How to talk to teenagers and young adults

A lesson or reminder for all who need it (including me).

1. Happy to see her? Say so. Show it with your face. Light up your eyes.
2. Unless it’s to offer an enthusiastic compliment, do not comment on his clothing, shoes, accessories, tattoos, hair, weight, or anything else appearance-related—especially in the first five minutes. If you don’t feel complimentary about any aspect of his appearance, go back to #1.
3. Ask what she’s been up to. Listen to the answer and then DON’T JUDGE. If you don't like the choices she is making regarding college or career or how she spends her free time, do not say so or in any way reveal it. Don’t offer advice. If you can’t think of anything else to say besides judgment and advice, simply ask what she likes or doesn’t like about what’s been going on.
4. Ask him for a movie, book, TV show, or game recommendation. Young people are often voracious consumers of media of all types, and the choices they make about what to consume are hugely varied from week to week. If he knows you at all, he is very likely to immediately think of something he’s seen or read that will be up your alley, or he’ll say, “I don’t think you would like what I’ve been reading,” and that’s a great conversation starter right there.
5. If her skills lean that way and the timing is right, ask her for help with that problem you’ve been having with your electronics, car, cat, leaky faucet, whatever. This shows that you know what her skills are and that you value them.
6. Listen, listen, listen. You are in the presence of a great mind that has matured in a completely different culture from the one you grew up in. Take a peek at his perspective on life and the world.
7. If she doesn’t seem interested in talking to you, don’t take it personally. By the time most kids turn 16, they have given up on adults' ability to really talk to them. It might take a while for her to recognize that you are worth her time. Meanwhile, find a way to set her free. “Would you like to go out to the yard and see the dog?”
8. Make yourself available for a conversation as equals whenever he gives you a chance to show what you’re made of.

Got more? Add them in the comments.

How to raise a good writer



The true alchemists do not change lead into gold;
they change the world into words. ~ William H. Gass

This is my tried and true approach to raising a good writer.

1. Make words a fun, happy, safe, communal thing in your home. Play with words (knock-knock jokes, Mad Libs, magnetic poetry, any of dozens of genuinely fun, noninstructional card and board games, etc.). Point out clever phrasing when you notice it. Read great (fun!) novels and interesting (fun!) reference books together. Talk about how ads in magazines and signs on businesses are worded and why it might or might not generate any business. Laugh together over words and about words.
   
2. Love words yourself and let it show.
   
3. Fill your home with paper, notebooks, a large variety of pens and pencils, computers with word-processing software and access to the Internet. These are toys for writers! A trip to the office-supply store is bliss.
   
4. Learn to distinguish between writing (content), handwriting, and adherence to rules for spelling and grammar. They are very different things, and a person can be great at any one of them without having any special talent for the others. Also, real writers have keyboards and editors; your child can rely on that, or get through life with spell-checkers and grammar-checkers like most of the known universe.
   
5. Never, ever, ever point out spelling or grammatical errors in a young person's writing. Some people's passion for writing will stand up to this kind of abuse, but it shouldn't have to. Keep in mind that using creative spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure is a natural phase of early writing. Most of us do eventually learn where the period goes and that "cat" is spelled with a "c." Trust.
   
   And meanwhile, focus on content. Share your natural enthusiasm for that, and be cognizant of the fact that by sharing his writing with you, your child is bestowing an honor. Appreciate it!
   
   Note: There is one time when it's okay to offer yourself up as proofreader and that's when your kid is submitting his writing for consideration in order to meet his own goal: winning a prize, getting published, gaining admittance to college, things like that. Otherwise, wait to be asked.
   
6. Protect your child's creativity from writing curricula and well-meaning friends and relatives. The approved essay format, with its rigid structure and counted sentences and paragraphs, can stifle creativity. And Aunt Martha's kindly meant comments to your seven-year-old about subject-verb agreement might serve only to dampen a budding writer's joy in all that is wondrous about writing. Step up and step in, if for no other reason than to show your child that she has choices.
   
7. Respect every writer's privacy. The things your child writes are his to share or not share as he chooses. In the absence of an invitation—and, no, that paper or journal left in plain sight is not an invitation—do what you have to do to control your urge to peek.
   
