The healing journey of a widowed, unschooling badass in Delaware.
I’ve never been happier with the way I look. The last two years have been a journey of self discovery and self love. Out of the darkest hole, I have found light and love in my heart. I’ve learned to accept God’s infinite love and honor myself as I would honor Him.
We attended a homeschool hike today that was meant to end with fairy house building. Most of the children weren’t interested, but my elder son found a dead bird and decided she needed a home…with a pool.
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From near to far:
-I’m sorting our latest used Lego haul (literally two trash bags worth).
-Isaac is working on this beautiful Treehouse set.
-Westen is experimenting with stop-motion for their YouTube channel, Z-Boys Creations.
Sets in this image:
When progress means regress.
Ten days ago I started a new morning routine. Wim Hof Breathing is still first thing, but taking it outside in below-freezing temperatures feels like a new experience. I may even regret the onset of spring. Maybe I’ll get an ice tub like the crazies I follow on social media.
I make some tea, grab my journal to put down a few words, and come here to write a post, or, at least, start one.
One morning, as I was finishing the routine, my son found and brought me my first journal, from when I was about 15-years-old. I’ve written about how cruel I remember being at that age, how much I had hardened against the world and used my empathy as a weapon. The journal doesn’t betray that narrative, but adds color to my dark picture. I was searching for answers, frustrated at not finding them. I was writing poetry. It started as extra credit and became much of my public and private personas. I was falling in love for the first time. There was plenty of cynicism too. I saw the attention my writing got me and enjoyed it. Just a mixed up kid trying to figure himself out.
It was around that time that I began experimenting with alcohol. I liked the romantic notion of famous alcoholic writers and started to quote them and identify with them. I thought I was too clever to fall into the traps, or I was pessimistic enough to not care.
That pattern solidified through college. I stopped writing. “Everyone gets writer’s block,” is what I told myself. I had self-medicated myself into a stupor because I was still afraid to face the big emotions I feared as a child.
I’m not afraid anymore. My big emotions are my path to healing. It’s a regressive path traveling into my youth and further, into previous generations of programming and trauma. I’m winding back toward that 15-year-old who was falling in love and wondering what this is all about. I still have more questions than answers, but I’m impossibly optimistic about the truth.
Our learning lifestyle changed dramatically in 2020. Almost all of our learning is done socially. As government Lockdowns partnered with fear-driving media, it became impossible to find people to learn from and with. The dozens (hundreds?) of individuals we interacted with per week was whittled down to a couple of families.
Fortunately, the mom of one of those families was sure that there were more of us who recognized the need for social learning. I was a naysayer, but backed her efforts to start a new group of families as the summer of Lockdowns began. On our first “official” get together, there were eight families and most of us didn’t know each other. The group has grown and the core families have become fast friends. I’ve witnessed (and received) material, emotional, and spiritual gifts given everyday through our various chats and group texts. Our weekly gatherings have grown into multiple days of video gaming, analog gaming, Lego building, cooking, and all types of learning meet-ups.
The latest adventure was brought to us by a mom brand new to homeschooling. She may have been considered a Crisis, or Isolation, Schooler when she met us. Lockdown restrictions on schools did not work for her family. I don’t know how she found our group, but she and her children have been a blessing to us in a number of ways.
One way was an invite to participate in Junior Rifle Club, a weekly meet of children to get instruction on gun safety and usage.
It was an early start and my boys struggled a bit with hearing the initial safety speech repeated a few times as new participants arrived. Although unplanned, I believe it was important for them to hear the messages multiple times (which, of course, they would continue to hear throughout the morning).
They took turns shooting and observing for close to three hours without complaint. They got to watch their improvement on the targets and the learning was off the charts, too much to absorb in one morning. I have no doubt that this will become an important part of our week and we will be broadening our skills in significant ways.
Live music. A friend lamented at music’s healing power of sound, connection, rhythm, and pure magic. I shared the lament. This is the longest I’ve gone without a proper concert (even counting the miracle yoga and music fest we attended in August).
