Let go and let flow

This is from one of my favorite sites, Daily Om.

Let Go And Let Flow: Taking A Leap Of Faith

Many people, in heeding the guidance of their souls, find themselves contemplating goals that seem outrageous or unattainable. In the mind’s eye, these individuals stand at the edge of a precipice and look out over the abyss at the fruit of their ambition. Some resist the urge to jump, paralyzed by the gap between their current circumstances and the life of their dreams. Others make a leap of faith into the unknown, unsure of what they will encounter but certain that they will gain more in their attempts than they would bowing to self-protective instincts. This leap can be exceedingly difficult for individuals with control issues because the act of embracing uncertainty requires them to trust that surrender will net them the rewards they seek. Yet when you make a leap of faith, believing without a doubt that you will land safely on the other side, you can accomplish almost anything you set out to do.

There have no doubt been times in your life when you chose to go where the universal flow took you. Yet you may encounter instances in which your objectives require you to step outside of the boundaries of your established comfort zone so that you may freely and actively jettison yourself into a new phase of your life. While you may fear what seems to be the inevitable fall, consider that in all likelihood you will find yourself flying. A successful leap of faith requires your attention, as it is the quiet and often indistinct voice of your inner self that will point you toward your ultimate destination. Understand that the leap across the chasm of ambiguity may challenge you in unforeseen ways but you will make it across if you trust yourself.

If your mind and heart resist, you can dampen this resistance by building a bridge of knowledge. The more you know about the leap you are poised to take, the smaller the gap between “here” and “there” will appear to be. Your courageous leap of faith can lead you into uncharted territory, enabling you to build a new, more adventurous life. Though you may anticipate that fear will be your guide on your journey across the abyss, you will likely discover that exhilaration is your constant companion.

Giving Thanks ‘06

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I hope that anybody reading this (from the USA) had a good one.

We usually go to my bestest friend (30 years and going strong!) Adrienne’s house but we had some things that needed to be taken care of and we stayed home. It was the five of us, my mom, my cousin and her son.

Our menu:

We started with:
Rigatoni with Billy’s homemade marinara sauce.
Antipasto (fresh mozerella, red peppers & black olives)
Mozerella bread

After about an hour, we had:

A 12 lb turkey cooked in our rotissiere. Butter on the skin and lemon pepper spices.
A ham shank coated in brown sugar and covered in pineapple.
mashed potatoes
mashed sweet potatoes with marshmellow on top
brocolli and carrots in an herb sauce
corn and mixed veggies with parmesean cheese

Pumpkin pie and pumpkin cake with cool whip followed.

I had everything except the turkey and ham (being a long time vegetarian). It was a really nice, relaxed day. Things have been stressful so it was nice to have a calm day.

No bedtime

My two daughters (ages 8 & 11) do not have a bedtime, as of about two months ago.

Let me back up a bit.

From the day that I removed my three children from school (December ‘04), I’ve been unschooling them, meaning we don’t do school-at-home and we don’t follow a formal curriculum. Around the time I removed them, I started reading about radical unschooling or as I’ve seen it called sometimes, whole life unschooling, meaning you extend the principles of unschooling into your child’s whole life. (Personally, I prefer the term radical unschooling because I just love the word radical. It has a nice ring to it. It’s described me for most of my teenage and adult life so why stop now? lol)

As I read more about it, I knew this was the path for my two daughters. My middle daughter was making a lot of progress with trusting my husband & I (you can read some of the posts labeled “adoption” for more on that) and I knew that I had to start placing more of my trust in her at the same time. The information on RU, came into my life at a time that I needed it the most.

Basically RU is extending the principles of trust into other areas of a child’s life. In other words, by unschooling your children, you’re trusting that they will learn what they need to, without school (how to do this without school is a whole other post but it included a great deal of parental involvement)….and then you have that same trust and use it in other areas of life (again…including parental involvement and again, another post).

I first started with food, which I blogged about here. Next was video/computer games (which I haven’t blogged about, but will soon). The next area was bedtime. This was a hard one, not because of my trust in them, but because of our bedroom situations. (long story-another post one day). I finally figured out a solution and we did away with bedtime.

This type of parenting is not for a hand-off type of parent. Being there, with your child discussing things, being involved in their life, listening and giving feedback, modeling healthy behavior is all part of radical unschooling and frankly, it’s not always easy. But to me, it’s worth it I have a better relationship with my daughters than a lot of other parents I come in contact with…and my girls are happy.

So…now my girls don’t have a bedtime. No, they don’t stay up until morning or only sleep three hours a night. Funny thing is, most nights Jacqueline goes to sleep earlier than her old bedtime of 9:30. For those who are curious, since we lifted the bedtime, they have been going to sleep somewhere between 8:30-11:00 PM and they wake up between 6:30-9:00 AM.

If you’d like to do a little more reading on this topic, I suggest Joyce’s site.

Related Tags: radical unschooling, parenting

Request/reminder for submissions

We’re halfway through with November so here’s a quick request and reminder for submissions to Unschooling Voices.

I’ve had some extra time this week to catch up on some blog surfing and I came across some really great posts that would be perfect for this months topic. I left comments for all of them (I think there were about 5-6) suggesting they submit them to UV. I really hope they do because they were all doing such fun stuff.

Anyway, as always…your post doesn’t have to have anything to do with the topic. Just unschooling in general. The deadline is the last day of the month.

Related Tags: unschooling voices, unschooling carnival, unschooling, homeschooling, homeschooling carnival

Day 157

Today was a busy, fun day. Shawna had her weekly storytelling meeting at the library. She’s getting really comfortable with telling her stories in front of others and she’s using more eye contact and facial expressions than before. While she was there, Jacqueline & I went to Dunkin’ Donuts and hung out. She had a kiwi slushie and a coffee roll, I had tea and a chocolate chip muffin. mmmmm. It’s nice spending time with her alone. After that, Billy picked up Shawna & Cimion at the library and took Cimion to register for basketball. He just turned 14 two weeks ago and he’s already 6′ tall so I thought basketball would be something that he would like simply because his height may make it easier for him. He’s never been much for sports but he said he wanted to try and see if he liked it. Their first game is in two weeks. It’s official…my kids have a better social life than their parents do. LOL