On Being a Colossal Failure - and Growth

Every great story has a crisis in the middle. Well, maybe many crises, actually: a rising crescendo of trips and falls and failures and flat-out terrifying leaps of insanity that land the protagonist smack in the middle of chaos or terror or hilarity, and then they learn something, and there is a conclusion, and we finish the story wiser than we began it. Hopefully.

Let me tell you one of my stories. This one began in 1993 when, at 17,  I went to the Netherlands, heart full of love and head full of dreams, hoping to become an artist. With the encouragement and guidance of my uncle, I took my portfolio and Canadian grad transcripts into the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in the Hague, the Netherlands, and walked out with a hearty invitation into the second year program. They loved me so much they put me into second year!! Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

My parents dug deeply and funded my great adventure, and I moved to the Hague in September, 1994. I was 18, and had rarely lived outside of the rural island I grew up on, apart from a year in the rural Shuswap, and short trips to the suburbs of Vancouver for family visits. My uncle picked me up from the airport near Amsterdam and brought me to the room he had arranged for me in a small flat in the Hague. Nobody else was home. The room was tiny. About eight by ten feet, with one enormous ten-foot-wide window on the side that faced the street. There were blinds, but the street-lights, the tram-lights, the sounds of trams and cars and scooters and sirens and drunken wee-hour partyers, the many neighbours all sliced upwards through those blinds and reflected off the ceiling to where I lay on the floor, huddled in a blanket on the folding mattress my uncle had given me. I cried so long I couldn't sleep.

At midnight on that first night my first room-mate walked into my room, introduced herself as Margriet, but said I could call her Daisy, if I wanted to, and I could use her dishes until I got my own. I was alarmed, but she became my first friend in that new and terrifying city. The first piece of news I read there described various female body pieces found in a garbage can in the park just a few blocks south of my new home. In the two years I lived there, I never went to that park.

I picked myself up in the morning, shopped with my cousin for essentials, as we were both setting up our new residences in neighbouring cities, and argued lengthily over who would buy the few white and orange cups, and whether each would look better with wine, beer, water, tea, and milk in them. My parents funded this shopping trip.

My tenure in the Netherlands was wonderful and terrible; I made some dear and treasured friends, and connected with my Dutch family in a way I never would have managed had I not lived there. I learned to speak Dutch, to cook and clean for myself, to live on very little income, and to find and create work for myself in a complex city that, at first, was completely foreign to me. I fought off a rapist in the middle of the night and then used my wits to force him to walk me to safety. I became courageous. I became an adult. It was perhaps the most powerful time of my life, and I have my parents' open minds and generosity to thank for it.

Me at the Royal Academy, 1996 - photo by A. van der Vlist

Art school, though? Well, I learned a few things, among them some basic printmaking skills that have stayed with me throughout my career, and the basics of oil painting. But mostly, after one and a half years, I learned about failure.

I majored in drawing and painting, and that department was set up like an open studio, where each student had a personal work area, and we gathered in some common spaces for lectures, lunches, and hashing out our ideas. As a working group it was great, but there was little support from professors. They wandered around and gave critiques irregularly, but basically in third year we were expected to self-direct and develop a practice. At the time I was working on womb-like forest paintings and abstractions of the same. I was working through feelings of homesickness for my forested island home, while living in the most urban environment I could imagine. While I lived in the Netherlands, a news story came out about a homeowner accidentally cutting down the last bit of indigenous forest. It was not the home I knew and longed for, and art is always a form of therapy.

So in early 1996, as I was deeply entrenched in this visual exploration of my heart's home and longing, the professors came around for the quarterly review, and requested that I come to the back room. But why? Don't we need to be in the vicinity of my work? Nope. They had only one pertinent question: Who were my influences?

Well, that was easy enough, I thought. I told them that probably my greatest influences were Georgia O'Keeffe, Emily Carr, and West Coast indigenous art.

They looked at each other knowingly, and flatly explained that while Georgia O'Keeffe is marginally acceptable, Emily Carr is "kitch", and "Indians don't make art". I can't remember anything I said after that - I'm sure it was useless. My mind was numb. They told me that since I was painting landscapes I should learn to paint like real landscape painters. They told me to get a print of a particular city landscape by Camille Corot and replicate it, stroke-for-stroke, until I had learned what a landscape should look like. I tried. I really tried. I laboured for weeks on this painting of two damn monks standing on a pale terrace overlooking a washed-out Italian cityscape. But the glowing ball of fire in my chest that brings me to paint had died. I was an empty shell pushing meaningless lines of paint onto a barren panel, and nobody - not even the professors - came to talk with me anymore. Until they did.

Sometime that spring the professors returned, ominously as a group, again, to give me an ultimatum: My work was going nowhere. They were going to give me a "Fail" for the year. My only alternative was to leave the school early and they would give me an "Incomplete", instead. With a newly blossoming relationship, a desperate homesickness, and a ticket home to Canada waiting to be used, I left. I went home knowing I had let my parents down, wasted their money, and caused them and my whole family irreparable shame. I soon discovered when I tried to continue my studies in Canada that an "Incomplete" is essentially the same as a "Fail", and I was unable to enter a Canadian university until I'd raised my grades by attending college. I was, truly and wholly, a failure.

Obviously, passion is a short-lived endeavour, as living generally requires a more moderate approach, and my passionate self-loathing waned over the years I attended school in Canada, married and learned to keep house, and eventually raised two children. This is the denouement of my story - the slow tumbling resolution to the crisis of my great failure. There was never a moment where I became un-failed or wildly successful. Never any particular redemption, although installing one of my works in Amsterdam last year did feel like a healing salve. The visceral memory of my firm kick out the door of the Royal Academy of Visual Arts gave me a whole lot more self-reflection, upon which to build a fire. I have now returned to my art career with a great but less fragile ball of fire in my chest. If I hadn't failed so colossally and grown to discover the beauty of it, I never would have arrived here. And perhaps I never would have laughed when my son sadly announced to us that he had received 38% on his math test.

My son Taliesin failed his math test. Colossally. So badly, in fact, that the online school he took it with is allowing him to rewrite it. It was nothing like the 15% I vividly remember receiving on a math-test, myself, but he, having held off telling us out of shame, was surprised that we just smiled and laughed about it. I imagine this single test failure to be just one small but positive experience in Taliesin's journey into academia. Go forward with courage, my love. May you live many adventurous stories, and may you overcome much greater failures than this one!

