Wednesday, April 22, 2009

This week has been a very interesting week for me- a week of reflection and some deep digging from within. I was "caught in the act" of doing something that did not jive with the spirit of joy and cooperation that I have worked so hard to create with my children and in our home life. I am lucky to have people in my life that love me and walk beside me through our unschooling journey and who are honest enough to tell me when they see me reverting back to using old tools, tools that I thought I had long given up and replaced with better ones. My mothers voice was loud inside my head this week and I couldn't get it out until someone who knows that voice well (any guesses?) was able to snap me out of it. And I don't mean that as disrespectful to my mother- we had a wonderful relationship once I was an adult but we struggled often when I was growing up and she didn't always use tools that led to cooperation, joy, and a healthy self-esteem.

This "digging" has shown up in interesting ways in my yoga practice but that is a whole 'nother blog. It's just interesting that about the time I think I have it all figured out and my life is perfect the Universe lets me know I still have things to learn and there are still ways I can make my life better and more joyful. It's been a letting-go-of-ego week for me to say the least. But that's what my yoga practice is all about so it's all good:)

Because of all this schtuff I've been dealing with I've been getting online and reading more blogs and trudging back to the basics of unschooling and what brought me to this path in the first place. I just wanted to share these two things that I really enjoyed this week.

A little snipet from John Gatto at a blog I visit every now and then:

http://fourlittlebirds.blogsome.com/

And a piece of an interview that Sandra Dodd posted on her blog recently in regards to showing other parents how to unschool:

"What it takes is the parent has to change. The parent has to learn to see the learning in things. And that's hard. School trains that out of people. School tells you that you need teachers, and you need books, and you need someone to tell you what you need to know, and you need to have proof that you know it by taking a test. I don't think anyone has been to school and taken tests can remember......very little, of the actual facts. And a lot of the facts changed anyway. They changed their minds about this and that, scientifically, and words have changed, and Tanganyika and Soviet Union are no longer worried about.........."

Anyway, not that these things are necessarily directly related to my week of "digging" but connected, as all things are. Good reading though:)

Namaste'

1 comment:

Ren Allen said...

Gawd...that "digging" you refer to is sometimes painful but oh-so helpful too. I call it "excavating" because it seems so intense and deep sometimes.

It brings stuff up from the deep though...up through the swirls of the things we were fed as children, that aren't necessarily true.

I don't think we ever "get it figured out" (not *I* anyway!!) we just learn to make better choices.

I heart you!:)