😃 Planning For The Best, Preparing For The Worst 😫
How We Find Peace Through The Panic
If you've been following our family this summer, you'll know that we are living through the biggest uncertain time of our family's lives. (Read More...)
Finding a way through the stress has been near to impossible but that has not stopped us from trying. We are a family healing from childhood trauma that resulted in major mental health issues. This last year and a half has been more of a challenge than we could have ever expected. But still, we will not succumb to the weight of it all.
WHAT WE DO
Joy
Even a really hard day has opportunity for joy. We seek out good moments, create them, bathe in them. We play every chance we get. We joke around. We do the things we love. Especially in difficult times. Our family grows and prepares delicious nutrition for our bodies to soak up. Every day joy is ours because we find it and make it happen. This keeps our spirits up no matter what is going on.
Slow Down To Speed Up
When life is chaotic and time short, it can feel like the best option is to speed up. But in my experience, I've never found success in that. When the mind is full of fear, it can be difficult to access our critical thinking skills vital for good decision making. Even simple tasks can become difficult with worry in our hearts. They say the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. I use this mantra for my life when things are going faster than the speed of light and my worry that we won't get things done skyrockets. If I slow down and take my time at the beginning of my tasks and projects, I am clear headed and actually work faster than I would otherwise.
Attitude Of Gratitude
Anytime I'm concerned with what we are missing, I reality check myself into what we have right now. The challenges our family has already triumphed over are so numerous, they are evidence of how much we have to appreciate. Gratitude helps us remember what our true goals are in life are so that we don't get side tracked.
Focus On The Solution, Not The Problem. It can be easy to be overcome with worry when there are many serious problems going on our lives. In order to minimize our energy input and maximize our energy output (min/max), it's important to keep the mind focused on solutions, rather than the problems. I shift my thoughts from concern over the issue to the possible solutions and mull them over instead. I put my hope into the best ideas and my acceptance over the worst case scenarios. I plan for the best and prepare for the worst so that no matter what happens, I know we will be ok and find a way to keep the joy in our family.
WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON WITH US
Our car has been vandalized twice and so we've been in close contact with our mechanic. We don't know who is doing it as we live on a dead end, rural road with 10 other families. One family DID just move in and we did ask them not to shoot off fireworks in the forested cul de sac (dead end) next to our farm where we have sensitive animals. They were not rude but there were some disappointed teens present... Our plan is to keep close watch and confront whomever is doing this should they attempt it a third time. So far only the air has been let out of our tires and 2 of our air caps stolen, but obviously we're concerned about it escalating. Hope went clothes shopping for the first time since March 2020 and boy did we have fun! She even bought some of her own clothes when what she wanted went past our budget. Hope has always had such a fun and unique sense of style. She does not want to wear a bra and we support her choice for her body. It's been hard to get to the beach between storms which make the water unsafe, but we have made it out to swim, even though it's been chilly this year. I find I can go longer when I call it "wild swimming". We all swam out far beyond our reach and Hope practiced her endurance and water safety. Now that she can swim, it's so important she understand the risks of the water should she not be within our reach. Most people who get into trouble in the water, good swimmers included, are dealing with exhaustion. As a former private life guard, I take water safety very seriously and want to instill in Hope not only a love for the water, but also a deep respect for it's power. At our beach there is a habitat preservation area, a haven for wildlife like the monarch caterpillar I spotted. A while back, Hope acquired this used lamb stuffy and had a vision to turn it into a character she designed. Well I finally had the time and all the materials necessary to do the transformation with Hope, and we think it turned out pretty good! Our spunky rooster Goldie passed on from an unknown illness that has not seemed to affect our last 2 hens. They are healthy and doing well. Goldie was a good protector and will be missed. Of the 3 chicks we were gifted in June we have 1 rooster, 1 hen and 1 unsure. (The grey one.) They will be joining into one flock soon and we're ready for that. House chickens are sweet but they are time consuming to clean up after. Though our trio is very good in the house compared to our last flock. Our garden is exploding with zucchini and zumpkini ( an accidental crossbreed ), so we are making all the things that have zucchini in them. It's so wonderful to not have to buy food at the grocery store. We saved the seeds to make this crop so it literally cost us nothing financially. It's like printing money!
VIDEO
Hope and Hay Hay
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To Do List
I illustrated a To Do List for myself and thought I'd share with you!
Visit our Contact Us/Free Resources page to print yours today and check out the other free resources available while you're there!
We are very close to finishing our 2nd Freeschoolin' children's book, which we hope will help in our goal, but until it is ready we are going to be asking anyone who can to spread the word of our currently available titles and our Freeschoolin' Clothing and More shop.
Our biggest following is on Facebook and they show maybe 500 people out of 11,000 what we post because we won't pay for ads. If we had the people's help in sharing about Freeschoolin' and what we offer I am sure we could get more of the support we need as a little family trying to make it in this crazy, big world. I do custom illustrations, logo packages and more, all of which you can contact me about.
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Much Love Always, Wendy BUY our BOOKS, CLOTHING & MORE
About the Author
Wendy Elizabeth Hart - Author, Illustrator, is a radical unschooling, homesteading Mom of 2 amazing kids and wife of more than 12 years to her bff, Jaze. Together with their daughter Hope, 11, they live a life of daily discovery in rural Ontario, Canada and share it with the world to connect with and support other families in the unschooling community.
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