Five Huge Unschooling Mistakes I've Made

Has your kid ever looked at you in earnest, and accused you of causing them problems by unschooling them? Mine has. And it was in that moment that all the indignation and arrogance I'd built our unschooling life upon totally collapsed. Because indignation and arrogance might have given us the courage to jump out of a system that wasn't working, but in the end they were just walls we built around our hearts to keep us from the vulnerability of life. Some of us unschoolers needed those walls to protect us as we built this new world, but now it's time for the walls to come down. I have made lots of mistakes. Now I want to own up to them, and grow.

Mistake #1: Succumbing to Self-Doubt

Actually, my reaction in that moment, a few years ago, when my son told me I had set him up for failure by unschooling him, was to question everything I've done as a parent and to cave in. It's a great thing to question ourselves, to evaluate, assess, and make changes, but there has to be an end to it. At some point very soon in the questioning we need to adjust course (or not) and keep on steering the ship. Instead, in that moment, I told myself I'd failed. I told myself I'd destroyed my son's life. He calls me dramatic and he's right! I mean, there's place for drama in the world--I'm an artist and writer, and I know that drama is often the key to reaching people. But when the people is your kid, and the reaching needs to be done with a supportive and steady hand on the wheel of his life, drama is not the way to go. Yeah. I bombed that. I basically let go of the ship's wheel and hid in a corner for a few weeks. 

Unschooling being what it is, he already had the freedom to steer his own ship, and he really did quite well, getting into a groove that worked well for him, and forgetting all about that day he had blamed unschooling for whatever the frustration was, at the time (we have both forgotten, by now). But unschooling is really largely about leading by example, and in that time I unfortunately set an example of succumbing to self-doubt--something that my son already struggles with, and which I desperately wish I hadn't modeled so well.

Another way that we often succumb to self-doubt is defensiveness. Other parents or family members question our unschooling choices (or lack thereof) and out of fear, self-doubt, or frustration, we get defensive. A little explanation can go a long way in educating others, and that's definitely a good thing, especially when making social precedent for others to join our journey. But when we get wrapped up in trying to defend the place we are in the journey, it's hard to keep moving--to carry on the actual journey. We can get stuck in that defensive place, and that's not the great big adventure unschooling was supposed to be!

Live and Learn, as they say. The learning is easy, because, as unschoolers know (or are trying to remind ourselves, constantly), learning just happens. It's the living--or sailing, to return to my previous analogy--through all the rough seas and mistakes and course-adjustments that happen along the way that can be challenging. But we're up for a challenge, right?

Mistake #2: Protecting our Kids from Challenges

It seems obvious, when you look at a title like that. We know our kids need to face and overcome challenges in order to learn and gain confidence. But watching them trip and fall and not rushing to catch them before they hit the ground is another matter. Or not clearing their pathway right from the start to avoid them even tripping in the first place. I've done that. OK, I still do it!

I'm so guilty of this that after all nineteen years I still catch myself doing it almost every day. I'm OK with the big things: hearing my kid's plan to attend a school program that I don't really like, and buckling in for the ride, for example. But in the moment, I have very little control over my own mouth, and find myself constantly forecasting problems that I think my kids should avoid, or advising them on ways to keep safe, or be successful in their endeavour, etc. My son made himself a great keyboard tray this morning, and was struggling to fit it into his desk. I just had to advise him on what I felt was a "better" way to design it. Gak. What does this constant advice do to my kids' confidence?! I know very well what it does. It kills it. I walked into the problem he was well on his way to solving himself, and reminded him that somebody else knows better. What the hell?! I only know better because his father and I made a keyboard tray for that same desk, ourselves... and figured out the challenges, ourselves! And we did this at a time when we were gleefully living away from our parents, free to make our own mistakes, and learn from them.

Seriously. Like I mentioned before, living and learning sometimes seems to take a lifetime. I wish I had held my mouth shut this morning. He probably would have made a great keyboard tray that might have been very different from my design, and possibly even better suited to his needs.

Confidence-shattering is not the only harm caused by protecting our kids from challenges. Having a life devoid of struggle, strife, and challenge, or--alternatively--a life in which somebody else was always ready to solve their challenges, leaves kids unprepared to meet the challenges they will inevitably face, in life. It leaves them looking for solutions from other people instead of exploring and trusting their own ingenuity. It leaves them less resilient.

Now, as an unschooling parent, I've been told many times that my kids need to face the bullying and hardship of school so they can "toughen up", but that's not what I'm talking about. Toughening up isn't becoming resilient; it's building a hard shell, and that doesn't seem very healthy to me! I know. I've had a hard shell all my life. I don't want that for my kids. I want them to feel so confident, so resilient; so intrinsically strong and ingenious, that they can be vulnerable and live their lives without fear. That is resilience. 

Although I'm still struggling to allow my kids to fall, I'm all good on being there to commiserate or snuggle them when they're picking themselves back up again. Unschooling gives us the chance to really live with our kids, and if we can master allowing them to meet their own challenges, we're in the wonderful position of being their support team.

Mistake #3: Comparing

The whole school system works on comparison. No matter how hard our amazing teachers try to nurture the unique skills and needs of every child, they work in a system that requires them to evaluate our kids. This kind of evaluation requires some kind of a measuring stick, and by nature that means comparison. The root of our whole school system is therefore competitive, and that's exactly why many of us chose to unschool. But then we got our kids at home and panicked that they weren't "keeping up", or that they'd struggle should they ever need to join the system. 

Remember, most of us were raised in the system. We're terrified of failing, of allowing our kids to fail. Those fears are deeply ingrained and didn't just get left behind when we stuck the word "unschooling" on ourselves. They are firmly rooted in our every word and action. In fact, some people even choose to unschool because of the reported competitive advantages it gives kids in adulthood. But then we forgot that the competition was so dangerous.

To me, the biggest benefit of unschooling is the fact that we can separate ourselves from that kind of competition and live by our own intrinsic values. It gives us the opportunity to make our choices based on our own moral and intellectual standards--and by "us" I mean parents and kids separately. Unschooling means that kids are defining their own goal-posts, their own compasses; their own personal evaluation criteria. Every time we judge them, or even worse, compare their achievements to others or to some kind of outside expectation, we take back that power from them, along with their impetus to lead themselves. 

