School Survivors and Remembering Grace

“A lot of the work of homeschooling, unschooling, is our work on ourselves. And the fact that we are all survivors of that system, and so have been deeply socialized to believe, ‘No. If you bring your kid home, you are totally going to fail them. There’s no way you can ever do this—this is how your kid is going to be totally marred and not get the best they could out of this life. Don’t you love your kid and want them to get the best?’ Even if you know that, intellectually, that is not true, the way that can trigger a trauma response, and trigger feelings, is still really deep. I think all of us, at this moment—particularly as the governor is like, ‘Peoples’ mental health has just gone out the window if they can’t be in the school’—all of us need to go back to what our grace is that we can offer ourselves that we made it out of that system with a different critique of it, and that we are trying to raise people that have a different understanding of that system. And be really patient with ourselves and the people around us who are freaking out because they pulled their kid and what the hell. ‘What’s gonna happen now?!’ That’s a thing.” -Carter

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Episode recorded October 3, 2021

Producer: Brian Lane-Karnas