Getting started.

The world came to a screeching halt and the idea of my children not going back to school sounded overwhelming. I was less concerned about the dystopian nightmare virus that was flooding the airwaves, television, and newspapers. I had no idea how to teach my children and I was afraid that they would “fall behind”. It’s strange because I always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and I never thought about what that looked like when they went to school. I am a super-clingy, lovey-dovey, my kids are my favorite kind of mom and so when I pictured being home with my kids they were in the frame. Then reality hit and three kids three and under became 5, 3, and 1.

Soon I was exhausted. I would drop my two girls off at school and occasionally my son was at preschool and somehow by the time I picked them all up I had accomplished very little and was still tired. If that’s how tired I was when they were at school for a portion of the day I couldn’t imagine how I could add in teaching them and never getting a break. We received direction that the kids would be doing most of their learning through online teaching and we rearranged our world to go all in. The truth is I am the kind of mom who loves to be around her kids all the time so I figured I’d be the perfect homeschool mom and this was our chance right?

Mary Evelyn in 2020 doing online school work through the public school system here in Florida.

Do I sound like I’m contradicting myself a lot? That’s because that’s how it felt to me. I felt so confused about what I wanted because I was so scared that I was not going to be enough. That was the hard truth that took me years to figure out. If I’m honest, that season of homeschooling didn’t go great. I created a cheap whiteboard with a gorgeous frame, reorganized our desk to fit the kids, and made our homeschool area look adorable. Unfortunately, looking the part didn’t make me feel like a good teacher and I thought I could be a better mom if they were back in school. Come August that is what happened. My kids went back to school and the next few years, despite a few teachers we liked, I felt this tug at my heart. 

If you know me personally you’ve probably heard me say this next phrase but it is the main reason I brought my kids home from school.

I felt like I was fighting a custody battle with the education system and I lost. My kids are my whole world and the only time I saw them was nights and weekends. During the majority of that time, we were usually making dinner and doing a bedtime routine. 

My youngest went from part-time VPK to kindergarten and it hit me hard. I didn’t just miss him though I was just painfully aware of how much I was missing out on with my kids. The next year of our life was a trainwreck with our house flooding, being short-term homeless (luckily friends took us in until we could find a place to stay), miscarried after 6 years of waiting for another child, constantly fighting insurance trying to salvage our home which was stripped down to the concrete, my uncle died, and then to wrap the worst season of my life I lost my mom to a long illness. We were emotionally gutted and somehow the strongest we’ve ever been as a family. For the first time, as a family, we were relying on God to fuel every bit of our lives. He was this candle in the darkness that even hurricane winds couldn’t blow out. Life for us wasn’t happy but it was joyful. It was chaos but we were full of peace. 

A month and a half before my mom passed away I told her I wanted to homeschool. You’ll hear a lot about her if you keep reading the letters to come but she is the biggest cheerleader of my life. No matter what it included she believed I could do it. When I couldn’t see a way out she could and her advice always began and ended with Jesus. She told me that if anyone could do it I could. Still, I wasn’t sure that I could but I knew that I would.

Luckily, Tanner (my husband) was one hundred percent on board from the second I mentioned it. We began dreaming about days when our children were with us, what they would get to learn, the experiences we could have as a family, and so much more. I pictured my childhood with my mom doing crafts every afternoon and thinking it didn’t have to only be the moments in between. This could be our normal. 

I reached out to friends who homeschool and got as much information as I could but the best advice I got was from my friend Kelly who told me that I would figure it out as I went and it was okay to decide that I don’t like the curriculum I chose, I don’t have to finish it. It’s okay to make changes because the whole point is that you do what is best for your kids and it’s okay to adjust. That advice set me free and let me realize that I didn’t have to be the perfect homeschool mom. I just had to be a mom who wanted to be the perfect homeschool mom and be ready to do my best every day. 

That is how we started our homeschool journey and it is a journey we are still on. So if you’re trying out homeschooling and you want to follow someone who has all the answers you’ve found the wrong page, but if you want to hang around with people who are doing their best to romanticize home life and prioritize family you’ve found the place.

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