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Homeschool Is Not My Identity · Making Everyday Magic: The Podcast

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  I have homeschooled for ten years, and I recognize how easy it is
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  for something to become your identity when you have done it for so long.
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  And I think there are a lot of stereotypes that fall in with that.
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  Welcome back to Making Everyday Magic. My name is Shanna.
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  If you are new, here we are Huntsville, Alabama of four.
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  We are in our 10th year of homeschooling.
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  I have a ninth grader and a fifth grader, and today I want to talk about
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  how homeschool should not be
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  your entire identity.
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  Before we go any further, please scroll down,
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  hit the big red subscribe button, turn on that bell
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  for notifications and give this video a thumbs up.
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  As always, you can find me down in the comments
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  or over on Instagram at Making Everyday Magic.
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  I am someone who
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  comes to the internet and talks about secular homeschooling,
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  and I love it and it suits my family well and I'm very passionate about it.
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  It is something that my youngest has done since pre-K three,
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  and it is something that well, and that was, you know, when the big C happened.
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  So we didn't have a choice on that one.
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  And my oldest has homeschooled since a kinder.
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  Since kinder.
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  So the start of their formal education career, anything beyond
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  like a mother's Day Out program has been exclusively homeschool.
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  And because of that, it's been ten years, which is so wild to wrap my head around.
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  It has been so long.
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  So not only had I have schooled a very long time, I also have big kids.
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  They are 14 and ten so we have done this since my youngest.
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  We started homeschooling my oldest before my youngest was a year old,
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  so she does not remember a time when this was not our way of life.
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  She does not recognize a memory that wasn't gathered on the table
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  actively, and working on things together as a family.
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  And while all of that is true, I want you to know it is such a slippery slope
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  when you have done something that long, when you have done something that
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  is as consuming truly as
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  homeschool is, because it is, every room in my house has something in it.
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  Every,
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  you know, stress and thought and fear of parenting magnified times
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  ten because we decided to shoulder the burden of our children's education.
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  And on top of that, with homeschooling comes the pressure
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  of socialization and the pressure of making sure that you're doing enough.
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  And is it hard enough? And are we doing what we should?
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  And will they be able to transition later?
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  All of those scary, scary, noisy thoughts that happen inside your brain as a parent
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  or amplified times ten?
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  Because not only are
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  we worried about the parenting, we're worried about the schooling and
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  all of the latent effects they won't get because we don't shove them into a,
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  you know, a shoebox down the street.
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  So I get, okay, you do a lot of research.
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  You're very passionate about it. People want to talk to you about it.
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  People want to know what's going on.
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  It's so easy to let something like that slip into being your identity,
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  and it's so easy to let the pressures
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  of that slip you into being a stereotype.
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  So people who don't leave the house, people who don't socialize,
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  especially if you have a lot of stuff that you're trying to work through, it's
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  really hard to be like, you know what? Not today. We're going outside.
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  It is hard to make those decisions and easy
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  to slip into the stereotypes of those things
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  that, you know, those homeschoolers do that people assume homeschoolers are.
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  But I like to think if people stopped my kids on the street,
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  if people stop myself on the street, even though I do come here and share,
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  and even though I was willing
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  truly consumed over half of every single day of my life
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  and almost all of my my waking hours at night,
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  I like to think that if people stopped me
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  on the street, first and foremost, I'm a wife and a mother.
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  My name is Shawna.
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  I have done here for a very long time.
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  I can tell you I want to get into theatrical wing styling and wig making,
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  and I can tell you
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  that I have other businesses and I can tell you that I like to learn.
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  I don't think homeschool would be in the top five.
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  It might be, but I don't think it would be in the top five.
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  And that is because homeschool is not my only identity,
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  and I think that comes from my motivation is not homeschool to homeschool.
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  My motivation is homeschool to educate my children and to give them
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  the best possible path that I can as far as education is concerned.
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  Because of that, my motivation is not to homeschool.
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  So if tomorrow it changed, it is very possible
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  my kids would be in the local public schools
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  because that would be what was serving them best.
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  I have never hung my
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  hat on the fact that I am a homeschooler and strictly a homeschooler.
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  I always tell people this is the choice we made because we felt
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  it was the best at the time, and we reevaluate.
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  Now it's more like annually, but we do have the conversations
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  and reevaluate frequently.
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  In the beginning, we genuinely set it every six months.
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  We have like a date on the calendar when we would make sure that we were
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  where we should be and not losing ground to to justify to ourselves
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  people who are passionate about a good education, that
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  that was the right path we were taking, that that was the path we should stay on.
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  And I also like to think that if you stopped either
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  one of my children on the street, I'm an actress, I'm a dancer, I like to draw.
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  I just started archery, I love animals, I don't think
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  short of because people always ask kids, how old are you at grade? You?
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  And where do you go to school?
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  Short of that, I do not think that they would
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  mention hub school unless it kind of led that direction.
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  And it's just because it's not our identity,
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  it's a thing that we choose to do.
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  And I think this is especially prevalent in conversations surrounding women.
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  Okay.
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  My identity is not mom, my identity is Shana,
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  I am Shana, and I love all of these things and I am many faceted.
