The Brave Learner Conference Post 6 "The Woman in the Living Room"

This June, on the week of my birthday, I had to go on an errand out of town and took a detour on the way home to spend some time all by myself at a real Barns & Noble book store!  There aren't many real book stores in my area anymore and it was a true treat to eat lunch surrounded by a stack of books that I could peruse at my leisure.  I also chose a few to bring home and enjoy this summer!

I had already happened to hear about Brene Brown somewhere in a Homeschool Alliance discussion this year and had come across her amazing TED talk, so I was very happy to find some of her books that day and I purchased Braving the Wilderness and Daring Greatly.  I zipped right through the first selection and was still finishing up Daring Greatly as I traveled to Cincinnati for The Brave Learner Conference in July.  I still enjoy reading a real book with pages that I can turn and mark up with a pencil, but I also bought the audio version of this book with Brene narrating it herself and was listening to part of it while driving to the conference.  It's so fun to hear her own voice telling her stories!

I was floored when at the end of the whole conference day, in her very last moments with us as a group, Julie Bogart read from the very book that I had been reading!  She chose the opening quote from Teddy Roosevelt that Daring Greatly is based upon.  It is known as "The Man in the Arena" and how it applies to home schooling and parenting is significant.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”—Theodore Roosevelt

Julie shared with us that she decided to write her own version of this speech, called "Woman in the Living Room".  It is based upon the Teddy Roosevelt quote, but totally re-written to apply to home educating mamas.  I was amazed at how she characterized those of us parents who are "in the trenches" of daily home schooling.  She validated us that day and shared this to help us remember why we do what we do.  I would have loved to have read this fourteen years ago when I began home educating our children.  Some days it just feels so comforting to know that other parents can identify with what I'm feeling through our shared experiences. Julie wrote a blog post over at Brave Writer about "Woman in the Living Room" and you should read it and then print it out and hang it somewhere to remind yourself that you are already daring greatly and doing life changing work!

When I stopped to think about both of these speeches, I realized that I have been the person in the arena with my kids and even with my husband.  We cannot accept criticism from those that don't really understand what we have gone through.  It's not the critic who counts.  We don't receive much credit for doing the laundry, cleaning up the spilled juice on the kitchen floor, or sitting down with our child to practice writing or spelling or math again and again and again.  But each day, little by little, we worked right next to each other to share in this learning experience.  We were in the arena together.  If I had listened to my fears and not tried this adventure of home education, I would have been robbed of one of the most daring adventures of my own life as an adult and so many wonderful and fun and exciting adventures as a family.  Whether you home educate or send your kids to school, when you invest in them and spend time pouring into them and into your family, you are the man in the arena and the woman in the living room.  It really is an experiment and we don't know what the end results will be, but know that you are daring greatly and that if you persevere, it will be worth all of the effort.