Ep 268: Freedom Is For Your Grown Ass Too!

Join Akilah as she journeys through the third path to Raising Free People: For Me not Them. Learn the languaging that helps you, the adult, the independent person, move through discovering confident autonomy and other themes that come through as you traverse the pathway of personal leadership.

This week we continue our exploration into liberation and self-direction from Seasons 6, 7, and 8. Among those who got their flowers are Yolonda Coles Jones, Leslie W. Bray, and Vanessa Molano, who have provided essential tools for this journey. Karen M Ricks, Tony Galloway, and Amelia Allen Sherwood. Karen explored the correlation between food, play, and mindfulness, followed by Tony's reflections on finance, politics, masculinity, mental health, and unschooling, and Amelia gave us a unique perspective on Montessori education for Black folks. We also showed love to other guests like Iris Chen, Karema Akilah, Ieishah Clelland-Lang, and Season 8's co-host, Domari Dickinson, who joined us in offering the P.A.U.S.E. framework and its transformative role in self-reflection and personal development.

This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for all, dig in!

Episode links:
Yolanda Coles Jones
Leslie W Bray
Vanessa Molano
Raising Free People book
Karen M Ricks
Amelia Sherwood and Sankofa Learning Centre
Iris Chen and Untigering
Karema Akilah and The Genius School
Anthony Galloway
Fare of the Free Man Child series: Ep 232, 233, 234
Ieishah Clelland-Lang
Maori Mother Wisdom series: Ep 237,238,239,240
P.A.U.S.E series and Domari Dickinson
Tebogo Modisane and Ha se Lehola

Chapters

• 0:03 Reflections from Yolonda Coles Jones
• 4:15 Recap of Seasons 6,7 and 8
• 12:17 Path No 3: Unschooling For Me, Not Them

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Warm greetings, akilah Yolanda. Here I am coming in to record this audio as sort of a recap and cap to the cultural artifact as my friend Andrew Thomas Clifton would say, the cultural artifact that has been fair of the free child, the podcast under your leadership. It was really an honor for me to meet you those years ago when my children were much smaller, and if I had to, I don't know if I can sum it all up a few words come to mind amazing, unfolding, lots and lots of unfolding, unpacking. Yeah, you know, the language is such a big part of it. I often refer to them as the younger than me, humans that are in my care and that I'm walking alongside, and so if I had to reflect and sort of put into a few words what I might offer that version of myself or to folks who are walking along a similar path, I just keep thinking a lot about the healing around the idea of nurturing and around the idea of parenting and around the idea of fully seeing and fully knowing and being with yourself as you unpack, as you put the pieces of yourself back together and when I say back together, I mean in the sense of any separation that has come about from like core self, anything that has separated you from that. That could be like societal norms and understandings and familial sort of generational patterning to you know, expectations of certain doctrines and just undoing. There's been so much undoing, so much unfolding, and that's been true. So this concept of raising free people has resonated in such a deep way, and that it's not just about the children. It's important to have that sort of framework, I think, to be able to know that you're making a journey as well, and so often it's a journey towards being able to have the confidence and the patience and the understanding to fully be with yourself and so just coming alongside the being that you are and the being that they are, with just expansive amounts of understanding and patience and curiosity and openness, knowing that there's going to be.

Speaker 1: 2:45

You think about a package that's been all wrapped up, layers and layers and layers, surprise things that are passed down. You know it's a surprise package, maybe, and it's passed down through all these hands and through all these generations. And here you are, it's you, it's you, or it's your partner or partners, or it's your child or your children, and the objective is to find the core, find the truth, find the connection, find the honesty and to be with that. And sometimes it's scary, sometimes it's not comfortable, often it's not comfortable, but in the end, what it will be is healing. What it will be is growth, maturation, and it'll be sacred. It'll be what connects us to everything that is whole and that moves us forward as a human race, as a part of nature. Right, because this is not bearing only parenting in mind. It's all being Freedom. Is that Freedom?

