Homeschool – Page 3 – Homeschoolers Anonymous

The Accidental World-Changers

November 19, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team3 Comments

Photo by Darcy S., used with permission

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Darcy’s blog, Darcy’s Heart-Stirrings. It was originally published on Oct. 8th, 2014.

They wanted to raise a generation of people who would change the world with our excellence, character, and superior skills, unafraid of doing right and standing alone.

Well, here we are.

All grown up and no longer staying silent about things that matter, no longer children controlled and smiling in a row. We may not be what they expected, but we are exactly what they planned us to be. They just never thought that we’d be standing up, not for their movement, not for their “values” or their mission, but for each other. Hand in hand, reaching down, pulling up, hugging close, fighting demons, speaking out, hearts beating together.

They wanted to create a force to be reckoned with. They accomplished that goal.

What they failed to take into account was that they were raising people not robots. And people are resilient. They are strong. They have minds and thoughts and wills of their own, things that ultimately cannot be controlled forever. Humans are wild cards.

We have found each other, connected, and now stand side-by-side. “Really? Me too!” is the cry of relief and sadness and connection and righteous anger that we hear every day. The letters I get, the comments on my blog, the conversations day in and day out…..they break my heart, they tear at my very soul, they overwhelm, yet they feel strangely familiar and tell me. I’m not a freak and I’m not alone and neither is anyone else like me. This is both terrible and wonderful.

We each bring our own strengths to this struggle. Some are lawyers, some investigators, some the story-tellers, some counselors and healers, all are friends to those who need a friend, a hand to hold onto. I have chosen to bring my passion for soul-healing into the fight, to do all I can to help others have the life and happiness and wholeness that they deserve as human beings, to break the cycle of violence and brokenness. That is my gift and my passion. Others in our midst are the masters of justice. They are the ones that have devoted their time and effort to exposing the abuse and the abusers, of rallying to do what they can for the rights of homeschooled children. And they’re doing a damn good job too.

“Sit down, be quiet, stop talking, how dare you? You’re lying, you’re disrespectful, submit, shut up, be sweet, don’t tell, don’t question, smile, conform, pretend, why can’t you just……” Ah, but that is not who we were raised to be, who we were supposed to be, who we have chosen now to be.

We are the world-changers, the truth-fighters, the culture-warriors.

Isn’t that what they wanted? What they dreamed of? What they planned for?

This exposure of abusers in the world we were children in is not going to end until the abuse ends. We were raised to be the best of the best, to stand alone, to choose righteousness when everyone else chose evil. That is exactly what we are doing. With every brave story, their power crumbles to dust.

This expose happened today: When Homeschool Leaders Looked Away.

I commend my friends for all the months of work they put into this. I know the backlash they will received from a culture of image-worship, a kingdom that is imploding before our very eyes because of years worth of corruption and power-mongering covered up in the name of religion and God and “educational freedom”.

There will be no more silence about things that matter from my generation of homeschooled adults.

If we do not speak up, who will? Obviously not those who laud themselves as the leaders of the Christian homeschool world. I am heartbroken for the victims, those named and those still wounded and hiding. And even more convinced that the way I have chosen and the fight I have chosen and the people I have chosen to stand with is all exactly where I am supposed to be.

We are who we were meant to be. We are the generation that unexpectedly changes the world…..our world. Which is more than enough for us.

Gifts and Wound: ElenaLee’s Story

October 17, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team2 Comments

ElenaLee blogs at Our Place.

A blogger I very much respect once spoke of events in her life bringing both a gift and a wound. A gift and a wound—I carry this imagery with me like a familiar piece of jewelry or some small memento, some reminder of where I have been and of where I hope to go. The simple acknowledgement that both exist, at the same time, is healing. After growing up in a subculture often trapped by a black and white view of itself and the world, I relish the freedom to carry both truths in my hands. For me, being homeschooled was a gift. And it was also a wound. Both strands revealed themselves as I moved from a very home-centered existence to the larger experience of college and adulthood.

College unfolded a new world for me, one filled with the stimulation of interacting with more people more frequently than I had before, a chance to know and be known in new ways. After a high school education taught largely by textbooks (but with careful oversight by my mother, who assigned each day’s lessons and made sure I did the work), I found flesh-and-blood teachers exciting. I liked when they knew and respected me—when an art professor noticed I had a question during lecture just by the look on my face, when my history professor shook my hand after I finished his final test. Looking back, part of me hates that I knew how, and was eager, to excel in relationships with authorities. There is, perhaps, an element of “working the system” involved in it. And yet, I am grateful for the richness that interacting personally with these good men and women added to my life.

I have never excelled socially with peers. I suppose excelling isn’t even the point of peer relationships—but certain elusive social skills are helpful in bringing people together. I made only one lasting friend in community college, and she wasn’t a fellow student but an older employee in the library. Though on cordial terms with classmates, I commuted into town and never “hung out” with others, a skill I still feel uncomfortable exercising. In college, I continued to be dogged by a perception of myself which began with the (to me, unaccountable) distancing of one of my few close friends as a tween and solidified during my lonely high school years as a relative newcomer in a rural area: I wasn’t good at friendship. “I don’t expect to make friends,” I declared to my mother as I contemplated my transfer to a college in another state. “If I do, that’s fine, but I’m not counting on it. And that’s fine, because I’m really just going there to learn.” Viewing college as a job instead of an opportunity to develop friendships was my defense against the humiliation of social failure.

Thankfully, my predictions didn’t come true. I made a few real friends and a number of lovely acquaintances during the two years I spent earning my bachelors. The comfort of companionship which I had primarily experienced in family situations, I now enjoyed in spontaneous games of Dutch Blitz with the girls across the hall, in watching a movie with friends the first night back from break (soothing the jar of transition with back rubs and “mindless entertainment”), in having someone to sit by in chapel and (sometimes) the safety of a group in the dining hall. But, at least in my own mind, I didn’t exactly fit. I seldom felt secure in relationships with others, never fully relaxed.

During that time, I did experience a whole new joy in the realization that my written words could resonate with others and forge a connection. My professors challenged and encouraged me, creating an environment where things stored inside of me could come to life on paper. Interactions with fellow students in small peer-review groups delighted me—I could hear the warmth in their voices, enjoy the sense of discovery when something one of us had written became something that somehow belonged to all of us. Shared imagery wove into each of our lives. This joy, this gift of shared words, flowered in college—but it began long before that.

