Chaz is a mom of three (ages 7, 5, and 18 months). Our conversation covers everything from balancing work and motherhood during COVID to following her intuition through birth and into homeschooling. We talk about her values - slow, secular, nature-based- and how to stay grounded in those values in a fast paced world.
I appreciated Chaz’s vulnerability in this conversation, and got the sense that she is often checking in with herself, re-evaluating whether her life actually reflects what she values or not, which felt deeply relatable. Like if you say you want to slow down, but you’re driving more than you’ve ever driven in your life, are you doing it?
I think there can be a tendency to overcommit in homeschool circles, in part because our kids have wide-open days, and we feel a responsibility to fill them with enriching experiences - to expose them to as much as we can. Every year as my kids get older, I feel this pressure to “ramp things up”…yet that instinct runs completely counter to why I chose homeschooling in the first place, which had nothing to do with how much we accomplish in a day and everything to do with having time and space together. That said, Colorado is currently a very homeschool friendly state, and I think we’d all rather live in the need-to-dial-back vs. the opposite, where there is no community and no outside support.
I’m still chewing on a lot from this convo; I hope you enjoy it.
Resources from Chaz >
Wild & Free - an online homeschool community with in-person groups worldwide
Ina May Gaskin’s Guide to Childbirth *
Blossom & Root - the main curriculum they follow
*note - I get a little kickback from books purchased through this link
As always, you can watch this episode on YouTube, too.