Speaker 2: 3:47

is that what was the voice of Yolanda Coles Jones, who you heard on episodes 40, 59, 91, and 205? Brilliant source of light in this work of raising and being free people and one of the folks who blessed us with aspects of their story that also ended up in raising free people book. If you have not gotten a copy of raising free people book and you rock with this podcast you got to grab the book. We also have a workbook that covers in deep detail chapter one of raising free people book. That was created by Leslie W Bray with the support of Vanessa Milano, and all of that was just them gathering the details from chapter one of the book, and Leslie worked with that over months, worked with it in community and then created a version of it for us that is downloadable and available on schoolishnesscom. So shout out to Yolanda Coles Jones, who you just heard, shout out to Leslie W Bray and shout out to Vanessa Milano. Thank you all so much for being part of this work. Let's move into this episode. You can't keep using tools of oppression and expect to raise free people.

Speaker 2: 5:20

Season six of Fair with the Free Child continue to explore the themes of liberation and self-directed journey. People like Karen M Ricks came through. We talked about the relationship between food, play and mindfulness, love what Karen has going on. We also talked to a show favorite, tony Galloway, who shared his insights on finance, politics, manhood, masculinity, mental health and, of course, unschooling. We also had Amelia Allen Sherwood, montessori educator, black Montessori educator, and I love her whole steeze. Her approach to Montessori education is not neglecting the ways that it really can be brought into the elements and needs of Black folks in ways that it historically has not. It was beautiful to listen to Amelia talk about that. In the Montessori movement she founded the Sankofa Learning Center which I think opens in September of this year. She's a mama community resource, just don't being, and I'm glad, amelia, you were able to join us in season six. We had Iris Chen of Untigering. Also. We talked about culture, consent, love, survival, all these realities. We had Karima Akila join us who is the founder of the Genius School and the Genii, which is a five-pillar genius community, very much self-directed education driven. I've had so many wonderful opportunities to connect with Karima over the years not enough, but certainly enough to say that I really love that. The commitment that Karima continues to hold for self-directed education spaces in Metro Atlanta has really come into fruition. It was really powerful for us to talk about how that was living in our lives, in our homes with our young people. We're in the same city, so we got a chance to just connect a few times outside and talk and vibe. Thank you so much for the work that you continue to do, karima.

Speaker 2: 7:34

In season seven we continued the themes, of course, really zooming in a little bit more. Actually, in season seven on self-discovery, tony Galloway returned. That's when he brought us Fair of the Free man Child, the series that really dove deep into learning and unlearning masculinity and manhood. To this day, to this day you hear me hit my chest To this day, that series continues to be a major source of just gratitude and fist in the air for seeing what happens when we have the spaciousness, the awareness, the mindfulness, whatever the circumstances are that bring us into mad question asking, because we start to question things like what we learned about manhood and masculinity. Anthony, among a group of his friends, really got together and talked about that in ways that continues to serve us as listeners. Thank you so much, anthony, the whole crew.

Speaker 2: 8:35

I also got a chance to do some solo work, to talk about resistance, new moon energies and mother work. Every once in a while I really dip into that space of what's happening in the cosmos and how that's related to my mother work and body. It's not a regular, consistent, always part of my life rituals. It's like a river that I dip into from time to time. I also talked about reactions from folks who are not in the unschooling world during the holidays like some tips, because I had some specific offerings for managing that. That's in season seven. We had the Maori Mother Wisdom series where we talked about reclaiming language, culture, intergenerational relationships. Man shout out to Aisha Cleland Lang who was a vital part of organizing that with some sister friends she had known from her time in Aotearoa, also known as New Zealand, that Maori Mother Wisdom series. I'm just standing here on my feet and my body is as I often do when I'm recording these episodes and I come here into this closet I find myself making circles with my body if my feet are on the ground when certain topics come up through this podcast. One of them is absolutely the Maori Mother Wisdom series. I highly recommend that.