Then I remembered I had tickets for a Lone Bellow concert at Union Transfer in Philly in March. My date for that show dumped me months ago and I was pessimistic that it was still happening at all. I looked up the venue and the show is still listed as on!
With good news trickling out and an event date right at the beginning of spring, I’m cautiously optimistic that my friend and I will be letting loose like the maniacs we are in a couple months.
Now, to find that magical, four-day, hippie fest my sons and I have been craving…
Disclosure: The links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
I’ve felt a sense of failure many times on our learning lifestyle journey and I’ve been at this for six years.
2020 was a really difficult time to begin homeschooling. More than 90% of our resources were taken away. We are hands on, experiential learners, almost nothing we do is online or “virtual.”
Even with all the resources, the start was rocky for us. We tried so many things and it was “giving up” that showed me how learning will occur without an authority figure demanding it. I’m now a devoted unschooler and concern myself more with their emotional, spiritual, and physical growth than academics.
Each family has to find its own groove. You’ll get there. You’ve got this.
I expected to play soccer last night, but the game fell through and I decided on a jiu-jitsu class. It smashed me and I had a tough time waking up this morning. I thank God for this practice. It used to be soccer or nothing for me. Now, with yoga and jiu-jitsu, I’m not only a stronger soccer player, but I’ve got options when the Universe wants to change plans on me.
Once I wore out my phone’s snooze function (didn’t know that could happen), I saw the last glow of sunrise fading and ran out to start my daily breathing. It was the coldest (27°F) and windiest day for my practice and I’m not sure why I didn’t put a shirt on. The wind was tame, but it felt like icy electricity crackling over my skin.
I love the different sensations I experience during the 5 rounds of 30 intentional breaths with breath retention on the last exhale of each round. Different shapes appear in my vision behind my closed eyelids. Today, the first couple rounds were accompanied by forks of lightning emanating from the bottom left of my field of vision. They faded and the field became calmer and more even, a soft, five-point star appearing during the last round.
As I hold my lungs empty, I try to focus on parts of my body that need attention. I was pleased that my knees were feeling better and not surprised that a smashed toe was still healing.
Today was the most discomfort I have felt in my fingers, but I directed attention there, and that faded as well. The small, yet distinctly observable, healing moments have been incredible. In the summer I would be bitten by a mosquito or two during early rounds, yet there would be no welts after I was finished. Doing this first thing in the morning, my body is often awkward and stiff. After the breathing, I am always moving more smoothly. The places I target with my mind seem to continually and actively heal throughout the day.
I think it’s about time to get Wim Hof’s book and deepen my journey.
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
I’m terrified of this subject. I have a history with empathy that I’m not proud of and now, as I embrace my God-given sensitivities, I feel like an imposter. I know empaths and connect with them quickly. The literature, memes, and stories all speak to my own experiences. It all seems very important to me and I dread the damage that can be done when those skills are employed without care.
It’s not a theoretical fear. I realized I was empathic when I was ten years old. I predicted my parents’ divorce by three years and started to experience the pain of the world. I was a curious kid in a gifted program and started to pay attention to world events. I knew how lucky I was to be in a school district that could afford a program that treated me more like a human than the regular classroom. I was an imposter there too, lower income than most of the kids and an IQ just high enough to grant me access after further testing. We got to discuss world affairs at a higher level and I felt a stink of self preservation in much of the talk. I was overwhelmed by the problems of the world and felt them as I tried to sleep. It was too much for a ten-year-old to manage, why wasn’t everyone crippled by this weight? Why do we operate like crushing suffering isn’t all around and inside us? I didn’t talk to anyone about it. I was shedding friends and turning inward, feeling like a freak. I knew my parents were going through something impossible and didn’t want to turn to them. They encouraged individuality in both me and my sister, but I still felt like I was too far off the spectrum of normal humans.