My parents, my mother in particular, raised me in a home rich with words. Mom read to my siblings and me nearly every night, even into our preteen years, and we each read eagerly on our own, as well. She placed a wonderful writing curriculum in my hands, thrilling me with the realization that words provided another outlet for my artistic passion. She even helped me like the physical appearance of my handwriting, teaching me a whole new kind of cursive when the first method wobbled and globbed from my left hand. Writing, especially poetry, has become a key way that I navigate life—a solace for myself, and sometimes even for others. When I trace the path that ushered me into that world, following it from my keyboard, today, through professors and fellow student writers–it begins with one woman, my teacher throughout my whole childhood, my mother.

I carry the gifts Mom gave me—the many benefits from her conscientious, extensive, and loving efforts on my behalf. In some ways, exposing some negative results from my upbringing feels disloyal and ungrateful. But it is not my job to be the justification of a lifestyle. I am no one’s lifework. I am a person. And along with a love for the sharing of life through the sharing of words, who I am includes the wound of a social limp which I carry today. I still tend to default to isolation or interacting with others through meeting their perceived expectations of me, but it is my hope that I will continually grow more honest with others and with myself.

A Mixed Bag: Salome’s Story

October 15, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team1 Comment

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Salome” is a pseudonym.

My experience going from homeschooling to college has been a mixed bag… but one I wouldn’t change for the world, no matter how shitty it was at the time. I have grown a lot and become a lot more normal, and rejected much of the legalism and hard conservatism of my youth, and all at a conservative Christian college which most people find restrictive!

I found enormous freedom (although I’m really careful about what I share with Student Life), and have become a moderate Republican (although if you were to ask the people I hung out with in my conservative activist days, I’m sure they’d call me a RINO, a flaming liberal bitch, and/or an idiot) and a feminist. I’ve found that there are actually a lot of people at my school (the administration of which prides itself in producing conservative culture warriors lol).

Thankfully, it’s usually safe to ask questions and come to my own conclusions among the professors. I even confessed to a couple of my professors that I’m not sure I believe in God anymore. I’ve become a lot more moderate, so I actually love my school and find myself defending a lot of the stuff it does. By the way, I still attend this school, so my knowledge of its culture and expectations are up to date. 🙂

I should also note that I’m really glad that I went to a small Christian school. Almost all of my professors know me by name. Several have put in long extra hours to get me to understand the subject matter, and are always willing to talk about non-academic stuff. Several have become friends and confidantes who’ve gotten me through really dark days. One has helped me manage my depression (because it’s unsafe to go to the school-sanctioned counseling or to Student Life) and has kept me after class to make sure that I weathered the panic attack that was clawing its way through my gut. He has checked up on me several times to make sure that I’m not suicidal.

Another helped me strategize how best to handle the sexual harassment I found myself woefully unprepared for in a culture which still asks women what they were wearing. When my anxiety and depression nearly paralyzed me, his office was a safe place where I could cry and swear and drink coffee with him. He has prayed for me a lot.

Another learned completely by chance about the recent death threats I’ve received, and has been praying with me (which… I mean. Even though I’m not sure I believe in God, that understanding and grace and prayer is so comforting). He has been talking through the Problem of Evil with me, and since he’s the philosophy prof, his answers are thoughtful and gracious. Yet another prof was a victim of one of the times that my pain exploded into rage, but he has forgiven me for losing my shit with him, and we still (carefully) joke and talk today. I look back fondly at the classes I took with him nowadays, and miss his quirkiness and dry sense of humor. I really don’t think that would have been met with so much grace at a normal school.

Anyway, I was homeschooled from 1st grade all the way through my high school graduation (although I managed to convince my mom to let me take a few classes at a Christian private school for my last two years of high school… which was a lifesaver omg). At first, my mom said that she wanted to homeschool us so that she could have more of an influence on us and spend more time with us than her mom did with her. As fucking creepy as that probably sounds to you all, I really can’t blame her, because her mom was a very emotionally absent single mom who’s tough as nails but hard and bitter. In the late 90’s, though, we started going to an evangelical church with a high concentration of homeschoolers. By 2000, my parents had made friends with these homeschoolers and had switched to religious reasons to homeschool us. They accepted the normal cocktail of homeschool ideology.

My homeschooling was spotty. I taught myself almost everything, which worked for most things, but I didn’t know how to write an essay until 8th grade when a homeschooling mom in my community realized that that was a major gap, but that I wasn’t stupid and undertook to teach me how to write. I still struggle with writing a lot. I don’t know why, but comma errors are my nemesis (which causes my poor professors pain when they read my papers). I also still struggle with basic arithmetic. But I have always read voraciously (and thus become friends with basically every librarian I meet), and trained myself to think critically and logically. I can spell better than almost everyone. My mind is full of trivia about science, history, and literature. I have always had this lust for truth, and have some measure of intuitive intellectual courage (when I bought a Qu’ran, I had to hide it for some time because my mom flipped out and thought that I’d convert and my dad threatened to burn it if he saw it… I read it, and have studied Islam, and still not Muslim. Interestingly, they also objected when I started hanging out with Presbyterians because they thought I’d become Presbyterian… which I eventually did to their dismay). I was woefully unprepared for the (very real) intellectual rigor of my college career, though, and my professors have spent long hours catching me up (because we technically don’t have remedial classes at my school).

I was the awkward, introverted homeschooler that nobody really understood or cared about. I was angry all the fucking time, and could blow up at anything. I had few friends. I had no sense of humor. I didn’t understand some basic hygiene (didn’t shower every day, and didn’t wash down south for several years because that made sense with the shame-based purity culture I grew up in, and my mom didn’t teach me how to clean myself, so yes, I stank and I stank bad). My view of sex was skewed, so I missed a lot of innuendo, which led to some awkward interactions. So I was really isolated. It’s hard to convey the horrendous pain and awkwardness and shame. I didn’t understand how to be good to people, because of the anger and violence which surrounded me at home. I’m still terrible at small talk. I get bored really quickly. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to learn how to listen. I always felt like I was out of sync everyone around me. I felt like a foreigner who was unable to communicate and remained unseen and unvalued.

I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, but when I chose the school I did, I was running from my family. I had been fighting for some measure of freedom for years, and with every freedom I won for myself, my parents flipped out even more, although they would eventually chill after they figured out that I wasn’t a heathen – only to repeat the cycle of me asking, them flipping out, me doing whatever it was anyway, them crying and screaming at me, and then them chilling out until the next time I did something that wasn’t acceptable for a good homeschooled little girl.

