Fare of the Free Child
Fare of the Free Child podcast focuses on Black people, Native Indigenous people, and People of Color (BIPOC) families who practice unschooling and other forms of Self-directed, decolonized living and learning. Each weekly episode examines a particular way that we’ve accepted coercive, emotionally and physically damaging habits as a normal part of adult-child relationships. With a focus on deschooling one’s self, decolonizing education, and exploring radical self-expression, this podcast challenges and informs us to walk toward a model for living with children that believes in trusting and respecting children and ourselves. #fofcpod #raisingfreepeople
Fare of the Free Child
Ep 265: New to This; Not Quite True To This
If you've been searching and asking about some of the most innovative minds in the realm of unschooling, youth rights, and liberation, names like Zakkiyya Chase, Moji Yai, Lane Santa Cruz, and Dr. Sundiata should ring a bell.
Some of our most listened-to early dialogues included ones with Ieishah Clelland-Lang and Lou Wilkerson. We detangled topics like Black maternal mortality rates, intuition, trust, and deschooling. Their insights set the stage for seasons two and three of Fare of the Free Child podcast, and Akilah is giving them their flowers today!
As we revisit these transformative dialogues, we dive into the heart of raising free people, where we're amplifying our stories and deepening our connections to love and liberation.
You'll also get perspectives and madd question-askin' around how to start unschooling. Questions that double as mantras is the offering here, and we truly hope you find these useful!
THE LINKS.
Moji Yai of Wise African Woman Retreats. Host of THE Birth Education Retreat where participants immerse in village healing culture.
https://www.instagram.com/wawretreat/
Tucson Ward 1 Council Member
https://www.instagram.com/lanewar
Dr. Sundiata of The Theory of Indivisibility
https://www.instagram.com/drsundiata/
Genesis Ripley of Mythology of a Dragon Newsletter
https://www.genesisripley.com/
Yolanda Coles Jones
https://bio.site/YolondaColesJones
Lou Hollis
https://linktr.ee/LouHollisTalent
https://www.instagram.com/lhtmproductions/
Miss Lou - Louise Bennett-Coverley
louisebennettheritage.com
The Unschooling Entrepreneur’s Guide to Life and Learning
The link between unschooling and entrepreneurship | Raising Free (rfpunschool.com)
Veronica Ashley-Reid
https://www.instagram.com/autonomousgrowth/
https://fofc.buzzsprout.com/344681/1193546-ep-41-demilitarizing-myself
Maleka Diggs
https://www.eclecticlearningnetwork.com/
Tia Cunnigham
Ep. 32: Kicking Cancer's Ass While Unschooling (buzzsprout.com)
Dig this show? Join our make-it-happen family at patreon.com/akilah to make sure we can keep this thang going strong. Thank you!
The Raising Free People Practice Card Deck
https://schoolishness.com/market/rfp-a-practice-deck/
Peek at the details of Personal Manifesto Path (will be available exclusively through our make-it-happen family on Patreon)
https://www.rfpunschool.com/p/manifesto
Our Youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/@fareofthefreechild
The Village:
https://my-reflection-matters.mn.co/
You can't keep using tools of oppression and expect to raise free people. Welcome back to another episode of Fare of the Free Child, the podcast, where we dive deep into the world of unschooling, liberation and raising free people. I'm your host, Akilah S Richards, and I'm really happy to be going back with you doing some Sankofa work around the past few seasons, specifically seasons two and three of Fare of the Free Child podcast. This is 2017, 2018, round-time. There I really wanted to just reflect on the incredible guests who joined us on that journey. I will not go in as much detail as I did about Extra Special Season One, but I do want to name the people, give them their flowers, send them, through this space, my love and appreciation.
Akilah S Richards:We had the pleasure of chatting with Zakkiyya Chase, the brilliant author of No Dream Deferred. Zakkiyya's insights on our children's dreams and creating an environment where they can thrive. It really resonated with me and I feel like it set the tone for that season, reminding us of the power of self-directedness in so many forms. We also had Moji Yai from Wise African Woman Retreats. Moji hosts the birth education retreat where participants immerse in village healing culture. If you listen back to some of Moji's episodes beyond and on season two, you'll hear that progression when Moji was still based in the US and now in Benin. It's just as I was re-listening to that in preparation for this. I just have so much gratitude for the ways that we can communicate where we are in our journey and invite people to watch as we evolve our shit, as we push fear to the side, as we stop trying to figure out and do more deepening, slowing down. I think Moji's story is such a beautiful reflection of that. Oh my gosh, we also had Lane, Lane Santa Cruz second appearance on the podcast. Lane, you are always dropping gems. My sis Lane went on to become a Tucson, Arizona, ward 1 council member. I will make sure that the Instagram page for her council member updates are on the show notes and you can get the show notes wherever you're listening to this podcast Apple, spotify, google, whatever, whatever. We're also on YouTube for episodes. Now It's just been beautiful. Lane is another example of listener turned community turned friend to really assist the friend who's doing beautiful work in Arizona that's rippling out into the rest of the world.
