Courage and Survival Mode

Title: Courage and Survival Mode

Episode Description:

In this episode of Conscious Family Project, we're diving deep into the realities of mothering and homeschooling in the face of heavy and hard challenges and digging into how to navigate through those challenges while keeping true to the intentions that you have for your family. 

🌱 Key Takeaways:

• The importance of acknowledging and honoring the challenges we encounter as moms.
• Practical strategies for healing and nurturing yourself, both mentally and emotionally.
• The journey to resetting your nervous system and finding resilience.
• The power of reaching out for support and modeling that for our children.
• The significance of creating intentional paths rather than forcing our way through life's challenges.

I hope that this episode reminds you that you are not alone in your journey as a mom and that it's okay to seek help and healing. You were chosen to be your children's parent for a reason, and there's a unique purpose in your path. 

Tune in to Conscious Family Project and find inspiration, healing, and a sense of community to support you on your homeschooling journey.

🎧 Listen now, you've got this . 💪❤️

I'd love to connect with you...
https://consciousfamilyproject.com/
@conscious_family_project

Transcript

It's been a while since I have been consistent with you guys and I am excited to be back, but I wanted to talk a little bit about why I wasn't consistent this past year. I have coached a lot of you. I have worked and listened to a lot of you and where you're at and what's happening in your life.

And I think that Well, I'm going to be really vulnerable here and share kind of what's happened and how I'm working through it, because I know that a lot of you are walking through really similar things. And I hope that this will be helpful and encouraging to you today. So this last year was the, one of the most challenging years of my entire life.

And we've had some doozies. So we've had some doozies even just in our parenting journey we've had. We've had some tough years. But this past year was by far one of the heaviest that we've walked through so far. And part of it, you know, it pushed me physically, it pushed me mentally and emotionally.

I grew a massive business really, really quickly. Which was a blessing, a blessing to the community that I served there and a blessing to a lot of people but it was fast, it was fast, and it was a lot and doing that while homeschooling and running a home and doing all of the other things was heavy, it was a lot of stuff.

I was dealing with bullies, which you still, I can't believe that we still deal with bullies as adults. Such an intense experience to walk through, especially with children and people bringing children into things. It's just, it was, it was a lot. It was a lot. I had a cancer scare this last year.

My mom had melanoma that went to stage 3 when I was a kid. And now I've got a big nasty scar on my back. But that's okay. It's cool, right? It's interesting stuff. Scars make, make up what the life is that we've walked through. And overall just my attention was so divided. And so we had some family health issues as well.

There was. Oh my goodness, just a lot. We walked through a lot. And with all of that, my attention was extremely divided. I was just at max capacity every single day. And my attention being divided and my... My capacity being so maxed out my children really felt that and that, I think that's the part that hits me the hardest.

We were in survival mode for a really, really long time and I think we're still feeling the effects of that with my kids and we probably will be for a while as we heal and we get things back on track. The reason I'm sharing this though today. Is not for pity or, you know, any of that kind of thing.

I'm sharing this because I know from speaking to you from hearing your stories, hearing your concerns, hearing what you're carrying, I know that I'm not on my own. I know that so many of you are, are holding while mothering, while homeschooling while considering to homeschool. And it can feel so impossible.

It can feel so impossible to go against the culture to take on these big, important and beautiful things when the world is so big and it's so heavy. And there's so much going on so I am sharing this because I'm coming out on the other side now. I've learned a lot and I want to share that with you and hopefully, hopefully help you see what's on the other side and help you walk through if you're carrying a heavy load right now too.

It was kind of like a snowball effect, right? And I think this happens a lot of the time to all of us where, you know, it was like little things and they would get bigger and bigger. And each of those little things would shake my compass a little bit, right? They kind of it was the slow process of just more, a little more, a little more, a little more.

And as the little more, little more kept piling up. It became this just massive snowball, and it shook my compass and where we were going and what my intentions were for my family. It siphoned off a lot of my courage and my trust and faith in myself. And it really diluted our mission as a family.

family and my personal mission and what I do and what I know I'm called to do. There was just so much happening. It was so much to process and it was going so fast. And it just felt like there were hits over and over and over again. And I just, I completely lost faith in myself and my mission for myself and for my family.

And it was exhausting. It's exhausting. And I know I'm not alone. I know that a lot of you are walking through this. Maybe you're trying to decide whether or not you're homeschool, you're going to homeschool and you're thinking about just how heavy life can be sometimes. Maybe the reason you're being called or moving to homeschool is because things are so heavy.