My first semester in college was fucking amazing. I got thrown into a room with one of the officially closeted but obvious lesbians in the school and an alcoholic. I learned tolerance very, very quickly. They introduced me to secular pop music, gave me the courage to start swearing openly (only did it behind my parents’ back in high school, which didn’t go over well when I went home for the first several breaks), gave me honest feedback on how to dress (the alcoholic informed me that my favorite shirt made me look like a grandma and I wasn’t allowed to wear it anymore), and forced me to get my own email account and a facebook account (they literally ripped my computer out of my hands and made both accounts right in front of me). Oh, yeah, and the lesbian roommate sent me soft porn out of the blue (which scarred my poor little homeschooler soul).

Academically, I did well my first semester. I got all of the coolest professors, had all the subjects I find easy, and skated by on my natural intelligence. But my study methods sucked, and I didn’t know how to take good notes (I’m a lot better now, but I’m still working on that). I didn’t always know the most basic things about classroom etiquette. Deadlines are hard for me (even though I love having deadlines. Yes, I know how contradictory that is. Yes, I’m as confused about it as you are). I also found myself learning from good, godly men and women who disagree with me and disagree with each other. I started to correct some of the misconceptions about history that I had. I learned that America’s immigration system has a sordid, racist history. I remember that day really clearly, actually, because I was in my favorite class with my favorite professor (who’s a really sweet. And Ivy-league educated. And happens to be married to a Latina woman). In the midst of class he said that first generation immigrants tend not to integrate well into American culture, but that their kids learn English and learn how to integrate their ethnic backgrounds with American culture. He said that a lot of the conservative resistance to immigration was just racism and paranoia, and has been the same arguments for a really long time… and those arguments have been proven baseless time and time again.

The more I listened and the more I learned about history, the more I became convinced that much of what I grew up with was wrong. I figured out that my dad is extremely racist, and that I had unconsciously picked up some of his bias. I had never been consciously racist, and would have said that racism is wrong, but the more minorities I met and the more I studied history, I realized that I needed to uproot much of what I had thought beforehand. To be honest, I’m still learning how to listen to people whose experiences are different from mine.

I also found myself interacting with people whose theological backgrounds were different from mine. I remember very clearly the first conversation I had with the first Lutheran I met. He informed me that he doesn’t really sweat the doctrinal fine points, and really just participates. Back then I was really shocked and thought he was a heathen. Now, he’s one of my dearest friends.

There was a dark cloud gathering over that first semester, though. I found myself getting deeper and deeper into an emotionally abusive relationship (which I’ve written about previously on HA, so I won’t go into detail). It didn’t get unbearable until Christmas break and into the spring semester, but it was bad.

Then Christmas break hit. I flew home, and found myself at war with my parents. I had started dressing normally, painting my toenails, wearing makeup, swearing, going to a Presbyterian church, and had a head stuffed full of ideas. My parents were losing control and they were panicked. Every day was a battle. They screamed at me for hours (I’ve also written about that on HA), and threatened to disown me. Fortunately, they didn’t, but the threat was enough to make me careful about what I shared with them.

The next semester, I came back broken and fearful. My relationship with my boyfriend was souring as he tried to establish control and I resisted. The academic honeymoon period was over, and my lack of skills left me treading water. My GPA plummeted due to the controlling boyfriend and lack of study skills. I stopped going to church, lost a lot of friends, and found myself deeply depressed.

I realized eventually that I would literally debate anyone about anything that year, and it took me forever to learn how to have a respectful, chill, normal conversation about normal topics.

That summer, I had to fight my parents to go back. Part of it was that they didn’t want me to take out loans, and didn’t want to help me pay for it. I managed to scrape most of the tuition cost together, and convinced them to pay for the rest (god, I have more skills than people give me credit for…).

Sophomore year was super rough. Almost all of my classes were things I’m not good at, with boring professors and a shitload of reading due every class. My GPA died in a cold, dark hole and I’m STILL trying to resurrect it. I figured out that I have a really hard time trying in classes that don’t come naturally. I didn’t have any motivation to actually study.

Socially, my abusive relationship had fucked me up so badly that my old rage roared back to life with a vengeance, and I became known as a vicious person and it was best not to mess with me. I lost more friendships, and was miserable.

A couple of the friends I *did* have came out to me, though, and as there were more people I loved in the category of “gay people,” I found myself realizing that much of the way I had learned to talk about the LGBT community was horrible and homophobic. I’m so, so sorry for that. I don’t know if I will ever be able to forgive myself for the horrendous shit that came out of my mouth.

That year was also the year that I tried being an emotional support for one of my professors… I didn’t realize how inappropriate that was. I still cringe when I think about it.

Junior year was much the same academically. The same professor who taught me about the reality of racism also really gently told me that sometimes when I don’t understand an idea, I dismiss it impatiently as idiotic. That was a hard lesson to learn. I studied a lot of non-Western history that year, for which I’m really grateful. I also learned that I had been overly dogmatic and I needed to be more gracious with the people who disagree with me. I took and passed a survey of physics class just for the hell of it (and the sense of triumph was intoxicating). Since arithmetic is difficult, I had no idea I was capable of that… but I figured out that I have an intuitive grasp of physics.

The most important lessons I learned junior year were social lessons. I started making new friends. I’m forever grateful that they saw beneath how prickly I am and realized that my anger was because I’d been hurt so badly. It became a joke among my friends. They’d tell me not to murder anyone, and in turn gave me safe places to curl up when panic ripped through my gut. I became rather famous for my profanity-laden pep talks, and started receiving requests for them fairly regularly. I started going to a new church and everyone there was nice to me (and still are). Some alumni from my school go there too, and they invited me into their home. I find my broken soul healing every time I’m with them. I watch them parent their girls in a delightfully non-gendered and gentle way. They interact with each other gently and with mutual respect. The man does housework and helps make dinner. They’re also delightfully nerdy. It’s comforting to know that it’s possible to recover from our backgrounds and become good people and capable adults. I met Christians who drink and swear (which gave me the courage to inform my parents on my 21st birthday that I was drinking and they could either come celebrate with me and make sure I consumed responsibly, or I could drink – and drive – alone and possibly die in a car accident… they couldn’t really argue with that logic, so we went out to dinner at my favorite restaurant and I had a drink with dinner and we had fun). I know now what unconditional love looks like. During a particularly bad panic attack, my favorite professor really gently looked at me and told me that I didn’t have to be good to be worth loving and worth living.

I also became the victim of sustained sexual harassment from two different supervisors at my job on campus (yes, at a fucking Christian school). I was woefully unprepared. I didn’t know that harassment was illegal. I didn’t know that much of the minor stuff that I considered creepy but normal was actually harassment and grounds for getting the bastards fired. I had to learn about sex online so that I knew what my supervisors were talking about and how to protect myself (which is why I’m a feminist and a passionate advocate for sex ed.). When I finally did come forward, the manager had zero rhyme or reason for her reaction. She fired the one guy, but the other is still working there now and I have to see him every day.