Akilah S Richards:Speaking of ripples and growth, do y'all remember when Dr Sundiata was Scott Speed back in early 2017? Shout out to you, Sundiata. That episode was so powerful and really just a conversation that Sanjada continues to be on. He's still on that same thing evolved about how, the types of transformations we go through as individuals, how those things shape our identities and our approach to liberation. His work around the Theory of Indivisibility is just really thriving and his visual album Grow Melodic is out now. By the time you listen to this, make sure you visit Dr Sundiata. com. I'll make sure that link is available so you can see what's happening there. Shante Smith, that episode was beautiful. How are you, Shante, if you are listening to this?
Akilah S Richards:We talked about the challenges and triumphs of being a mom and engaging in intergenerational conversations across our families. We also talked that season with Anthony and Julia, the co-founders of Hartwood Agile Learning Center. Hartwood is still around, though with a very different flavor, very different flow to it. So many Agile Learning Centers are not just like a place where people go to try to practice unschooling, but they really are also a reflection in all the ways of what is happening when we try to break away from the standardized route and how beautifully messy and complex that can be and the type of skills we develop along the way, the things that break along the way and the experiment is going to have that breaks hearts, that break rules, that break shifts in relationship. And, yeah, it's important to not hide that shit. It's important to show the ways that these ways of liberation work, shift us and shape us. It's not always beautiful, it doesn't always feel good, but it is always in service of healing from the shit that we used to accept, and a big part of that is forced schooling and the type of rights that are taken away when we ourselves, as human beings, take on schoolishness. We also talked with Tia Cunningham. Tia was talking about the link between cancer and unschooling for her.
Akilah S Richards:That episode blessed me and I really want you to listen to it because the types of connections that people make between unschooling and other things that are happening in their lives, it tells you, it shows us, even as a beginner, it shows us how much unschooling is not at all about school or not school, but really about relationship, community, including the community of self yourself as a community. You are comprised of so many things and then you bring all of that into spaces And so, as you are listening to seasons two and three, you'll hear how people's stories deviate from whether their kid is in school or not. But really it's not a deviation, it really is an including of all of the things that are important when we think about our relationships with young people and with learning. And speaking of Hartwood, kenya Scott, i think that was Kenya's second appearance on the podcast in season two. Kenya we met because our children were at Hartwood together Love talking to Kenya. We also have these really nuanced conversations about mother work in ways that I really just really cherish.
Akilah S Richards:We also had the pleasure of speaking and listening and just vibing with Kaylan Reid Shipanga, who runs the brand African American in Africa. She shares her experiences and insights, as- I wanna read exactly what she says- a rapidly growing collective founded on the need to amplify the perspectives of travelers and expats of color across the African continent. Yes, Kailen is in Namibia, at least that's where she was when we connected. Also that year, Chemay Morales James of My Reflection Matters, made her first visit. appearance Another example of listener, turned community member, turned sister friend. We talked about the power of connection and community, as we do, and if you're not following Chemay's work over at My Reflection Matters, you absolutely should be, because if you're listening to this podcast, you will make the connections and really that's a beautiful place for any stage in your journey towards raising free people. My Reflection Matters has community and resources around that journey, so you should be there to at least check it out and see if it's a good fit for your needs.
Akilah S Richards:Veronica Ashley Reed, my sis in love, another incredible guest. We talked about adult unschoolers and how she, at the time, was not a mom. She is now a mom of two daughters. At the time she was not a parent. Oh, my gosh, wow. And we talked about her journey from being in the military to really demilitarizing the schooling herself. And so many people were able to relate to that conversation about Veronica and that journey to reclaiming herself. So thank you so much, veronica, for being willing to share that and shout out to Josiah and Zora, veronica and Jared's children.