8. After creating a home where writing is valued and considered fun, check to see if your kid is a writer right now. She might not be, and that's okay! If she is, you will know it; writers write and nobody has to make us do it.
   
   If she isn't, repeat steps 1 through 7, not with the goal of making her into a writer but because words are a playground you can enjoy as a family.

Unschooling my cat, part 2: Letting go

My cat continues to remind me of unschooling lessons I had supposedly already learned.

We made the decision when Rigby was young (she's going on 2 now) that she would be an indoor cat. Indoor cats are safer, live longer, and have lower veterinary bills, and they tend to be cleaner and free(er) of fleas. It was a very sensible decision with her and our best interests at heart, and when she was a kitten, it worked beautifully.

But there developed a problem: Rigby loves the outdoors.

She began to cry to go out, sitting at our sliding glass door for hours--really--yowling like the Siamese she is for her freedom. She'd take periodic breaks from the yowling to come over and bite my ankles to make sure she had my attention. On the occasions when we would give in and take her outside, usually on a leash which she tolerated sort of as a fair trade for some outside time, she would romp and run and chase bugs and look like, well, a cat. A happy cat.

She loves it. LOVES it. Loves it. It is her favorite thing.

Like good unschooling parents, we've paid attention. We remembered that our comfort level is not the most important thing, and that being uncomfortable isn't fatal. We began to prepare for Rigby to be an indoor/outdoor cat, with some safeguards to make us feel better about the whole thing but primarily focused on this clearly communicated preference of our youngest, furriest daughter. We took her to get the feline Leukemia vaccine we had previously declined. We bought her a collar with a tag so kind people can help her find her way home should she wander. And we kitty-proofed the yard as much as it is possible to do, so that mostly she will remain in our yard.

Then we opened the door and let her out.

I wish you could see the changes in her. Outside, she moves with obvious pleasure around our yard, satisfaction in every step and radiating a clear sense that she is in her place. If you're out there with her (which she loves), she comes over to rub against you and head-butt and let you know how pleased she is with life in general. She climbs trees and stalks everything that moves and hides from loud noises. If I kick the soccer ball, she will sometimes chase it, and she has taken to sitting near me when I hula hoop, apparently not concerned by the fact that I drop the hoop nearly as often as not.

She has struck up a fascinating and hugely entertaining friendship with Roxie, the dog next door. They peek at each other through the knotholes and gaps in the fence, sticking paws or noses through, swat at each other, and then race together down the fenceline to the next peekhole to do it again there.

Inside, she's calmer, more affectionate, and just happier. I don't know how to explain it, but we can all see it.

We have seen the law of diminishing marginal utility very much in practice. She used to be desperate to go outside. Now, she still loves it, but if we leave the door open for her, she's in as much as out.

And she just thinks we are pretty darn cool. As I write this post, she is wandering the yard apparently giving me no notice. But when I went inside a moment ago, she immediately came to the door to call me back. Like most unschooled "kids," she enjoys being with her parents! :-)

My unschooler is interested in...

At the Wide Sky Days Unschooling Conference in 2012, Pam Sorooshian and Laura Flynn Endres gave a talk together and did a really cool thing: they put up posterboard around the room; asked people for kids' interests to put in as headers for the boards, such as Harry Potter, acting, Fibonnaci sequences, whatever; and then gave sticky notes to everybody in the room (about 100 of us, I suppose). We all went around the room putting sticky ideas onto the boards for ways kids can deepen their involvement in and exposure to the posted interests.

It was a remarkable experience, the hive mind at its finest. We created such a vibrant, varied library of resources. I wanted to do more and more.

So, after we got home from San Diego, I started a Facebook group that runs along the same principles. People create posts about something their kids (or they - we're not age-ist!) are interested in, and other members put in ideas for learning more. I have discouraged commentary on other people's suggestions, since you never know what a given family will find enriching and many families might use the same posts for ideas. I have also discouraged discussion of unschooling philosophy itself. There are many other places where that can happen; I don't think people need one more place to argue.

