Home Schooling - A Path to Enlightenment?

I have not liked most parts of home schooling.

This is mainly because the whole process has tugged on all of my perfectionistic and people-pleasing neuroses and lay them out for the world (and myself and my kids) to see. This only occurred to me while I was feverishly posting evidence of my grade 1s activity on the school app and then checking constantly as to whether the teacher had “liked” it. Oh my goodness. I am not in grade 1, why do I care what Catherine (teacher) thinks of me? Why do I care what anyone thinks of me?

I have come to believe that the only thing that really matters is what I think of me.

I feel like the last 3 months of my life have required me to dig very deep into my self-care, insight & emotional management tool kits, not to mention my interpersonal tools. It is like I have been on a very long, not-self-imposed Zen retreat. With a slightly irritable and irrational grade 1 Zen master whipping me as I climb a very tall mountain, in the rain, naked. THAT is how hard it has been, so so many opportunities for insight and development and so so many opportunities for crumbling into a puddle of frustrated and angry goop, right here on the kitchen floor. Of course, in reality, most of the time, it was my own dear mind who was the old Zen master. Dammit, those realisations hurt.

Someone asked me the other day “how is home schooling going?” I paused, she jumped in and said, “I am sure there are some lovely bits”. My response was a very definite “no, there have been not been many lovely bits, I have actually dreaded most mornings at 9am when we are supposed to start ‘school’. I have had to constantly check myself as to whether I am going too hard or too soft, I have had to constantly remember what really matters at the end of all this (mental health and connection!)  and I am currently measuring the success of my days in terms of whether I killed or divorced anyone”. She was silent (and perhaps a little shocked) and she finally said, “oh well, at least you’re honest”. I could tell she was a little disappointed that I wasn’t more up-beat about the whole thing, I mean, I am a psychologist and meditation teacher after all – aren’t I supposed to be positive? Or at least have my shit together?

I have spent a great portion of my life not being honest about my feelings and, pretending to have my shit together. As women, and especially as mothers, society demands us to be smiling and grateful and to just get on with it. Of course, I am grateful, my life is awesome but, that does not diminish my pain and discomfort. In fact, I have now come to believe that pain and discomfort is necessary for us to truly grow into who we are supposed to be. And that all of this avoiding of pain and discomfort does us as a massive disservice. We then pass down this way of seeing and being to our kids, which, in turn does them a massive disservice. We gotta teach ourselves (and our kids) how to ride the pain and discomfort that comes with being a fully functioning human, not how to hide it and especially not how to fix it.

 I think this starts when we are little girls, when we are taught to be nice and quiet and pretty and well-behaved. We swallow down our feelings (unless of course they are the “positive” ones like happiness and joy) and eventually, they lodge themselves in our bodies. The mind/body connection is alive and well here, I can assure you. Our anger or fear or shame sits in our gut, churning, churning, churning – largely unacknowledged or unexpressed. Angry women are dismissed as aggressive or neurotic, or lesbian (as if that were an insult).

If we do somehow manage to keep a lid on it, sometimes these emotions seep out, trickling and whirling as insecurities or irritability or unexplainable tears. We wonder why rates of burn-out, anxiety, depression and autoimmune disease are higher in women!

As my sister in law pointed out to me the other day, women are the biggest losers in this global pandemic. Women make up most of the part time or less-skilled workforce and they are largely the ones who have lost their jobs due to the economic crunch we all find ourselves in. They are also largely the ones who have been tasked with homeschooling the kids, putting their careers on hold, once again (and having the Zen-retreat-like experience described above). Please be assured this is not having a go at men. Men are bloody awesome, it is not their fault that we all live in a largely patriarchal society set up by and for men. However, is sure as hell is their responsibility to be aware of what is happening here and, to step in to support and work with the women in their lives, at home and at work.