Maybe you've been homeschooling and you're walking through some tough stuff right now. And you're in that survival mode. It can be a lot. And I I just, I, the reason I'm sharing this because you're not by yourself, you're not alone. This happens, this is a part of life and it's a part of life, whether you choose this lifestyle or another one.

But there's a way through. There's grace. There are opportunities to grow and to expand. And to become an even better version of yourself for, for yourself and for your children. It's all there for you. So, I do, I, you know, another thing I hear so often is families. Who are like, well, I'm not qualified to homeschool.

I don't have the skills to homeschool. I don't have the tools, the resources to homeschool. And they feel just in general, inadequate in taking this on. And I think a lot of that comes from our conditioning, from just cultural conditioning, from institution schooling, from a whole lot of things. And so when this survival mode happened, when all these balls were like coming at me and some of them were.

Breaking my heart absolutely breaking my heart so so hard Everything I've done I've done with the purpose and the intention of serving and When that gets met with other things the pain is so real. But we That inadequacy starts to seep in, even though I know I've done the work, I've worked through that.

I know I can homeschool my kids. I know I can help others homeschool their kids. Done it successfully for a very long time. But these things start to strip away those pieces and just demonstrate and show how much there is still to heal and grow. And so even I who have been doing this for a very long time started to feel inadequate myself.

in homeschooling, questioning whether or not I could actually do this if I was crazy, if I was doing the right thing for my kids. Because again, it's that snowball effect, right? It's the little things and they start to wind up. And as they get bigger and bigger, it taps into all of the things that we revert back to, right?

The things that we're afraid of, the things we're worried about the things we've been conditioned to believe they start to become bigger and bigger, whether or not they're true. They just start to become bigger because you're in this survival mode and your capacity for thinking through things logically for staying connected to your mission and who you are and what your goal is it just starts to get sloughed off over and over again.

And. It was like, and it's like the the world was putting all these roadblocks up and every roadblock made the mission that we have less and less clear. It was like it was getting foggier and foggier. And then all of those insecurities start piling up. And so this is not something that Any of us are immune to everybody has these moments.

Everybody does. Every single family homeschooling, not homeschooling, whatever it is. Every single family has times where they are in survival mode for whatever reason, because life is big and life is full and things happen. So this is something that. We all walk through at times and it's okay. It's okay to have times where things aren't exactly how you pictured them or the way you wanted them to be.

It's okay to have moments where you're Contemplating and and trying to figure out if you are on the right path but the thing is we can't let these things these life moments these things that Open those doors to insecurity. Open those doors to past conditioning to take over what we know deep in our core that we're called to.

So what do you do? Right? What do you do? Because a lot of times this stuff happens just like that. We were talking about the little, little things that happen slowly over time. You don't even realize it's starting to go on until you get to the point where it's a big deal And you're going oh my goodness, like things feel like they're blowing up I feel like i'm ruining my kids like I don't even know what's going on.

They get so big And then what do you do? What do you do? Do you listen to that voice? Do you Do you go start calling the local schools and seeing what's happening? What do you do? And that's what I want to spend most of our time on today is What do we do when this happens? Because it happens. It will always happen.

It just will. We all have insecurities. We all have past conditioning and we all are dealing with human beings, which means there's life. There's life going on. There's things happening all the time. So what do we do? I'm a huge proponent of having a family mission statement and being really, really clear on what it is that you are called to with your family and what the goal is and what your intention is with homeschooling so that you can be really intentional with how you're using this, what ultimately is really limited time with our children.

I even teach about this in my courses and the family mission statement things. If you need help with that, let me know. But I I really, I really encourage every family to do that because eventually your compass is going to get shaken and you've got to go back to that. Now, even though I teach it, even though we have our mission statement, we know our mission statement, we know what matters most to our family.

All of these things were going so fast and they were so big. We, it just got fuzzier and fuzzier. And so when it finally kind of. Hit me just how far off track we had gotten And how I really don't have another word for it other than to say heartbroken just heartbroken and exhausted. I was It wasn't until we had gotten to like a place that was so far off track when it finally hit me now in the future Things I'm implementing.

I do like quarterly planning with my business. I do weekly planning for our homeschool I'm now implementing just a little bit of kind of a journal check in with myself to make sure that I'm taking care of myself so that I can keep an eye on this for the future. Because even though I know better even though I teach families and I coach people through these things I'm a human and human beings are messy and I, Let the busyness of life get me further off track than than I would have.