This was also the year that I started trying to work on my anger. I realized that lashing out and hurting people because I hurt is wrong. I think that’s why my mom was so screwed up. She took all her grief and rage and insecurities from her own childhood and took it out on us. That’s not the person I want to be. I know I can be a monster, but I can also break the chains of my childhood.

I also went from trying to be “normal” to allowing myself to be unapologetically smart and nerdy… because I know the difference now between being a tiny little homeschooler who didn’t understand and was afraid of the world around her to being able to come up with my own special variation on normalcy. And that’s okay. I don’t have to look like everyone else… but I don’t have to fit myself into the restrictive categories I was taught as a girl.

I still struggle with a lot. I know that I get really emotionally invested in my schoolwork. I kinda spill emotional pain all over random people sometimes. I tend to overshare (which is a pretty common problem with homeschoolers in my experience) with professors I trust without even realizing that that’s what I’m doing. I’m still learning about healthy ways to resolve conflict. I’m actively trying to undo a lifetime of learned racism.

I do have friends of other ethnicities, sexual orientations, and outside the gender binary, now. I have a go-to alcoholic drink (but I still experiment sometimes), and know how to drink responsibly. I can have an intelligent conversation about multiple religions. I’m learning how to listen and show mercy instead of hysterically wringing my hands about the fall of American civilization all the time (BTW, in case you’re wondering, pretty sure American civilization isn’t going to fall because of gay people being able to marry).

I do have advice and suggested reading:

Understand where people are coming from and exercise charity. If you look at 1 Corinthians 13 and your reaction doesn’t look like that, it’s not charity. Don’t be combative… people aren’t usually trying to destroy your faith. There is no vast left-wing bogeyman conspiracy.
Read up on philosophical Pragmatism. American culture is more or less pragmatic, and that will help you understand your culture.
I recommend dipping your foot in little by little to avoid culture shock. Don’t start out reading Richard Dawkins or Ayn Rand (I suggest using Ayn Rand to roast marshmallows, actually).
Read Martin Luther’s “On Christian Liberty.” It was instrumental in teaching me how to distinguish between the legalism I grew up with and real Christian liberty.
It’s okay to doubt your faith. God’s a big boy. He can take it.
If you grew up evangelical, I suggest reading D.G. Hart’s book, “That Old-Time Religion in Modern America: Evangelical Protestantism in the Twentieth Century.” It’s a really good intellectual criticism of evangelicalism, and I believe that Hart is a Christian, which will make it easier to swallow if your parents flip out as much as mine. Even if you remain evangelical, you should read this to challenge yourself and see weaknesses in your beliefs.
Related: if your beliefs can’t stand up under criticism, they’re really shallow and probably not worth holding.
I also recommend Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Kuhn is not a Christian, but this book is really wise anyway, and there’s plenty to glean from it. Actually, literally everyone should read this book… not just homeschool graduates.
Read secular poets and novelists. The current poet laureate is pretty amazing. Read John Le Carre and Daniel Silva. Also, don’t be afraid of non-Western writers. I have less experience there, so I can’t be of help. Experiment a little.
Music does not have to be explicitly about Jesus to be okay to listen to. Our parents came out of the heyday of rock-as-rebellion in the 1960’s-1980’s, so they’re a little paranoid.
David Barton and the authors of The Light and the Glory are bad historians who allow their agendas to corrupt their responsibility to tell the truth. Source: I’m majoring in American History, and I looked into their books and there are soooooo many glaring errors. Don’t do it. Just don’t. If you want a really good Christian historian, look up Mark Noll or Steven Keillor. Mary Habeck is also an amazing historian who writes and lectures about Islamic extremism (and is a world class military historian). If you need further advice on how to choose a reputable source, look at their credentials and the publisher, as well as where they teach.
Read C.S. Lewis’ book “A Grief Observed” if you’re going through enormous pain or loss. I cried the whole damn time but felt better afterwards.
It’s okay to google stuff. It took me a freakishly long time to figure that out.
It is never EVER your fault if you are the victim of harassment, bullying, rape, or abuse. I don’t care what you were wearing or whether you were drunk. You share NO culpability for someone else’s sin.
Recognize the warning signs of an abusive relationship and get the hell out if you see them, but be careful while doing so. You can’t change them or save them. Love doesn’t look like manipulation, control, or isolation. Trust your gut.
Don’t let your anger run your life. Find a balance between anger and mercy toward the people you’re angry at. Don’t demonize people because they’re still people, even if you disagree with them. Also, demonizing people historically doesn’t end well.
Normalcy and happiness are possible. You aren’t trapped. Discover. Travel. Dance. Sing. Eat good food and drink booze (legally, of course. Don’t be a fucking idiot).
Finally, you’re worth loving and you’re worth living. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Finding Myself in the Ashes: Aisling’s Story

October 14, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team3 Comments

Editorial note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Aisling” is a pseudonym.

The heavy wooden door to my dorm room closed with a definitive click behind my parents. I exhaled the weight of eighteen years spent wrestling for control, for individuality, for personhood.

I was free.

I imagined this moment often, with ever-increasing fervor as the end of my homeschooling approached. Some people who grew up like me, children of conservative Christian homeschooled parents, were not allowed to go to college. But the proudly educated tradition of my family would not allow for depriving my sisters and I of higher learning. My mother was the first person in her family to go on to college after high school. It was expected.

It was my ticket out.

I chose a school not far from home, but far enough that my busy parents would be too busy to come visit often. I chose a big state school, with enough room for me to roam and spread out my roots and grow tall like the oak trees all over campus.

I imagined the freedom, the ability to do what I wanted without asking permission, to spend my days and nights as I pleased without being fussed at for staying up on my computer until 2:00 in the morning. I didn’t expect the overwhelming weight of overstimulation, social anxiety and drastic personal revelation that occurs when you spend every waking moment trying to suppress who you are and play a role.

I played the part of devoted Christian, loving and virtuous daughter, for so long. Once I had a chance to find out who was really hiding inside, I almost tore myself apart on my way out.

The last couple of years before high school “graduation,” I spent most of every day alone in my parents’ house. Dorm life, with my roommate’s near constant presence across our tiny room and shared hall bathrooms, was at once liberating and meltdown-inducing. I began quietly panicking inside as my daily hours spent in isolation suddenly gave way to never being alone. For someone who considered herself an extrovert, it was confusing. I had craved social contact but I got more than I bargained for, certainly more than I could handle.

