Unschooling, Santa, & A fake new years

Thoughts on things around this time of year...

Hello Friends, 

I feel like I haven’t written in a long while, 

Though Tul has taken Rafi to the skatepark this morning, After 7am, which means I’m both alone and awake enough to attempt to write. 

I’ve been very much “In life” and every time I’ve come to sit and write I can’t think straight. 

I wonder if it’s because nothing feels that inspiring to me lately, 

Or if I’ve been out of the game of “creating content” long enough that I’m out of the habit of thinking in that way where I grasp an idea and run with it. 

But honestly, I don’t mind. 

Everything feels so insanely fluid right now that It feels more Foreign to claim a thought process as my own and as truth, than it does to just be in each moment and really letting it all pass too. 

I do think it’s important to have opinions about things, but honestly I can’t be bothered to have opinions right now. 

The online space kinds reminds me of online shopping for belief systems. 

Try one on, see if it fits, wear it for a week, chuck it to the closet floor and jump online to find something else. 

And of course there’s plenty of more sustainable options in the online space. Slow beliefs. Ethically made. Intentional and pure. 

You just gotta dig a little deeper. 

Right now though I’m just in my body. Living life from my centre and simply being an embodiment of our family values. 

Those values at the core are kindness, and love, thoughtfulness & compassion. 

I love to make an effort for those close to me, I love to have meaningful conversations but also to just sit comfortably within the silence, coexisting in one place together with those we love without having to fill it all up. 

I’m enjoying fresh fruit, lots of it. Perks of being in the subtropics is mango and papaya every day. 

I’m enjoying Tully, and creating pockets of intimacy and connection, and I’m enjoying Rafi, I stare at him often, just mesmerised by his facial expressions. 

A few conversations Raf and I have had lately… (for anyone new here he’s just over 2 and a half)

Me: Baby, sometimes I’m just like, WHO ARE YOU?! *referring to my awe of who he is*

Rafi: I’m Rafi

Me: Rafi Who?

Rafi: Rafi River Caven O’Connor

Me: Wow Raf, What a beautiful name. Who gave you that?

Rafi: Myself

Me: How did you do that? 

Rafi: With my heart!

*Not pictured, the story where I feel like Rafi actually chose his name in utero*

——

It’s 9pm and I sneak into bed, 

Rafi stirs and wakes up sitting bolt upright in bed with his eyes still closed. 

“Hey Raf, Lay back down baby”

“Okay”

*Lays down and waits…..

“Mum, You got sumting for me??”

Me: ????

*Opens his mouth for the boob while his eyes are still shut*

———

Rafi and I both congested with a cold, sinuses blocked and feeling a little sorry for ourselves

“Hey Raf, mama is feeling a bit sick like you….”

“Mummy! I’m not sick, my body is healing! My immune system is strong!”

“Oh yeah, of course baby, you’re so right. Our bodies are healing aren’t they!” *Schooled by my offspring. It’s welcomed*

———

Time offline has been great. I’ll admit I’ve gone back on occasionally to stalk a friend… and absolutely have been sucked down a few reel holes. 

Though overall I’ve felt more free and liberated in my daily life. 

I’ve arrived at a point where I am having a felt experience of social media and that world being very seperate from me and my life, 

Which is great, because I absolutely knew it in theory, but it was still just second nature. 

Now I see it clearly (and feel it clearly) as a seperate dimension we can play in as an option. 

I don’t feel inspired to be back on just yet, so just rolling with that. 

Tul and I have been discussing hosting a family camp out style event here on the Sunshine Coast. 

Intimate, slow paced, not packed with workshops and education. Instead a few nights to recreate the village in some way. 

Building early morning fires midwinter while the mist swirls around the campsites, 

Local musicians creating soundscapes. Children playing together and being creative in nature, feeding animals and having quality time with parents & community 

I’ve attended a few events lately and realised I’m actually craving less not more. 

Less people, Less options. More wholesomeness, and simplicity so I can just move at my own pace. 

Take an hour to cook breakfast on the fire, have an afternoon nap, go for a walk and read a book, before listing to some live music snuggled under a blanket with chai. That sort of thing. 