Sometimes we're comparing our kids, even without words. I can't tell you how many kids I've taught art to who walked into my program with the idea that they couldn't draw, or that they only knew how to draw one specific thing (usually a cartoon character). You know how they became that way? From guided art projects, where either the book they learned from or the adult they were with set up an expectation for them to follow. Maybe they succeeded and their work was comparable, but more likely, since the book or example-drawing was made by an adult with much more experience, they saw all the dissimilarities between their own work and the example, and they felt defeated. Luckily, teaching art was something I did for a long time before I had kids, so I managed to stop myself from creating situations where my kids would compare their art to mine, and the results were amazing. My son used to draw the sounds that the instruments made! "Tell me about your drawing," I would ask him, and he would say, "It's a drum!" This drawing he proudly held out consisted of many many repeated lines. He was drawing the sound of the drum. If I had shown him how to draw a drum, he would have copied me, but the genius--the uniqueness of his own experience of learning to draw--would have been lost. He grew up and did teach himself to draw visual representations of what he saw, but he did so without self-criticism, fear, or road-blocks, because in that one respect I was able to give him room to be himself, uncompared, un-assessed, and unhindered by my expectations.

Partly, for parents, this issue comes back to self-doubt, and defensiveness, again, because when we're already struggling with our own fears, we're more likely to turn tail and run, or to dig down into some kind of defense. Getting stuck in a competitive mindset leads to fears of failure, self-doubt, and possibly over-protection. All these things are intertwined, of course, and it's hard to move on from one without tackling the others.

Mistake #4: Not Enough Time with the Same Group of Kids

This, unfortunately, is a challenge that most unschoolers face, and many--including us--fail to overcome. The nature of unschooling is to be following the needs of each individual kid, taking them out of situations that aren't suitable, and experimenting frequently with new activities and interest groups. Obviously, this sets kids up for an ever-changing array of relationships, rarely having time to settle into long-lasting relationships, to tackle and overcome the challenges of long-standing relationships, and to make all the personal growth that these experiences would have afforded. It takes many years of shared experiences for kids to build deep connections, and kids without a consistent cohort miss that. It is even more challenging for families who live in rural areas than it is for urban families, who likely have more access to regular programming and a larger unschooling community. 

Our family lives on a small island just outside of a big city, so while we did develop bonds in a community of homeschoolers when the kids were young, it wasn't long before most kids in our group either went to school or became busy with an assortment of other activities. Both of my kids were very lonely, and due to our unschooling convictions we were reluctant to put them in school. We did try out a couple of different alternative programs over a two-year period, but in the end both kids pulled out for a variety of reasons. My kids did end up attending a democratic school on the mainland for a few years, and really found their people, there, but by then there was so little time left of school that deeper connections were very few. Consequently, my two never spent more than about three years with the same group of kids and, while they've made a few very treasured friends, they really missed out on the experience of growing up in community. Of all the mistakes I've made, this one was possibly the most harmful. 

I still don't know how to reconcile in my mind the choices we regret with our educational philosophy. The only options that would have given my kids a consistent cohort of friends over many years would have been to ignore our educational values and send our kids to mainstream school, or to move or commute to the mainland for a significant portion of their lives, thus losing connection with our island home and their extended family, who also live here. Would those options have been equally damaging? I can't know. This is a horrible dilemma that I know many unschoolers face, and I think the truth is we just can't ever know how things will work out. On the whole, I think my kids are OK, and we controlled the damage as best we could over the years, but it's still a deep regret.

Mistake #5: Vilifying the School System

In the middle of writing this article, I had a beautiful long talk with my brother, who is a teacher of grades six to nine in our community. We talked a lot about politics and education, his work, and the struggles of teachers and parents in the increasingly divided, challenged world. And goats and chickens, but that's another story. I have a deep, deep respect for teachers. All three of my mothers were teachers in some capacity (preschool teacher, elementary art teacher, and high school educational assistant). I have taught art and wilderness exploration in a number of different schools, sometimes working with teachers to integrate with their activities or the curriculum. If I criticize the school system, I do not do so lightly. I am extremely critical of the system as a whole, and the speed at which it is changing, given that for my whole life I've been witnessing good teachers trying to make changes that still only scratch the surface of the problems. I'm very serious about my criticisms. They're a big part of the reason we unschool. But I sometimes veered into vilification when my kids were younger, and I regret that, now.

There were a number of incidents with schools that made me angry, over the years. I sought to link programs I was running with public schools, or to integrate schools with homelearners, or to ask whether my kids could join for certain programs but not the whole school experience, and was frequently shut down. I think feeling rejected often makes people reactive, and it did me. But even worse, I felt I could offer something to the whole community by making these connections, and when my ideas were shut down I felt the system was arrogant, ignorant, and harmful. That made me really angry, and I often told my kids about it. Now my daughter tells me that at a certain point in her childhood she was worried about going to pick up her friends from their school because I'd told her so many negative things about it that she felt unsafe. 

I'm sorry. I unequivocally apologize. That was a terrible mistake, and I truly plan never to repeat it. That school I vilified to my daughter was my school. Sure, they rejected my unschooling family, and still ignore my emails offering programs or volunteering, but damnit, we're a small community and that was the school I attended, myself. It's our school. People I love teach at that school, and we share many philosophical ideals. Countless children I adore attend that school, and my careless words during a couple years of my children's lives left them with many more years of distrust in one of the most important institutions of our community. More than that, my words made unschooling appear adverse to mainstream schooling, and actually I fervently believe that unschooling is a stepping stone in the betterment of mainstream schooling. As an explorative learning consultant, some of the people I work with are teachers in mainstream schools. Many of the readers of my articles are mainstream school teachers and administrators. My apology is deeply felt because, as so many of us in the education world know, we're not at opposite ends of a scale; we're all in one big soup together, and we need to be working together, not against each other. 

