This one is tough.  Mental health.  What does that mean exactly?

Good mental health doesn't mean that you don't have bad days.  It doesn't mean you are the perfect mother.  It doesn't mean even than you are medication free. Good mental health starts with being a proactive participant in your own care.  It means knowing when to get help.  It means allowing yourself to feel pain.  It also means knowing how to not throw poo.  Let's talk about poo.  If you are new to our work then you might be pretty grossed out - stick with me.  Poo is gross.  If it gets on you then you can't wait to get it off.  It stinks.  It stains. It is the last thing that we want on us, our shoes, our clothes... what about our loved ones?  We don't like them to have poo on them either. Poo can come in many forms.  I am talking about emotional poo.  Emotional poo is the stuff that comes out when we aren't taking good mental care of...

Now many people want to know what on earth God has to do with their child and their rhythm and their ability to homeschool. Everything. We are living in a time when reliance on the Spirit is seen as weakness and we are sold the lie that science has it all. Steiner could feel this lie even in his own time and spoke tirelessly of the connection between the spirit world and science.  We have to come to a place that reveres both.  Many of us have been indoctrinated in the public school system where God wasn't allowed so it will take time to bring those pieces together for you.  What I am asking from you right now is just that you will follow part 1 and be teachable.

A friend once asked me, "You really do pray about almost everything, don't you?" She is a dear friend and we went to church together.  She was impressed by my willingness to just hand it all over to God. Really though... what is our choice? We can fight about it. We can scream and yell about it. We...

Someone once told me, "If Dr.Wayne Dyer can be called the father of intention, then Melisa you are the mother of rhythm and the guardian of the will."  Maybe I am.  It sounds a bit silly. I have written about rhythm so much over the years that it becomes second nature to talk about and sometimes I worry that younger moms think "yeah well that crazy Melisa doesn't know how busy my son is!" or "she must have easy children!"  Now those that have been with us for years know that NEITHER is the case!

Family history is one of those things that Steiner didn't really talk about in the lectures given to the first teachers.  In his time, many extended families still lived near each other and children had aunts, uncles, cousins all about. Today we are a much more fragmented society.  There are times in our lives where as adults, we relish in that "buffer zone" we have created, some of us because we don't get along with our families and others because jobs or necessity has pulled us away from the place we grew up. 

As a child, my birth father was in the Army and I moved a lot, I missed grandparents and other extended family and then as my parents divorced when I was young, my mother and I lived in a place that was 1000 miles from my nearest relative.  I craved family.  I wanted to sit at the feet of my grandmother and hear stories of her childhood, listen to my grandfather talk about "courting" my grandmother and the early years of their marriage.  He told...

Single mamas (and dads!) are very close to my heart.  I am talking mostly to divorced parents today. Being single has a completely different set of stress inducing frustrations.  Even if you are living on one income while married, there is generally that second person that can step up to the parenting plate and help - not so in single parent land.  Rather than this being a post on the nuts and bolts of single parent homeschooling, I want to focus on how you can take care of yourself and get back to a place of love.  Love has to be within us before it can be given to someone else. 

With all the divorces in our culture, I can only say one thing for certain... they are all different. All of them carry most of the same elements. Sadly amicable situations are NOT the norm.  The reality is that some co-parenting relationships are amicable for a time and volatile at others.  Do your best.  You can only work on you.

Working through your hurt...

A while back, I was having a moment with one of my sons where I had to really step up my message about something. He was struggling with a moral issue and Erik and I as his parents had to lay down some expectations. The thoughts came flooding to me...this is a simple task, but it isn't always going to be easy, he has society hurling things at him all the time, how will he navigate these teen years?  For our personal lives, we live very Gospel centered, meaning that commandment of "Love God & Love your neighbor" is at the center of our lives. Such a simple commandment, but not always easy on the follow through.  Things happen, we get off center, we aren't always impeccable with our word, but it is our daily striving.  It isn't always easy to heed that commandment... sometimes that neighbor isn't very nice and I find myself praying for them and for myself to be more tolerant and let their issues be between them and God.  Not always easy.

Homeschooling and...

I was thinking the other day about two of my favorite resources, The Waldorf Online Library  and The Rudolf Steiner Archives  - I love the audio place too and use them a lot, but there is something about printing out a lecture if I need to and then going after it with a pen and highlighting all the tidbits I need - that makes me a nerd and a waster of paper.  LOL. In all seriousness though, I think these resources are fabulous. I will often pull a lecture from the archive to read and then see if Rudolf Steiner audio has it as well.  I may read, then listen, then go back and read some more.  This is my favorite way to use these two resources.  The Waldorf Library is a bit different, while they have some things written by Steiner, what I really appreciate are the articles written by teachers of all grades, with topics ranging from grammar to circle time to astronomy for middle school!  These things help me be a better curriculum writer...