The result has been pretty freaking cool, far beyond what I imagined when I got it started. In a little over five months, we have gathered 1250 idea-makers together. People post topics ranging from... Well, I'll share a few of the ones at the top of the group today. That will give you an idea:

- physical comedy
- Japanese
- boats and water
- g.a.m.e systems and a.p.p.s (trying to avoid spam)
- narration
- Legos
- and much, much more.

It is fun, inspiring, and WAY too busy for me to keep up with. Fortunately, with so many contributors, people are assured of having some collaborators whenever they post.

If you're interested in some ideas for your kids or yourself, come join us. My unschooler is interested in...

What's on our coffee table today

Netflix - Beasts of the Southern Wild
VHS - Moonstruck
Magazine - Seventeen with Ke$ha on the cover
CD - Greybeards' LiG song list
DVD - Labyrinth
Books:
- Dinosaur A-Z: For kids who really love dinosaurs
- Calvin & Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book
- a few coffee table books that never leave
Hi-Q (a little puzzle game for one)
Coasters - because "Use a coaster" is one of the rules we do have in our house
My wrist brace (I never leave home without it)
MJ's bottom (attached to her body of course)

Friday night poetry

Long conversations at midnight.
Oh-dark-thirty, he murmurs,
as we cover our yawns
and take turns being
Interested.


--------------------------------------------------------------


Didn't we do this before?
Were we here once before,
In this place of madness and pain,
Or was it only a dream?

It's all so familiar.

Rededicate ourselves

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/08/24/presidential-proclamation-women-s-equality-day-2012

Money, money, money, mon-ey

This started out as a comment on an unschooling forum. I think it works as a standalone post too, and it's LONG, so I'm saving it.

Our kids are 19 and 20. The older one doesn't live at home right now but soon will again. We support both of them financially. Come September, they will both be in college, which we are paying for right now but which will eventually need to become a group effort. They each get a weekly no-strings allowance, which they don't have to do chores to earn and which they spend on whatever they want.

That's our situation.

Our philosophy is one of cooperation and sharing, with a healthy dose of ignoring society's arbitrary, different-from-country-to-country rules about the ages by which kids **should** be doing certain things like driving cars, paying their own way, moving out, and so on. Society doesn't get to decide those things, we do.

The ways this philosophy has paid off are many, and somewhat immeasurable.

Where to start? The biggest benefit has turned out to be that they get a modicum of relief from the pressure they are under -- that ALL kids are under, no matter what their parents say and do -- to become independent adults. Our kids talk to us, so I can see that this pressure is staggering and probably worse than any "gotta earn a living" pressure they will feel later in life. ANYTHING I can do to ease that pressure and give them a little breathing room to "figure this shit out" is a good thing. We reassure them repeatedly that there is no hurry. They don't cost more now than they did at 13 or 15 or last year. We know we can afford this lifestyle, just as it is, which means we can joyfully continue to be a safe haven for them as long as it takes them to find their paths.

Do I think I will still have kids living with me five years from now? Judging by their personalities and by what their older unschooling friends have done, the answer is, sadly, no. I'm on Empty Nest Watch whether I like it or not.

The other benefits are more, well, ordinary, and the reasons we went with the no-strings allowance to begin with. They got to practice budgeting and math and learn what it feels like to have money on payday and be broke by the end of the pay period. And Frank and I got to stop always being the bad-guy money decisionmakers. "Can I have this?" they still ask, and all we have to say is, "It's your money."

If you want a little friendly feedback, your setup [kids do chores to earn allowance, with commentary about kids beginning to pay their own way at 16] sounds pretty stressful and somewhat adversarial! All that keeping track. All that wondering about where YOU should draw the line. Don't draw any lines. Figure out what the allowance is, hand it over with a smile, and then sit back and watch *them* figure out where the lines are and how to make the most of what they have. I bet they'll surprise you. (I should tell you sometime about the $5 megaton of candy the girls bought.)

When they make mistakes -- and they will, we all do -- I make purchasing mistakes all the freaking time *g* -- don't say, "See! I told you this wouldn't work!" Instead, recognize that it HAS worked. Mistakes lead to learning. If they buy too many potions and lose them [on a gaming site where cyber items are purchased for real money], they will learn how yucky it feels to get nothing for their money.

