An Epilogue to Homeschooling: A Mother Hangs Up Her Homeschooling Hat…Now What?

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

A mother’s account of letting go of who she was in an old story and allowing herself to evolve into a new one

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My chest feels achy. It’s felt like this for weeks now. I keep catching myself holding my breath, losing focus, reaching for something to soothe me, staring into space. This isn’t me — who is this person, I wonder. And yet, I recognize her.

I met this version of myself once before, years ago, when I was learning how to travel from girlhood into motherhood. And now, here she is again, getting her sons ready for their first days of school without her, learning how to be their cheerleader instead of their coach, figuring out how to let go while still holding on. This is me after 13 years of homeschooling.

Homeschooling was never the plan. It started when my almost-four-year-old leaned over and whispered, “I want to know everything, Mama,” lighting a fire inside me.

The year was 2009, and I was a 27-year-old mother of two intensely active, curious, wildly creative little boys (read: “not ready for Pre-K but bored to tears at home”) living in rural Georgia with very limited resources. A co-worker of mine at the public school had met my son and told me he wasn’t ready for the classroom. She told me he’d need to learn to sit still first, that he should wait a year and then start. But I didn’t want him to wait. So, I decided to teach him myself.

The next day, with fear screaming into every cell of my body, I took $50 I couldn’t really spare to the bookstore and found my way into becoming a homeschooling mother.

I was only going to homeschool for one year at first. But seeing his face light up at every new discovery, every library trip, every arts & crafts experiment changed me. Then one year turned into two and his little brother turned four and wanted to know everything too. Two years turned into three and we found ourselves loving our little homeschooling life and everything it afforded us both inside and out of the classroom.

It wasn’t that anything was wrong with traditional schools — or that something was wrong with our kids. The more I taught them and researched curriculum options for each grade level, it was more of trusting this feeling I had that a home education was the best place for them to thrive. At the same time I sensed that we’d created monsters (wink). The good kind of monsters with voracious appetites — the ones who want to know everything, want to put their fingers on everything and experience the world right up close, want to build and invent new things and explore every single crevice the world has in its depths, and want to ask why a million times every day without ever raising their hands. And I didn’t want to tame them. I wanted to plug into their curiosity and wonder — to foster more of the same.

I blame it on the way my husband and I grew up as big dreamers, became parents at 23 and 24, and started using every penny we could find to pack up our kids and move again and again in search of wild adventures. I also blame it on how we committed to a nontraditional family value early on: one of us was always going to make a way to stay home full-time and the other would work from home as much as possible. As crazy as that seemed at the time, and even though we had no idea how exactly that was going to roll out — as a result, I’ve been able to spend most days with my whole family at home while building a consulting business that pays our bills. Our lifestyle of packing up and adventuring took on a life of its own and became our children’s incredible education.

It began with selling everything. We sold our home, cars, and furniture, and made travel our life. Outdoor adventure became our textbook. National parks became our playground. And we lived full-time in our 30-foot Airstream while traveling the US for seven years before finding our home in a small community on the coast of Maine.

It was a dream I never could have planned for. We found nature healing and teaching us in unexpected ways.

I found wisdom and inspiration from researchers and authors like John Holt, Ken Robinson, Blake Boles, and in books like The Teenage Liberation Handbook. I built community in unexpected new ways and connected with other homeschooling moms and found resources to help with every roadblock I encountered. We hit our groove, met a bump in the road, cobbled through, made it work, and hit our groove again a million times over. We loved our homeschooling life.

And then, quite suddenly at the end of last school year, when my youngest gently, kindly said, “Mama, I don’t want to homeschool anymore,” it was over.

In truth, he was only giving voice to something I’d known was coming for a while.

Homeschooling wasn’t serving us anymore; the longer we traveled and the older my kids got, the more difficult it was to find new resources, make lasting friendships, and expand our circles. It was time for something new, and we all knew it. The winds of change were upon us.

Skip ahead. As the school year starts this year, I’m turning in my homeschool badge to watch one son spend his senior year in online dual enrollment classes (senior year high school and freshman year college) and the other get on the bus each morning to attend the public high school down the street.

I could pretend I’m not struggling, but I don’t. My achy chest won’t let me. Instead, I’m embracing how I’m changing, who I’m becoming.

