How does understanding yourself outside your homeschool identity affect your homeschool role?

What is your other identity other than homeschool mama?

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ~E.E. Cummings

Who are you? I'm guessing you're a homeschool mama.

  • How would you describe yourself?
  • How would your children describe you? Your friends? Your partner?
  • What are your strengths?
  • What are your aptitudes?
  • What are your passions?

Years of parenting and homeschooling responsibilities occupy our near-constant attention.

You are not just a homeschooling mama.

“You be You,” the cool folks say. But who be you?

  • Who were you before you were a mother?
  • What occupied your spare time before you had a family?
  • What activities did you love?

Just as important as acknowledging our interests is acknowledging our internal landscape.

This assumes you pay attention to your internal world, your feelings and thoughts, how you react, feel, or think in different scenarios.

What makes you feel...

  • angry
  • disappointed
  • cheerful
  • sad
  • delighted

Over time, when we have repeatedly listened to our internal world, we understand how we react, why we react, what we react to, and we learn to curb those emotional triggers.

  • We recognize that when more than one child talks, we feel overwhelmed.
  • We recognize that when more than three kids fight, we want to yell to get their attention.
  • We know that when we watch them sleep, they are the most perfect creatures ever made.
  • We know these things about ourselves and we accept ourselves.

Keep learning, keep paying attention, keep growing.

If the journey of becoming ourselves wasn’t encouraged in us from childhood, we need to nurture it for ourselves.

Who are you when you don’t care what other people think of you?

Instead of trying to be what we understand others expect of us, we need to let ourselves just be.

Trying to be what other’s need us to be isn’t authentic. We can be us without requiring other’s approval.

We don't need to push back when someone demands something from us. We need only to practice being comfortable just being us.

Not everyone is interested in us becoming our own selves.

Others might have a different prescription for us. If you become more you, and change from what they know you to be, you might not fill the same role in their world.

It's not your responsibility to be something that you're not.

If we are self-nurturing and self-affirming, we learn not to listen to other’s prescriptions for us.

We develop such a strong sense of self that we are able to listen to others’ perspectives with respect, we are more able to honour their feelings and their selves, and we are able to acknowledge their ways of doing things as simply different, and not wrong.

We become people that are comfortable being ourselves but also comfortable with others being themselves.

So, who are you outside of homeschool mama?

Because you are here to be you.

"Be vulnerable at being the authentic you." --Brene Brown

Who are you?

  • What did you like to do when you were 8 years old?
  • What did you do before you had a family?
  • Have you explored your personality profiles from Myers Briggs or Enneagram?
  • How do you feel when you wake in the morning?
  • What brings you satisfaction or contentment?
  • If you could make something, what would you make? What kind of creative are you?
  • What wakes you up in the middle of the night?
  • What was the first music you purchased? Do you have a song that describes you?
  • Who are the people you value and why?
  • What are the character traits that you choose in a friend?
  • Name your three greatest values.
  • Choose your daily words: three words to describe your intention in how you engage your work, your family, and yourself.
  • Meditate: just let yourself sit and listen to what's going on inside you.
  • What is your emotional landscape?
  • What wakes you up at night?

Who are you when you are alone?

You are separate from your children.

Your children will grow up and leave, then will you know who you are and what you are supposed to do?

Plan now to spend just fifteen minutes once this week to do something just for you!

“If you’re always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” --Maya Angelou

For your journal exploration this week, answer the following journal questions about YOU!

Steps to Becoming You.pdf
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