Home schooling was worth the blood sweat and tears! (or Anything is Achievable)

“There is no one way to raise our children, but a path that we must find.”  Barbara Coloroso

When we made the decision for my son Kinmond to leave formal schooling halfway through grade 11 and continue through home schooling, we both knew that it would be a tremendous challenge, but I don’t think anything could have prepared us for the discipline, work and dedication it would require.  Kinmond had a tremendous amount of work to catch up, and I continued to run my company. 

Despite the sacrifices, it was an amazing experience.  I got to spend a tremendous amount of time with my son and got to know him as the incredible young man he has become.

All the effort proved worth it when we learned yesterday that he had passed Matric.  He is now registered for a Certificate in Advanced Music Production and plans to follow this with Entertainment Management.

The lessons I have learned over the last year and a half are things that can never be taught.  I’ve come to truly believe that anything is achievable.

I’m looking forward to 2010 and all the new challenges and projects awaiting me, and to watching my son go from strength to strength on the journey he is about to embark upon.

Why Tactile Soul?

‘There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.’ ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Besides the fact that a lot of the other titles I had in mind weren’t available…

I chose Tactile Soul as the title of my blog because I believe that we need to touch (and be touched) with our soul’s.  That may sound like a contradiction, tactile meaning ‘capable of being perceived by the sense of touch’, and the sense of touch being thought of as physical or tangible.  And yet, we are touched by things emotionally and spiritually all the time.

This blog is really about reconnecting to our selves, and in order to know who you really are you need to open yourself and allow yourself to be touched more than superficially.

We need to be present in each and every moment, live simply and keep centered.   Remember, it’s about the journey.

Living in the now!

I’ve spent the last few weeks, as I’m sure you all have, reflecting on the last year. 2009 was a particularly rough one, for myself and my family that is. As I was pondering all the trials and tribulations I realised – and this was by no means a new realisation, just one that tends to be pushed aside in the everyday hustle and bustle – that we spend most of our lives anticipating the future. Tomorrow this will happen and by tomorrow we’re onto what will be happening next week and then next month. We spend so much time anticipating how things will be better tomorrow, how we’ll begin the new diet, exercise programme, project tomorrow (or on Monday…), sometimes we completely miss what’s going on today.

We put happiness on hold, thinking that the next best thing is just around the corner. I’m horrified to see that as my children get older, they are beginning to fall into the same habit.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to look forward, to have goals to work towards, but remember, as some wise person once said , it’s about the journey, not the destination. Think about it, if you’re waiting for happiness to “happen” once you reach a particular goal, finding a new job, losing weight, getting out of debt, what about the time it takes to achieve that goal? Does happiness have to be put on hold? Ninety percent of our time is spent striving to achieve something, and if you are in the mindset of “When that happens I’ll be happy…” you will only be happy for 10% of the time.

Besides, once you reach a particular destination, you’ll be looking forward to the next one. – I’ve lost 5kg, now I need to buy some great clothes….

When does happiness actually “happen”?

Live in the now. Appreciate every moment, every experience, every step of this journey that you’re on.

As for me, I have many goals for 2010, but I have determined to slow down and smell the roses along the way. For today, I am happy that my family is together and I had breakfast with my beautiful daughter this morning, I’ll be spending time this evening with my neighbours who’ve been away for a couple of weeks, I have already lost 3kg towards my goal and my i-pod is synchronising my latest music downloads!

What are you happy about, right here, right now?

Helplessness in the face of my children’s pain.

Darwin said that it isn’t the strongest or the most intelligent that survive, but the ones most responsive to change.

I’ve always been responsive to change, thrived on it in fact. There’s a nomad somewhere inside me who loves the idea of constant flux.

And yet….

This last year has not been an easy one. There have been many changes and many areas over which I have not had control. Growth comes with pain, and while, I know that and have learned that lesson and am able to sit with my own pain, it is the pain of my children that is so hard for me. Because I am unable to ease it, I am unable to take it from them and ‘make it all better’.

What I am feeling isn’t something that is easily passed from heart to page. It’s a sadness that is impossible to describe. Every road is winding, every window is cracked, and the distance between a mother and a child continues to grow ever wider. A distance not measured by centimetres, inches, feet or miles, it is the distance between a child’s pain and a mother’s inability to erase it, prevent it, circumvent it.

