The Reason for Unschooling

I swivel on my desk chair in front of my iMac screen, tapping the keyboard, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, wondering if I’ll ever get to the end of the task. Will my website ever be ready to launch? I wonder: when can I begin creating again, writing new posts, instead of fixing problems?

Well, today is the day! I want to present my new-look blog, Stories of an Unschooling Family.

Admittedly, my website isn’t perfect - a few of the links are still broken - but it’s mostly there. I’m quietly happy with it.

My blog has a new home on Squarespace. It has a fresh look. It also has a new structure: I’ve arranged my stories into different sections:

1. Home Page

2. Blog: the main area of my website.

3. Secret Stories: the password-protected posts, available to anyone who’d like to support my blog with a coffee or two.

4. Wholy Souly: my personal stories, imported from my Wordpress Wholy Souly blog (which I will soon delete).

All my online writing is now in one place.

I’m thinking of adding a 4th section for frequent short posts, a place where I can jot down my latest thoughts and ideas or share a resource or two, somewhere I can share what I used to post on social media.

Here are a few unschooling thoughts that resulted from my many weeks of website work:

1. Just because unschoolers can choose what they want to do doesn’t mean they only do things that are easy and pleasant—building my website involved weeks of tedious work.

2. I did the work because there was a reason: I wanted to create a new home for my unschooling stories.

3. I might not have been willing to take on that huge commitment on my own. I could have been tempted to believe a new website wasn’t important. But I received encouragement from friends, which spurred me on.

So,

• If there is a reason, unschoolers will work hard doing difficult things. Without a reason, we might be wasting our time.

• Encouragement can help. When someone tells us our work will make a difference, we’re willing to persevere through all the trials. We all need a cheersquad. I’m grateful for mine.

I’m hoping my new-look website will make a difference. I want my stories to encourage others to unschool, even when life gets tough.

A friend recently shared my story, When Our Unschooling Days Turn Grey in the Virtual Kitchen Table community. I added a comment to her post.

I wrote:

Sometimes, I think I have nothing left to say because all my kids are adults. Also, I’ve been writing for 15 years. There are already hundreds of stories on my blog. But while I’ve been fixing my posts and rereading my words, I realise I've reached the point of thinking I’ve finished writing about unschooling many times before. But more stories always appeared!

When Our Unschooling Days Turn Grey makes me think about our yearning to provide perfect lives for our families. Maybe when we start unschooling/homeschooling, we imagine all our days will be wonderful. We don’t anticipate the grey days. When they arrive, we question ourselves: What are we doing wrong? We start searching for answers, a new way of living with our kids, perhaps a new method of homeschooling. And sometimes that’s the answer, but what I’m convinced about more and more is that life is never going to be perfect.

We all have to endure grey days. But not many people talk about them. (Do we feel like we’ve failed and don’t want anyone to know?) I guess I want to encourage parents not only on the joyful days but also on the hard ones. So that’s why I keep writing. I want to say: Keep moving forward. Do what is right. Trust. Keep loving. Because love is most important, isn’t it? It keeps us going through the good times and difficult ones.

Writing about the hard times has its own challenges: Will people think I’m making excuses for myself and my parenting abilities? Surely others will do a better job at parenting than I and avoid the difficulties? So, it’s hard to be honest. But that’s how we encourage and support each other, isn’t it? Anyway, does it really matter what people think of us?

Does it? Do other people’s opinions matter? Their influence over us can be huge. But we are free. We can choose to go our own way, the right one for us.

So, my unschooling stories have a new home, here on this fabulous site. (It’s much faster than my old WordPress blog!)

I will continue to write, sharing reflection stories about days past, and ones about our lives now. I want to explore Christian unschooling further, too. And then there are my personal Wholy Souly stories.

Unschooling affects all my stories. It’s my life. It is who I am.

I want to continue passing on this unschooling message. As always, I won’t promise a fairytale life if you choose to unschool. I won’t pretend that my family’s life is perfect. I’ll be honest and encourage you to unschool regardless. Why? Because of love.

Love is our reason for living. It’s why we are free.

And love is the reason I write, and why I created this new blog. It’s why I want to continue encouraging you to unschool.

Because at the heart of unschooling is unconditional love.

Not perfection but love.