So we will endeavour to create the sort of event we would love to attend as parents, as a recharge, slow and simple style of event rather than something we’d get home from exhausted. 

At this stage we are heading to a venue this weekend to take a look, and are planning for midwinter (June) this year so keep a finger on the pulse if you’re local and would like to come play. 

That’s probably the only main thing inspiring me from a creative perspective right now, other that crafting a new and improved family rhythm with Rafi. 

I’ve actually just downloaded the @Whole.beings curriculum (they do a monthly membership) which is a very holistic approach to home education. 

I’ve only just started so can’t offer a review - and this is just me sharing what’s going on for us, no collaborations or whatever. 

It ticks boxes for me as both my parents are very extraordinary primary school teaches so there are always lots of conversations around child development, alongside social skills and mindfulness in children. 

Whole beings has many aspects to the whole including nature connection, community education and social skills, and then holistic approaches to other learning topics. 

I’m a huge advocate in unschooling/ homeschooling but not the sort of homeschooling where you’re alone in the room with your child with a big blackboard on the wall and it’s solely your responsibility to educate them on every topic in existence. 

Firstly I don’t have the skillset, and secondly… it’s not how I want to live my life. 

Community education is how I’d prefer to describe it. 

Using the world and community as learning tools. Finding skillsets within my network who can share with Rafi different things (age appropriate). 

At this stage, social skills has been huge and we are really enjoying that side of education. 

Rafi is fast developing empathy, compassion and a sense of responsibility. 

The other day we were tidying his playroom, like we do every evening. He didn’t want to tidy it up, and though we had given him a 5 minute countdown before tidy time, and though it’s apart of the daily routine, he wasn’t interested. 

Tul went to encourage him to help more directly, 

Though we stopped and decided that instead of “forcing” clean up, I’d rather he learn to WANT to be helpful, and WANT to participate in jobs on his own, rather than resenting it.

So we just started singing our tidying up song and put big smiles on our faces and within 10 seconds Rafi was there, choosing to help because he wanted to be included and participating. 

At the end we all gave each other “good teamwork” high-fives and I had a moment of feeling proud to trust ourselves to step back and let him come to us rather than forcing rules.

*It totally could have gone the other way haha cause he’s 2.5, but it didn’t on that day*

I remember learning about a study done where the mainstream education system is only suited (from a learning style standpoint) to 30% of kids. 30% will be able to tick the boxes and somewhat thrive in the system. 

70% won’t. Which means, unless that 70% have strong self esteem and family values at home, will feel somewhat like a failure in a system that isn’t made to support them. 

Based on Rafi’s personality, I think he would enjoy mainstream School, to some extent. 

But I have never once been able to picture him actually going. I’ve never searched for schools in the area (other than having an idea about the local Steiner and one unregistered school that is focused on homeschool support). 

I also whole heartedly don’t agree with the Australian curriculum (Lol here I am with opinions all of a sudden), and because of that, we will be focusing on community, home and environmental education for Rafi. 

That excites me a lot as he is so eager to learn and I love that we get to have a big role in that for him. 

I’m excited to outsource aspects of his education, especially as he gets older, and I’m excited to be able to move at his natural pace. 

I’ve been around mainstream and alternative educations my whole life, having parents as teachers but also parents as alternative thinkers who also valued entrepreneurship, self development and curating unique experiences for us to learn outside of the system. 

I’d love to know about what you feel about unschooling/homeschooling/mainstream education below. 

There is honestly no right or wrong, just different values for different families being expressed. 

This year we did Christmas away from family. 

It was a weird choice to make, but we also had an inspection right after xmas to prepare for. 

This time of year always brings up reflection for us. 

Especially around things like ritual, Santa, the roots of Christmas etc. 

To be honest, If I had it all my way, I probably wouldn’t celebrate Christmas in December and just focus on a big beautiful summer solstice celebration, 

And do a more “christmasy inspired” Christmas in July on the winter solstice in June each year. 

That to me feels a lot more natural.

Celebrating seasonal changes, and bringing that into the home with themed activities, music, food and rituals. 