I have lots more to say but this is a novel already. Here are a couple of relevant posts from my blog:

http://zombieprincess.blogspot.com/2010/06/stuff-and-money-and-space.html

http://zombieprincess.blogspot.com/2010/05/date-with-reality.html

Geographically inclined

I shared this image in Facebook. Neat, isn't it? As I introduced it there: "Fun way to learn geography *and* put some popular (and not so popular) movies into a geographical context." My friend Emily asked me to talk a bit about what we did for geography as an unschooling family, and about how learning geography can be fun.

To answer the first question, well... First I have to admit that we didn't consciously do a darned thing to expose our kids to geography. What we did, as always, was have fun as a family. But in retrospect, I can see that we did a lot. We traveled. We talked. We pulled out maps, nautical charts, globes, atlases, and Google Maps often and with bright interest and a need to discover something in particular. Geography is not some esoteric subject in our house but an extremely valuable tool. Plus, it's just interesting. Topography is interesting. Distances between places we'd love to visit are interesting. The impact of geography on world events, current and historical, is interesting.

Another thing we did was to become part of the unschooling community. We have friends and online acquaintances all across the U.S. and Canada, plus several other countries. The unschooling community has personalized the entire world for my kids. Destinations are not foreign and distant but possible. This means we don't hear a mention of a destination in England and think "oh, yeah, that place where the Queen lives." We think, "What part of England? I wonder how far it is from Schuyler's house. Maybe someday we can go stay with Schuyler and go there! Yeah, wouldn't that be cool?"

And there's the Internet. Cool stuff like the map above abounds. Maps come up automatically with many Internet searches. You can see graphical representations of voter patterns, Native American tribe locations, current weather conditions (with useful tools like hurricane trackers), and the paths followed by favorite fictional characters. Maps are everywhere.

Books! Every time my kids read a book they add to their knowledge of geography. When we travel, we visit places that we previously visited in books. Some books have maps as the frontispiece. Some maps are fictional, which inspires kids to draw fictional maps of their own. This gives them a gut-level understanding of scale and the challenges faced by map makers to show topography, distance, and relative size.

And music! Do you know the song "Battle of New Orleans"? We went to that battlefield! When my kids sing the line about "til we seed their faces well," they know where the Americans were waiting. They know the Mississippi River was a stone's throw away. They know how far the field is from New Orleans, and how far New Orleans is from our home near Seattle.

Planning for travel has been huge. Road trips. Unschooling conferences. Not Back to School Camp. Visiting friends in other states. Sailing in the Gulf of Mexico. Looking at maps and deciding where to *actually* go is FUN. (You can have this same experience with a city map, by the way.)

Kids learn geography when geography has context and meaning. And to answer the second question, the learning is fun for those very same reasons. It's fun because it's attached to fun things, and it's memorable because it becomes an integral part of the kids' personal memories.

Versatile (chaotic?) blogger

Shan gave me an award. Cool! You can read the meme rules and stuff on her blog. I am breaking all the rules except the fourth one, which requires me to tell you--my versatile (chaotic?) audience--seven random things about me.

1. I can't resist a blog meme.

2. I've been neglecting my blog and various other online spheres because my attitude is not the best since we lost Tom. It feels rude to jump into someone else's life and spew negativity.

3. I have not been neglecting Pinterest because, there, I can tuck all my negativity in one place and those who don't want to see it don't have to follow that pinboard.

4. About the time Frank got some relief from the pinched nerve that had been making his right arm alternately numb and painful, my right arm started wigging out. It aches, my fingers tingle, it makes me cranky. But ice helps, so I am so far resisting going to the doctor.

5. After a couple decades of settling for inadequate garments, I have found a style of bra that fits me, meets my strict requirements for comfort, and is reasonably attractive. I periodically buy a new one as older ones wear out, so I currently have this bra in four colors in varying states of repair. I don't care that each new one is $60. I would pay more than that. It is pure joy to know it will fit (without having to try it on, which I hate), feel as good as a bra can feel, and work under all my clothes. If Wacoal ever stops making this bra, I will cry bitter tears.