I was also lost trying to keep up with academic pursuits far beyond anything I’d undertaken before, thanks to a barely-supervised home education that left me with no math skills to speak of and no idea of how to study successfully. My ADHD, which my mother called laziness and procrastination, made it even harder. I cried in secret frustration many times because everyone else knew things instinctively, like labeling every paper with your name and the date in two neat rows at the top left corner of the page.

From when I began homeschooling at age 6 right up until the speech at my makeshift graduation ceremony, adults told me I was the cream of the crop. Homeschoolers were supposed to be stellar academics, with fantastic test scores and great grades. Those grand speeches were little comfort to me as I struggled in a biology class I was failing because I never learned about genetics.

I hid the fact that I was homeschooled for as long as possible, only letting in a few people here and there. I was overwhelmingly met with, “I couldn’t tell! You’re so…normal.” It made me feel proud and also terrified: was I playing a part again? I definitely was very far behind on pop culture, videogames and “throwback” music, and I spent a lot of time faking it until I could catch up.

But I also found real friends. One of my first close friends was a staunch atheist, and she patiently listened to me as I parroted all the Right Words You Say To Atheists per evangelical Christianity. Through her and others like her, I began to reconsider everything I knew and formulate my own ideas about what I believed.

I made many mistakes due to ignorance. I abused alcohol, lubricating my existential crisis with cheap booze to forget the realization that everything I told myself was true might actually be wrong. But as the fog lifted, I realized there was a freedom for me to be the bold, fearless woman I’d tried to hide in fear of the countless reprimands for being too forward and opinionated.

Without the restraints of the beliefs I was taught, I was afraid I wouldn’t have any kind of moral compass. From the ashes of the beliefs I’d clung to out of fear and ignorance, I was able to rise into a person I could live with, a person I actually wanted to be.

My experience has taught me a few important things: children need freedom. Children need a safe place to make mistakes. They need to be adequately prepared for life outside the bubble of home and church. Children need socialization and adequate education. They don’t just need these things, they deserve them and have a right to them.

To the homeschooled graduates heading to college: if you are struggling personally or academically unprepared, don’t be afraid to take care of your mental health and seek extra help. Be prepared to question everything you think and know. Relish it and embrace it, because the only things worth believing will withstand the test. Don’t be afraid to burn it all down and start over if you have to, because you’ll find someone to be proud of in the ashes.

Living with a Schedule: Karen Poole’s Story

October 10, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial TeamLeave a comment

Stepping onto a college campus for the first time was not a big deal for me. I was ready to leave home. Tired of the monotony, drudgery of my daily life at home, I was excited to move on to bigger and better things.

Thankfully, my parents had never encouraged me to believe the typical mantras that many of our homeschooling friends encouraged, that 1) I shouldn’t go to college and have a career, or 2) women can go to college, but their main priority should be to find a husband.

I wasn’t fazed by the dorm life. I had grown up with 8 younger siblings, after all. Crazy and hectic was the norm. I wasn’t even concerned about the fact that I had 5 roommates in a small room my freshman year. We all shared growing up. That was normal life for me.

The atmosphere of the college wasn’t an issue. My parents both happened to be alumni, so I was familiar with the campus and the overall feel of the small Christian liberal arts college. I wasn’t even really concerned about not knowing a soul. I wasn’t overt or outgoing, but I was comfortable meeting new people and developing new friendships. Our close relationship with many of our “secular” neighbor friends growing up had provided a good background for that.

The classes weren’t really that big of a deal. I actually found them to be much easier than most of my peers, and didn’t have to work extremely hard to do fairly well. I graduated with a 3.64 GPA. None of these factors bothered me that much. NO, but what I wasn’t prepared for was the schedule. As an education major with a music minor, I had about 160 credits to cram into the shortest time possible. My family didn’t have very much money, and I didn’t have access to a job that would allow me to take the sometimes 6 years that many people allow themselves to graduate with an education major. This meant that I was constantly tired, always on the run, had many credits each semester plus the music electives and performing groups to fulfill my requirements for my minor. It was insane.

I went from the doldrums and lazy days of being homeschooled, where I could set my own schedule as long as I completed my assignments in a timely manner, to sometimes 8-10 hours of classes per day. Don’t get me wrong, college is exhausting for everyone. However, not having a structured routine or going through the high school experience, I did not have a clue as to what I was getting myself into schedule-wise. I ended up sleeping through classes and feeling guilty about it, going back to my dorm if I had more than a 45 minute creak to take a 20 minute nap, falling asleep in the library, etc., etc.

The routine was so different than my entire school experience, that it was almost mental overload. I wasn’t an organized person, and certainly wasn’t used to having to micro-manage my time to accomplish everything that needed to be done. However, I soldiered through. I didn’t quit. I drank 64 oz. sodas to keep me awake to finish projects and papers. I persevered.

And although I think my homeschool background failed to prepare me for that aspect of college, another trait got me through – flexibility.

Because, even though the overall experience could have knocked me out and I could have run away with my tail between my legs sobbing because I just couldn’t do it anymore, homeschooling taught me that it’s ok to be flexible. It’s normal for things not to go exactly the way that you planned them. Constant changes in plans – Dad has business colleagues over today so we have to clean the house instead of doing school this morning, or it just snowed 6 inches and we need to go shovel our elderly neighbor’s driveway – taught me that my life will never be just the way I want it, and that I need to adjust to what it is, make the best of it, and keep on going.

When We Tell Our Stories

August 24, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team8 Comments

by Darcy. Photo by Darcy, used with permission.

The other day, Homeschoolers Anonymous shared an article on their Facebook page. It was one homeschool alumna’s statement about how her experiences with being homeschooled made her unwilling to homeschool her own children.

As is to be expected, homeschool apologists came out of the woodwork with the belief that her sharing her experiences was somehow an attack against homeschooling as a pedagogical method. I want to address this phenomenon as a fellow homeschool alumna.

The thing nobody seemed to notice in the discussion that happened was that homeschooling wasn’t under attack.

The author wasn’t crying “down with homeschooling!” or “all homeschoolers are evil brainwashed minions!” She was merely telling her story and explaining how it influenced her current choices. But the No True Homeschooler brigade was right on schedule. Which was rather baffling considering that the article itself was just one person’s story and a pretty benign one at that.

Why is it when someone says “here is my story, this is why I’ve made the current choice I have”, so many people feel the need to pick their story apart, try to analyze how the story isn’t correct, then claim their choice is faulty because their story is faulty? No one is judging you for your story and your choices. They’re just telling their own. If you’re threatened by that, perhaps it’s time for some introspection and reevaluating your own story and choices instead of trying to tear down someone else’s to make yourself feel better, feel justified, feel right.