Though we aren’t quite there yet and I can acknowledge many of the patterns from my own upbringing shaping Christmas. 

We intended on doing the gift rule of ‘Something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read” for Rafi… 

And I ended up getting excited to gift him things that he now has magnetic tiles (huge win, plays with them every day), a possum play couch (The ads got me, but also has been used every single day and it lots of fun), and a whole bunch of gifts from family. 

We even chose to do Santa this year - which I’m still not centred on. 

I don’t believe in using Santa for bribery with the whole good boy naught boy thing. That just boggles my mind. 

And I don’t want to use Santa as this over the top consumer type thing. 

Raf was also concerned that Santa would come down the chimney while we were asleep - so we pivoted with that to “daddy will stay up and let Santa in the front door and make sure he can leave ok when he’s done”. 

I mean the whole break and entering thing wasn’t a full yes anyway for me haha. 

Santa also only brought a few trinkety gifts like two felt dinosaurs, a kaleidoscope a book. 

The Santa’s at the shopping centres are just men dressing up as Santa to Rafi, not the real deal, (mainly so he doesn’t go sit on random mens laps all the time).

I’ve been around many conversations about Santa and Christmas, especially since becoming a mum. 

At 8 weeks pregnant with Rafi I had a huge meltdown about Christmas and Santa and vowed to never celebrate Christmas ever again and that we couldn’t do Santa. 

Though, when I think back to my own childhood at the anticipation, excitement, magic, wonder. The importance of fairytales and believing in stories. 

I also think to the day I found out that Santa “wasn’t Real”. I never felt disappointed, I never felt like I was lied to. 

Instead I felt like my parents had curated a beautiful and magical childhood and now I was privileged to know the truth and I got to have the responsibility of that for my younger siblings. I’d now get to be included in wrapping Santa presents and participating. 

And now, I’m not sure where I stand. 

Though I thought we’d try it on this year and see how it felt. Rafi was very excited, we had a lot of fun making little reindeer footprints and reading books about Christmas fairies. 

And often I assume we are just over thinking it and to simply have fun and create magic…

I guess we have a whole year to reflect on how we want it to feel, and the values we have around it all… But maybe this year we will decorate the house with dried orange garlands, drink hot chocolate by the fire and magical music in the dead of winter, exchange some simple gifts and have a few days off for family time and see how that rolls, and come December, Decorate with flowers and fresh fruit, and dancing and the beach with the summer solstice. 

What feels good for your family?

Life in the sunny coast has been beautiful. 

We returned home from our trip to WA to visit family and friends, and I felt genuinely nervous that I wouldn’t feel anything on arrival back into Queensland. 

We had so enjoyed how wholesome our WA adventures were. Rafi got to play with all the kids he was basically born with. 

Spend time in the town he was born in, right down the street from the very house he was born in. 

We got to visit our favourite beaches, Have dinner with friends and have lots of quality family time with grandparents, and our siblings who are great aunties and uncles to Raf. 

Of course having family around and beautiful community makes me question our decision to move. 

Seeing Rafi so excited to feed the donkeys with his Mema each night or jumping on the trampoline with his aunties and uncles (My 6 siblings range from 11 yrs old to 24 yrs)

I remember telling Tully when we moved to QLD that we couldn’t go back to WA for 6 months (depending on boarders, at the time of moving we assumed we’d be stuck out of WA for years potentially) 

at the very least so we had time to grow roots and ground in QLD.

We went back to WA 10 months later. 

And then we returned to QLD. 

To my surprise, it felt like home. (And turns out I have homes in many places.) 

I felt as though I could actually take in the trees and the land and the place because there was no overwhelm (compared to when we moved here within 2 weeks of making the decision, it was all very full on). 

I could drink it in. I could smell bali when people would burn small bonfires in their backyard in the evenings (Bali is another home for me). 

I could smell Western Australia in the peppermint leaves and eucalyptus trees. And I could smell Queensland at the beach. The frangipanis remind me of growing up on the cocos islands. 

It feels like here is a bit of a mashup of all our favourite places. 

We were “welcomed home” at the markets by stall holders, and we landed straight back into community. 

