Fare of the Free Child

This week on #fofcpod we're serving insightful thoughts, feedback, and resources based on our current PAUSEwerk flow.

The letter of the week is P, for Pain Points: What’s the matter? What took you here? What things feel like pain, discomfort, uncertainty? What is coming up for you and for the people that you’re closest to right now?

This episode is our first Listening Party, the space where we focus on your feedback about an aspect of pausing, as well as our own insights and struggles.

Akilah and Domari continue unraveling the layers of perfection vs pleasure: they speak about Black Excellence and the pressure of feeling that all that you do is never enough.

Can pause be a privilege?

“The more success I feel, the harder it is for me to accept that I can pause.” - Akilah

“I don’t like that. I’m not like that”. - Domari

In this episode, you’ll notice that we’re just getting the hang of the tech for this new format—but you’ll still get a feel for what these listening parties are about!

Every other Monday, we’ll be at it again, so join Domari and Akilah as live audience members (no video necessary)!

The next Listening Party is Monday, April 18th at 1 PM Eastern.

We LOVE feedback

We listened to Zeba Savage from Savage Learning Environment who brought up the importance of pausing, and the pressure of being perfect. Then, our homie, Vanessa Molano, shared their thoughts from one of the cards that Domari pulled from the Raising Free People practice decks (the Layers card), and pointed out their experiences with boundaries and grace. Raising Free People Card Deck is available now, click here to order it.

These comments are gems in the work we do, so thank you for contributing to this ecology that moves us away from tools of oppression and towards our personal healing journeys.

More Resources

Dr. Sundiata teamed up with Maryella Marie and Tomis Parker, two other SDE-minded facilitators, to create an amazing offering: The live virtual training, “Co-creating a Thriving Family Culture.” This will take place on the weekend of April 23 to the 24. They’re offering tools that will help you on being intentional about learning new skills and processes to make decisions and resolve conflicts in peaceful and collaborative ways.

Liberation WALK

Here are a couple of gems to take your time and think about:

• “If I pause, who is going to fill the space left by all of the people who told us how to be in the world?”
• “Can I afford to pause?”

Give us some feedback about this episode, reflect inside

Support the show

Dig this show? Join our make-it-happen family at patreon.com/akilah to make sure we can keep this thang going strong. Thank you!
The Raising Free People Practice Card Deck
https://schoolishness.com/market/rfp-a-practice-deck/
Peek at the details of Personal Manifesto Path (will be available exclusively through our make-it-happen family on Patreon)
https://www.rfpunschool.com/p/manifesto
Our Youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/@fareofthefreechild
The Village:
https://my-reflection-matters.mn.co/

Grief. Avoidance. Funky energies. We’re wrapping up Season 8 with all kinds of feelings in the mix. How do we embrace or transform these feelings as they arise? That’s the pausewerk, and this week we arrive at E, for Exploration.

“Noticing your behavior in that moment is about noticing that moment, which is really powerful. It grounds you in the now.” Akilah encourages us to trust the wisdom that emerges from a pause, and Domari shares a story speaking to this experience.

Domari reminds us that pausewerk is deschooling work. It’s the little moments where we stop to notice ourselves in our environment. But in what ways might this be a privilege? In what ways might this be radically transformative? How can pausewerk shape the way that we treat ourselves and others in community?

Why we pause

We are pausing from colonial habituation. We are pausing from autopilot. We are pausing to give ourselves undivided attention and to identify our needs.

“Definitely deep emotions this week...because I see myself sitting at this intersection where my liberation work is always about being in relationship with, not free from.” - Jonie

Around this gem, Akilah reflects on how it might feel to gather yourself and be in relationship with that emotion, embrace it, and learn to be ok with it.

Domari recalls a moment when she navigated an opportunity to pause and pivot: “I did [it], and I didn’t die.” Jonie (our wonderful Listening Party regular) validated how threatening a pause can feel: “this all can feel like negotiations with our survival sometimes.” Transformation ain’t easy! But we’re embracing the practice with open questions.