~ ~ ~

I considered calling this article "Unschooling Regrets" but here's the thing: We all make mistakes, and if we learn and grow from them, perhaps we can avoid regretting them. It may have taken me a long while to see the benefits my family gained from these mistakes, but in the end I'm glad we had the opportunities to grow. Because that's unschooling: the whole family, the whole community, the schools and the teachers and the self-doubting, arrogant unschoolers just running and tripping and getting up and learning, together: All the hands on the wheel, all determining our course. All the things we do matter, and we're always learning, together.

Still thinking about all the ways we can fail as parents? In this 2021 article I discuss some of the biggest concerns of unschooling parents: Unschooling: Am I Failing My Kids?

Wild Salmon Rally

On October 25th, the day the Cohen Commission began proceedings in Vancouver, Alexandra Morton led a heartful delegation of wild salmon supporters into Vanier Park by canoe, ending their Fraser River journey from Hope to Vancouver. Then they and others walked up to the Vancouver Art Gallery, where we joined them to walk down Georgia to honour the Cohen Commission's work at its offices... then back to the Art Gallery for the many speeches and songs. It was a wonderful, spirited gathering, in the pouring rain, and wonderful to know there is so much support for wild salmon.

A couple of other homeschool families from Bowen were there, too, as well as a bunch of other Bowen people! How nice for us to feel so in community!

The Raging Grannies were there, too!

The snippets in the following video are just a very little bit of what went on; unfortunately we were inside the Art Gallery for a kids' hand-warming and toilet break when Alexandra Morton actually spoke, so I didn't get any footage. Also terrible quality is the footage I did get... but that's testament to the great crowd that was there. :--)

New Decade: How Connection Will Save Us

As we round the corner on a new decade, I find myself contemplative about the evolution of our species. What have we changed? Where are we going? What changes are to come? And, as so many ask these days, how can we save ourselves? How can we "be the change"?

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” – Mahatma Gandhi

This morning I read that two firefighters have died fighting Australia's massive bush fires. That's 10 people so far this year in a fire season that's only half over, according to Victoria emergency services minister Lisa Neville. Over 1000 homes have burned so far, but it's not a shock, anymore. It's the news we're accustomed to hearing. I was, however, surprised to read that the prime minister apologized for having been on vacation at the time. His compassion is news; in our current human state of trauma and overwhelming feelings of helplessness, many of us have become dispirited, numbed by the constant reports of tragedy. We are accustomed to looking away. My children know that in every season people around the world die of heat, floods, storms, wildfires and other climate-related disasters. Sometimes we watch the smoke on the news; sometimes we're battling to keep it out of our own lungs. It's the end of the decade, the end of my children's childhood, and the beginning of a new epoch for humanity. And what can we do to save ourselves?

In her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about her university students' inability to imagine a healthy relationship between humans and nature:

"As the land becomes impoverished, so too does the scope of their vision. I realized that they could not even imagine what beneficial relations between their species and others might look like. How can we begin to move toward ecological and cultural sustainability if we cannot even imagine what the path feels like? If we can't imagine the generosity of geese? These students were not raised on the story of Skywoman."

I would like to suggest that connection is how we will save ourselves.

The other day I drove my kids past the recreation centre in Burnaby where I first kindled my desire to connect children with nature. Around two decades ago, before I had children of my own, I took my eight-to-ten-year-old art group out to the small planting of conifers and rhododendrons beside the parking lot at that rec centre. It was the only forest-like area between the mall, the skytrain and the office buildings. Beside the smooth concrete pathway, I and this group of kids dug our fingers into the grass and needles and found worms coming skyward after recent rainfall. We saved one from a puddle. We gathered cones and twigs, and the children discovered that cones actually contain seeds of the trees they fell from. Although I tried valiantly to connect our indoor art adventures to this one outing, it was plainly evident to me that the greatest learning we'd had by far was the short fifteen minutes we spent out poking fingers into the earth. This was the moment of connection - of discovering a sense of home and belonging in nature. I have spent the last two decades bringing people into the wilderness, welcoming them to these spaces where nature still displays its fabulous and curious habits, and beckoning them to feel at home. Because this is our home.

In the last decade forest schools have become increasingly popular; as have explorative and self-directed learning. These things, I think, are beacons of hope for our civilization. As we reintegrate with nature in a curious and explorative way, we become, as a species, attuned to our own existence, and better able to understand our own nature. As we discover the amazing interactions between other species in the wild, we discover our own interactions with them, as well. We discover our mutual needs and gifts. We discover our sameness.

But how will this help us survive the climate emergency? In very practical terms, explorative wilderness play helps people of all ages become more resilient and resourceful; both qualities needed to survive any time, but especially in the unpredictable time we're entering now. A few years ago, during the worst smoke-season we've had yet on Canada's west coast, I bought an air purifier that barely managed to keep the smoke out of one room of my home. But I took my Wild Art groups into the forest nearby, to discover the clear green-filtered air and relatively smoke-free play areas. During the hot smoky season we found respite under the shelter of cedars and hemlocks, leaning our bodies against the cool logs and reaching fingers into the mud that remained from the previous winter's flood. The children learned resourcefulness as they wrote, developed and performed a play about consumerism (their own idea, but not surprising given the climate of fear in the forest fire season). They connected with our local recycling centre and second-hand store for props, and created other props and a set from objects found in the forest.

In addition to resilience and resourcefulness, the deeply-felt connection that nature exploration develops between humans, and between humans and other species, helps us to see the bigger picture. We discover the trees' need for moss, holding water like a sponge, as we discover our own need for the damp cool that that moss provides, and the shelter of the trees' leaves. Symbiotic relationships are everywhere, and the more of them we discover, the greater our perception grows; the bigger our picture becomes. Climate change is a very big picture. If we want to solve it, we need to understand the interconnectedness of all things. We need to know that we matter.

And mostly, in this world where happiness is sold on in-game-advertising and the price-tags on our brand-name merchandise, we can discover happiness in nature. The pursuit of happiness continues to be a ubiquitous aim of the human spirit, and we're not going to save our home and future by denying ourselves joy. Our salvation will not come from starvation and asceticism. It will come from abundance. We just need to start seeing abundance - happiness - in the things we need to save, and then we'll find ourselves ever more willing to save them. Saving the trees is much easier when the trees are our children's playthings; when we know their scent and the feeling of their cool skin on ours in the summer; when we have experienced their canopy protecting us from the heat and the smoke. Saving frogs and beetles and worms and slugs is much more delightful when we're not envisioning some far-away ecosystem we've never walked in, but noticing the appearance of worms after rain in our own neighbourhood puddles.