I'm also reaching out more to my community, my friends, my coaches to have them help me stay accountable to being on track with what I know my mission is. So that's in the future though. This wasn't how I could get out of it, because in the moment I was in it, I was so in it, and it was so heavy, and every day felt so heavy and so exhausting, and I just felt like I was chasing things, and was never catching up which is so hard, and I know so many of you have felt this before so the first thing I did that actually made a difference in

Finding the little things and delighting in them. I think we have a tendency, not think, I know we have a tendency, there's a lot of science behind this, that we have this tendency to live in the gap over the gain. There is a wonderful book called Gap. Gap versus gain, something, I'll put it in the show notes.

But we're always looking for the thing that's missing, right? Like the missing piece between here and what's next. And our, our brains, a lot of us are conditioned to look at that gap. What's missing? What's not happening? What haven't I done? Yes, we did a read aloud, we cuddled on the couch, we had a good time, but we never got to math.

We didn't do this, right? We're always looking at that gap. Well, if you live in the gap, it just drags you deeper and deeper into that hole. And when you're deeper and deeper into that hole, the light, the truth, the mission, the vision gets so far away. It's impossible to see. So the first thing that I had to do was go, okay, I know better.

I know this. I'm going to delight in the things we are doing and the gains, the gains we're having every day. And sometimes that was as small as You know, I, I, I, there's a quote and I can't remember who said it, but they were saying that the, one of the best things parents can do is light up when their children come into the room or when they see their children.

Because when you do that, when you give them their attention, you show that you're excited to see them. It shows them that they have value. They have worth, they're loved, they're connected. And when things get so busy and things get so heavy, that is one of the first things to go. Even though we do delight in our children, love our children, want them to feel seen, heard, and cared for.

It requires us to step out of ourselves in those moments frequently, especially if you homeschool you're with your kids a lot and so that's where I started in the morning. I didn't even try it all day long I just started in the mornings and I made sure to Delight in my children first thing in the morning the first time I saw them.

So I Stopped whatever I was doing Our littlest one still ends up in our bed before the before we start our day He's kind of back and forth which it is what it is. We're okay with it But he's always in in my bed when he's waking up And so I just started playing with him and talking to him and instead of rushing to the next thing cuddling with him, telling silly stories singing little songs.

This is a very short, it was a minute. But just trying to be intentional with us smiling and connecting first thing in the morning and then I made sure to do that with my other kids when I first saw them. I just, first thing it was good morning and a hug and I love you. And I'm so excited for the day with you.

Seconds. It took seconds. But just doing that one little thing helped to remind me and help me to sleep. See the delight I can have in my life in my children. The next thing I did was when my husband came home I did the same thing when he would come home at the end of the day I made sure I put things down and just delighted in him and just be like And yes, this was for them, but this was a lot for me to just pause and just recognize like Oh my goodness, I have these people, these beautiful people that I am so grateful to be the mother of, to be the wife of, that I just love so much.

And this was seconds, guys, it was seconds, but it just helped me to connect again and remember why I'm doing everything I'm doing and to have those little Spots of joy, those little joy bubbles. If you've taken my life giving rhythms course, I talk about joy bubbles all the time, having joy bubbles built into your day, helped build connection, and that was where I could start and that's where I started so simple and it's grown so much from there, just finding those little moments of connection and delighting in my children.

I had to, and my husband, I had to just switch my brain because the gap had gotten so big and heavy and it had to, I had to let it be. If you're in a space right now where you are deciding to homeschool and you are in such a gap in a relationship with your children, in their experience with education, and you're looking to switch and get started.

Oh, start little, start small, start in delight, little moments of delight and build from there. It really, you guys, it really is that small. There's a, there's a video I saw from a national park in California where they have three boulders sitting on the side of the hill and they have a pipe running over these boulders and the pipe is dripping the same amount of water just to small little drip on each of the boulders.

The difference is the first boulder has been dripping for 20 years, the second for 15, and the last for 10. That one for 20 years, this big boulder, they have pictures of what it looked like before, is now pebbles. The one that's 15 years has a huge divot right down the middle. I mean, it's about to just split into.

And the one that's been going for 10 years has a crevice that you can see how much of a change that little drip has made. And we have to we have to have faith in that drip. It's for us and it's for them. So if you are in the gap big time right now, It's okay. But start small. Don't do a radical change.

