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Dear Renee, age 16

posted 25th December 2010    Written by: Renee    CATEGORY: Life Lesson, Love/Relationships, Renee, Season 3, What I've Learned

Dear Renee, age 16,

You realize how lucky you are to be living a storybook life right now. You’re in honors courses. You’re dating your best friend who plays in a pretty sweet band. You’ve got all the solos in choir and you make all the plays you audition for. Your teachers love you, your friends love you, and some of your classmates have told you that they admire you. Shit, you’re doing something right.

But know this is not as good as it gets. You are simply learning what greatness feels like, but it’s not all the greatness you’ll feel in your life. Know that your boyfriend will cheat on you with a taller, prettier version of yourself. Even though that will put you in a tailspin and on anxiety meds, know that this experience will help you realize how good of a catch you really are. This experience will teach you the lessons of heartbreak and it will teach you that putting giant chewed up jelly beans on that girl’s car is actually really funny and healing. Just not the second time. But most of all, this experience will give you a taste of how resilient you truly are. You’re only scratching the surface of your strength.

When someone all but promises you the lead in your senior musical, know that you still have to work for that audition. In the offchance that you blow it, you’ll learn that even those things that you take for granted require effort. You blow your audition and you get cast as a guy. Seriously. I wish I could make that part up. It’s the cherry on the sundae that makes you resent high school. That, coupled with all your friends graduating early, and all the drama that surrounded your break-up with aforementioned boyfriend, makes you look forward to college. And I’m telling you now, college is a bajillion times better than high school. You don’t even need anxiety meds in college (or post-college).

Listen, I know you’re on top of the world right now. You feel like everything is going in the right direction. You think you’re going to marry that boy and settle down in northern Indiana and pop out babies and go to church every weekend… but a little thing called politics and feminism will soon creep into your life. You’ll take some new media classes. You’re a smart cookie, but you’ll find a hunger for knowledge soon enough. You’ll meet a young man who listens and appreciates you for who you are and won’t try to change you. You’ll graduate high school. You’ll win awards in college. You’ll get A’s in grad school. You’re going to succeed far beyond your current dreams.

Dream bigger, lovely.

So stop passing notes in World History. Stop drinking the nights before choir competitions. Stop making out in the driver’s seat of your tiny car. You’re so much better than that. It gets so much better than that.

And when you get caught cheating on your Biology exam? You’d better feel DAMN lucky he let you retake it. Also, you’ll get a lead in Hello Dolly, so stop whining about Annie Get Your Gun.

Love,

Renee, age 24

{photo credit: D Sharon Pruitt}

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5 Things I Believe About Spirit, Soul, and Faith

posted 9th November 2010    Written by: Doniree    CATEGORY: Doniree, Inspiration, Season 3, Spirituality, What I've Learned

Southern Baptist childhood.  One year in a Jesuit Catholic university.  Friends of all faiths.  A year in a hippie-like, yoga-fied, meditating near-mountain town.  Spirituality.  I’ve had a lot of religion in my life, largely Western influences, Christianity, prayer, repentance, and judgment.

In the last year or two I have identified much more with a broader worldview, more similar to Eastern religions, but not identifying as Buddhist, Taoist, or Hindu.  I’m learning, exploring.  Exposing myself to new world views since as a youngin’, I was simply taught that everything else was wrong, but never really understood what “everything else” meant.

I also know that it’s tough for me to discuss religion and spirituality sometimes, as I don’t want to imply that my practice is the right practice or that one idea trumps another.  I don’t know that – I don’t have the authority to say that.  But I know what works for me, I know what resonates.  I know what keeps me grounded, what keeps me connected to my world.  I’ve boiled some of what I do know down to a series of simple, straight-forward beliefs.  These are a few of those:

  1. I believe in love and kindness.
  2. I believe that religion doesn’t make you spiritual and spirituality doesn’t make you religious.
  3. I believe in a higher power and in Divinity, and I believe that that Divinity is present in all beings.
  4. I believe that yoga, meditation, clarity, self/Self-awareness, and intention are crucial in my own spiritual practice.
  5. I believe that I don’t know everything.

I don’t believe in religions that teach love and kindness but don’t exude it.  I don’t like labels, but would rather see evidence of faith and love that comes from within.  I believe that ideas and acts like prayer and putting it out in the Universe are synonymous and reflect our different perceptions of what God means and who God is, and that neither of those things take away from the presence of Divinity.  I believe that I connect with my spirit and soul through yoga, Svādhyāya (self-study), relationships with others, and my relationship with the earth and my world.

