Unravelling me

In March this year my mother died.

I wrote about her death and my loss in earlier blogs; about how hard it was at the time, and the realisation that I was affected more than I presumed I would be.

I had to put aside some of my grieving due to midwifery commitments; when you are caring for a woman in labour, you need to hold the emotional space around her (see my midwifery blog) and the birth space is not the time or place for your own emotions to fill this....

I have been off-call now since early July; slowly, I can feel some of the grief starting to release and bubble to the surface.  I know this because I have started to cry again; I am 'unravelling' - a phrase I have stolen from this insightful blogger.  It feels scary and raw, but really good to let go and miss my mother, to think about her, and to remember her with all my heart.

My tears are healing tears; my heart and soul feel strong and I am well.

Heart aches

Tears flow

Memories.  Loss. Missing you.

always. forever. 

love you mum.

angela xx

It's the simple things.....

For my birthday, a dear friend gave me a lovely wooden plaque with the following stencilled on to it:

"Enjoy the little things in life,for someday you will realize they were the big things".

As with all these beautiful quotes, we may read them and acknowledge them, but how do we apply them to life in this busy modern world we exist in?

This is something we have been thinking and talking about at home.  Daily over the past week or so, I have been taking pictures (either on my walk with the dog, or in the garden), trying to find beauty in the everyday moments around me.  This has helped me see that even though I hate living near the motorway, and would rather live somewhere more rural, there is still beauty and 'the little things' if you just take a moment to stop and notice.  I upload these to facebook to share with people (in the hope it may brighten their day); I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes, but taking the time to do this makes be feel more appreciative.  (If you have missed these, all that I have taken are at the end of this post.)

Talking about the simplifying life however, has got us exploring all sorts of 'bigger picture' ideas; one of which is rural living in a yurt! (If your not sure what a Yurt is, take a look at this fab website).  Lily has been working on a great project for yurt living, and she has researched and designed a great yurt home for us:

Yurt pods, costings, vegetable garden and copse.

The skills included in this research were:

• measuring the trampoline diameter.  This enabled Lily to visualise the size of a yurt pod and subsequently work out the living space we might need, including sleeping pods and a bathroom pod. 
• calculating the cost of each yurt and estimating a total projected cost (including foundations, mains connection etc.)
• researching a piece of land she would like to acquire through 'Rightmove' (ensuring it has its own water supply) and in an area we would like to live
• searched for and found a great youtube clip of a tour of a yurt home
• provided a full presentation of her findings over dinner!

Pretty cool autonomous learning covering Maths, IT, Analysis and Presentation Skills.  

We're not sure of course if these ideas will come to fruition, but we are in love with the notion of simple yurt living.  We are now planning some visits to yurt villages to see and experience what this might be like - an experience of learning in itself and great fun too hopefully.

When we take the time to stop and notice, it's truly amazing what we might find.

angela x

The view from our garden

The Thames at Shepperton Square

Runner bean flowers in the garden

Dappled sun light at camping

Raindrops on roses

Happy Sunflowers

Ripe blackberries for picking

Bzzzzzz..... luscious lavander

The Sun on the Thames

Woodland flowers on Esher common

Home Grown Happiness

Our little family has been on a roller coaster journery over the past 12 months, learning about homeed, learning about each other, learning to think (even more widely) outside of the main stream box;  I have been challanged beyond what I thought I was capable off, tired beyond belief on days, energised and revitalised on others.  These experiences have strengthened me - all of us - deeply.

Unexpectedly however, our home education journey has become more than opting out of state education in order to support our children; for many years we have danced around the edge of a more 'meaning-full' way of living, often asking ourselves the question 'is there more to life than this?'.  We have swayed between having nurturing, eco-strong, mindful approaches to life, and then back to a consumer driven, 4x4 driving (I do miss my ML a little though!), disposable life-style.   But something has changed - a road to Damascus moment perhaps - and we find ourselves not just dancing around the edge of living a mind-full life, but wishing to jump right on in to the dance floor and feel the music entirely!

So, like the butterflies I wrote about, we are slowly emerging from a chrysalis and thinking about our lives on a more concious level, and we have started on a process of change.  I have been hugely inspired by several things of late:

• an article in 'The Mother' entitled 'The Shadow Mother
• my time at The Mother Camp with my dearest, soulful, beautiful friend
• the book 'Women who run with Wolves'
• this amazing blog 'Rowdy Kittens' 
• the book 'The Life Organizer'  

You know you have struck a chord when something leaps of a page, grabs you and then - unexplainabley - causes you to cry, sob and release something that has been stuck, but you just didn't realise it.