Madd Question Askin’ ...

• What system, patterns, or habits do you want to stick to or pivot away from?
• Why pause? When to pause?
• Why do we choose what we choose? Why do we feel the way we feel about it?
• What might feel good to begin re-imagining?
• How might it feel to spend more time focused on yourself and your interests as opposed to what your children are not learning?
• What are you trusting right now?
• What brings you back to notice what is impacting you?
• What keeps you grounded?
• What makes you proud about your children?

In case you missed any episode here you can revisit our P.A.U.S.E acronym:

Episode 244: There is Real Power in the Pause tho!

Episode 245: P for Pain Points: What’s hurting you? What’s hurting them?

Episode 246: Listening Party for “P. is for Pain Points”

Episode 247: A for Absent: What feels missing in your current relationships?

Episode 248: Listening Party Replay for ‘A. is for Absences’

Episode 249: U for Understa

Support the show

Dig this show? Join our make-it-happen family at patreon.com/akilah to make sure we can keep this thang going strong. Thank you!
The Raising Free People Practice Card Deck
https://schoolishness.com/market/rfp-a-practice-deck/
Peek at the details of Personal Manifesto Path (will be available exclusively through our make-it-happen family on Patreon)
https://www.rfpunschool.com/p/manifesto
Our Youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/@fareofthefreechild
The Village:
https://my-reflection-matters.mn.co/

This week we’re focused on the letter U for understanding in our P.A.U.S.E.werk. Listen as we talk about the language of conscious parenting, the difference between dialogue and discussion, and then some.

Domari and Akilah take us through some of their noticings about how understanding and control impact their relationships, and not just as mothers. Also, be ready for an insightful convo about an Instagram post where Ieishah Clelland (our Season 7 Co-Producer) questioned gentle parenting as a privilege. Akilah cites Dr. Sundiata’s distinction between dialogue and discussion as we question our relationship with understanding, and with discomfort. So much goodness in here! Pull out your pause pad and join us.

Madd Question Askin' Understanding Essay for people committed to Raising Free People

There is a link between Understanding and control, and in our efforts to become more partner-centered parents and caregivers,

we've got to look into that link.

Control is not inherently a negative thing,

but when control is our goal and we don't even realize it,

we can demand things from children

in the name of understanding,

when really what we're after is a sense of control.

Control is comforting.

Control feels like certainty,

yet comfort and certainty aren't always what's needed in a relationship.

Is it a child's job to be controllable?

Is it a child's job to give us a sense of certainty?

How do we impact children when we don't understand something they do?

And how much of our need to understand is tied to our desire to feel

like we're in control and we're sure about what's going on?

When are my efforts to control a child appropriate?

and when are they more about my lack of understanding?

Here’s a resource for working through the questions and feelings you will face as you let yourself ask better questions:

Restorative Justice and Conscious Parenting workshop. Happening Sunday, May 1st. Be ready for interactive exercises and group discussions, where we’ll learn the roots of restorative justice work, the basics of the restorative process, and how this supports your conscious parenting process, harm caused by supremacy culture, and other oppressive systems.

Discomfort is a significant part of understanding

Shout out to Ieishah who put this on the table and made us inquire about our relationship to discomfort. Ieishah reflects on conscious parenting and gentle parenting. Is our capacity for gentle parenting or to treat h

Support the show

Dig this show? Join our make-it-happen family at patreon.com/akilah to make sure we can keep this thang going strong. Thank you!
The Raising Free People Practice Card Deck
https://schoolishness.com/market/rfp-a-practice-deck/
Peek at the details of Personal Manifesto Path (will be available exclusively through our make-it-happen family on Patreon)
https://www.rfpunschool.com/p/manifesto
Our Youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/@fareofthefreechild
The Village:
https://my-reflection-matters.mn.co/

Episode 182 is a mix of communal spaces, tools, resources and of course liberation talk. Genesis Ripley will be joining us to chat about shadow work and the importance of being more aware of our unconscious as we are moving into a more self-directed way of being. Genesis is an LA-based mother, natural learning advocate, decolonizer by design and unschooler momma.