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  A part of that is mom, a part of that?
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  Is wife.
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  A part of that is a homeschool parent.
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  But my identity is
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  Shawna, who has wild hair and a nose ring
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  and enjoys learning new things and doing new things and traveling.
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  There are just so many aspects to who I am that homeschool isn't my identity.
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  And I want to remind you,
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  especially if you're getting into it, if you're getting into the thick of it,
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  or if you're getting into a hard season of it.
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  As the weather turns and we start to stay inside more
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  and the days are more gray and dreary and all of that,
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  I want to remind you that homeschool shouldn't be your identity either.
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  Even if you have a platform of 9000 of you
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  who come and watch me talk about homeschool.
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  Homeschool is not my identity.
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  Homeschool is a thing I do.
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  Homeschool is the thing we enjoy.
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  Homeschool is a choice that we've made.
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  But homeschool isn't all there is.
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  It's not all there is for me.
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  I've got lots of other things I can talk about,
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  lots of other people I talk to, lots of other things that I pursue
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  and interests and passions and all of the things.
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  And it isn't for my children either.
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  It's just the way they get their education.
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  It is not who they are.
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  And as girls, again, I think it's really, really important to stress
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  that there are things that you do.
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  Okay.
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  Aunt and I'm really big on the ant.
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  Really, really big on the ant.
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  Especially when I hear little people talking about how all they want to do is
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  get married, or have babies or know have babies.
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  And that expectation is never put on men.
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  It is never, oh, you will have children, so therefore you will not work.
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  Oh, you will have children, so therefore you will not have a career.
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  That expectation is uniquely for those of us who have a uterus.
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  Okay. And I don't understand why.
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  I don't understand why or how we got there.
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  But children and family and homeschool
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  and mom and dad and married and
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  and and and what I'm not going to do is limit myself
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  to simply being a homeschooler, regardless of how many hours a day
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  it takes up in my life, regardless of how much I feel like I know about it
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  now, after ten years,
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  regardless of the decades worth of investment that I have made, regardless
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  of the fact that I've now got two homeschoolers that I've taken into high school,
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  it just is so much more than that.
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  I am so much more than that.
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  And you are so much more than that.
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  Pick a thing. I don't care what it is.
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  Puzzle lover, book reader, animal helper, gardener.
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  I don't care what lawyer.
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  Doctor. I'm not limiting here.
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  Whatever it is that you do,
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  even if it is serving an aspect of your life.
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  Okay, you are like a jigsaw puzzle.
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  There are a thousand pieces of you and no one of them.
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  While they may be bigger for a season or bigger for a reason.
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  No one of those defines who you are.
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  You are many things,
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  and one of them might happen to be a homeschooler,
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  and one of them might happen to be a mom,
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  and one of them might happen to be neither of those things.
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  And that's all good.
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  And that's okay, because we are people.
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  We are humans. We are multifaceted.
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  And if we could just accept and if we could accept a lot more,
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  and from people, I love you and
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  and you happen to whatever, whatever, I love you.
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  And they're a little whatever.
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  If we could just accept that other people might have an aunt in the same way
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  that we also have an aunt, we could stop putting people in those boxes.
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  And the last person I want to have put you in that box is you,
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  the last person that I want
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  you to put my children in boxes, especially as girls, is going to be me.
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  I homeschool aunt, okay?
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  Homeschool is not my identity.
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  It does truly.
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  And I you guys, I've spoken about martyr mothers a lot.
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  Okay? It's going to lead to burnout.
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  It's going to lead to resentment.
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  It's going to lead to fussy feelings on either side.
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  Don't box yourself in, okay?
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  You can pivot at any point. You can change at any point.
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  You can recognize that maybe you just need a little time away.
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  And whether that's mentally time away reading a book,
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  maybe that's just pouring back into yourself
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  before making sure everybody else has what they need.
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  Maybe it is just the expectations that we put on the people who live with us
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  to do better and to do more, to stop accepting
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  that they will be non-compliant, to stop accepting
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  that they will be noncontributing, to stop accepting whatever it is
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  that is building within you that you know is not the way that you would like
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  life to go.
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  Your identity
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  is bigger than woman, parent, father.
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  I'm not trying to offend homeschooler.
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  You are more than the things you do and the pieces that make you a whole.
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  Okay guys,
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  I hope that you found any of this helpful, entertaining, or informative.
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  If you did, please scroll down and hit that big red subscribe button.
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  Turn on the bell for notifications and give this video a thumbs up.
• 10:45
  As always, you can find me down in the comments
• 10:47
  or over an Instagram at Making Everyday Magic.
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  And I just want to remind you if you're feeling any of these ways.
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  There are a lot of resources out there.
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  There are a lot of helplines if I can remember.
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  I will try to drop one down in the description box below,
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  but everybody should be happy where they are.
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  Okay, and maybe you are really passionate about homeschool right now.
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  You just learned a whole bunch of stuff and that you get a little fixated
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  and it is like, you know,
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  I always liken it to Diet Coke drinkers or marathon runners, and maybe that's
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  just your season right now and that's great,
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  but don't let it be your whole identity
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  together.
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  Let's keep making everyday magic.