I realize this transition isn’t just about me, and yet, I also realize this version of me might become something permanent, so I feel a call to get to know her. She’s someone who knows how to wade through critical transitions, someone who’s getting comfortable in her new skin, emerging, stepping up, becoming. Who she is exactly, I can’t know yet. But I have a sneaking suspicion I might even start to like her if I give her a chance. I’m making room for her to emerge.

I keep reminding myself this is what it’s like to have kids who aren’t kids anymore. This is also what it’s like to have homeschooled for so long and suddenly stopped. This is what it’s like to let go of everything we’ve always had together and start holding on to something new.

And yet, like the butterfly who’s just become something unrecognizable to its former self, there’s pain in the remaking, a bit of struggle in the redefining. I may not have this figured out for a while. I may have to find my way like I have so many times before. I’m going to have to be okay with that. For now, I’m redefining what motherhood means to me — motherhood without homeschooling.

Deep down I realize I always hoped our long homeschool days would lead here. I always knew which son would want to try public high school just as surely as I knew which one would want to enter college early. But the truth is, I wasn’t always exactly sure we’d arrive — or that I’d be ready.

For the past 13 years, we’ve been trying untraditional approaches to education, testing out new things, following curiosities, discovering learning as a pleasurable activity — something I missed in my own achievement-focused summa cum laude-focused academic life. For the past 13 years, I had hoped their education could be different, hoped it would work out extremely well, but no one could guarantee me it would.

Even now, big questions remain. I don’t know whether my sons will have learning gaps I couldn’t fill as their sole teacher for so long. I don’t know if they’ll receive scholarships that will allow them to go where they want to go and do what they want to do. I don’t know if they’ll love art school or college or whatever path they choose. I don’t even know if public high school will welcome us.

I don’t know anything, really.

Except this — I know I’ve taught them how to pivot when something isn’t working. They know they have options. They know how to follow their intuitions. They know there’s more than one way. They know anything is possible.

All in all, I feel good about that. It’s true that only parts of our homeschool story have been the rainbow kind, but there’s more than golden memories lying here at the end. There’s respect, relationships, and more adventures taken and happy days spent together than any mother could dream of.

Despite its challenges, our little homeschooling life has been the life of my dreams.

Except now, sitting here alone at my quiet kitchen table where we usually share audiobooks, loud breakfast discussions, and heated homeschool debates — I have a decision to make.

I have to decide if the life of my dreams is over or if I still have the energy to create something new.

I’m letting go of being the center of their worlds to watch all our worlds get bigger, letting go of my little boys and getting to know the young men they’re becoming.

But I’m still holding on, too. Holding onto being their mother no matter what season we’re entering together, holding onto the memories and embracing their next season with heart, mind, and arms wide open.

I’ll think about our long, slow homeschool mornings full of books read aloud, homemade muffins, and pots of Earl Grey tea for as long as I live. But if I’m lucky, I’ll get to think about the adventures we’re still having and are yet to have, too.

So, with the homeschooling door closing and so many feelings still swirling inside me, my conclusion is this — there is no end to the life of our dreams, only new seasons adding depth, new waves bringing new realities.

There is no failure — only pivots and discoveries.

Wherever we find ourselves, we always get to choose how to approach what’s next, and I’m choosing to try my best to love whatever comes next for us.

One day at a time. . . .

The morning of his first day of school finally arrives. He wakes early to the alarm he set for himself, showers, dresses in the clothes and shoes he set out the night before. I cook him a special breakfast and he makes a cup of tea. With his back turned, packing his own lunchbox, his dad asks, “Are you nervous?” He replies simply, “Yeah,” and keeps nodding his head to the music in his earbuds. He doesn’t look nervous at all.

Watching him get on the bus for the first time, I feel tears sting my eyes, but I feel something new, too.

My chest isn’t achy anymore. Instead, I’m feeling something else — something expansive.

Yes, I’m swallowing a lump in my throat as I sit on the porch and peek through the trees to see him step onto the bus and roll to the school without me, but I have things that need my attention, too. I take a few minutes to breathe, process my feelings, and send him all my love and all kinds of distant hugs. Then I fire off emails to the women in my email group, polish a new piece for potential homeschool families, send a magazine pitch, and head inside to dig into projects for my clients and help his brother get settled into his dual enrollment agenda for the day.

And I smile, thinking about the cookies and milk we’ll have this afternoon when he gets home from school and all the stories he’ll have to share. One of my life’s biggest and best seasons is over, but my life is not over. Another one is beginning. I think this one might be big and beautiful, too. At the very least I can stay open for it.

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