It felt good, and though a very busy couple of weeks in the garden and home after weeks away, 

There was a big breath out

In knowing - Even though it’s really hard and heartbreaking being away from family, 

This is where we are meant to be right now. 

And that clarity is so welcomed.

Finally for life updates, the new year. 

I’m not entirely convinced the new year is even a thing to be totally honest. 

The Gregorian calendar doesn’t sit right with me, though having been raised with is (as likely almost all of us have been) it’s hard to picture something else. 

I’ve been reading into alternative calendars, and natural rhythms of 13 month years, with each month smack on 28 days…. Similar to a women’s cycle… though still adding to 364 days for a year…

It’s interesting to me that September, October, November & December are named after latin words for 7, 8, 9, & 10 (Septem - 7, Octo- 8, Novem - 9, Decem- 10).

The Vatican changed the world to a 12 month Gregorian calendar in 1752, which up until then it had been a 13 month calendar…

And March 25th was the original day 1 of the new year, not jan 1st….

Ethiopia also uses a different calendar called the Ge’ez calendar and according to that calendar 2023 is 2015…. Which makes 2020 actually 2012 according to them… which has me thinking about the Mayans predictions around 2012 and how life on earth has changed since 2020 (or possibly 2012 in Ethiopia??)

Anyway, just food for thought, look into it all more yourself if it resonates with you, but it does have me thinking about calendars and date as contractual timelines we consent to… and has me wondering about alternative ones that may be more conducive to thriving and ease… less hustle and consumerism lining up with all the Gregorian dates celebrations etc….

So with that, January 1st doesn’t feel as grounded for me as a new year, but because there isn’t a clear alternative its natural to go along with it as feeling like the first day of a new year…

Though Januarary 1st for me was actually spent feeling quite a bit of anxiety and flatness rather than zest and motivation for a year ahead. 

I’m excited for this year though. It feels like lots is moving and shifting and changing. Honestly I don’t know what life will look like a year from now. 

I am waiting for some time to be able to sit with Tul and really feel into how we would like to guide and be guided this year, 

But I’m pretty open. 

My words is gentleness, and nourishment, and sustainably living in a way that feels good. 

Pretty simple really. 

I intend my family all stays in great health, and that we all appreciate our life often. 

Some other things I’d love to mention quickly is

1. I attended a private intimate gig of my friend edde’s. @the.Edwina.masson on IG, and it was goosebump vibes. Honestly this woman is an artist beyond words and the way that she crafts her songs, the lyrics, the felt experiences she can translate about motherhood and how she curates the sounds with her looper is honestly world class. I wanted to share because if you EVER get an opportunity to be in a room with her, especially as a mother, please make it happen. She is someone that I feel privileged to get to witness in their genius. She has some songs on her IG, and also a playlist for birth you can download which are all stunning creations and a bit out of this world.

1. Tully opened early enrolments to his online Couples program “Liberating love” at the end of last year, early enrolments closed and will reopen very soon. The course kicks off in February and can be done as a couple or individually. @liberating_love on instagram, though the enrolment link isn’t available yet, I’ll let you know once it is. 

2. Tully’s men’s program IMLP (online also) is also open for enrolment. @tullyoconnor on instagram you should be able to get a feel for it but also tullyoconnor.com and to the programs section for a full rundown of what’s included in that. The feedback from men who have completed this program is honestly unreal. The onflow to their work, families, intimate relationships, other relationships, presence with their children and how they feel in their life is incredible and It’s something I can’t really describe though you can go and listen to some testimonials on IG for a feel. 

3. Tul will also have BOTH mens retreats AND couples retreats happening in WEST AUS and QLD this year. You can message him to get on the waitlist for the couples stuff and there’s a waitlist in his bio link for the mens retreats. 

4. Will let you know once details are finalised for the family camp out event hopefully for this winter here in QLD! 

That’s all from me today, Mainly just wanted to have a little check in. 

I’m looking forward to writing an entry on spirit babies for those with the paid subscription. 

One of my favourite topics to chat about. I may possibly create that as my first audio publication but we will see how we go with time and space for that. 

Love to you all, 

Kat