For instance, if someone tells me “I had a horrible time in public school, I’m homeschooling my own kids and we’re doing great”, I don’t try to make them understand that public school wasn’t the problem and thus their current choice to homeschool isn’t valid. I don’t jump to the defense of public school. I nod and show empathy and understanding. I acknowledge that some people had terrible experiences in school.

It’s their story. It doesn’t threaten me. It’s not even about me.

A homeschooler who says “I had a terrible experience so I’m not going to homeschool” is not about YOU, current homeschoolers. Stop trying to make this about you and thus miss the entire point.

Someone tried to tell me that the uproar was because the author said homeschooling was a cultural problem. Actually, she didn’t. Here is what she said in the article:

“But homeschooling is part of a larger cultural problem — it’s the mental equivalent of trench warfare. Instead of engaging on the battlefield, we dig in, draw our lines and refuse to budge. American society is embroiled in conversations of racism and sexism that permeate the fabric of our cultural institutions. Donald Trump, the most polarizing (and arguably sexist) Republican candidate for president is the most popular. Police are shooting and killing black men, women and children at an alarming rate. The problems need to be engaged. Yet, instead of engaging, Americans are choosing to entrench themselves further in their ideologies.”

But people weren’t arguing about this part. They were arguing about her experiences. They were saying her parents just didn’t do it right. They were trying to negate her story and prove that their stories are actually the “right” ones and hers is wrong. They were trying to find any possible hole in her story to prove that this wasn’t True Homeschooling™ and thereby dismiss her. We’ve seen this happen thousands of times as alumni. Someone posts something about their negative experience as a homeschooled child, and the apologists jump down their throats, making all kinds of excuses, and defending homeschooling while dismissing the author’s painful experience as some fluke that shouldn’t be spoken of. With their protests, they show they care more about the reputation of homeschooling than the people that were affected by it. It’s an image to be held up at all costs, even if one of those costs are throwing broken, hurting people to the curb. Honestly, it’s getting old.

By all means, let’s have a reasonable discussion about the rather interesting idea put forth in that part I quoted. About different facets of homeschoolings, the pros and the cons, how to prevent abuse, and how to make the experience better for children and parents. About the authors claim that homeschooling can easily hide abuse. Let’s discuss those things. But people need to stop with the dismissing, the invalidating of others and their stories. If they don’t, they run the risk of being the perfect example of those the author said have dug a trench to defend their ideologies to the detriment of everything else.

If You Weren’t Homeschooled, Don’t Make Homeschooling Your Punchline

February 11, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team8 Comments

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

I was dismayed the other day to read Amanda Marcotte’s piece “Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham: It’s not about science versus faith. It’s about public education.” I was dismayed for a number of reasons, but I want to focus on the reasons related to Marcotte quoting me in her piece.

First (and least importantly), Marcotte — while trying to make the case that fundamentalists are stupid — failed to spell my last name correctly. And my last name isn’t hard to spell. Second, she took the words I said in Kathryn Joyce’s amazing piece on homeschooling for the American Prospect completely out of context and haphazardly slapped them onto her piece as if they had something to do with her own point. Which they don’t.

Third, and most importantly, Marcotte’s whole piece drips with condescension towards those “stupid fundamentalists.” “They may not be the smartest bunch,” she says — qualifying that by saying they “aren’t that stupid.” Implying that, well, they’re still pretty damn stupid.

Yes, there are some truly fascinating individuals out there with some truly remarkable ideas. There is a wealth of material for stand-up comedians.

But to Marcotte as well as atheists and progressive Christians who like to rubberneck when observing fundamentalists:

Please don’t appropriate my life and my words and the lives and words of other homeschool alumni for your hit pieces against fundamentalism. We have zero interest in being your meme.

Homeschool alumni are not telling our stories for your entertainment.

We’re not telling our stories so that you can call our culture or parents stupid. If you do that, then honestly, you’re no better than our culture or parents.

We’re done with being pawns on the culture war chessboard. We’re not pawns for Christians and we’re not pawns for atheists. We are neither cautionary tales nor anti-Christian fodder.

We have spent our entire lives overcoming stereotypes. Our parents pushed us to the point of breaking because they wanted us to prove those stereotypes wrong; we forced ourselves into all sorts of predicaments to break free from those stereotypes. We are now shouting as loud as we can that some of those stereotypes have truth to them and they need to be taken seriously.

But here all the bystanders come, sweeping in and trotting out the stereotypes all over again, just to get a laugh or content for another asinine Buzzfeed article.

That’s not cool.

We are more than the stereotypes foisted upon us by our parents and by people who think our parents are “not the sharpest bunch.”

Many of the stories we share are painful, so painful, just to think about — even more painful to write. But we summon the courage to share our stories because we want to help each other as well as kids being raised just like we were. We want to reach out to them and show them a path away from fundamentalism. But when you stereotype and mock, you are making our job that much harder.

Pointing and laughing is not helping. Instead, it adds fuel for those who grow increasingly hostile and terrified of “the world” because people like you — the “evil atheists” and “liberal Christians” — say the things you do. In turn, the fundamentalists feel more pressure to isolate their children — from people like you, but also from people like us.

If you actually care about people like us, about the homeschool kids and alumni out there who have been impacted by fundamentalism, then help us. Tell our stories.

Treat our stories as more than anti-fundie click bait.

Otherwise, let us do our work in peace.

An Average Homeschooler: Part Eight, In Summation

January 15, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team4 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Samantha Field’s blog, Defeating the Dragons. Part Eight of this series was originally published on December 17, 2013. Also by Samantha on HA: “We Had To Be So Much More Amazing”, “The Supposed Myth of Teenaged Adolescence”, “(Not) An Open Letter To The Pearls”, “The Bikini and the Chocolate Cake”, and “Courting a Stranger.”

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“Common Myths about Homeschooling”

If you search for that term, you’re going to find a lot of articles and videos– some from homeschool kids, but most from homeschooling parents. Most of these articles tend to focus on emphasizing how homeschoolers aren’t strange weirdos, that not all homeschoolers are like that. These posts try to put as much distance between themselves and whatever they perceive to be a “fringe” group that they think make the rest of us look bad. Usually, what gets identified as the “fringe” group is the sort of homeschooling culture I’ve spent the last few days describing: conservative religious (they might say “fundamentalist”) homeschooling.