Speaker 2: 9:53

That was season seven. We had the good sister, boho Modisani, from Soweto, south Africa, who talks to us about the connection between all of this and the rest of the natural world, which is what we are To. Boho is currently building health services, health and wellness services through the brand Hase Leola. We talked about that. We talked about what that means, why, how she's doing educational work around different herbs and how they benefit us. Make sure you go check out Hase Leola. I will make sure that their Instagram account for sure is on the show notes page so you can be following along and getting your education about the ways we can care for ourselves with the rest of nature.

Speaker 2: 10:41

Season eight that was a dope collaboration with Damari Dickinson, who many of you know, another liberation worker in this movement to raise and be free people. We talked about the PAWS framework, that P-A-U-S-E acronym. I really just used that whole season to offer this framework as a means for self-reflection and even transformation in our living and learning practices. It was really about slowing down what that meant, how to do that in the middle of life, life in, and mother work, mothering, and father work, fathering and all the things in between. What does it look like? We had this acronym the P was for pain points, a was for absences, u was for understanding, the S was for sorting and shedding, the E was for exploration, kind of like this season, we had affirmations, we had just a medley of offerings in alignment with that PAWS framework. Your feedback about that continues to make me wanna dance, because y'all got and gave, you poured so much into us as we were pouring in. That reciprocity for season eight was just like live and direct, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it. So long We'll get through the recaps because I really wanted to leave room for what else is in store this episode.

Speaker 2: 12:17

Let's talk a little bit about the next path, the third one in the five paths we're sharing this final season. This third one is the for me, not them, path. This is about highlighting the fact that unschooling skills are not just for parents and their children, they are for all of us humans. I'm here in Oregon and the house I'm staying in has all these deer, especially baby deer, walking around. So that is the energy with which I start this recording watching baby deer a couple feet in front of me, all around me, on this beautiful day in July, and I'm recording this part of this episode on July 27th, which marks the seven-year anniversary of Fair of the Free Child. Episode 1 was also on July 27th of 2016. How wonderful. I'm getting to walk around as I'm talking here, but I'm going to find a little spot so I can pull up what I wanted to share with you.

Speaker 2: 13:40

This part of our journey together is specifically about the For Me, not them, path. This is one of the five paths that I wanted to leave you with, as the elder that is, fair of the Free Child is laid to rest and the people, the energies, myself included who are part of this elder want to pour into a sense of responsibility that I didn't want to just leave the space without offering some care packages that comprise a lot of what we've learned together over these last seven years. So that's what this final season is about, and if this is your first episode of Fair of the Free Child, then you might not know that we have five key things that we're focusing on here, and this one right now is the third of the fifth, and it's about the ways that the path to raising free people is about each individual, and not necessarily about school or not school. I even say that everyone, at some point in their life, is an unschooler because at some point, you are questioning something that you either held as true because you never questioned it or because you didn't feel that you had the space, capacity, right, safety, whatever it was, the tools to question it and do something different, right? So questioning to evolve our shit, to change our minds about things, to change our habits about things that's a pretty normal part of most people's lives, and when you're in that mode, let me tell you, you unschooling. So I wanted to speak really specifically to that. The other thing is that, because this podcast was so based on the needs and feedback of the listeners, I got to learn how much the work of raising free people feels supportive for people who don't have children, people who are not caregivers of children, and that's really moving for me and it also tracks like it. It aligns with me too, because I Initially was doing this in service of Marley and sage right, just like Chris was, but eventually it really became about us. It was really personal leadership work, and so Hearing from people who were not coming from the lens of a child or even their own inner child Really allows me to stand in what I also experienced, because I knew that it had a lot to do with me Akilah, not not me Marley, or sage's mom, so I want to lean in on that a little bit over the next couple of minutes. So the two things that I would offer here in this care package.