6. As of two weeks ago, I have no children. (Chloe turned 18!!!)

7. My favorite ice cream is rocky road, but I always, always dish it into a tall glass and pour milk over the top to make a quicky milkshake. The nuts left at the bottom of the shake are my favorite part!

I love this photo

Photo credit: Snugabell Mom & Baby Gear

Except me

For the past couple of years on this blog, I've been writing about accepting people as they are. During that same timeframe, I've been doing some work on accepting myself as I am. I have a ways to go there. You see, acceptance applies to everyone but me. I must be perfect.
I have no idea what the hell "perfect" is except that I know when I'm not being that. Which is often.

Recently I've been putting in very long days at work. They start at 6:30 a.m. and, counting commute and the occasional hour of so-called downtime (when my brain remains dominated by work thoughts), they end at about 11 p.m. I'm doing the work of two people, and I'm doing it damned well.

But I'm short on sleep, and I'm tired, and most nights I go to bed feeling like an utter failure because there is always so much that didn't get done that day. The work is never done, and my personal commitments are suffering. I have nothing left for my family except snarky comments about the housework that didn't get done while I was working. The only one who gets any quality time is Rigby, and that's because she attacks me or cuddles with me until I pay attention to her. (That's the solution, Frank and MJ and Chloe and Emma: pounce on my feet or get in my face if you want some time from me.)

I suck, and I refuse to accept that this is Who I Am.

Let's try that again. I don't suck. But I'm ridiculously human. And accepting me for Who I Am is a process rather than a switch I can flip.

That's true with the kids too, of course. They are also human, with foibles and preferences and habits and their own varying capacity for daily accomplishment. Living with them involves some daily adjustment of my expectations and my attitude. But I don't look at, for instance, Chloe's foibles and preferences and habits and accomplishments and think, "She sucks." I don't think, "There she goes again, being imperfect." And I don't qualify "human" with "ridiculously" when I talk about her humanness. Only my humanness is ridiculous in degree.

I'm special that way.

For the last couple months, I've been doing this thing where I take those "special" thoughts in my head and amplify them by saying them out loud. I am trying to hear myself better, trying to hear how hard I am on myself. What's been the most illuminating about this practice is how very distressing my family members find it when they hear me say these things. They find them vicious and frightening and cause for immediate remediation, not of anything I've done or failed to do but of the underlying belief that I'm expressing.

They are horrible beliefs.

What gets really tricky is that accepting myself as I am includes accepting that I have them.

I expect perfection in/of myself. And that's okay.
I am really hard on myself. And that's okay.
I can practice loving-kindness with everyone but me. And that's okay.
I have less time for my personal life when work is busy. And that's okay.

Except none of those is really okay. They are all things I'd like to improve. And that's okay too.

This acceptance business ain't for sissies.

Fitting parenting to the child

MJ is 19. She doesn't live with me anymore. When she's at her home in Salem, I typically have no idea of her daily plans: whether she's going anywhere, where she's going if she is, how late she'll be out, who she'll be with. I don't worry about her as long as I "see" her via text, phonecall, or Facebook occasionally, which here means every 5 to7 days or so, and which "sighting" does not necessarily have to include me. For example, if I see her post something on her wall on FB, my internal mom-timer gets reset, and I don't worry.

I also have no idea what she's eating, how much she's exercising, what she's learning, how she's learning, whether she's tidying up after herself, whether she's minding her manners, how she's spending her money, what music she's listening to, how much TV she's watching, whether she's brushing her teeth and wearing her retainers, and so on and so on. I don't ask, she doesn't offer, I just don't know.

In other words, in the absence of evidence to the contrary or complete radio silence, I trust that she's healthy and happy enough, and I know she's quite competent enough to handle what life throws at her, either on her own or by picking up the phone if she needs help.

And then she comes home for a visit. Something happens inside my brain, and MJ moves from the "MJ's responsibility" compartment to the "My responsibility" compartment.