It's exhausting to go radical. First, you have to shift. You have to shift and start finding these pockets so you can make way for those radical changes. So that was the first thing. Start finding the light and connection in the little things. Makes a huge difference. The second one is doing a dump, a brain dump, a dump of all the things.

We usually as a family do this at the beginning of every year. So New Year's you know, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, that first week, somewhere in there. We always, as a family, come together. We go through my husband and my phone. We look at all of the pictures from the past year because you forget.

You forget how much you've done and accomplished. But we go through and we just list everything that we did that year. By, by month. We go, you know, oh, we did, we went to the zoo. We baked this. We had this fun meal. We saw these friends. And we go through. I decided to stop and do that sooner than I normally do.

And we did it together, and we looked at what they had done academically, what we had done as a family, what we'd done in our home, like and we just listed it all out, and because of the way we did it, we're only looking at the gain, only the gain, and while I knew there was so much that I could have done so much I wanted to do It didn't even matter because i'm looking at okay, but things did happen.

We did grow. We did work on this. We did make this progress. We did enjoy this day and it just doesn't always feel like that's happening when it's happening. So do a dump and figure out where you're at. If you're shifting gears in your homeschool because what you're doing is not working, that's great.

Dump. What did work? What, what worked? What did you enjoy? What were the moments that worked for you guys? Even if the list is small, it's there, it's there. You can, you can. See the goodness. It doesn't mean we're not going to change things, but it does help pave It's just like it's just like mowing the grass on the on the trail so that you can move forward Because oh my goodness when you're in the weeds There isn't it's like you step in every direction and hit resistance So you have to mow the way you got to get some space so that you can actually take a step forward and finding what Can be delighted in what was useful what?

Did serve can kind of just help clear that path and give you some space and some some breathing room, right? Just like, whoo, so you can do it. So, we did a brain dump and we looked at what we did accomplish and what we did enjoy together. The third one and I am type A, like, whoo! Majorly type A.

It's funny, not in, I'm kind of like, a little messy. I'm not always put together, but when it comes to how I do life, how I do relationships, how I get things done, the amount of things I do, I am like, type A achiever.

But and even if you're not that way, we all, this, this third step makes a big difference, but you've got to have some grace and forgiveness for yourself and for the situation and for anything else that came up that made you feel so heavy. It's hard. It's really hard to do. And that's okay. It's okay that it's hard to do, but we have to again, this is part of mowing that path so that we can move forward.

We have to acknowledge that we did the best with what we had at the time and just the fact that we have become conscious and aware. That things aren't where we want them or in a place where our children are served well, where we are served well, where our families as a whole are served well. Just the fact that we've become conscious to it means that we are already making the change.

We are already growing. We are already breaking chains. Cutting off generational trauma like we are doing that by being conscious and aware of it. So just that, if you cannot find grace for yourself in any other way, although I really hope and pray that you can, but if you are struggling to do that, You can have grace and forgiveness for yourself because right now, this moment, you have become aware, you are conscious of what's happening and you are looking for a way to change it.

You are looking for a way to reconnect, a way to shift your family. And that is something that is so valuable, so beautiful, so incredible, and so desperately needed in this world. It's a, it's a lot to carry, but it's... So needed. And you can have grace and forgiveness and just gratitude for yourself that you've actually made that connection, that you have become conscious of the concern and you are working to make a change.

It's not even about, because I think a lot of us will go, but we haven't made the change yet, but now we have to repair all of this and this and this and this, that's the gap that's living in the gap. And yes, I get it. We all are wired that way, but living in the gap makes no room. No room at all for us to move forward and towards the game.

You can't do it. So we have to release this and go, okay, I may not be able to completely forgive myself for having yelled at my child the other day or just dropping math for this amount of time or whatever the thing is that you're carrying. I'm trying to think. I'm like, there's so many things that it could be.

We're all different. We're all walking a different path, but you may not be able to do that specific thing, but you can have grace and gratitude and forgiveness for yourself because right now you are shifting. All right. The fourth one a lot of times when, what I'm learning and what I've seen in coaching families and in really even just being a friend to moms who are walking through this part of life right now is that these situations come up and they get so heavy, and so challenging, and so Difficult to see through, because they are a reflection of the fact that we have a lot of healing to do, or we have healing to do in that area.

I have always said, if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you know I have always said that there is no bigger magnifying glass for yourself than parenthood, except Homeschooling, which then takes that magnifying glass and makes it one of those like mega mirrors that are lighted.