Akilah S Richards:We also vibe with Genesis Ripley, my Kim folk. We talked about mask free relationships. We talked about reclaiming our vastness. Genesis Ripleycom, you must go look and feel. That's another one of my friends who really understands portal work. We speak the language of portals. Their newsletter is called Mythology of a Dragon, which is also a book they wrote, and I just I'm so grateful that we've become intertwined in these delicious ways and that we get to raise free people together and in community. And when we sit and talk, it is always just soul food for real. Yolanda Cole Jones talk about soul food brought so much energy and wisdom to the podcast. I will make sure that particular intersection of liberation and parenting that Yolanda occupies is accessible to you through this microphone that I got right here, because I will make sure the links are on the show notes page. She's a singer, a mama, a guide, a community resource and just beautiful inside and out in ways that we were privy to back then in 2017 and continue to bask in.
Akilah S Richards:Veronica joined us again as we went deeper into demilitarization. Because that first one we really were talking more about being an adult unschooler, what that meant if you didn't have children, and then the second one was even more specific to her journey away from the military and what growth and self-discovery meant for her. I encourage you to go back to both of those and then you can get the links to where Veronica is now in her world and work and see how it has evolved. Sonia LeBlanc came through talking about her own community self-directed education space as she started a school and just really talking about her passion for creating these types of learning environments and being in community around it. Shout out to Sonia, you are amazing.
Akilah S Richards:Also, in season two, marley joined us. She was just 13 years old, i believe at the time. She was talking about her self-designed curriculum and really just reminding us that education can take many forms and that our children can shape their experiences, and that unschooling is not the absence of structure at all. It is a more inclusive, involved type of structure and shape taking that we are able to be part of and not force. In July of 2017, malika Diggs joined us for the first time, again with the blessing that I have of people that I meet through this podcast, who become family I could say that so effortlessly that become Kim Folk, people that I talk to on a regular basis and rely on for certain aspects of my own growth and accountability. Malika is so that And in 2017 is when she first joined us to talk about her perspective on mother work, without the unnecessary borders and silos and labels, and just breathing fresh air into this movement of raising free people. Shout out to Malika.
Akilah S Richards:I also, throughout the season, had the opportunity to record some solo episodes. We talked about discipline, i talked about travel and the transition from homeschooling to unschooling. Those episodes really allowed me to reflect on my own experiences and share some of the things that really resonated with so many of you, and I'm so grateful for that because, you know, we be feeling like all kind of feelings in this life when we venture away from the maze that they set us up in, and so I love just being able to share my life with you in these ways that I choose and you sharing yours with me. I remember also that year that's the year that I spoke at Arrow conference and I talked about resistance and Patua and I shared with some folks there my shero, dr Louise Bennett cover Lee, known more so as Miss Lou, and she's just an orator and a teacher, professor and a lover of Jamaican culture and language and a liberator of Jamaican Patua, taking it out of the shadows of something that you don't say because the queen wouldn't sanction it over to something to celebrate and be proud of and to really understand. And there's so many parallels for me with Patua and raising free people, and so I've shared a lot about Miss Lou, even in our make it happen family. I've done some readings there and really encourage you to check out her work, as I did back in season two, back in a day in 2017.
Akilah S Richards:And last but certainly not least, we closed out season two with another conversation with Dr Sinjata and me. We talked about the importance of standing in our troops, like what that meant. I just love being able to see how that has evolved our lives mine and Sinjata's in beautiful ways, and we remain in touch. As a starter point, season two, along with season one, would be really helpful for people who identify as beginners on the path, because we really not only touched on some of the fears that we had as we were moving into unschooling, but really a lot of the wisdom that it was already bringing in and some of the connections that we just had made before Season three episodes 51 to 100. Much like season two, there were so many conversations that allowed for expanding of this thing from just a focus on school or not school into what eventually I started calling raising free people and realizing that included raising ourselves, raising our, our vibration across relationships, across generations, across all relationships, including generations after us. So, kendall and summer, shout out to y'all. It was so beautiful to be able to push back against the idea of what a family is supposed to look like and supposed to experience. Kendall and summer are a black and queer married couple And in that episode 51, the beginning of season three, we talked about self love, cultural awareness and they were raising both a conventional school or and an unschooler at the same time. So it was really interesting and I really recommend that episode for just being able to listen to someone's story and push back against ideas that you have about what something is supposed to look like. Shout out to Kendall and summer. Thank you so much for that episode.