Wilderness isn't far away. Wilderness is happening in the city puddle under our feet, or, as we once discovered with the help of our trusty microscope, in the surface of an old moldy piece of cat food! Wilderness is, yes, in the Australian bush, burning up with its koalas heading ever closer to extinction. And it is also in the weeds along the edge of a forgotten urban alley. It is in the heart of the little girl playing there, digging her fingers in past plastic wrappers and grasshoppers to find the treasure she buried there last winter: A fir cone full of now-sprouting seeds, which she carefully pulls out, and plants again.

In the last decade we have become, as a species, accustomed to watching our home burn from the other side of the street, then turning our back on it and looking towards our cell phones for a quick emotional fix. We've become accustomed to blinding ourselves to our own feelings of despair and helplessness; using capitalist promises and lies to soothe our broken hearts. Now it's time to get back over there and put out the flames. I think about Robin Wall Kimmerer's despair at her students' lack of connection with wilderness and I think to myself that if we allow our children to find joy in the discovery of small things, the next generation will be the first to return to nature. When they reach university, the scope of their vision will be greater, because they have seen and known the wilderness beneath their feet. They will integrate the great technological systems of their day with the great system of the wilderness and those of us who follow them will, finally, be the change we already know ourselves to be.

Happy new decade. May we connect with each other and with our wilderness.

*image: copyright Emily van Lidth de Jeude

Adult Unschoolers: An update on our kids' lives! (And the Careers Situation)

 

This morning my daughter sent me a photo of her dog, Clara, sulking on the couch. She's not a morning-dog, apparently, and I guess sometimes she just doesn't feel like going for a walk, even if it is to review a new dog park for Rhiannon's work. Whatever "work" is. Clara gets treats no matter what, so should it matter whether she's helping with a reel, going on a doggy field trip with her hiking buddies, or just sitting at home waiting for Rhiannon while she's at her other work? Clara has adapted well to city-living, since leaving her island home with my two unschooled kids, just over a year ago. I'm told she likes to walk up to automatic doors to make them open, and she knows where her favourite treat-dispensing doggy store is, and will pull Annie towards it from many blocks away. Thankfully, my kids have adapted to city-living, too.

About eighteen months ago, my 17 and 20 year-old children started planning to move out, as soon as they could get jobs and a place to rent on the mainland. I encouraged them but carried on as if nothing was happening, because I wasn't prepared to live without my kids. At all. They, however, were absolutely prepared to live without their parents, quickly arranged jobs and a rental for themselves, and moved out on January 2, 2023. 

In the month between them finding a rental and actually moving into it, my heart was crushed. I was terrified for their safety in the city (they'd spent most of their childhood on a small rural island), but mostly I was just bereft. What does a mother do when the greatest joys of her life just up and go elsewhere? Well she uses a phone, that's what. And it turns out I'm OK after all. In large part because the bond that began with pregnancy and was nurtured through attachment parenting and unschooling is secure, so no matter where my children are, we know our hearts are connected, and by whatever means necessary, we're there for each other. Whether that means sending photos of their sulking dog, phoning for advice on banking or tenancy rights, or gleefully texting us photos of the steam clock at midnight on New Year's Eve. It's been an amazing year of growth and discovery for each and all of us, and my heart is just fine!

So last year I wrote something about unschoolers building careers, and people have asked for an update! Here it is. ☺ I won't pretend it's been completely smooth for them, but I do feel that both kids' struggles have been needed challenges that led them to important personal discovery.

“Photo of Rhiannon and Taliesin (not photoshopped)”
... I asked the kids for a photo of them and the dog
for the article and this is what I got. I love that our relationship is silly.

Rhiannon

At the outset, Rhiannon's plan seemed to be the most sound: Following her passions for childcare and dog training, she had arranged a 4-day/week nanny-share job that would cover her cost of living for the first year, while she planned to attain her dog-trainer certificate, work evenings and weekends as a trainer, and build a base of private training clients that would enable her, eventually, to only nanny sometimes. She still held some interest in pursuing her Early Childhood Education certificate, but maybe later. She's a remarkable organizer, and things went pretty close to her plan.

Rhiannon (or Rhi, as she is known) at Raintown Dog Training

Rhiannon lucked out massively (or perhaps she's just very socially astute) with her employers. The owner and staff of Raintown Dog Training not only took her under their wings as a very young new trainer, but continue to treat her as an equal, respect her decisions and values, help her to advance her skills, and to employ her as much as possible, even in slower seasons. Her nanny-share families paid her as promised, including sick-days and paid vacation, provided whatever was necessary for her to care for their children, and shared her values of inclusiveness and diversity exposure for their children. It was, in fact, important to them that she uphold these values, which made her feel she really had something to give. 

What I think she didn't expect was how physically and mentally draining and isolating it is to care for other people's children every day, and the barrage of viruses she'd fall victim to. When we raise our own children we make choices that suit our needs, our routines, and the simple practicality of living. But when we hand our children over to a caregiver, those same choices may not be as convenient, and when that caregiver has two children from different families with different choices, things can get a bit complicated. Rhiannon took this all in stride, and never complained, but quite frequently she and the children were sick, and in those (many) weeks, the complexity became exhausting. Then throughout the autumn, as she transitioned to working full-time as a dog trainer, she was frequently working six or seven days a week--common for young adults now--and she was absolutely drained. 

I think by the end of the year she was grateful to be moving on to a career that would involve more engagement with the public, and really just looking forward to a little free time. She now has a deeper appreciation for the physical challenges faced by early childhood educators, and no longer wants to work in that field. That's not to say she's lost interest in working with children! She's still taking on a few shifts with the kids she's cared for in the past, and is glad to be able to maintain those connections.

Because my Annie seems intent on filling every spare second of her time, she also now volunteers at the SPCA. I get the best deal, here, as she sends me photos and updates of all the adorable dogs she works with, how they're recovering from their various issues, and the great news when one of them finds a home. I'm amazed she finds the energy for this, and am also extremely proud. Not just because she's such a values-driven, generous person, but because she is somehow managing to continue seeing the positives, even when working in a place that often sees so much tragedy. That is a gift I'm constantly impressed by.