I believe that this is where I’m at after decades of an upbringing in church, a few years of a dedicated yoga practice, and an attempt to reconcile the two, think critically about the two, and discern what I can and can’t accept.  I believe that yoga isn’t sacrilegious and that pastors who have been saying that yoga is the devil’s work are total whack jobs.  I believe that there is plenty more to learn and that as someone who is a seeker, that I will continue to learn and that the more I learn the more I will realize how much more there is to discover.

I believe that I love this journey.

What do you believe and how did you get there?

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How Homeschooling in Middle School Affected My QLC in My 20′s

posted 31st August 2010    Written by: Doniree    CATEGORY: Doniree, Family, Season 3, What I've Learned

I was homeschooled through most of middle school.

Specifically, I was homeschooled for five and a half years during third, fifth, sixth, seventh, half of eighth, and ninth grade. I used to really enjoy telling people this because I felt as though my family busted right through the stereotype that was homeschooling, particularly the ‘how’d you have a social life?‘ and ‘didn’t that shelter you?‘ questions that typically followed.  However, I don’t think that stereotype exists really anymore, so now when I talk about those five and a half years, I tout what I felt were the really strong contributors to my work ethic and relationships today.

So, this is my homeschooling story.

Why we did it

Here’s the short story: My parents decided to homeschool my sister and I after my second grade year and her first grade year. They’d run into a bit of a disagreement with the school administration over what kind of information they could and wouldn’t share with parents about what the students were being taught and tested on. Feeling as though they should get to have some idea about what their six and seven year old were being taught, they pulled us out of public school after that year and took matters into their own hands – using an approved national cirruculum from a private school based in Florida.  That was that.

Lessons Learned

Being homeschooled from essentially late elementary school through middle school was pretty formative, and in retrospect, one of the best things to have happened to me. I appreciate the development that happened in those years and feel that there are three things in particular that have shaped me and have influenced my work ethic, professional direction in life, and ultimately the handling of my own quarter-life crisis.

I’m grateful for the years my parents taught us at home because:

I learned how to self-teach. Perhaps one of the best things to come out of being homeschooled from 3rd-9th grade is the ability I developed to teach myself information.  We had cirriculum and my parents were great teachers, but ultimately I was responsible for reading, understanding, and presenting the information I learned about each of the topics we studied.  This came in handy especially in college when professors weren’t spoon-feeding us everything anymore, and expected students to take responsibility for their own futures.  Today, as a self-employed blogger, consultant, and aspiring yoga teacher, the ability to keep myself motivated and constantly learning is as much a crucial part of my personal growth as it is my professional life.

It changed the way I believed work time should and could be structured. I remember starting our “school day” at 8AM (yes, we had to be “on time”) and being done by or shortly after lunch.  What took middle schools 7 hours to teach and accomplish between hallway time, lunch hours, etc., we nailed in 4-5 hours.  Since I’ve left the “traditional” work force again this fall, I’m back to working from home for a few different clients.  Knowing that it’s possible to “work smarter, not longer hours” keeps me focused in the mornings so I have my afternoons to work on my own projects, take yoga, and spend time with my friends – for the most part.  The golden nugget of this set-up is that it reinforces balance, something that remains a massive priority in my life.

The things I’ve learned from my family are some of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my life. From teacher-student lessons to parent-daughter lessons, I’ve learned more than how to manipulate a curfew and how to diagram a sentence.  Thanks to Ma, Pops, Mir, and Jeff, I’ve learned:  Alabama history, how to sauté mushrooms, what to cook cornbread in, how important the first grade is, what a laminating machine could be used for, how to pronounce “Gewurztraminer,” how to play Canasta, what an ERA is, the Caray family lineage (Harry, Skip, and Chip), some inner workings of today’s school system, how to cook with wine, and the importance of down time, alone time, and family time.

A Balance of Learning

Miranda and I went back to public school for high school, and I have to be honest – I loved it.  I know a ton of people who hated their middle and high school years, but I look back on middle school and I see a time in my life where foundations were set, where habits and work ethics were developed, and relationships with my mom, dad, and sister were strengthened.  I look back on high school and see a time when all of those previous years enabled me to self-teach and stay far on top of assignments and classwork in high school, enabled me to keep my head on straight and only get into a little bit of trouble, and ultimately appreciate the balance that was spending a few focused years learning at home so that I could spend the last years of my pre-secondary education rounding out academics with relationships and getting a better idea about what I wanted to do after that.

Role models and support systems

Family plays a huge role in who we are, and how I’ve landed where I’m at today.  I’m eternally grateful for having a support system of parents, a sister, and in the last few years, a brother-in-law that stayed supportive as I hammered out all of my big dreams.  Big dreams that have included from the very start writing, travel, self-managing, and constant learning and now into my late twenties really haven’t changed that much, but through their counseling, teaching, and unconditional love have been better defined and pursued than ever.

{Image credit: I swiped it from my sister’s Facebook page.}

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