We’ll also be sharing some great resources and invitations to continue through this healing and self awareness process, and you’ll hear from Kelly Limes-Taylor and Chemay Morales-James about ways to do that work.

WHAT WE DISCUSS

Kelly Limes-Taylor, is a former college professor and unschooler mother of five. Kelly speaks about the relevance in naming our failed structures and how these structures, built on a settler-colonial framework, are reinforced through conventional schooling. Kelly points out the importance of trusting our intuition and brings us a valuable resource: she is offering a course series called The Ours First Series in order to help adults to settle into the practice of listening to their intuition and themselves for their own answers.

Another communal space shared by Chemay Morales-James from My Reflection Matters community, is a virtual co-learning community for primarily BIPOC families that can be looking for support in raising and educating free people. My Reflection Matters Village seeks to create a virtual space that supports caregivers that may be wanting or are already on the path of self-directed education with their children, offering access to resources that can help them in their deschooling processes.

Akilah and Genesis have a conversation full of layers on the topic of liberation and healing work as it relates to the unconscious. Self-directed skills to embody the level of confident autonomy in partnership with children.

Genesis shares the importance of Shadow Work and why we can't continue to contemplate the world in a binary spectrum, ignoring the nuances, ignoring the shadows that are also part of it. She also points out the importance of diversity as sacred, intellectualizing the plights and issues without the people involved is to dehumanize and undermine the voices that need to be heard.

LIBERATION WALK

• Genesis wrote an insightful piece emphasizing anti-Blackness called Essay: Shadow Work as Embodied Anti-Racism Work
• Check out Genesis’ previous episode: Episode 39: Mask-Free Relationships
• Pre-order Akilah’s Raising Free People book

Support the show

Dig this show? Join our make-it-happen family at patreon.com/akilah to make sure we can keep this thang going strong. Thank you!
The Raising Free People Practice Card Deck
https://schoolishness.com/market/rfp-a-practice-deck/
Peek at the details of Personal Manifesto Path (will be available exclusively through our make-it-happen family on Patreon)
https://www.rfpunschool.com/p/manifesto
Our Youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/@fareofthefreechild
The Village:
https://my-reflection-matters.mn.co/

Our featured host and guest during this week’s version of our month-long love fest is Lou Hollis of Grief, Growth and Goals podcast (#3GPod), a space for sharing insights about healing work while parenting after grief and depression.

Lou is a model and actress with more than 25 years of experience in the talent industry, both as talent, and as talent management and mentorship. Grief, Growth and Goals podcast (#3GPod) is a healing space where Lou chats with child talent, parents of talent, bookers, agents, agency owners, about business, but more so about managing life and staying grounded through it all.

On this week’s episode, Akilah and Lou speak about power dynamics in relationships and the importance of changing the narrative to advocate for their children from a partner-centered lens. Lou talks about how empowering it is for her to hear other people's stories, particularly how they’ve learned to raise their voices, and how that has inspired her to make sure she is showing up and sharing her spiritual transformation.

To meet all the hosts on our network, be sure to check out our main page: https://raisingfreepeople.com/network/

LIBERATION WALK

• You can also watch the video version from this episode
• You can listen to Lou on previous #fofcpod episodes: Episode 73: How Grief Unschooled Her and Episode 194: Language for Unschooling
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!
• Join patreon.com/akilah and support the show!

Support the show

Dig this show? Join our make-it-happen family at patreon.com/akilah to make sure we can keep this thang going strong. Thank you!
The Raising Free People Practice Card Deck
https://schoolishness.com/market/rfp-a-practice-deck/
Peek at the details of Personal Manifesto Path (will be available exclusively through our make-it-happen family on Patreon)
https://www.rfpunschool.com/p/manifesto
Our Youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/@fareofthefreechild
The Village:
https://my-reflection-matters.mn.co/