And then there are the books... BOOKS!!! If you've followed my kids' story for some time, you will know how important books are to Rhiannon. Maybe you already follow Rhiannon's Reading Corner, where she reviews books with an eye for authenticity, inclusiveness and diversity. So this year, finding herself in the glorious land of thrift stores (the city), she began thrifting children's books, and putting them into the hands of grateful young readers through her Loved Books program. She is intensely morally-guided, so when she feels that she won't have a use for the books she's thrifted, she donates them to free libraries around the city. Financially, this program is still costing her money, but she feels great about it, and that's the important part. She has also recently arranged to read to children at a local kids' and parents' café. You can take the ECE career out of the mind, but you can't take the mind out of ECE...

Taliesin

OK, Let's talk about Taliesin. He saved up quite a bit of money while working from home on various contracts as a digital artist, so when he moved out the plan was to fund the first few weeks out of his savings, until he could find a 9-5 job at a Vancouver office. Well... that didn't go exactly as planned!

Tali wanted to work in games or film, so continued developing his modelling and art skills from home, while diligently applying to every company he could find. As the weeks became months, and a few people told him that nobody in the industry was hiring, he began applying to remote jobs, even as the situation of building his portfolio at home, alone while his sister was out working, became more and more isolating. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck behind his computer, working from home. But he persisted. As the months dragged on, despite fears of his savings running out (and the worst-case-scenario of having to return home loomed) he kept himself sane by going out daily for walks and photography inspiration. He got to know his city, and began experimenting with all the great food and entertainment options he now has around him. If I caught him at home while applying for jobs, he sounded unhappy, but if I happened to call while he was out jaunting around his city, he sounded the happiest I've heard him in years. He sent us photos of sunsets from the bridges, and kilometer-counts from his increasingly frequent runs. He bought himself a new tripod and proper running shoes. He made new friends and in a very non-career way, I think he found a piece of himself that had been missing during his recent isolated years at home on the island.

And then he got a writing job. Yes, this once-upon-a-time kid who used to abhor writing assignments (but who has a wonderful grasp of communication and language), got a job writing Blender tutorials! I think he was more surprised than we were, but there he was, financially limping along through last summer, employed as a writer! It didn't surprise me at all that this was so easy for him, but it was completely delightful to watch him gain confidence in an activity that I had, unfortunately, accidentally turned into a childhood misery for him with the likes of the "Painless Junior: Writing" workbook (yeah... that was never going to go over well with my wildly creative son, despite and because of the book's front cover declaring "Don't be a chicken, it's fun to learn!" 🙄) Well, he overcame that particular learning-injury, and became a paid writer! ROCK ON, Taliesin!!

But writing is what he uses to communicate, and his heart is in science and art. So all this time he continued applying for modelling and other digital art jobs, exploring his city with a camera, and making unabashedly science-related art for his portfolio. 

And then... He got my dream job!!! You know how sometimes you look at a kid and you think: "Wow--I can see his career written all over him!!" And for my son the career I saw was science educator... but then that little person grew up and did other things, and lost his passion for science, and I thought... wait... what? Where did that little boy go who I was convinced would be an interpreter at the planetarium?! I thought he would become one of those tall gawky long-haired science geeks doing explosion shows!!

And then last fall my son video-called me to practice his interview performance for the Space Centre, where he demonstrated Newton's laws and how they apply to space travel, using a little flashlight with some "fire" taped onto the end... And my heart exploded because that kernel of inspired joy that I remembered so well was growing right out of my son into the world around him!!

Tali's first-day selfie at the Space Centre.

Of COURSE he got the job, even though his confidence has taken a big hit through his teen years, and last December I found myself sitting in the audience watching him demonstrate explosions and rocket propulsion on the stage at the planetarium, and tears were running down my cheeks. I watched my son up on that stage and I saw that he shares the gift of every gawky science geek I looked up to as a kid. He has the spark of childish excitement of my first science teacher, Mr. McAllister. He has the gentleness of his beautifully geeky father in the way he acknowledges and responds to kids in the audience. And he has back his own confidence in the astounding base of knowledge he holds about physics. It was a joy to watch him.

So, what many of us don't realize (I certainly didn't) is that our non-profit agencies are always in financial crisis. Those inspired science interpreters can't earn enough to live on, and despite their vast knowledge and serious dedication to educating our children, they can't afford to do their jobs. After my son leaves a day of running physics and astronomy workshops for school-groups, shows in the Star Theatre or Ground-Station, telescope nights, or long sleepless overnights with a hundred Girl Guides, he comes home and has to make money. So, like most of the interpreters, Taliesin will shortly only be able to work one day a week at the Space Centre, as he's finally landed a full-time job as a digital artist. He's creating car accessory advertising for a company called Protex. It's maybe not the most inspiring job, but it allows him to use his art skills, and he'll finally stop using up the dregs of his savings! What a relief!

How did unschooling play into all this?
I asked Tali and Annie about this. 

Taliesin says, "[I have] a wide variety of interests that keeps me learning things even if I’m not in university or at work, and I’m used to having to figure things out myself so I’m able to adapt to new situations." He also credits unschooling with enabling him to maintain a "great relationship" with his sister, but feels that it also made it very challenging for him to find friends.

Annie says, "I like what I’m doing right now and what ended up happening in my life, so if I had the chance to go back and change stuff, I wouldn’t. But I don’t know what specifically causes the things I’m doing right now to happen; it could have been benefited by unschooling or not... I don’t know. I feel like sometimes it’s harder for me to relate to other people, or to feel like I know what to do in different situations because I just haven’t been in them before, but I wouldn’t want to change anything, because I like my life right now!"

I think it's totally fair to say that unschooling as we did in a small community without other unschoolers set my kids up for some social hurdles. In their teen years they missed out on a lot of social events and rites-of-passage that their peers enjoyed, from school to birthday parties, to sharing the drudgery with a cohort of same-aged kids. We tell ourselves they also missed out on all the things we don't like about school (bullying, competitive education, coerced learning, lack of time to follow passions, etc.) and we don't regret our choice to unschool them at all. In fact, I believe their success in living independently at 18 and 20 is largely due to the lifelong-learning, agile thinking, and self-motivation that unschooling instilled in them. But the fact remains that they're quite unique in this. Most of their peers are off at universities now, or still living with their parents. It can be hard to relate, and my kids are among the youngest of the young professionals, so they don't easily fit into any of the major groups in our society. Still, unschooling also provided them resilience, and they are finding their way: managing not only to make new friends, but also to continue developing their very solid sibling relationship, now living as room-mates. They're finding themselves in the city and within the context of their society, and they meet challenges with courage and a solution-seeking mindset. I can't hope for anything more.