Last night she went out with her cousin Chelsea. As she was walking out the door, she said she'd either be home "later" or stay the night at the friend's they were headed to. I opened my mouth to request a rather more specific plan, and to go through my usual magical-thinking routine of questions designed to reassure me that she would be safe.

And then the absurdity of that struck, and I said, "Have fun" and closed my mouth again. This child-of-mine, despite her name and similar appearance, is not the same person she used to be. She no longer needs (if she ever did) the type of parenting I had been about to offer.

It's up to me to catch up.

Unschooling my cat

Catchy title, right?

This is my cat:


She's bigger than that now, but you get the idea. This amazing, bright-eyed little being has entered our lives and transformed our home and our routines.

Sound familiar? Yeah, it's a lot like having an infant again.

Several years ago, I read something Sandra Dodd wrote about things she did to make her dog more comfortable. She didn't say she was unschooling her dog, but somehow hearing the changes she was willing—no, happy—to make, to her home and routine and the arrangement of her furniture, in order to meet her dog's needs and make her dog happy really helped me see what the unschooling lifestyle is all about.

Fast forward a few years and my kids are pretty much grown. While we continue to adapt our home and routine as needed to meet their needs, everything is pretty settled these days, and we take even the surprises in stride because adapting is habitual by this point.

And then along came Rigby.

She is named for Eleanor Rigby, thus continuing our mini tradition of naming cats after Beatles' characters (our last two cats were Desmond and Molly). I am allergic to cats, so she was only supposed to be a visitor, and I was quite prepared to fall head over heels in love with her and give her away anyway.

What I was not prepared for was for her to fall in love with us. And she did. Within a day after I found her cowering under the neighbor's car, beyond thrilled to be found, she had bonded completely with all of us. This is where she slept:


And there I was, an unschooler and attachment parent riding on nearly nine years of unequivocally meeting the needs of the beings I love, confronted with a little loved one who clearly did not need to be separated from another family. Surprise!

So we adapted. We kept her (and my allergies are learning to live with it). She's a fair bit bigger now, but she's still attached. She sleeps on whichever of us is not moving, and she struts and sprints around the house like she owns it. Which I suppose she does.

My next surprise was the unschooler refresher course that having her in our home provided.

She likes to play with the cords on the mini-blinds. We don't especially want the mini-blinds to come crashing down, so we tied a string to chair. It has a bead tied on the end, in as close an appromixation of a mini-blind cord as I could conceive on short notice. She loved it.

She has daily periods of astonishingly high energy. We call this Satan Cat Mode, and Honey Badger has nothing on Satan Cat. What Satan Cat Rigby needs is someone to romp with her. It doesn't matter that we'd rather sit on the couch or go to sleep. (Cats are mostly nocturnal, remember.) We have acquired a collection of toys and other items that she finds entertaining, and I spend close to an hour every day creating opportunities for her to chase, tackle, climb, pounce, sneak, destroy, and gnaw. Very often with me as the target. This is in addition to the time that Frank, Chloe, Emma, MJ, and whoever happens to be visiting contribute to the cause.

She loves plastic bags and cardboard boxes. We have had varietal bags and boxes littering our floors for eight weeks.

She needs to claw something. She would like to use the oriental rug, while we would prefer for her to use one of the alternatives we have provided. We can occasionally be found dragging our fingernails over the surfaces of these alternatives to show her how it's done. She's getting the idea.

She needs to be with us. We leave doors open so she can follow us around. We make sure not to leave her alone for too long. We talk to her and generally provide companionship. I sit in weird positions so she can drape herself across my neck or my lap while I work.

She needs to cuddle. I know this is true because if we are too slow about noticing when she's ready for a cuddle, she will climb on shoulders, laps, keyboards, books, or faces until someone does their damned job, thank you very much. It's usually not too hard to get someone to cooperate. She prefers cuddling on her favorite blanket, so this blanket is usually adorning one or the other of us. (This last might become more problematic in August.)

And of course she needs a litter box and good food and medical care. Check, check, check.

