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.