I always said that the only important thing I wished for my children was that they would be happy. I now know that happiness is not a goal but a mindset. My kids are learning to find satisfaction in the diverse activities they've occupied themselves with while simultaneously holding multiple jobs to afford Vancouver's increasingly unaffordable rent. They're unschooling adulthood. They're becoming emotionally and financially resilient, and when things are just too hard, they have each other, their parents on the phone, and a big fluffy dog who will snuggle the love back into them. Even when she's lazy in the morning.

Clara hogging the blankets.

Why We're Not Saving for Our Children's Education

I always say that, as our children are unschooled, they make their own educational choices, and may choose at any time to go to school. They may very well decide to go to University, as most of their family has, for generations. But we're not outrightly encouraging it. That will be their own choice, and we'll support them in however they make it.

Taliesin exploring Fort Worden, in Port Townsend, May 2011

RESP's: The Value of Learning Then or Now
The Government of Canada (or is that the Harper Government?) will match a certain amount of any money which we put into RESP's for our children. BUT, should our children decide not to attend one of the specifically accepted institutes for higher education, they will be required to return that money to the government. So, yes, we could take a gamble that indeed has very little risk, for the potential benefit of having many thousands of dollars returned for our children's university education, should they decide to go that route.

But what is the cost of that gamble? The cost is that we must sacrifice the opportunities that the money we might invest could otherwise provide for their education NOW. We have very little to invest, to begin with. And we feel that it is of greater value to their lives to save that money and spend it on a family trip that will allow them to get to know their family in Europe, as well as to spend time there, broadening their understanding of different languages, cultures, and technologies. The month-long road-trip that we made this past June was probably the greatest educational experience we've ever provided for our children. In addition to the expected learning that we gained from visiting different communities, cultures, museums, etc. we also gained an intrinsic basic understanding of the geology, humanity, and ecology of the US West Coast. We gained an intrinsic understanding of the meaning (and non-meaning) of borders, of politics and pop-culture, of distance and quantity of space, time, and resources, that we never could have achieved by studying in a classroom. The month-long trip cost us about $3000.00, and we'll be paying it off for at least a year to come. But was it worth it? Absolutely!

Mama has a University Degree
My own parents spent about $25,000.00 -- a great deal of their own investments -- putting me through two years of art school, in the Netherlands. I learned very little at that school, and ended up leaving with an Incomplete. But I don't think my parents really understand the return I got on their investment. What I learned from living in the Netherlands on my own, from getting to know my family, there, from speaking another language, and from having to make ends meet (I created jobs for myself to supplement the money they gave me) was probably the second greatest single learning experience of my life. I came home to Canada, but that experience, and my knowledge and understanding of that other part of the world informs every day of my life here, and expands the value of the experiences I have, here. My parents' investment in my education really was of enormous benefit to my life, but not in the way I expected, when I first registered for the school.

I did return to college in Canada to study biology and English, and then to University to attain my degree. And luckily, because I worked during that time, and was also supported by my husband, do not have any student loans. But that degree has done nothing for my career. I chose to have children, and that, after all, has been the single greatest learning experience of my life. Now all my work (artistic, community, etc.) is about mothering. My mother, my children, and my community have been my teachers, as well as the many authors and speakers I've chosen to inform myself with, over the internet and through books. And finally, I feel as though I have value. I am aware that my art finally has value, too, since it's about mothering, and therefore I'm finally creating from a place of deep understanding. And I can absolutely say that I learned none of this in school, but that the money my parents put into my education -- living overseas -- made a great difference, indeed.

Global Depression and the Future of Education -- A Film Review
I just watched a video (unfortunately named College Conspiracy - watch it here), put out by the (US) National Investment Association, which explains some of the (global economic) reasons we've decided not to keep RESP's for our children. Generally, the current system of high tuition, crippling student loans, and standardized learning (as opposed to individualized community-based learning, where students learn within the community they wish to serve) is unsustainable. In addition to this, I believe that the predictions of a coming global depression are well-founded, and that such a depression would not only radically change the structure of higher education, but that anything we may save, or the value of that money in general, is at extreme risk, if stored as RESP's. In fact, even if there is no depression, I would like to see radical change in our education systems, and that kind of change does not happen by first fitting into the existing system. That kind of change is happening already, as so many of us are rising up with new movements such as unschooling, and creating the world we want to live in.

So the College Conspiracy film is interesting, and worth watching despite a few sweeping generalizations, but I want to point out some specific ideas I really disagree with:

1. That we should invest in physical gold and silver because it will be the only thing of value in the coming depression. 
Well, since when are gold and silver valuable? Value is created by need and desire. I believe that there will be need and desire for food, shelter, and compassion. But better than investing dollars in agriculture, construction, and humanitarian services, we can give up entirely on the notion of financial investment (if there's a global depression, our money will be value-less, anyway), and invest in our own personal education. We can LEARN, and we can build community. After all, in the absence of money, knowledge and skills are the new currencies, and community is our school.

2. That online degrees are the answer to the inflationary college degree scenario.
In the film, Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute suggests that online education can and should take the place of classroom education, for its cost-saving benefits, and the ability to reach more people, more easily. I hate to say it but I think this is shallow. It assumes first of all that a degree will be useful, and secondly that mass, standardized education is valuable. Above I say that knowledge and skills are the new currencies, but if we all learn the same facts, while staring at our Skype interfaces, how are we adapting that knowledge to the specific applications where its needed in our communities? We have to get out there and apply it before it has any value. Sure, there's a certain amount of information that will be usefully learned, this way, but much more understanding will come from our interaction in community. And if we go out into our communities to learn, instead of sitting at home with our laptops, then I think we'll be learning much more of what is really important for us to know.