However, these groups are not as fringe as they’ve been portrayed, and the problem is, what’s “fringe” changes to suit whoever is talking. Kevin Swanson, probably one of the most extreme examples of conservative homeschooling, labeled the stories in the Homeschooling Apostate article “fringe“. Fringe, in the sense that many homeschooling advocates use it, doesn’t really mean “peripheral, not in the mainstream”; it means “a position that I think is more extreme than my own.”

So, Myth #1:

Conservative religious homeschooling has virtually no or very little impact on the modern homeschooling culture.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time beating this one into the ground, but I’d just like to point the people who believe this in the direction of the major state homeschooling conferences. Who is coming to these gatherings– still some of the largest and best-attended events in homeschooling culture? Vision Forum. Institute in Basic Life Principles (ATI). Many of the state conventions invite conservative or fundamentalist speakers (like CHEO inviting the Chapmans, although they have apparently withdrawn).

Also, what’s still the most popular curricula? A Beka and BJUPress. Calling those “textbooks” anything but opportunities for fundamentalist indoctrination would be incredibly generous.

Who’s running most of the homeschooling culture media? Homeschooling World is probably still the most significant magazine, and their latest issues includes items like “4 spooky educational trends you should know about” and bemoaning girls who turn from “princesses” into “cowgirls,” articles on how to get your pre-schooler to memorize Bible verses daily, and other titles include words like “ominous” in reference to Common Core.

The Homeschool Legal Defense Association is one of the most powerful educational lobbying groups in America, and the agenda that they are constantly pushing represents an extremely conservative Christian position — in politics especially. Many of the avenues they pursue have nothing to do with homeschooling at all and are instead focused on keeping the US from ratifying the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and making sure the Florida legislature stays homophobic.

Myth #2:

Homeschoolers don’t need to take socialization seriously; social interactions with siblings, churches, and co-ops is more than enough.

Or:

Homeschoolers have no reason to be concerned about socialization; you’re doing your children a favor by sheltering them from the influences of The World.

Hopefully I’ve talked about that particular one enough.

Myth #3:

Parents don’t need any form of higher education in order to be good teachers. You do not need training to teach your own children– concerns about high school level materials are misplaced. You can receive enough help to overcome any of the difficulties you might face teaching advanced subjects like chemistry and calculus.

Although many students successfully opt to self-teach or to learn together with an interested parent, the options for children extend well beyond the family. Some families choose to get together to form study groups around a particular subject and to hire a tutor. Some students opt for community college classes. Others barter help with one subject for help in another. Classes over the Internet or the television are increasingly available options for many families, as are videos and computer software. Learning options are excellent and varied so there is something to meet the needs of every family. [source]

Yes, there are resources for parents who do not feel comfortable teaching the more difficult high school subjects. Personally, I feel that most intelligent parents are capable of homeschooling their child through the elementary grades– however, just because they’re capable doesn’t mean they should, and I think there are parents who should not be teaching even the elementary grades.

When their children hit high school, there are all sorts of opportunities to help balance out what parents might lack– dual enrollment at a community college, distance learning, etc. You might be able to tell that there is a gigantic however coming, and you’d be right:

Although many students successfully opt to self-teach …

Even this article that focuses on “debunking” homeschooling myths admits that self-teaching is the standard. I cannot stress this enough: with extraordinarily few exceptions, fifteen-year-olds are not capable of teaching themselves high school subjects. Yes, many of us are amazing readers and our language skills supposedly test off the charts (when we’re tested, and all of those numbers are self-reported, so, grain of salt). However, that does not mean that we are capable of teaching ourselves things like literary analysis and how to looks for themes and symbols. We are especially incapable of teaching ourselves math and science, however, and that is continually presented as an “acceptable” option for homeschoolers– even though math and science is a consistent weakness in homeschooling.

This does not mean that I don’t think that no one should be homeschooled through high school. I think even high school can be done successfully, but the problem is you have to go pretty far out of your way, and many of the resources available put too much financial pressure on families that were already having a hard time buying textbooks. If you can’t, realistically, take advantage of things like paying to hire a tutor or sending your high schooler to college, then do something else.

Also, since this came up in a discussion a few posts back, giving your child a supposed “love of learning” is not a replacement for giving your child an education.

I find that particular argument to be extremely frustrating. Yes, I obviously love learning, and yes, that could be tied to my homeschooling background. However, and this is anecdotally speaking– I don’t think it’s really connected to being homeschooled. My parents helped give that to me, and they would have done that regardless of whether or not I was homeschooled. I have interacted with many homeschoolers in the last eight years who either hate learning or are so incredibly handicapped that even if they “love learning” they have none of the necessary tools to actually learn.

This idea is usually connected to what is hailed as “self-directed learning,” and unschooling advocates tend to talk about this a lot. Somehow, in these conversations, your child being “interested” in subjects and “pursuing” those interests is painted as being better than your child gaining a broad awareness and basic high school-level education. Speaking as a homeschool graduate who was permitted to pursue my own interests– I don’t use any of those skills today and I would really rather prefer being able to do algebra.

And… that about wraps up what I have to say. At least, until you all comment and get me thinking about something else I haven’t thought of yet! I’d just like to leave you with this: 20 Ways not to Respond to Homeschool Horror Stories.

End of series.

An Average Homeschooler: Part Four, Junior High

January 9, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team8 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Samantha Field’s blog, Defeating the Dragons. Part Four of this series was originally published on December 11, 2013. Also by Samantha on HA: “We Had To Be So Much More Amazing”, “The Supposed Myth of Teenaged Adolescence”, “(Not) An Open Letter To The Pearls”, “The Bikini and the Chocolate Cake”, and “Courting a Stranger.”

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Junior high was a difficult transitional phase.

My mother and I continued fighting over school– some weeks, on a daily basis. Part of this was due to the fact that I’ve always been ferociously independent. I’m what my husband calls a “dirty rotten little rule follower,” but part of what that means to me is that I like to be left alone. You can trust me to do what I’m supposed to be doing (most of the time), and I intensely dislike being monitored. That came to the forefront, and something my mother and I struggled with all through 7th grade was my insistence that I can do this by myself. She was also dealing with my younger sister hitting 4th grade, and this is when my homeschooling experience radically changed– and when, in my impression, many homeschoolers make the same transition.

Junior high or early high school is when homeschoolers start teaching themselves.

Granted, this is not always true, but in my experience, it almost always is. There are as many reasons for this as there are homeschoolers– some of us come from huge families, and it’s impossible for parents to give older children the attention they need. Sometimes it’s because of situations like mine, when we start feeling that we can handle it without our parents. I think my reaction is a natural part of child development– I was, after all, 13 in 7th grade. However, in homeschooling culture, rebellion is not permitted to exist, and the natural independence that children start exerting around 13 is conflated with rebellion. For many of us, our teenage years were incredibly stifling– although many of us didn’t recognize it at the time. I certainly didn’t. I was extraordinarily proud of how I wasn’t going to be “one ofthose teenagers” who “think they know better than their parents.”