And so, this is why I am so passionate about running my #mindfulwoman meditation classes every week via zoom. It is an opportunity for women to come together to support and grow and rediscover their awesomeness.  The awesomeness that may have been stifled by society and/or the way they were raised (no fault passing or blame here – just an acknowledgement of reality). No competing, no pretending, no fake smiling or “I’m fine – how are you?”. Just us. As we are. Passionate. Smart. Funny. Whole. Human.

And so, home-schooling ends for some of us next week. However, I know that life will continue to throw me many more opportunities for development and growth. That is what life does. Life wants us to grow into who we are supposed to be, not what we have been told we should be. One thing I am not supposed to be for sure, is a primary school teacher, especially not to my own kids.

Thanks for the memories home schooling, smell ya later!

Leaving home and being saved again and again and again…..

I was 15 and in year 9. He was 17 and in year 12.

I was dating and older boy (eeeeek!) and I felt so cool! Cool was not something that came naturally to me, it was something I desperately wanted to be but, have you met my parents? both not cool. I had no hope. Anyway, he was the best basketball player at school and with that came great prestige. We’ll call him “Matt” (because that may or may not have been his real name). 

One Friday night we went out for dinner with Matt’s parents (slightly weird, I know) and the plan then, was to go onto watch a professional basketball game. I felt so grown up and so excited that this guy must really like me – since he was introducing me to his parents. I remember sitting at dinner, describing in detail the raft making activity I had done at Girl Guides the night before. I was in total flow….I had three grown-ups enthralled in my description of how we built the raft, how we sailed the raft and how we capsized the raft. I actually remember having the conscious thought “wow, I am so uncool (I mean, I go to girl guides for goodness sake) and these people seem to like me anyway - unbelievable”. I was practicing being myself and it felt so new and so good. And even better, the feedback I was getting from “the world” (AKA Matt and his parents) was positive. After dinner we walked across the park towards the basketball stadium. Matt and I were walking slightly behind his parents. I remember the smell of the fig trees, the gentle glow of the street lamps lighting up the crisp winter evening, the warmth of his hand as he held mine. And then, all of a sudden, the unthinkable happened, he broke up with me. In the park, 20 meters behind his parents.

 A little piece of my adolescent self died that night. At that tender age of 15, I learned that actually, being myself is risky, people might leave me if I show them who I really am. Turns out, the break-up was nothing to do with me. Matt had kissed “Shannon” (who just happened to be the fastest runner in the school – damn sporty people sticking together) the night before and she had made him promise to break up with me the next night.

When I got home from that very awkward date (where I had to sit through a whole bloody basketball game with this guy who had just broken up with me AND HIS DAMN PARENTS) – I fell into my Dad’s arms at the front door and sobbed. I could see in his face the firm resolve to do everything he could to protect me from such pain in the future. His little girl was hurting and  he would make sure THAT would never happen again. Of course, this is a natural response from many of us parents, to protect our children from pain – however, I wonder whether it is misguided? Because what I inadvertently learnt from my Dad’s response was “pain is bad, I am weak and I can’t handle my pain therefore I must be protected from it” – and protected by a man, no less.

And so, when pain came in my life, as it inevitably did because, you know “life is suffering” and all that jazz, I became very good at either avoiding the pain and therefore avoiding or leaving myself in the process OR playing the “weak” card and crumbling. I never knew I could turn right towards the pain. I never knew I had a choice when it came to abandoning myself and that, it actually could never destroy me, it could, in fact only ever make me stronger.

And so life went on, I crashed and burned, many times. I left myself over and over and over again. I turned to men to save me. I moved further and further away from my own wisdom – looking outside myself to be fixed, to be saved. Trying to fit myself into boxes that just weren’t the right size or shape for me. And then, I found mindfulness. I finally found an approach that did not require me to fix or change anything, in fact, it encouraged me to be who I really am – wholeheartedly! 

This is why I teach it. This is why I am so passionate about teaching it to woman. We can and must trust and save ourselves and we can and must teach our daughters and sons the same.

Oh, and I did bump into Matt again. It was when I was about 24 and I was on a catwalk, modeling lingerie at a wedding expo. I spotted him in the audience with his fiancé. He was balding.