EU420: A Field Guide: Accepting Our Nature

We’re back with the fifth episode in our series in which we’re working our way through Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. Today, we’re continuing our exploration of the deschooling phase of the journey with stage nine: Accepting Our Nature. This stage is all about the temptations from our old life that may lead us to abandon or stray from our unschooling quest. Our lives have likely changed quite a bit since we were living in our ordinary world, but, chances are, there are times when our new reality doesn’t match what we first envisioned our unschooling lives would look like. It is in those moments that we can give ourselves grace and accept ourselves exactly where and as we are. We hope you find this episode helpful on your unschooling journey! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE Learn more about Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide. We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT PAM: Hello, everyone. I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined today by my co-hosts, Anna Brown and Erika Ellis. Hi. ANNA/ERIKA: Hello! PAM: And we are back with another episode in our A Field Guide series. We are working our way through my book, The Unschooling Journey: A Field Guide, which is framed around the hero’s journey and is a weave of myths, contemporary stories and tales from my own journey. We are deep in the de-schooling phase. In the last episode of this series, episode 417, we dug into the idea of accepting the value of all experiences. As we continue our journey on the road of trials, in this episode, we are exploring the idea of accepting our nature. If you’re newer to unschooling, and this is your first time exploring these ideas, you’re likely dancing with them more intellectually to understand what they mean, and maybe even discover some of their further reaching implications. If you’ve been unschooling for a while and feel like you are already intellectually embracing these ideas, and have actually been bringing them into your family’s lives, now’s the time to maybe peel back some more layers to build more connections and context around them, strengthening your web of understanding with your own experiences. As we’re chatting, thinking about how this relates to things that you have had going on in your world, and building your own wisdom around it, as you move towards believing these in your bones as your own truth, a version that works for you. And all that’s to say, welcome to stage nine. This stage is all about the temptations from our old life that may lead us to abandon or stray from our unschooling quest. Our lives have likely changed quite a bit since