The only way my “teenager” stage was allowed to come out was in this way– in taking over my education.

I started doing all of the work by myself and occasionally going to my mother with questions. This is enough of a pattern in homeschooling that some of the major homeschooling curricula distributors have created entire programs around it.

In 8th grade, we started using the A Beka Video school, although we chose not to use them for accreditation. It was insanely expensive and my parents could barely afford it, but it seemed to suit what I needed, and it had an incredibly good reputation among homeschoolers. At first it was amazing, and I ate the whole thing up. Toward the end of the year, though, the program was brutal and exhausting. The videos are not set up for homeschooling the way we were doing it. In order to really make the videos work, a teacher needed to be there with you– doing the reviews, checking homework, administering quizzes– or you’re just going to be sitting in front of a TV for six hours.

Eventually, I grew incredibly bored with the videos.

When I started fast-forwarding through all of the homework checks and the quiz grading on the tapes as well as the classroom work sessions, I realized that there was rarely anything on the tapes that was actually teaching me anything.

I stopped watching any of the videos for English and math, preferring to do the work on my own, and only watched the lecture portions of history and Bible (which, anyone remember Mr. McBride’s history classes? The day I met him I told him that I would save the best lessons and watch them during sleep overs. Seriously. We did that.). In short, by the spring quarter, the videos turned out to be a gigantic waste of money for us.

It also convinced me that I would absolutely hate school– that, along with taking the 7th grade standardized test, which I got extremely good marks on. My reading ability tested out of the park, and everything else was well above average. Those, combined, fed into what I believed about homeschooling compared to public schooling– homeschoolers are smarter, better educated, and more free-thinking than public school students. Public education can only result in stifling a child’s creativity, destroy their intellect beyond repair, and give them nothing more than socialist indoctrination.

So, we turned to Alpha Omega Switched on Schoolhouse for 9th grade. That turned out to be a disaster. The science for that year was physical science of some stripe, and they were trying to teach me how to convert units– except the units in the homework problems frequently weren’t measuring the same things– seriously, you can’t convert a unit of force into a unit of volume. I was so confused I asked my mother to look at it– she rolled her eyes and we stopped using the program in the middle of the year. My mother purchased other textbooks and I spent the rest of 9th grade playing catch-up.

Junior high, though, is mostly when I started understanding how much pressure I was under.

I realized that one of the reasons why homeschooling is considered superior to all other forms of education is that homeschoolers are “better-educated” and “smarter.” We test better. We’re better-read. We’re more articulate. We can socialize with adults better. We spend a lot of time de-bunking homeschooling “myths” and “stereotypes“. We write whole tongue-in-cheek pieces answering “common questions about homeschooling.” And, in junior high, I became one of them. Suddenly, it was my job to convince everyone that I was fantastic. I had to get better grades. I had to read more books.

Every single time I left the house I had to be ready to mount a defense for homeschooling.

All of that convinced me more than it convinced anyone else. It wasn’t that homeschooling and public education have different strengths, different weaknesses. Homeschooling had to be better in every conceivable way.

And I had to be an example of that.

To be continued.

On being a broom (and why I can’t just relax and enjoy shit)

January 8, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team2 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kierstyn King’s blog Bridging the Gap. It was originally published on December 31, 2013.

I realized why I have a hard time relaxing and taking actual vacations and even enjoying the holidays.

As a child all of the times that most children have “off” to play and relax and do their own thing, I never had. We never had summer break.

We took Nov-Jan off every year instead, and during those two months we never rested. During those two months, my mom made lists, my mom kept us running ragged either baking or crafting or “ministering” to other people, or doing deep seasonal cleaning. I remember, vividly, begging, all of us, begging to keep one day in two months free so we could just watch a movie and relax and not make cookies (or make cookies that we actually got to eat instead of for everyone and their aunt).

We had “parties” that I don’t ever remember being fun, because the entire time leading up we spent deep cleaning, and cooking, and setting up, and then when it was party time I had to help mom keep the party and the guests organized and on-schedule, and I had to make sure the dessert came out of the oven at the right time, and often was interrupted with some kind of care-taking need in the middle of a group activity.

My mom hated it when I planned my own (graduation) party and I told her she couldn’t do anything and that I had no plans, and we were just going to hangout, maybe watch a movie and order pizza. Even then she still tried to dictate what happened when. I was still pulled aside. It was still stressful.

All I remember my mom doing during breaks, and actually for the majority of my childhood, was sitting in her recliner: writing us lists of things to do, and getting upset when we didn’t do them all fast enough for her.

Her version of helping and “being productive” was sitting there, after giving us our lists, watching us do the things on the list and telling us what we were doing wrong or should do differently, or coming up with more things to do simultaneously.

There is no pleasing my mother.

We had “breaks” solely so we could do chores and things we couldn’t have done while we were “schooling”. Forget that we didn’t school on Fridays, because Fridays were intense cleaning days, you know, on top of normal cleaning all week.

Even my dad, my mom would write huge “honey-do” lists for on his one week off (you know, when we kids just wanted to play and have him rescue our toys from the packaging). My mom was a slave-driver who bred her own slaves.

And yes, I do feel like I and all my siblings are just slaves in my mothers eyes. She wouldn’t say it that way, but that’s exactly how they live(d) and practice(d), and people wonder why I have horrible self esteem issues.

I mean, I was told, outright, for years, that my purpose and job in life (while I was home) was to serve my “family” (i.e. mom). I felt, literally (I cannot emphasize this enough) like I was just a broom with arms, legs, and a heartbeat. I remember standing in the kitchen one day, fighting back tears, devastated as I was doing two things at once, that I didn’t have 8 arms, because I could. not. keep. my. mother. happy. I could not physically clean, and cook, and hold the baby, and do the laundry all at the same time. I was human, I ONLY HAD TWO ARMS, and yet, there was my mom, in her chair in the next room, berating and harassing me because while I was cleaning the dishes and cooking and had a toddler draped around my leg, I hadn’t yet started the laundry, or brought her snack.

If I was “caught” doing anything that loosely resembled “relaxing ” that was immediately rectified with other tasks (unless it was bedtime, or the like 90 minutes of “free time” I had that rapidly shrank). I feel horribly guilty if I am not doing some kind of mundane work when I could be, because I was never allowed to breathe.

I wasn’t a person until I ran away.

Before that, I was nothing more than a breathing, walking, broom.