The End of A Chapter - For Now
Well, my friends, I never thought I’d write these words. And honestly, I’ve been sitting on it for a while because…well, I’ve struggled with navigating and processing my feelings about it all.
Two weeks ago, after a lot of prayer, and a lot of tears…
Gabriel and I made the decision to enroll Dresden and Jude into the public school here on base.
This was a huge decision that did not come lightly for us. And, if I’m being honest, I am still processing my feelings and beliefs about it all.
So, what changed?
Well, if I am being honest, I was struggling with juggling everything before Gabriel left on this short deployment*. I had already talked to Gabriel about the possibility of enrolling them. He will be leaving again early next year for several months, so we agreed that this deployment, since he was only joining the tail end of it for 60 days, would be a good “test run”.
Well….suffice it to say…
it was rough..
First of all, I thought deployments would be easier now that the kids are older, but I forgot the tiny little fact that older kids also come with bigger emotions.
And boy…were there some BIG ASS feelings 🙃 . Not having a community yet made it even harder. It was just me and the boys, day in, day out, 24/7, with no one to help when I needed to “tap out”.
Jude also stopped sleeping the last month…he wouldn’t go to bed until 10pm-11pm, and he was waking up multiple times at night.
I wasn’t able to give my work the attention I wanted to give it, and I wasn’t being the present mom I wanted to be with my kids.
I was burning the candle at both ends and I honestly felt a little crazy by the end of it. My nervous system was completely disregulated and stuck in freeze.
I knew in my heart that doing again this next year would NOT be feasible. And the first time I said it to Gabriel, it was almost…surreal. Like…am I really doing this? Am I going to go through with it? But I knew that SOMETHING had to give.
So…here we are.
The boys absolutely LOVE it.
Dresden especially, my little social butterfly, is enjoying making friends, and I think he’s really found his place. Jude is taking a little more time to adjust, but it helps that they both have amazing, kind teachers.
And me? Well, I’m learning to navigate a new season.
It’s MUCH quieter around the house, but the afternoons are a little more chaotic as we learn how to balance homework and sports, and I’m learning the ropes of school activities and events. I haven’t quite found a good rhythm for myself just yet. The boys haven’t had a full week of school since they started - which has been nice easing them in - but it means I haven’t really had a full week to figure out my rhythm while they’re gone.
Grieving An Identity Shift
There has been a lot of mental and emotional unpacking happening for me.
A huge piece of it is allowing myself to grieve this identity that I am losing…to find peace that I am not a homeschool mom, at least for this season.
And it feels as though the last three years have been a season of undoing, unbecoming, of COMPLETELY unraveling for me, and honestly…I am exhausted.
I’ve always battled the belief that I lack follow-through. I told a friend that homeschooling was the ONE thing I’ve done consistently, and if I let it go, I am afraid that it would feel like just another thing I’ve failed to stick with.
And all the reasons homeschooling became too hard - the exhaustion, the lack of sleep, the juxtaposition of loneliness, but also the constant overstimulation of never truly being alone - a part of me has struggled with believing that those reasons are just excuses. That maybe I “should have” been able to handle it anyway. That maybe if I were stronger, more disciplined, more spiritual…I could’ve made it work.
But I am learning that sometimes…releasing something isn’t quitting. It’s having the wisdom to know how to take care of myself.
What is so wild, is that when I look back at where I was three years ago (almost to the day), I knew a shift I was coming. And that’s when I pulled back from my online marketing and business coaching to focus on homeschooling the boys fully and supporting Gabriel with his new role at work.
That was a painful identity shift, too. I was letting go of something I loved and enjoyed…to be a mom? To be a wife? I felt like I was letting down women everywhere, like I was taking massive steps backwards for the feminism movement.
I had peace with my choice, yet when I took off the identity of marketing and business coach, and laid her to rest…I felt raw and exposed. I wrestled with the question, “Who am I, if not this? “
So I stepped into the role of homeschool mom, and fully owning it, but that same question would continue to echo….
“Who am I? Outside of motherhood, and homeschooling, and being a wife…who am I?”
And now…another layer has been stripped away.
I’m grieving the homeschool mom I wanted to be, the homeschool mom I struggled to be, and the homeschool mom who I actually was.
Another identity is being laid to rest, at least for a season, and I find myself back at this crossroads of grief and questioning, the same one I stood at three years ago.
I feel as though, once again, I am letting women down, but this time, it feels like a betrayal of homeschool moms. As though, by making this choice, I am letting down homeschool moms everywhere, the ones who are doing it, and the ones who are actually making it work.
Is this what God is doing? Helping me release every title, every identity, every external accomplishment…until I finally discover who I truly am, underneath it all?
What I Am Learning
Within the first week of the boys being in school, I had a massive subconscious belief surface:
I’ve tied my worth to doing it all - as if God’s favor depended on my performance.
I’ve always said I believe you don’t have to do it all…but somewhere, deep down, I was still striving to prove my worth to the point of exhaustion. OOF.
Somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that being a good mom meant homeschooling. It meant doing it all, and doing it well. LIKE WHAT?! WHAT THE HELLY?! What kind of ridiculous belief is that? I think because I’ve always known the benefits and advantages of homeschooling,and because I know the downsides and obstacles in public schooling, maybe I equated MY personal worth to be tied to homeschooling my kids. It’s wild, because I would never hold someone else to that impossible standard. Yet I’ve held obviously held myself there for years.
Now, for those of you who have kids in public school, you might think I’m being a little dramatic with all of this! And you’re probably right 🤣
But for someone who was homeschooled K-12, and whose kids have NEVER been in the public school system - this is huge.
Homeschooling wasn’t just what I did - it’s a part of who I am!!
I was so proud of being homeschooled, and I LOVED my classical education - Latin, logic, rhetoric - learning how to think, speak, and reason. And I really, REALLY wanted to share that with my kids through homeschooling.
And who knows? Maybe I will weave those things into our life, outside of school. Maybe I will be able to find a balance, and we will find ourselves homeschooling again next year. Maybe this is just a semester, or maybe it’s is our new normal.
But for now…this is where we are.
And I am choosing peace as I shed another skin, as I close another chapter, and as I walk through a new door.
I am choosing to believe that this is what growth is: learning to love the woman I becoming, as I say goodbye to the woman I have been. Learning to love and trust myself as these identities shift, knowing that nothing in life is permanent, and everything is always in motion.
I am choosing to believe that growth is learning how to be here in this present moment, and love myself now.
**The deployments here in Rota are called patrols, but for the ease of understanding to anyone not in the military (or here in Rota), I’m going to call them deployments