Speaker 2: 16:42

If the question for you is, as someone who is child-free, what are some of the ways that I can tap into the skills and understanding the reasoning of unschooling? One thing that I would say is to get familiar with the language. There are some main vocabulary terms, if you will, some main points of language that I use often and that has really resonated with a lot of the folks who who are also on their raising free people journey. Those are listed on what is now my main site, which is schoolishness calm, and if you go to schoolishness calm and click the language menu item, then you'll see the words schoolishness, de-schooling, sovereignty, confident autonomy, self-awareness, parenting, self-directed education and, of course, unschooling. I Invite you to Get familiar with what those words mean in your body.

Speaker 2: 17:52

What are the stories that you have and want to hold on to and what are the stories that you have and want to release around each of those words Confident autonomy, for example. That's a powerful Framework to move some shit through. I Know that for myself and I know it because many of you told me what happened, what, what woke up, what came to attention when you first experienced the term confident autonomy, let alone when you started to recognize its role in your life, whether it was the absence of it for you or for a child, or Whether it was the presence of it and wanting to prioritize it even more. You know to build the skills of confident autonomy. So when you go to that part of the site and you experience each of those words, when you read the definition, feel into it, use them as mantras.

Speaker 2: 18:49

When you read the definition of unschooling, and then it tells you Something that really connects with you, or de-schooling when I let me walk back over to that one, because I Know how to be feeling de-schooling shedding the programming and habits that resulted from other people's agency over your time, body, thoughts or actions. Also designing and practicing beliefs that align with your desire to thrive, be happy and succeed. Take those words and whatever pieces resonate with you. Let them work. You put that, write them on your fridge, write out the sentence, say it in your voice and record it. These, these simple things that we can do to put ourselves in Relationship to the things that move us, so that we have life after the aha, you know, if you you hear something on here from somebody's story or you read raising free people book or many of the other Amazing books that are out here.

Speaker 2: 19:51

Tackling this type of work on Tigering, it's another dope one where, iris Chen, if you're reading these things and you're in this space, what are you doing to to sustain and to Integrate the things that are showing up? And a part of what you can do a simple starter point, a simple bridge, is to Put the words into more of your everyday life, say them, write them out. That's why I did the card deck. The card, the raising free people practice card deck, began as, literally, pieces of paper, notebook paper that I wrote out certain things on in the middle of struggles that I was having in my mother work and in my personal leadership work, and so I Found it so useful to have the visual there and to write it out with my own hand and to record what was showing up for me as I was allowing those things to work me, as I was allowing for the inherent Discovery that comes with discomfort.

Speaker 2: 20:56

Right, I feel like there is no type of Valuable discovery that doesn't come with, or maybe first come with, discomfort. This comfort and discovery go together. So in order to discover something useful, there has to be Discomfort. That's what I'm feeling through right now. You tell me if you feel different, but that feels solid to me. So, as you are feeling through these terms like confident autonomy, or rethinking your definition of unschooling, or when we talk about self-directed, what does it mean to be self-directed for me as an adult? What is my relationship to the term sovereignty? What do I think about when that comes up? Where have I heard that language before that, right now, is calling to me in a different way? This is how we work the for me, not them path. You hear the language, you interact with the language, you move it through your actual life by putting it in your presence more.

Speaker 2: 22:14

For me, that made the things more accessible when I needed them, essentially studying through my own body, through my own experiences, looking it up, aspects of confident autonomy, what that meant, what that could mean, what it has meant to other people. Then, when I was in some sort of conflict, maybe with one of my daughters or with somebody I was working on a project with. Then I could see because I was practicing, I was in the space with how someone was maybe asserting or practicing their confident autonomy. I was taking that personal. I was making it about what I preferred or what made me comfortable, when really what I needed to be doing was recognizing and respecting their right to lead themselves in a way that makes sense for them, for them to be confidently autonomous.