My heart and my head sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. I know that this will pass, and that there is no growth without pain, but how do I share my truth? How do I share my self in the truest, barest of hues.

My truth, or any truth for that matter, is not beautiful. It is broken, blistered, tainted, and yet it is the only thing I have to offer. It can be dangerous and yet, my darkest moments have shown me who I truly am. Have allowed me to look in the mirror and accept my darkest faces.

Witnessing my children’s journeys to self-discovery slices a dagger through my heart, bringing the trepidation and fear and growing sense of horror that engulfed me as I embarked on my journey of escalating memories and cerebral turmoil. Thoughts whipped through my head, clashing together in a mental cacophony of voices. At times they melded together to form concepts I still struggle to put into words. My thoughts were my avatars representing me more justly than I represented myself.

And yet, here I am, pretty much whole, content with the person I have become, yet feeling more insecure than ever in the role that has for the better part of 18 years defined me. As my children reach inevitably towards the adults that they are struggling to become, I cling desperately to the children that they were/are. Trying so hard to give them my truth, because in the face of the fact that I am unable to absorb their pain, my truth is all I have to offer. (the love goes without saying)

For my son on his 18th birthday…

Dear Kinmond,

Today is your 18^th birthday.  It’s such a cliché to say that I can hardly believe it and that time has gone by so quickly, but it’s the truth.

I feel tremendous ambivalence on this day, and it is not just the poignancy of a parent watching the maturation of a child and the accelerating passage of time and disbelieving that it could happen so quickly.  How could you get to be so tall, so independent, so capable, so complex, so funny, so far away?  How could eighteen years have elapsed since that astonishing, magical moment that our eyes locked and I saw all that you had ever been and all that you were to become.  You were disconcertingly serious, unconditionally present and absolutely real, and I have loved you completely ever since.

Like any first child, you were the culmination of such vast trepidations and expectations, the repository of such ineffable hope, the focus of so much concern and love.  What I’m feeling as I anticipate your transition to adulthood (whatever that might mean!) is beyond my ability to express with words.  In thinking about how well or how badly your father and I have prepared you for the world, I find that I am completely unprepared for how much more perilous and awful it feels to send you into the unknown.  There are so many more things I want to teach you, to tell you, to show you.

You are still so young and you’re at a wonderful stage of life, with so many wonderful stages of life still to come, but they are not without their costs and perils.  I want you to know that no matter what situation life may bring you, I will be there to see you through, if not in person, then in your heart.

There are, and will be more, days that you don’t have the right answers, or any answers at all.  You will find cruelty and suffering in your journey through life … but don’t let that close you to new things. Don’t retreat from life, don’t hide or wall yourself off. Be open to new things, new experiences and to new people.  If you close your heart to new people, you’ll avoid pain … but you will also lose out on experiencing some incredible people, who will be there during the toughest times of your life and create some of the best times of your life.

Always take responsibility for your actions, good and bad.  If you can’t change something, change the way you think about it.  You will fail many times but if you allow that to stop you from trying, you will miss out on the amazing feeling of success once you reach new heights with your accomplishments. Failure is a stepping stone to success. You are growing stronger in wisdom with each passing year. Don’t ever use CAN’T as an excuse, ALWAYS TRY.  Remember a mistake is not a failure unless you let it keep you down.

You will meet many people who will try to outdo you.  Remember, life isn’t a competition. It’s a journey. If you spend that journey always trying to impress others, to outdo others, you’re wasting your journey. Instead, learn to enjoy the journey. Make it a journey of happiness, of constant learning, of continual improvement and above all, of love.

Remember to be kind to others even when you feel they might not deserve it.  Let others see the real you from the inside. It’s ok to show your true feeling.  Share your amazing spirit with others.

Most of all, love yourself. While others may criticize you, learn not to be so hard on yourself, to think that you’re anything less than the wonderful, sensitive, funny, strong, loyal, multifaceted, intuitive young man that I am so profoundly proud to call my son.

Finally, know that I love you and always will. You are starting out on a weird, scary, daunting, but ultimately incredibly wonderful journey, and I will be there for you when I can.

With all my love

mom