S.4 E.1 A Natural Unfolding
This episode talks about why I closed my shop for a semester and how I discovered the Zen of Homeschool through that process. Listen to the hatching curiosity podcast on iTunes and Spotify.
Some key takeaways are:
Slow down before your body forces you to.
There is beauty in “Dolce far neinte” or ”‘the sweetness of doing nothing” it’s just a matter of learning what that means. It’s not mindless social media scrolling but attuning yourself to nature, your home, your children, and finding the natural rhythms of your day.
Don’t just be available to your kids - LOOK available to them.
Sit back and watch as your child’s skills develop naturally. Don’t be a slave to curriculum.
Try doing chores family style.
Be more selective about the activities you allow into your life.
Find your purpose and align your day to meet that end instead of all of the “should dos'“.
In this podcast I also mentioned:
The Schole Sisters Podcast
Wild and Free Podcast
Other Resources to learn more:
What’s this Tao All About Podcast
The Tao te Ching
The Outline for the Episode:
1. My experience
2. Semester off
3. Schole Taoism
4. Wu Wei
5. Our typical day
6. James flourishing
7. Not being hurried has been meaningful, rich, and full of purpose.
8. Living simply, doing less but doing it better.
9. Can I live in this Zen bubble forever?
10. To everything there is a season
11. Harmony not balance
12. Carving room for stillness
13. Stillness is a powerful teacher
14. As mothers we set the tone- reconnect with our homes, our children, ourselves, and nature in quiet moments.
15. The serenity that comes from this practice cannot be overstated.
16. Near-death experience- reevaluating my purpose and meaning.
17. My purpose is to live a full and beautiful life and share the beauty and joy of this incredible world with others.
18. The clarity of purpose came from stillness and I invite you to step into that space when you are feeling overwhelmed. Watch your children play, cook together, have some tea, and look out the window. Put your bare feet in the soil. Remember who you are.
A Very rough draft transcript (A lot was edited and changed from this initial write up):
You’re listening to Season 4 Episode 1 a natural unfolding which is a podcast episode independent of another series but something I have felt really impressed to share with you all.
I’ll start by sharing a little bit about what has been going on with me lately:
- Thunderclap headache, hemiplegic migraines, shut down the business, backed off Coop and other commitments
When all of this happened I found myself searching and I wasn’t quite sure of what I was wanting or needing.
I realized that I fill so much of my time with productive activities as a way of feeling purpose. Like if I could just create enough learning materials, plan enough curriculum, and serve enough people then my purpose would be filled.
I know I am not alone in this either.
- Most homeschoolers are ambitious or go-getters in one way or another
- We want our kids to have a life full of experiences and be well-rounded so we run them from place to place until we haven’t been home for 4 days and all they’ve had to eat was pizza and McDonald’s.
- We plan too many classes and feel overwhelmed by failure when we can’t get them all done.
- We feel like we need to have a clean house AND homeschooled kids AND engaging posts on Instagram AND nice clothes AND healthy meals AND…
- We go, go, go trying to do it all and be it all, and at the end of the day feeling exhausted. I don’t even need to ask if you relate to some or all of this because I KNOW YOU DO. This has almost become the definition of motherhood.
- When we are on it though, I mean, let’s be honest we love that high. That high of having empty hampers or everyone commenting and heart emoji-ing our ancient Egypt class where we mummified a chicken, or when we have a REALLY good hair day. When we actually pull it off we feel like a boss.
- So we keep reaching for those moments.
I placed so much of my worth on pulling it off. My purpose was rooted in being productive. So when that was taken away. I felt a great sense of loss. I mean what do people even do who are not constantly doing?!
There was another part of me though that was enraptured with the idea of coming home though. I have felt it calling to me for years and I kept putting off that feeling of needing to recenter and reconnect with my home and my family. Until I was physically forced to. Now that I had to stop I could feel the pull of something new calling to me like Elsa in Frozen two. It was a song only I could hear and I wasn’t sure what it was that was magnetically attracting me but as usual, I was endlessly curious.
I don’t know how I pictured this “semester off” but tried to go in with few expectations. I did imagine there would be more painting and curriculum design but incredibly I never picked up a brush or turned on the computer. There was also a lot more tea and yoga pants than I ever saw coming but the time I took was incredibly healing.
I took time for some schole. Which you have heard me mention before on this podcast and is essentially the mother culture of Charlotte mason education and the continued lifelong learning being modeled in a classical framework. There is a great podcast called the Schole Sisters that dives more deeply into this concept, but the basic idea is to continue to seek out learning and new experiences as a mother so that you can be the best educator and model for what it looks like to LOVE learning.
During this time, I took the opportunity to do a deep dive into something that has always held my curiosity. I had always wanted to learn about Taoism which is an eastern religion that focuses on man’s connection to nature and himself and honoring the natural rhythms and cycles of our life. The concepts of yin and yan are a major part of the ideology as they refer to the harmony between seemingly opposing forces, but my favorite concept was that of Wu Wei. Wu Wei directly translated means inaction or the act of doing nothing. Which by the way, was fun to discover that there is a phrase in Italian (That I’ve FINALLY started making some progress on as well) that means the sweetness of doing nothing “la dolce far niente”. This concept seems to be somewhat unamerican. The idea is that doing nothing could be a virtue instead of a vice but everything in its season. If you are laying around on the couch staring at Facebook you’re not exactly grasping the concept here. It’s not about being lazy but appreciating the natural unfolding of the day around you. It’s about being fully present. In Italy, they take longer dinners where they enjoy smaller portions. Their recipes are simple because they use quality ingredients and let the ingredients speak for themselves. They appreciate art, family, and ritual. This slow appreciation of what is in front of them is a beautiful thing.