Akilah S Richards:I did some solo episodes there talking about like a vision for a self directed world. I talked about managing anxiety and push back parenting. Push back in SDE spaces. We had Zara Alabanza and Atlanta activists and dope human joined us. Aisha Cleveland Lang on self mothering. Aisha has joined us many times over Kim Hester. We had Trudy Lebron. We had Lou Wilkerson Shout out to Lou, who went on to host grief, growth and goals podcast on our network and is doing amazing work right now with the Dreamers Academy and Lou Hollis talent management. The links will be there.
Akilah S Richards:Kelly Palmer formerly Kelly Carboni Woods. We had Doritzia Rivera, asia Rutledge, who also went on to host. She said we shed podcast. Monique Allison on surviving survival mode. Sister friend in the homie, najai Knox, who talked about de schooling and founded de schooling DC. Oh my goodness, the conversations. Etl McVay joined us and I think that was ETL's maybe second time on the podcast. Moji was in full swing with her podcast. We talked about black maternal mortality rates, intuition and trust just connective, rooted, expansive, all at the same time. Conversations happened and I just really love being able to reflect on that and encourage you, even if you listen to them when they first came out.
Akilah S Richards:Feel through some of these back in seasons one, two and three. From where you are now. You know when you read a book that just really changed your life. You read it at different times in your life. We could do the same thing with the vibration of sound through people's stories on podcasts. So I encourage you to do that and share with somebody else what it does for you to really go back, as you now, to this thing that moved you all the way back then. Thank you.
Akilah S Richards:That was 2016, when a lot of the ways that we were viewing education was still fresh in our minds the old ways that we viewed education, the purpose of it, the purpose of our children, our roles as parents. That was really just four years into our unschooling journey, what eventually became our unschooling journey, and really just a couple years into our moving away from just doing school at home like that type of homeschooling. So the first season of the podcast is really good because who I reached out to, how I understood things feel like those would be really useful and I know they've been useful because I've been told that by different people who have listened to that first season. The other thing is that I have a course and you literally will have to message me some kind of way you can email me. I'm on Instagram. You can always hit the voice memo app on raisingfreepeoplecom If you ask me to open up the course that I created around that time, which was called the unschooling entrepreneurs guide to life in learning long name because I was like deeply into the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, as I still am, and I wanted to create something that felt like a guide to this new fucking planet of unschooling.
Akilah S Richards:So if you are interested in that, i will give you access to it. I cringe a little bit because, because I'm not there anymore, you know a lot of the things that I talked about then. I don't even see it like that anymore. I don't even care about some of the shit I was focused on back then My trust, work around, how learning happens, and the role of relationships and partnership, particularly with people I love, like my children. Those things have shifted so much that if I were to do the course again which I would like to I would take such a different approach.
Akilah S Richards:I would be talking to you more about how you fucking feel and how your children feel, and not so much what they're doing, not because the doing isn't an important part of the times when we do need to progress and when growth is ripe and appropriate, as opposed to forced. We do need growth at some times, but back then I was so focused on how to see it, how to notice it, how to facilitate it, whereas now, even talking with a beginner, i wouldn't focus on that. I would talk more about emotional needs and what you're noticing. I would offer education on things like interoception and I would talk about hearing more about what struggles your children are having like in their words, in their language. Not so much what you've noticed, because so much of that helps us to understand why we push and why our children resist and how resistance can really be a roadmap and a relief from the pressure to figure out how to fix or help our children or ourselves or anybody else in our lives.
Akilah S Richards:I would be talking from much more a space of connectedness. I wouldn't try to meet you where you were, because one of the things that I know now about how I serve and how I support is that I'm not really that's not my ministry to meet people where they are. It's not that there's anything wrong with that. There are so many people in my life like Malika Diggs of Eclectic Learning Network, so skilled at meeting people where they are in ways that can support them to another space. But my alchemy, how I'm set up, is that I support you when parts of you trust something different than how you're showing up. Parts of you are in tune with a deeper truth than the surface, truth that you keep on trusting. What I'm for is to invite and invoke that part of people. That's what I do, and now that I trust that way about myself so much more because I've been in in community with people, like some of you listening, who helped me to trust that and who show me how to not try to perform some other way than how I work best. That's where I would speak from. So that's where I'm talking to you from now.