My emotions were too hot to regulate. I relied on my rational brain to solve what I perceived to be a problem of poor wiring. I made a judgment about reality that I didn’t reconsider for far too long: the world is made up of victims and victimizers. I felt like a victim of reality. I felt tied to all the victims and that we were all drowning under the force of the victimizers. I chose to be a victimizer. It couldn’t be worse than this feeling of slowly dying and I knew I was at least smart enough to put up a good fight.
On the first day of seventh grade, schools had merged and there were new dynamics and cliques forming. A big kid, Steve, was picking on someone in homeroom. I knew I would be next. It wasn’t heroics or any type of compassion that set me on this kid. It was my turn to be a motherfucker that no one would mess with. Mind you, I was the smallest one in the room and Steve was the biggest. I came at him from my desk, smiling and joking and tearing him down. Fuck, it makes me so sad to think of the person I became in that moment. I just knew where to hit. I knew it because I could feel his pain and I went right there. I took my insecurities and weaponized them, acting like I was so fucking smart and this kid was a waste of flesh. I got some laughs, I got that hit of serotonin, I was hooked.
I wasn’t a traditional bully, and maybe folks would remember me differently, but I believed in a dominance hierarchy and would fight to protect my place in it. I would claim it was a fight for independence, but that was only partly true. My independence meant cutting myself off from others unless it served my purpose, then I would use my empathy to get what I wanted. Reality has a way of getting twisted when you deny truth. I went so far as to deny that “empathy” existed. I was denying my Self.
Then I discovered booze. I had been exercising an oppressive control over my Self and found relief in this elixir that loosened my grip. And then, when the pain and guilt got too close, I could use more of the drink to numb it away. Voila!
I had grown and cultivated a monster inside me and I confused my Self with this Shadow. I let myself be the bully when I was drinking, I was terrified that this was the true me. Alcohol was medication for the disease I had become.
I don’t know how much Mary saw the true me. I was clouded from years of practicing being superficial and clever. I think she liked the edge I had honed, she knew I could protect her and our children. What she loved was something I hardly saw, a deep potential for love that would empower her and our children. Our relationship was always about children. Everyone knew Mary was going to be a mother. I’ve never known someone as naturally suited for the role. Something told her that her time was finite and that she would need a husband and mate who could thrive after she was gone. That’s why she gave me boys, I would definitely have screwed up more with girls.
Now one of those boys is eleven years old. He has big feelings and I’m trying to meet him there. To do that I have to let go of my fear and embrace my empathic journey. I didn’t have someone who understood, but he can have that in me.
God blesses us every day.
I have been sorely missing the service opportunities provided by our church community. I’m a poorly educated Christian, but my experience with the Gospels places love and service over fear of the human frailty of disease. Slowly, we are finding ways to help our neighbors in the spirit of Christ.
For a few hours this MLK, Jr. Day, we felt love and shared it as we were given the chance to help beautify One Village Alliance’s Freedom Center in Wilmington.
When we arrived, someone was already outlining a mural and the grounds looked like this.
We removed a massive amount of ivy and I was allowed to build a makeshift fire pit.
I got lost in the ivy. My late wife, Mary, and I lived in two homes that existed under the constant threat of being overrun. I indulged in a touch of anger at the creeping vines as I smiled at the cleared fence and grounds. The firepit gave more catharsis. My knees hurt from grappling with the ivy embedded in two inches of driveway gravel and dirt, but permission to put the cinder blocks to use was more than enough to overcome the discomfort. Mary loved fires. We never had a pit this big and I envisioned her working alongside me to prep the fire.
My sons faded from the yard work and I couldn’t blame them, there was painting to do. They started inside, helping with the stairs, and ended up contributing to the love-infused mural outside.
Finally, they were rewarded with a videogame paradise provided by Mobile Entertainment Theater.
We were all rewarded with this day of service. I made new connections and saw friends who I’ve missed for nearly a year. We walked away with jobs still to be done, but also real improvement in a necessary community center.