Wu Wei takes it a step further, it’s not just doing nothing but in some cases the effortless action when things do need to be done. Meaning in lay man’s terms to “go with the flow”. Do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done without imposing your will upon it. By being still you are able to see things more clearly and act more decisively when you do act. In modern terms: by being present you learn to act more intentionally. Wu Wei is about aligning yourself to that right season and the right time instead of trying to control the timing and direction of everything that happens in your life.
Learning this concept, I decided to put it to a test in my home since worst-case scenario I had no other outside commitments and if it didn’t work, I could always make up time later. What happened was no short of miraculous.
- Our typical day, allowing to unfold as it felt right instead of sticking to a strict schedule, akin to Waldorf rhythms, focusing on connection and leaving room for stillness.
- When I was still sitting on the couch with my tea reading or just enjoying the view out the window the boys would come up to me and bring me books to read to them, talk to me, show me their creations and I would have incredible moments of connection and teaching that can only flow from stillness and time to reflect.
- A concept I love from wild and free is the idea to reclaim childhood and give them back the TIME to be kids.
- Kids need time to be still and reflect and think and make connections.
- It is a good practical life skill to teach the kids how to be happy in stillness, comfortable with their own thoughts.
- I felt connected to my kids, myself, and the earth. Things that used to matter just didn’t anymore but in the best way.
- My cup was running over with love, meaning, and purpose and I wasn’t DOING anything.
It became about the natural unfolding for me. You can’t force open the bud of a flower but if you give it the time it naturally unfolds into its splendor in its own time. You can’t make spring come any faster but you can learn to see the beauty in winter. For the first time in my life I was able to do this year because I didn’t battle seasonal depression like I usually do. I have awakened to a whole beautiful, quiet restful part of the year that I had just survived before waiting for the newness and energetic sprouting of life that comes in the spring.
Not only did the feeling and culture of my home shift but I started to see my 2nd child in a new light, and he started to bloom.
You see he always does things in his own time and ONLY when he is ready to do them. So often I would feel frustrated or concerned because I was imposing my timeline on him and what he “should” be doing. Stepping back and watching day after day unfold with him I started to understand a little bit more about how his mind works and it is a beautiful thing.
He likes to really understand things and then make his move when he feels confident. Taking the time to let things unfold naturally at their own pace he has felt loved, secure, and free to explore and has made LEAPS and BOUNDS in all areas of study.
I am teaching my youngest and him both phonics right now. I absolutely love that my youngest is fearless he will just go for it, try a letter, if it is wrong, I tell him the right one and he moves on trying to memorize them as we go but always jumps in after it headfirst. My middle child though pauses and thinks for a long time before answering, sometimes getting distracted and forgetting what he is doing, but for the most part, he wants to feel sure before he speaks. This means that learning is a long road for him but it’s on his terms in a way that works for him.
I love that I can see this now.
The way the different subject’s layer and support each other. The harmony of action and inaction in our school day is really a beautiful thing.
Not feeling rushed or hurried has made homeschooling feel more meaningful, rich, and full of purpose for me. It has made it feel sustainable and natural and all the little elements that we have been working on over the last few years are starting to unfold in beautiful and sometimes surprising ways.
“Can I live in this perfect little zen bubble forever?” I wondered as the new year started.
No, my oldest craves the friends and variety of classes he gets at CoOp. I do find purpose in sharing the beauty of the world with others in my work and heaven knows I will spend WAY too much time outside when spring comes.
I will have demands on my time and stressors that come from interacting with people because that is just life. But this experience has taught me to meet each season and do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Now is a really great time to read a ton of books, spring is a really great time to be out in nature, and summer is a really great time to work on house projects and gardening. In Christian terms: “To everything, there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven”
Learning to live in harmony, not necessarily balance, I think is the key. There will be seasons where I just don’t read out loud to my kids because we don’t get home until late and spend the whole day outside working and that’s okay. There are seasons when we forget to go outside for a week. Our outdoor time and read-aloud times are not balanced but they are in harmony with our lives.
By allowing time for stillness, we get to enjoy “la dolce far niente” and the perspective that comes with the act of doing nothing. By being still we can see the forces and seasons outside of ourselves and act efficiently. CHOOSING what is worth spending our time on and what is worth letting go of. For me, soccer is something I’ve decided to let go of. My kids get their physical, sportsmanship, teamwork, and strategy needs to be met in other ways and my fall evenings are worth more to me than 3 practices a week and Saturday games are. But that’s just me, to you they may make the cut but homemade meals don’t. You won’t know though until you step back and look at what the natural flow in your home is. Do you like it? Do you like where it is going? What small course corrections can you make? Where can you let go of your ego, and your plan and let things unfold naturally? I promise you will be pleasantly surprised if you carve out even one afternoon a week to purposefully NOT have plans.
Stillness is a powerful teacher.
One last idea I want to leave you with. The very first concept you learn in Taoism is that the tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. This means that words are inadequate to describe the life-giving, energy force and flow of life that we are all part of. Anything we can say is wholly insufficient.
That’s how I feel about this podcast. The beauty, calmness, and serenity that come with taking the time to be still and having the humility and trust to let things unfold naturally are entirely understated.
I had a hard time trying to decide what to tell you about this time I took off. Like something has shifted in my soul that I can’t quite articulate or even define yet and that mystery is beautiful in its own way too. As someone who is endlessly curious, it excites me but I will say that learning to let go of my expectations and be comfortable with stillness has has a profound effect on my home.
I highly recommend carving some time out to discover this for yourself if you are fortunate enough not to be forced to.
When I had that near-death experience this summer I had to step back and think about my purpose and the meaning of my life. For me, I have found that my purpose is in LIVING a beautiful and full life and sharing the beauty and joy of this incredible world with others.
Life is short…and wonderful. So as always, until next time, stay curious!