- Nov 26, 2018

Unschooling/Freeschoolin' A "Bad Day"

Last Wednesday we had a "bad day".

We had 2 car appointments, shopping to do, a snow storm to drive through BEFORE we even got to town, and the day even included a few panic attacks. (We're ok!) The energy of the day was even off! We were late for the first car place, but so were they by nearly an hour. It was clearly not cool with the shop management that we had to wait there with Hope. I became drained trying to make things pleasant. It ended worse, with us being humiliated just before they gave us our car back.

I was unable to react without stress on the way to our second appt and had already been upset about being late to our first. I was so triggered and felt like I had no way to shield myself. Thankfully, our home garage Craft Auto was our second appointment and put at ease all my worries from the first. (We highly recommend them if you're in the Barrie, Ontario area!) A thrift store, gas station and grocery store later, we had our car ready for winter and a lot of energy to clear. We were all spent and feeling the drain. What got us through the day was what brought us together at the end of it. The perspective of perpetual learning. Unschooling. Perpetual 1 : continuing forever or for a very long time without stopping 2 : happening all the time or very often

Our main coping skill for dealing with bad days is asking questions. A favorite is "What is this teaching us?". When we can focus on what we're learning in place of why is this happening to us, everything changes. Asking the question and shifting thought to what the lesson might be gives us the moment needed to interrupt old, destructive patterns and begin new ones that will serve us and our family. The day ended in hugs and tears of apologies and understanding. It's not avoiding conflict that makes life magical. It's seeing that life is learning and we all have to make mistakes to gain some of our lessons. And that we're all in this together. That is our magic.