Speaker 2: 23:16

It switched my access to how I could view what was happening and make it less about my feelings in the unhealthy way. I give it that descriptor of the unhealthy way because sometimes my feelings is exactly what the fuck I need to be focused on. That is the wisdom, that is the move, that's the strategy, how I feel. And then there are other times where that feeling is just a fever, it's just a thing that's uncomfortable and I actually need to be with that discomfort and not push back against it. So if I'm working on a project with you and I have been practicing, reasoning out loud and maybe even recording it or making it a point to talk to people about confident autonomy, then when I'm in this situation with this person and they are clearly practicing that and setting a boundary or doing whatever they're doing and it rubs me the wrong way because I have practiced with that language, that reasoning of confident autonomy. I can see it. I can then decide how I can take care of myself, which looks very different than just reacting to how I felt about what they did.

Speaker 2: 24:38

The other thing I'll say about the for me, not them path is that if you are a parent, these terms, these few words and a few more that I put in the book I think there were some other terms in raising free people book those are terms that showed up for me in my personal leadership work and allowed me to broaden my, my own view of myself way beyond my motherhood. So being a mom is very important to me. Motherhood is where a lot of my transformations show up. You know, I say motherhood raised me and still raising me and sometimes, when I'm too zoned in on my mother role, it costs me other aspects of Akilah that I actually they. They not on the table. Those aspects of me are ones that I want and need to keep whole. I want and need to keep these other aspects of myself whole.

Speaker 2: 25:54

As much as I would want to be available for whatever my girls need, I'm actually not. I'm actually not available for whatever they need. I do have things that I choose not to do, even though I can. I do have interest that conflict with what they might need, sometimes Nothing that makes them unsafe, but something that just doesn't make them the priority. And when I'm in practice, with words like sovereignty and with words like re parenting, that allowed me to make this journey less about saving my children from school, which is what it started as, but it evolved really into something that was about who I am, what happens in conflict, whether that conflict is with another person or my own.

Speaker 2: 26:52

Conflicting needs, like the prioritization of my mother work, while also prioritizing caring for myself and building upon my own interests, and not making myself so available for what my children might want or sometimes need, making myself so available to that that the rest of me is put on some back burner or some later thing or gets less of my attention and energy. I'm not cool with that anymore and some of that much of that had to be really deliberate. It wasn't like automatic. Because they got older, I was doing less for them. I was doing a lot in different ways and they deserve a lot. They're amazing people and being their mother is one aspect of all of me, and so this language, these specific words here on schoolishnesscom under the language tab, are the result of my expansion of my understanding of unschooling from freeing my kids from school prison over into so much more personal leadership work and so much more healing of myself For the purposes of the need I have for community. I didn't want to be a harmful thing in these communities that I was becoming part of. I wanted to be able to honestly say that I was doing my work, which for me meant that I had to gather the separate pieces of mother and this and that and be really honest about what I was willing to do. You know how to reach out to me the voice memo option on raisingfreepeoplecom. I love hearing from you there. Thank you to Yolanda Coles Jones for using that button and to so many others of you who reach out to me through that medium. You can also email me sheatraisingfreepeoplecom or anywhere you see this episode, you can comment. Let me know how this landed for you.

Speaker 2: 29:25

Next week, I'm going to give you a little bit more detail about the personal manifesto path, which is the series that I am revisiting. It was something that I did back in 2014 that really transformed my life. I talked earlier this season about how what I was doing then really worked, really worked, and I developed a particular set of rituals around that, as I do each time I drop into a really life-shifting milestone era right in my life. I usually do some of that, struggling out loud, as you've heard me say many times here, and that was in the form of creating a personal manifesto. I even wrote a book about that back then, as I'd be doing Same same, same, same same. You meet me now. This is a result of probably the same thing a book that I wrote that you found, and I also did a course around it. I just really was able to take the concept of the vision board, and it's like the vision board on mushrooms.

Speaker 1: 30:32

And.

Speaker 2: 30:33

I'm going to be running that course fully through our Make it Happen family on patreoncom slash akila no extra fees. I think people have asked me that. Like no, if you're a member of the Make it Happen family, the course will be available to you. You just got to sign up when I put the little sign up sign there and I promise I will. And it'll be on patreoncom forward slash akila as always. Thank you for listening Chat's here next week. Audio by raising free people network.