You know those horrible ones that make you see every single pore. Homeschooling does that. So then we've got all of this stuff and don't be afraid of that. Don't be afraid of that because that's how we change things. That's how we heal. That's how we grow and that's how we make this next generation of humans.

Whoa. Incredible, right? So this next thing is you have to take some time and figure out what is it? What kind of healing is it that you need? What's some of the work that you need to be doing so that when life starts to hit you like a tsunami again? Hopefully not but if things happen you have more tools more capacity.

To Keep what matters close and insight and stay as healthy as you can and be present with the people you love as much as you can. And that is all possible. It is all possible. Even in the craziest of circumstances, it is possible. That is available to you, but it may require, and for most of us, it requires some Focused and intentional healing and working through of stuff that we've carried around for a long time Now this can look like therapy.

It can look like journaling. It can look like meditation. It can look like prayer. It can look like joining a group of other people who are trying to do the same thing it can look like reading, books about What you're podcasts. There's so many ways It just like homeschooling. There's a million and a half.

Actually. No, there's an infinite what is Infinite number of ways to homeschool. There are an infinite number of ways to heal But again, you've got the first most important spot is the conscious being conscious of it being aware that there's something there And then finding what's going to serve you to start working on that healing and growth.

We have to do it. We have to do it. A lot of us don't want to do it. And I think even those of us who want to do it don't want to do it, right? It's not easy. It's not easy work. But the battles that we don't fight, the healing we don't do, becomes the healing that our kids have to do. I heard someone say something similar to that.

And I need to go back and find her name, but it hit me so hard. It hit me so square in the chest because it's so true. It is absolutely true. And you know, the benefits from doing that work hit us too. We get a lot of the benefit, but if you're struggling to do it for yourself which so many moms are struggling to do things for themselves, Do it for your children and the fact that if you don't Look at this healing and start working on this healing then you Are going your your your children are going to have to do this healing or their children are going to have to do this healing It is something it's it's just a fact it just moves through our families There's fascinating research on this that is coming out.

We're learning more and more and this is not to Remember we already did grace and forgiveness. So this is not piling on and being like, oh I have to I'm so horrible That's not what we're doing here. We are acknowledging that we're human beings who have experienced life who and we may not respond the way we want to, or have the capacity to care for ourselves the way we want to because of other things.

The, the hope here and the cool part here is that it is possible to do that healing. It is possible to reset your nervous system. It is possible to expand your capacity to stay present and be able to experience delight even in the face of challenges. It is all possible it starts with being aware of it and then looking for modalities that help us as who we are To heal so healing has to be a part of your process and then the last one once you once you have a plan in place for healing and this was a this one for me reaching out for help is something that I have to keep working on it's a place where I have to keep growing.

I definitely have a I mean, even my friends will tell you they'll know, I'll know more about them than they will me, and it's not their, it's not because of them. It is because of me. It is because I don't do that. Now, I don't want that for my children. I don't want them carrying things 100 percent on their own, especially when they don't have to.

And I can tell them that all I want, and I can give them examples and scenarios and talk through it with them. But if I'm not modeling it, it will never become a part of them at a cellular level. So I am going to work on that. I am changing that. I am choosing to heal and work through that. And once you've made that choice and once you've found some resources to help you start on your healing journey then, then you can reassess and restart.

And I think It's really important to go through these steps and take a minute and mow that grass. Get those weeds out of the way before you make a plan. That is not my go to. It's not a lot of our go to. We are in the weeds and there's stuff everywhere and we just... Pushing it down, right? We're like get it down.

I'm gonna go. This is the way it's supposed to be We're gonna download the best plan ever. We're gonna get this new curriculum We're gonna completely declutter the house and everyone is gonna be on a specific plan and we're gonna do this And you do this from a place of just Force like, because it is terrifying, it's terrifying and exhausting to be in the weeds and not be able to see around you and have no idea where to go.

And knowing there's something on the other side, knowing there's something better, knowing that mission that's deep down inside of you is over there. It's there, you know it, and you get into this very frantic place, trying to push all of these things down. But you just end up getting hurt and possibly going in the wrong direction.

And I mean, actually think about that. If you were surrounded by weeds, if you were out... Got lost on a hike and you end up in a place where you're surrounded by weeds and you cannot see around yourself and you just start frantically Pushing and fighting against it. You could end up completely turned around You don't know what's in those those weeds as you're just shoving and pushing and forcing your way through So you could get cut you could get bitten you could all kinds of things can happen But if you take a time to sit And process look through see if you can see a path through start to lay them down fold them down.

