In our efforts to raise free people, we cannot ever exclude our own selves.
Are you here because you’re wondering how to deschool? Maybe you made your way to this page by actively looking for resources to nurture a better relationship with a child you love. Or maybe you’re interested in this idea of a self-directed life because some of what you’ve heard makes perfect sense to you. Maybe you just speak fluent Freedom, and you crave more of it in the world, not just for yourself.
I’m not sure about your story, but I can tell you I first got here because my daughters guided me into unschooling. And I’m still here, nearly a decade later, because through unschooling, I began learning about my personal liberation and healing, which directly inform my approach to my daughters, and extended way beyond unschooling, for sure.
The work of raising free people goes beyond my children, and over into the spaces in the world–society, laws, varying isms, where I can make different choices in support of the change I want to see.
If I can imagine my daughters’ education outside of the confines and fuckery of schooling, I can spend my money in places that care about the things that matter to me.
I can collaborate with other unschooling families to bring information and support to the folks who want to put their own social-good ideas into practice.
I can stop chasing degrees and dream cars and start traveling more with my family; not later, now. Seeing more, doing more, learning past borders and biases.
I can stop trying to survive capitalism and look around at the actual world to decide how I can be part of movements and mindsets that help make spaces safe for more people to be free.
I can release the notion that I must postpone my desire to live fully and freely.
But, you know...
I couldn’t do any of that until my regularly-scheduled programming was disrupted by my children’s resistance to conventional schooling. Through unschooling, and maybe more importantly–deschooling, I feel like I’ve grown both roots and wings.
Roots
[vc_empty_space]The roots help me ground myself in one single idea: I trust children. Basically that’s the root of how I get down, particularly as it relates to the children who came here through me. The roots here are planted in the spirit of respect and love, not fear and control. That is how I raise and regard the youngest members of my home and our society. It’s a form of respectful parenting, but more than that, it’s about living out my belief in liberation to the benefit of children, in honor of my ancestors, and in support of my own self.
Wings
[vc_empty_space]The wings are the liberation energies I now fully embody because I’m clear about the ways I’ve contributed to the oppression of children, and how that’s connected to oppression on a larger scale. With these wings, I’m training for what feels like freedom in reality, not theory. I’m giving myself space to understand how my body works, what I believe in, what spaces exist where I can serve, support, and where I can be supported. Basically, unschooling was my portal into my personal liberation.
Question for you...
[vc_empty_space]Have you thought about the ways your ideas about your own liberation—whether you’ve explored them, or they lay dormant somewhere in the corners of your psyche—affect your capacity to make the changes in your life you say you want?
I’ve thought about this, and I’m gonna doing some strewing and place this resource in your environment. This is so that you can have language for the feelings you’ve been feeling. The Deschooler’s Dictionary (first edition) speaks to the language of Freedom. Sign up below to get it for free. May this bring you in closer communication with your own unique personal liberation practice!