Look at those beautiful, happy kiddos! I love those smiles SO MUCH!! I took this at the Unschoolers Winter Waterpark Gathering in Sandusky this past week, and this is the look that was on their faces the majority of the time we were there. We all enjoyed ourselves immensely, but it seems that I, in particular, was deeply moved by the experience.
What a mixture of emotions I'm feeling at the moment! I feel the need to talk about them and examine them to figure out what they mean, but I'm not even sure where to begin...with the feelings I associate with the UWWG seems most approprieat since it's fresh in my mind, although these feelings go back farther than that. Anyway...the UWWG...it was the first big unschoolers gathering that we've had the money to go to and I'll say right now that it was worth every penny! It's one thing to be on lists and forums with other unschoolers, but it's a totally different experience to be in a gathering of hundreds of them. TOTALLY different.
I have spent the last few years feeling very isolated much of the time, even with the awesome bunch of more traditional homeschoolers that surrounds me. My ideas about so many things, the way I try to respond to my children, the laid back lifestyle that we strive for...so much about us is just so foreign to most of the people I'm around most of the time. I feel like I'm speaking a different language more often than not and that I never REALLY get my point across. Words seem so inadequate most of the time. That separation between myself and the homeschoolers I've been around for years feels like it has just gotten bigger and bigger over the last few years. I think a lot of that has to do with the ages of our children and that the pendulum will swing back the other way to a certain extent as the kids get older, but for the last few years I've just felt so *separate*. I know a lot of that is my own perception however, and that there isn't really that big of a gap, I've just been *feeling* like there has been. I've also become very aware of the tension that develops within me when I'm around people who parent and/or homeschool more traditionally. It's almost unbearable at times and I have to physically separate myself from other people for a while to regain my balance. It's been difficult because I truly love these people and want them in my life, but I haven't been able to be around them *too much* for quite a while. I couldn't handle it. The tension would just overwhelm me and I would start to behave in ways that I didn't want to behave. Being an "empath" really sucks at times like that, when you're vulnerable and picking up on whatever stray energy happens to be floating by. Ick.
But at the Kalahari I didn't feel that way. The one night that we got to hang out in the lounge and just *BE* was perhaps my favorite time of the whole trip. While I obviously loved spending the time I did with my kids and husband in the waterpark and in our room, it was *THAT* time - the lounge time - that I will forever associate with this....awakening that I'm feeling. I keep trying to figure out what that awakening feeling is, exactly, and what it means, but I think that may take some time and lots of thought. The things that have been getting to me at other homeschool gatherings didn't get to me there, perhaps because I didn't see or hear go on there. That sense of tension, of people being at odds with one another, that is so prevalent in most places was almost totally absent there as well. I felt peaceful and at home in my own skin. It was sort of the same feeling that I've had at times in deep meditation, but my eyes were wide open. That feeling of being "at home" in my own skin seems to be at the heart of it all in some way.
But it goes much deeper than just the UWWG and being around other unschoolers. This feeling seems to be attached to our move into our house and to belly dancing and art and to the way I'm feeling about my body and the way I'm eating and to EVERYTHING. I honestly think I have hit some major turning point in my life - one of those ones that you don't see coming, it just sort of takes you by surprise. After spending so much of my life feeling at odds and out of synch in so many areas and feeling just plain STUCK, I suddenly find myself very much "in the flow" and "at home" in many of those same areas. For whatever reason, it all just seemed to come together while I was physically away from home in the middle of a bunch of strangers! I find that rather amusing! I feel at peace. I feel like I'm EXACTLY where I should be at EXACTLY the right time...a feeling I haven't felt this intensely in so many areas of my life in quite some time. As a matter of fact, I can't remember the last time I did feel this sense of "rightness" in so many areas at once. Maybe that's the word I'm looking for..."rightness". Yes...I think that's it. And "home". I feel at home, at peace...like everything is RIGHT, even with all of the "buts"...as in "but the house is a mess"...."but I don't have this or that or the other thing that I want". Even WITH all of that, everything feels RIGHT at this moment. All is right with my world.