"....accepting and embracing your quirky, dented, perfectly imperfect individual self".

Happiness is home-grown; it is found in the moments of quiet when your child is sleeping peacefully next to you.  It's in the morning walks when you take the time to notice the beauty that is under your nose.  It's in the repairing of a favourite t-shirt, the hand-made gifts, the stitches of the knitted baby hat, the eating of the chocolate courgette cake (made with love, using home grown vegetables).   It's in the warmth from the chiminea in the garden, whilst sitting under the stars.  It's in smile from the person you say good morning to - even though you don't know them.  It's in the sharing of a cup of tea with an old friend over the kitchen table.    Happiness does not come from money (just enough helps), or stuff (do I really need that), or shopping (is what your buying encouraging child labour), or watching other peoples lives on TV (reality 'stars' WTF?).  It does not come from living a life that makes you feel tired, that disconnects you from who you are, from your children, from your heart.

So, as we follow a a different path on our life journey, I hope to share our adventures with you.  We all have choices we can make (and I hope with my heart not to find myself judging others who make different choices to us),  but we dream we can find that there really is more to life than the modern worlds current approach.

Love angela xx

A year in the making.....

I have not blogged in a while, so my new promise to myself (and to you) is to start blogging more regularly!

A lot has been going on since my last update and I have so much I want to share that I'm not sure where to start.......  let's start with:

Sophie......
She was in school, then out of school, then in school, and then.... out of school!  Sophie rejoined us after the Summer Half-term break for a whole variety of reasons.  Although we are still all getting used to the change in dynamics (again) I am so pleased she is home and with us.  Sophie is now eating, sleeping, laughing and resting (and arguing with siblings but we shall skim over that bit), and has a renewed enthusiasm for learning.  We have decided to follow the GCSE option for her, so she will be studying for her Art (at a local adults college), Maths (with a tutor) and Biology (with me) GCSEs over the next 12 months.

New additions......

Bodhi

Out for a morning walk

As well as having Sophie back, we have 6 new additions to the Horler 'school'.  Bodhi is our rescue puppy from  Battersea , and arrived on the 9 June.  He has settled well, and of course gets lots of attention all day.  We have worked his walk into our unschooling day, so you may see us around the village between 9 and 10ish.  I love this time as I either have really interesting conversations with the children (I normally take one of them for 1-2-1 time), or I can have a short amount of thinking time-out for me.

The other 5 additions our a rescue chickens; Ben built a fantastic Chicken Pen and we brought a house on ebay for them.  We now have between 3 - 5 eggs a day so are completely self-sufficient with eggs!  Lily and Noah have taken on a lot of the day-to-day care of them and enjoy this immensely.

The Chucks!

Autonomous Education.....
I attended an autonomous education conference in July; although there were parts of the day I found frustrating and a little un-relevant to us as family, it completely restored my belief in autonomous education as the way forward for us!  I have noticed how much the children learn without me, and as knowledge is at their fingertips through the internet, libraries, stories etc, I am not sure that 'teaching' is relevant.  Children are not empty vessels waiting to be filled; they are amazing, individual, unique spirits who know what they want to learn about when they are inspired.  They have their own learning styles that do not always fit in with our modern view of 'learning', and we believe that they really, really do not need to have 10 GCSE's in a range of subjects that they will soon forget about once they have left school in order to get on with life. Through the autonomous route, learning is not in a 'neat linear' way, but in a random almost 'haphazard' way..... BUT they learn ALL THE TIME!  Even when they're not 'doing' something deemed as learning, they still learn!  A great book that helps you understand this The Unschooling Handbook - but you can google and find/see lots of different ways that families are learning together.


Reflection.....

A colourful meal and life!

We have been home-unschooling for a year now; I have learnt so much; about me, my children, life, love, saddness, patience, laughter, friends, fear, courage, rain (!), gardening to name a few. (Phew!).....  I would not change what we have done for a second, I love it and I love the adventure we are on.  Today I made a delicious meal of salads; it was full of colour, spice, flavours, home grown food, shop brought food; the children picked and chose what appealed most, they tasted something they weren't sure about, and we shared, laughed, grumbled and savoured - just like our unschooling life!

angela x