Letter to my children: Using your Big Voice

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Letter to my children: Using your Big Voice

Dearest Beloveds,

I am so grateful to Conscious Discipline for teaching me the nomenclature around using one’s Big Voice. Our family has been steeped in this soup since Bean was a baby. According to the Conscious Discipline website, “Shubert’s Big Voice teaches the Skill of Assertiveness…and helps with Conflict Resolution, Self-regulation, Active Calming, Self-Control, Emotional Intelligence, Social Emotional Learning, and the School Family.”

Wow, all of those terms arising from the simple teaching of, “I don’t like it when you do XX, please do XX.”

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Letter to my children: Life is Both And

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Dearest Beloveds,

According to Oak Meadow, the Hopi Creation story involves a Spider Woman who sings the Song of Creation to bring forth all life. She also puts a soft spot on the top of people’s heads so that they might be able to listen to the Creator. Eventually, people forget the Creator anyway and a great flood is sent to punish the wicked and start over. The few people who are saved in reed boats (thanks to Spider Woman) are brought back to a world where “there are now hardships so people will never forget their dependence on the Divine.”

For the two of you, that is this week’s story. A story we recalled as you two bounced around the room. A story to imagine as we painted onto dripping paper in yellows and blues and reds. A story the Bean summarized into her Main Lesson Book in her cursive. For your mother, it has pierced my soul.

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Pelvic Steaming my way into body acceptance

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Pelvic Steaming my way into body acceptance

From Kundalini, I have been taught that trauma lives in the body. That is why certain poses can be so confronting - emotional upheaval leaving the body is as uncomfortable as emotional trauma/stress entering the body. I thought one needed to be screaming internally (our externally, the joys of Zoom muting) with one’s arms/legs shaking in order to reach that level of emotional emancipation - turns out I can get that from steaming my genitals.*

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Homesteading Middles: Fall Cleanup

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Homesteading Middles: Fall Cleanup

“I am sorry my beloved, but I can’t play with you, I need to get this done.”

“But WHY?!! I don’t want to do this anymore! This machine is too loud.”

“My dearest Dragon, winter is coming* and we have no choice. We need this wood to stay warm when it gets cold.”

Winter is coming and, like the ant, we must prepare.

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Homesteading Middles: Harvesting Honey

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Homesteading Middles: Harvesting Honey

Homesteading in the beginning is a lot of planting sticks in sawdust, building chicken coops, watering seedlings, navigating bee swarms, spraying growing fruit trees with neem oil, on and on.

We are slowly moving into the harvesting part of this cycle where the efforts of earlier years are bearing fruit. In this case, our first honey harvest - 30 months after introducing the girls to their new home by the comfrey.

Here is what I learned from the process.

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Letter to my children: Nighttime peregrinations

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Dearest Beloveds,

A recent evening after saying goodnight to the two of you, I staggered to my own bed. We had swam earlier that day, the sheets were clean, and The New Yorker beckoned. It was 7:36 pm and your father was on call. I was looking forward to passing out obscenely early and not waking up groggy at 5:20 for my morning sadhana.

Then the peregrinations started.

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Letter to my children: On Being a Tourist

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Letter to my children: On Being a Tourist

Dearest Beloveds,

As you both know, I grew up in a city. I walked to school crossing concrete sidewalks. The orange glow of the streetlights on my bedroom ceiling at night lulled me to sleep along with the clattering engine of the 96 bus. Every Saturday morning Baba, Tia, and I would walk to the Eastern Market to buy eggs, drop off Baba’s dry cleaning, and, once I was old enough to notice, to gawk over the artisan vendors.

Commerce was all around me.

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Letters to my children: Homeschool Circle Time learnings

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Letters to my children: Homeschool Circle Time learnings

Dearest Beloveds,

The effects of covid range from the tragic to the ridiculous. Tragic - thousands dead. Ridiculous - Dragon you do not know the words or the hand movements to children’s songs.

I had assumed you would know them and was rather shocked and sad at your first Kindergarten circle time.

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Homesteading Middles: Animal Husbandry

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Homesteading Middles: Animal Husbandry

I have noticed myself more and more putting my own thoughts, ideas, sensations, desires, onto the animals that feed us with their bodies - to anthropomorphize the animals. To assign human traits to animals has historically been deemed unscientific - but I would contend that not assigning emotions, agency, or recognizable sensations to animals is a way to separate humans from animals, to make us better, and in turn to provide excuses for the mistreatment of such. Just ask Jane Goodall.

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