in terms of our relationship, going through some growing pains on both of our parts.  The strain got to me so much at one point that I broke down and did what so much parenting advice says is the exact wrong thing to do:  I laid my own faults on the table.

I talked to my child like she was an adult and I told her I was unhappy that, lately, I hadn't been the kind of mother I wanted to be.  I explained the mistakes I felt I'd been making and told her about my own doubts in myself.

I let my daughter forgive me. I asked for no apologies in return.

Then, I told my daughter about my dreams.  I talked to her about the lessons I want to teach her, the lessons she's taught me that I want to cultivate in both our spirits, and the ways in which we can help each other become the people we want to be.

I promised to make some changes.  I asked nothing of my daughter.

Stepping Forward - My First Guest Post

Today, my very first guest blog post has been published! I was asked to write about my story as the mother of a visually impaired child for The Center for The Visually Impaired's (CVI) Sightseeing Blog.

A Wren on the Porch

Earlier this Spring, we discovered a Carolina Wren had made a nest and laid eggs on one of the outdoor shelving units on our porch. We were delighted at this turn of events and more than a little bit proud of ourselves that this bird trusted us enough to build its nest so near a center of our activity.  

At first, the mother would fly out of the nest as soon as we walked past to get our gardening supplies or water the plants, sit in a nearby tree branch, and squawk angrily at us until we went back inside. We made a point not to get too close to her eggs and try to disturb her as little as possible, while still maintaining the garden...not an easy task and one that led to the neglect of several tomato seedlings and the skipping of a scheduled staggered planting.

A Three-Poem Day at the Park

Benjamin Franklin said to "either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." So today, I took the J-Rex to a new park. As soon as we left the house and began driving through a world in bloom to reach our destination, I knew we, too, would bloom with the season today.

Gorillas & Lessons in Unschooling

For most of our homeschool, I've wavered between attempting to meet the common core standards and letting the J-Rex explore knowledge based on her interests a'la unschooling. Recently, as I've been trying to prepare her for the rigours of 3rd grade in the public schools, I've been veering more and more toward a scheduled day focused on the standards.  Still, though, I try to work in at least 1/2 to 1 hour of interest-oriented learning per day.  Lately, I've been doing this by keeping a list of questions she asks at times when we don't have time to explore them so that, when planning for the week, I can write in 30 minutes of topic exploration to address these questions.

The other day, in the car and out of the blue, the J-Rex asked what kind of food gorillas eat.  I answered that I thought they ate mostly fruits and vegetables. The J-Rex followed up with, "So, they're herbivores, not omnivores?" I hesitated. I remember seeing images of gorillas picking bugs out of each other's fur and eating them...don't they eat other bugs, too? Does that make them omnivores? I shared my line of questioning and reasoning with the J-Rex and we agreed that some gorilla research needed to go on our unschool topic list asap.

Luckily, the next day was my planning day, so I wrote in a 30-min topic exploration (I try to leave the unschooling lesson open-ended, so I don't generally put more detail in my plans other than the title of the topic we are exploring) on gorillas, assuming we'd spend a little time looking up some facts about their eating habits online and then browsing pictures of gorillas eating. Afterwards, we were planning on doing Yoga for PE.  I thought I had a fun afternoon planned for the next day. I had no idea.

Not a Monster / Thoughts on Fear

Fear can really eat away at a person.  Most of my life, I have lived in a place of fear - fear of the what-ifs,

fear of the unknown, fear of the next shoe to drop, fear of myself, etc. and etc. For a long time, it took away my ability to succeed: I was so afraid of “failure” that I wouldn’t even try, regardless of whether that “trying” was for inner peace or for outward successes.  At times, my fear nearly destroyed me but, even still, this lifetime of a fearful outlook has taught me some things about this massive emotion:  

The universe doesn't set us up to fail. Neither, though, does the universe always provide us a safety net. Sometimes we have to just leap off the damn platform and pray we've learned how to fall well enough that we don't break our necks. And if we're terrified? That's ok! That adrenaline our fear produces can keep us going until we are on solid ground again. But. The adrenaline is draining. Use it, but take time to care for yourself and replenish your energy. Eat. Even if you don't feel like it. Sleep. Even if you think you can't. And trust that everything happens for a reason, if only that reason is to lead us to a place we might not have gone without the kick in the ass that destruction gives us.