Have you ever seen? I'm not gonna remember. I want to say it's ancient Egyptians, but they would fold down Maybe it's not, maybe it's all farmers. You guys will live in California. I'm not, I'm trying to get attached to the land, but it's not my natural state. So but you, they fold the grasses down and make paths over the top and then they would thresh them, I think is how that works.

But if you take the time to fold the grasses down to look around to have that Deep breath where you're in your logical brain and not your lizard brain. Then you can make sure you're going in the right direction. So you gotta go through the process. You have to take some time and do this. Then the lessons you've learned, the things you've figured out, the clarity that comes back into place with your mission and your goal and where you're supposed to be all becomes clear.

Then you can restart. Then you can start taking steps forward in the direction you want to go. And, and adjust things for the better. And it feels so good and so refreshing and it will be different and it will be more longer, like, it will be longer lasting because you did it from this more regulated place.

So, it's a lot. It's okay. And the big thing that I want to remind you of is that you were chosen to be these children's parent. You were chosen to do this. That was not a mistake. That was not a mistake. Never. You and everything that you are, everything that you may feel that you are not, all of it was chosen for these children for this time, for this part of life and the world.

The desires that are on your heart, the desire to homeschool, to live life differently, to not go with the grain, but go completely against it, are in your heart for a reason. You're called to that for a reason. There is a purpose, there is a value, and you can do it because it would not be pressed on your heart if you couldn't.

But it doesn't mean that it needs to be a battle. It doesn't mean that you need to fight through it. It doesn't mean that Do you need to exist in survival mode for extended periods of time? It doesn't mean any of that. That is not when we allow that to get conflated with the path we've chosen that we feel we've been called to and we mix them together and we go, okay, this is what homeschool life is, this is what gentle parenting life is, this is what, whatever it is, that, that we conflate those two things together.

We're letting stuff we're letting things guide us instead of intentionally guiding ourselves and guiding our family and you can You can intentionally guide your family. You can make intentional choices for yourself You can design the life that you have been called to for you and your children and your family You can do that.

You have been called to it. You're here right now Listening to me because you know, you know that what your family is meant for is different. It's bigger. It's it's intentional. It's powerful. It is world changing. You know that, and you can do that, and even when those balls are just flying non stop, you can find the way through. You can learn from it. You can model something different. I sometimes...

Told you I was getting vulnerable this time guys. I'll tell a story and she may be listening to this So she'll know what I'm talking about. But I went to our first day of nature group for this year and I had had to run to work in the morning. My husband had to take the morning off We were frantic.

Our fridge has been broken. We didn't have like snacks and food. It was just oh such a day But this group means so much especially to my daughter her people are there and you know what it's like when your kids find their people. Right. And so we make it happen. And I love all of the people who are part of this group and I'm so grateful for it.

But still working on coming out of the survival mode. And sometimes it just all feels like too much, but I knew it was what made sense. It was right. And it worked in any, everything. So we're at nature group and my kids are playing in the Creek. Creating species of their own like they were having a blast and this mama comes up to me and she had tears in her Eyes, and I'm like, oh my goodness.

I don't even know you what's happening. Like I'm like, did I do something? Is your child? Okay And she shared with me that she had started following me years ago when her child was two my videos and had started

homeschooling because of well she attributed it to

It is never lost on me how honored I am that you are listening, that I have your ear, that I have your attention, but even more so that I have been called to share what you are looking to hear and need to hear so that you can do what you are called to. Every single one of you makes me so incredibly proud to be a mother in this time, in this day, in this age, with everything that is going on in the world, walking alongside you those of you who are carrying heavy things, those of you who are getting started, you are all so incredibly brave and absolutely beautiful and just amazing.

incredible mothers. And I am so honored and I, you should be so proud of what you have done just by being here, by being aware, by making different choices for your family or looking to make different choices for your family.

Children are definitely the hope for our future, but only if they have mothers like you. Now, this is the first episode of our new season, and I am so excited for all the things that are coming. I have spoken with some really incredible homeschooling moms that I'll be sharing with you this year. Lots of really cool things coming for you to serve you and support you.

And I promise I won't be getting this, this vulnerable in every episode. But I just want you to know that what you're doing is wonderful. Absolutely wonderful, and so brave, and so needed, and I am so excited that my children are growing up in a world where the people that they will work alongside, the people they will grow, the people they will marry and build families with are being raised by women like you.

Alright, I'll see you soon.