Akilah S Richards:If you're just getting started and you might be dealing with oftentimes regret, oftentimes a sense that it's too late for you to be at a more partnership centric level with a child in your life, whether you're a parent or a different type of caregiver, an educator, an educator who's not a parent, because all parents are educators but not all educators are parents. If I'm talking to you from that space, i would say the guilt, the sense of fear that it's too late, the idea that you just don't know what exactly to do now if you are gonna trust the kid more, or what I hear a lot is my kid can't unschool because they need structure. That's a common myth. So those are the type of spaces that I'm wanting to bring some offerings to. The first thing is, i talked last week about how I had to learn and Chris, my partner, had to learn how not to fill this perceived void once we stopped sending them to school or if we stopped using a specific curriculum. If so, if we were less structured, what would we do instead?
Akilah S Richards:I would say to a beginner that the question is not what do we do instead, the question is oh, what's making me feel like if we're not doing that, then we need to be doing something else. Why do I feel that way? where's the proof of that? what is it that I think would happen if I just offered some de-schooling time, meaning that we didn't have a particular curriculum, they were doing nothing. I wasn't making them do anything. I wasn't trying to sign them up for a particular thing just yet. I know that I want to get there at some point, because I know they need stimuli outside of the house, or I know I do not want them and me to be together all day long. That's stressful for me in ways that I'm not. I'm not feeling that right now. So, even if my goal is ultimately to do something else, what might happen if I didn't rush to that something else? So that's a question I might say if I don't give them something to do, then that's more pressure on me, because they're gonna be being like mom, dad or whoever. Can we do this? What about this? Watch me do this. Wanna do this with me.
Akilah S Richards:If you have a younger one, it might be hard if you have a seven, eight, nine year old, because sometimes they're still dependent on that adult, their primary adult, to facilitate, to entertain them, essentially give them something to do. The thing about that is that you are the environment. You are essentially the government. You are a child's government as their adult, You are the governing adult. So that environment if you don't want to be the primary person that's doing the things for them, then you and they both have to develop the skills of that change. What does it look like? I remember when I was doing that with our girls, we dealt with it through proximity I'm gonna go in this room over here and then you're gonna be in this room here, and so when this timer goes off is when you can come into the room that I'm in. So what do you need to be in this room for this time? Like really just trying different practical things to separate yourselves from each other, to not assume that you have to be the manager of their schedule and life, even when you're still like bathing them or helping them to do basic care things.
Akilah S Richards:There is a point where it is appropriate and necessary for a young person, a young human, to rely on. Take from extract from the first the mother, and then whoever the main adult is. That's normal, natural, healthy. That doesn't necessarily change automatically. We don't just grow or age out of that. There are things we can do to facilitate that when we have a younger one, and that's what we need to be thinking about, reading about asking that question on the Facebook groups or wherever it is that we connect with other people, our in-person events, gatherings These are the type of questions we need to be asking.
Akilah S Richards:If someone has a child that, like my youngest, was just super I don't know if the term is self-regulated she just didn't need to be around, nobody to do nothing. However, you word that clinically she was that, and whereas our oldest, miley, was not like that, and so we didn't learn until later that a child could even be that autonomous and just do their thing gather their different toys, come get you when they need something. That's a thing that we, if we knew that was possible, we would have been facilitating that, but when we knew it was possible, then we were able to facilitate it and nurture it in both of them in different ways, and so that's something you can really be just paying attention to. How to do that if that's not the environment that you're already in. Sometimes we need to do that even when a child is older. That also helps us to begin to recognize ourselves.
Akilah S Richards:Let me speak for myself, and also no, i'm not just speaking for myself, actually Because this is also very much informed by the conversations that I have with different people because I am in this sort of unique, in many ways, a position of studying, unschooling, life and culture, because we live it and we're invited into different forms of it all the time in different parts of the world my family and me And so I'm not just speaking for myself. I'm also wanting to make sure you are aware that other people, not just me, are experiencing this thing. You could have, for example, a 12-year-old or 13-year-old that's still really dependent on their primary adult for what to do, how to engage their time when they're not in school. That can happen, and so I don't want you to think that, if you're having this experience with a preteen or a teen, that it's too late for you to start developing those skills or practicing those skills. It's not.