So the College Conspiracy film just doesn't go far enough for me. And then the whole thing disintegrates into an ad for the National Inflation Association. Or perhaps it was that all along... this is one hell of a long advertisement. NIA does claim that its goal "is to help as many Americans as possible become aware of the disaster we are rapidly approaching", and also that they "are not investment or financial advisors". And yet, they are giving plentiful investment advice.

Sadly, NIA falls short of its stated goal by failing to actually escape the money trap. Although they interview a farmer in this film, and he discusses the value of real employment, with an anecdote about his grandson chopping firewood, the film never really explores that aspect of the economy. Neither a cheap online college degree nor gold and silver investments will help a society that has lost touch with the provenance of the fundamentals of human life: food, shelter, and compassion.


This Is Why We Are Unschooling
The pillars of our children's education are their involvement in the world around them: they have a deep understanding of their natural surroundings, ecosystems, and the provenance and value of their food. They are involved in the maintenance of our home and community. They are involved in their community's politics, festivities and conversations. I believe that the education we're giving our children, which is rich in understanding the physical world they live in, how it works, and how they work within it, will be the cornerstone of their ability to lead a life of value. With that upbringing as their strength, we trust them to make their own decisions on how they will seek and learn the skills they desire to participate in their world. This may include University, trade-school, apprenticing, travel, or any number of other participatory activities from which they wish to learn.

How We Become

back cover illustration from "Emily and Arthur", 1975

This morning I got up as I have almost every May morning for as long as I can remember, and went barefoot out of the house to wash my face in the dew and pick flowers for my mother. I don't know why I do it, and I don't know that my mother even knows I get that dew all over my face and feel so at peace in the world this way. Something inside me just feels this is right, so I do. I used to take my own children out to do it when they were little, but I don't think the practice has stuck with them in adulthood. Why do I do this? What makes it so important to my identity?

I came back home after visiting my mother to find this old book on my table. Emily and Arthur, by Domitille de Préssensé. It was there because my daughter and I were recently going through the children's books, reminiscing, and I'd pulled out a few of my old favourites. 

In these old books from the 70's, I saw how I became me, and some of how my children became, as well. The girl in the image above is Emily. She's wearing red--always--and holding her beloved hedgehog Arthur among the flowers. She has interesting things in her house like a "long stocking" that I always thought must have been a wonderful thing to have. And because my name is Emily, I grew up thinking this little red-clothed Emily represented me. Is she the reason I love to wear red? Maybe! Red just feels like it belongs with me! I remember feeling a lot like the way this Emily looks, as a child. I remember the feeling I had one May morning when I went out to find my mother some flowers and got distracted looking at woodbugs on the log where I eventually broke off a beautiful Turkey Tail fungus to bring in for her. I remember when I handed her that beautiful Turkey Tail with a couple of flowers how it couldn't encapsulate all the beauty of the woodbugs on the log, or the special curve of the broken wood, or the smell of the bark or the happiness of my heart. But I hoped she knew it meant I loved her. I became that girl on the back of the book--the one who is delighted by small found things--and am now a mother and artist who is also just still Emily. Still wearing red and going into the flowers to be me. How many Emilys have been somehow defined by this book?

As a parent, and former educator, and as an artist I know how much our childhood experiences mean to our identities. I sat wondering this morning how the idea of washing my face in the dew came about. I feel like I've been doing it all my life, but I can't ever remember doing it with my mother. Then I saw another of the treasured childhood books, and I remembered: The fairies drink the dew! When I turned four, my father gave me a book called In Fairyland, Pictures from the Elf-World, by Richard Doyle. In this book the fairies dance and fly and race snails... and drink the dew! I remember trying to drink the dew off the plants as a child, imagining I was one of the fairies. I guess somehow this became part of my personal May Day celebration. This is how traditions are born, how they grow and change and define us. And... this is the power of art!

page 13 of Richard Doyle's "In Fairyland, Pictures from the Elf-World", 1870

I always knew these and other images were drawings made by artists. Even the text of Emily and Arthur is a hand-drawn piece of art. Now I can see its influence in my own birthday-card making, and I can see how Eric Carle's rainbow of fruits for the Hungry Caterpillar informed the way I set up any painting, now. Nothing is complete for me without a whole rainbow.

So what have I given my children through the books I chose for them? Some I'm not so proud of, I confess, and some I can see in their life-choices, now. Obviously they were also more drawn to the books that suited their personalities--this isn't a one-way system of influence. And I chose things that suited them. We know that every move we make as parents will have effects on our children's psyches, that every mistake we make will cost them in self-doubt and therapy dollars, one day, and we hope they'll carry our triumphs forward as courage and happiness into their adulthoods. Our children become themselves in the environment they're given. 

But our sphere of influence doesn't end with our children. It grows from each of us into the world around us, whether we're artists or teachers or foresters, diplomats or farmers. We're all creating and influencing each other every day. The choices we make in the language we use, in every bit of media we consume, and in the products we bring into our lives all influence everyone we come into contact with. And through our contact we become ourselves, in community. Living with this in mind is self-determination. This is how we become, as a species, or perhaps even as a planetary ecology. It's good to remember that in everything we do, we have a choice.

Wild Art Exploration: One Clear Day

Such a rich and wonderful day with two groups of Wild Art kids today, that I thought I'd share it as a photo montage.

The teen group went to check out the old dump site along the Dump Road, and we saw a shimmering orange puddle where rust and oil leaches out from the dump pile.

From there we headed up to Everhard Creek, where we used spoons to harvest some clay. That was about all we had time for today, but we've hatched a plan to return next week with a bucket, and try filtering the clay.

The younger group returned to the forest village they'd begun making the week before, and carried on creating things to sell at their shops and restaurants. One group led a tour to a beaver lodge, and later became petty criminals, robbing the shops and calling the 'police' on each other. We discovered some as-yet-unidentified little calciferous things (photo included), and returned very wet and muddy - the perfect ending to a great adventure!

That's the robber escaping on the left, and his 'boss' sitting carving a stick in the shop the two of them created.

These are the unidentified little calciferous semi-spheres we found on the forest floor.

A 'fire pit'.

An abandoned cedar crown.

Cedar crowns for sale at one of the shops.

Unidentified (maybe heron?) prints.

The beaver lodge! Entrances are barely visible on the left and centre-right, behind a few large sticks.