But in terms of illustrating unschooling principles, the need that is the most interesting and, yes, entertaining is her obsession with the bathroom. She loves the bathroom. She needs to explore the bathroom. We have no idea why. It is the strangest cat behavior we've ever seen. If someone goes in to pee, she literally runs after them so she can watch. She hangs out in the sink. She sleeps on the toilet lid (the seat is heated so this one is less puzzling) and considers the toilet tank a prime perch. If someone goes in and closes the door, she sits outside and waits for them to come out. And she showers with me every day, spending some of the time hanging out at the foot of the tub and the rest in the safe zone between the shower curtain and (clear) shower liner.

We don't get it. But the thing is, we don't have to understand her need in order to respond to it. We just have to care that her need is met. That is pretty much the prime directive of unschooling.

Gotta go. My cat needs me.

Dissonance

SOFIE
So you really think having two opposing ideas in your head does some kind of damage?

MUMFORD
Sometimes, yeah... pulling in two different directions at once. It makes tiny little tears in our fabric.

SOFIE
Well then, my life has been some kind of huge rip.

From Mumford

Self-care

There is a fair amount of content out in the self-improvement sphere devoted to helping us see the difference between self-care and indulgence. You will get more genuine comfort, they say, from a brisk walk than from a jelly donut or a trip to the Nordstrom shoe department. Maybe so.

But unschooling with my kids—accepting and staying calm about their choices—has shown me something very important:

Self-care is not only doing the things that you know are good for you—eating right and exercising and getting plenty of sleep—but loving and accepting the part of you that can't be "good" all the time.

Blogs I read religiously

1. Raptitude.

2. zenhabits.

3. mnmlist.

4. Tiny Buddha.

5. Just Add Light and Stir.

6. Yours, of course.

How to meditate

I just did a quick search on Tumblr for "meditation." Holy confusion, Batman, do people have some funny ideas about what it takes. This is my attempt to set the record straight, at least for my little circle.

You don't need quiet.
You don't need a special space or any special equipment.
You don't need to change who you are.
You don't need to be more or less religious than you are right now.
You don't need to believe it will help.

All you need is you, and your breath, and a moment or two or twenty.

Close your eyes or leave them open.
Sit comfortably or stand quietly or lie down.
Breathe. Feel your breath come in and out.
If there are sounds, hear them.
If there are sensations, feel them.
Try to notice without reacting.
Breathe some more.
Enjoy meditating for its own sake.
When you are done, take a deep breath and return to your regular activities.
Try to do it again tomorrow. (That's what makes it a meditation practice.)

That's all there is to it.

Silent language

I react to grief as I react to most stressors: weariness. I am tired down to the bone. But that's not all. My anger is there, hovering, seeking a handy target no matter how disconnected from the true source: that our world is forever changed, that my mother is left alone, that life is unfair.

And I cry. I cried over oil and vinegar salad dressing in the Microsoft cafeteria. I cried over spaghetti, and the thought of a phone call I have yet to make. I cried over a grave, not empty and yet so empty of what I hoped to find there.

I'm restless. I walk and walk and walk and still can't be still.

Returning to work brought some solace in the form of distraction. Busy, busy, busy.

Being busy makes me angry. I am pissed off about how busy I am. Busy doing nothing that matters. Busy because it's easier.

Being still makes me cry.

It's two weeks tomorrow. An eyeblink. An eternity.

I want to go home. I want to go back. I want things to be as they were but better: no pain, no cancer lurking in the wings, just ordinary, boring life, with no threats or vulnerabilities that can't be ignored no matter how hard we try. I want the luxury of complacency.

There's no going back. There's only figuring out what comes next. How we do this, how we go on without him. Who we are now, as individuals and as a family.

It is knowledge I would rather not have.

Soothing

I just had a walk in the woods. It was very soothing. I found the damp green smell of slightly soggy Northwest woods, barely ripe blackberries (Papa Tom's favorite kind!), perfectly ripe huckleberries that made me miss Molly-pop, my grandniece and once-and-future huckleberry hunting pal, and a couple of not too shy rabbits that sat still while I checked them out.

But, most importantly I think, I found spots where no human eyes were on me. I am such a self-conscious creature; it is all but impossible for me to relax when people can see me. But there in the woods, even with human sounds all around, I was alone.

I think I'll be heading out to those woods every day for a while.