Akilah S Richards:Another thing that I would say for a beginner is to really try to separate yourself, which is really tied to what I was just talking about as well separate your role of teacher, because if you're a parent, you're automatically a teacher, you're an educator, and if you chose education not because you have children but because you wanna be in that world, there's a way that we as adults can blend our teacher or guide self with the rest of ourselves in a way that makes it hard for us to see that young person as just a person. We tie all types of expectations around our role as teacher or guide or facilitator or parent. We latch that on to that young person And so, because of that, they're too close to our shit. Like we need some distance so we can see them as a whole human. We can see them as having the right to discover some things that somebody isn't trying to force them to see. We can see them as imperfect, and necessarily imperfect, so that they can make certain mistakes that they need to make in order to evolve, so that we can see ourselves as also humans who are imperfect and that what we are seeing for them, what we want for them, might not actually be what's best for them. Even if we're coming from a great place, can we honor the right that comes with them not being, not being just for you. Their life isn't just about what you understand for them or how you understand them to be or what you think they need.
Akilah S Richards:There is some other type of trust work to be done around distancing yourself as their adult, their governing adult, distancing yourself from the expectations you have for their life and how they are going to get certain skills that you think that they will need. For example, if you are thinking that your version of unschooling should look like no school, no curriculum, but you don't know where to start. So you are going to say to them alright, i am not going to give you a specific curriculum, but I want you to pay some attention to these couple of books. Or I want you to watch this particular thing. I remember we did some of that because we just needed scaffolding. We were not able to jump from giving them things to do to not giving them anything to do at all. We would assign things, but if they didn't do the assigned thing, instead of trying to figure out how to make them do it, we would make the lesson really be about okay, how do we handle that?
Akilah S Richards:they didn't do it? What type of feelings is it bringing up for me? What type of feelings is it bringing up for Chris? Where do I feel disrespected? Whatever it is that I feel, what am I doing with that feeling? How did I express it? What else is it bringing up for me? to really use these experiences as an opportunity to investigate all the shit behind it, all the behind the scenes, not whether they did the thing or didn't do the thing, but all of the other things behind it the emotions, the reactions, the tendency. What happens if you didn't follow what you tended to do this time? What if you didn't make it a big deal that they didn't do the thing? How did they react to that? What did they say to you about whether they were surprised that your reaction or not? How do you feel about the fact that they expected you to behave a certain way and you didn't? What else is that related to mad question asking and asking different questions than the ones that you would default to if you were just thinking about them as a student and you were just thinking about yourself as the guy, the teacher, the facilitator, the parent, and a lot of what we discussed in Season 1 speaks to that, a lot of what is in the blog post on selfdirectedorg the Alliance for Self-Directed Education that site. If you read a lot of the blogs there, you'll see how people shifted over from the questions about education and over into the questions about relationship and the drivers.
Akilah S Richards:What's actually driving our focal points here? Who is in my head when I try to make my kid do something, or when I react this way to something my kid doesn't do? Who's in my head? Who am I performing for when I make my kid perform? What is my kid reacting to? Are they reacting to the thing that I'm asking or is there something else that they're reacting to? Is there a pattern here that they are responding to? When I think about the opportunities that I want a child to have, am I also factoring in the emotional, a mental wellness, or am I only thinking about education? Where is education actually getting in the way of the emotional, the mental wellness that I also want for a child and for myself? Who's performing here and for whom? These things And questions can also be mantras, any one of those things that resonated for you in what I was bringing up, what I was asking.
Akilah S Richards:You might write it down and put it somewhere where you see it often, so that you can use the questions to guide your actions or to make sense of your actions in a moment. I would also say that one of the easiest things that you can begin to do as a beginner into this non-school-centric way, even if your kid is in school, one of the easiest allegedly perhaps easiest things to do is to just listen more. Listen more to that child, listen more to your inner voice, listen out more for your inner critic. Make your inner critic more visible by writing down things or sharing in a group that you're in where there's some trust, sharing what your inner critic said when you chose a different route, even if it didn't have anything to do with a kid Becoming a better listener, because part of what these systems do, these non-human-centric systems like the school system, part of what they do is they get louder than what we actually need to be listening to.
Akilah S Richards:We can't hear because we are so focused on doing, producing, performing, grinding that we're not listening. We're tired. We're too tired to listen. We're too worn out to listen. We don't have enough of our basic needs met to try to be listening to somebody, some softer inner voice, when we try to figure shit out. But if you can manage to decide and commit to just listening more than you talk in, listening more than you're explaining, listening more than you try to figure out. That alone is going to guide you further into this practice of raising free people. That alone. So this is it. This was a long episode. I'm going to really play with how I recap the rest of the episodes, but, as always, i feel your presence and energy when I record these things. I want you to know that I feel it. So, as usual, thank you for being here and chat to you next week when we continue. We'll recap the next couple of seasons and see what else we get into. Much love.