Fare of the Free Child

Peace, #fofcpod fam! This week we’re still focused on the letter U for understanding as part of our P.A.U.S.E.werk. Domari (of Positive and Purposeful Parenting) and Akilah hosted the listening party, and Jonie, Reese, Ana Maria, and Erica joined live to share and hear feedback and touchpoints. Together, they reflected and inquired about our relationship with understanding, how autonomy and trust are intertwined, the many layers around discomfort, compassion, trust, and then some.

Let’s agree to disagree

Our two hosts reflect on what they’ve been noticing around their relationships and pause work, on the importance of taking the space to go through certain feelings, crying, for example, as a liberation practice. As our hosts speak and share their stories, pausing and understanding emerge as key components in the trust work that builds up community and healthy partnership.

Check some of the offerings the listeners gave us during this Listening Party Live Chat

“In my family, disagreement equals disrespect.” - Erica

“For me, I’ve been working on shedding the belief that needing to be understood equals being loved. I think I've tried so hard to get the members of my family to understand me when I think what I was really looking for was compassion, and not actually needing to be understood.” - Ana Maria

“I’m feeling into understanding so much more as a verb, it’s not a set destination, it’s movement, it shifts, morphs and transforms.” - Jonie

Careese shares some thoughts about Ieishah’s reflection on gentle parenting as a privilege. If you missed the previous episode you can replay it here Episode. 249: U for Understanding and get more details.

Then Akilah pulls a card from the Raising Free People practice deck:

AUTONOMY:

Take up space, let them take up space too, practice allowing yourself and them to take up space, work it until it invites boundaries that work.

Remember that the Raising Free People Card Deck is available now, click here to order it.

Next week we will be talking about the S in P.A.U.S.E. for sorting or shedding, we will reflect on what’s good for your family and what might need releasing or re-imagining?

LIBERATION WALK

• We love feedback, so don’t be shy and share some thoughts by pressing that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side or email Akilah and speak up about today's revelations [email protected]
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel
• Give us some feedback about this episode, reflect inside

Support the show

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/

This week we’re focused on the letter U for understanding in our P.A.U.S.E.werk. Listen as we talk about the language of conscious parenting, the difference between dialogue and discussion, and then some.

Domari and Akilah take us through some of their noticings about how understanding and control impact their relationships, and not just as mothers. Also, be ready for an insightful convo about an Instagram post where Ieishah Clelland (our Season 7 Co-Producer) questioned gentle parenting as a privilege. Akilah cites Dr. Sundiata’s distinction between dialogue and discussion as we question our relationship with understanding, and with discomfort. So much goodness in here! Pull out your pause pad and join us.

Madd Question Askin' Understanding Essay for people committed to Raising Free People

There is a link between Understanding and control, and in our efforts to become more partner-centered parents and caregivers,

we've got to look into that link.

Control is not inherently a negative thing,

but when control is our goal and we don't even realize it,

we can demand things from children

in the name of understanding,

when really what we're after is a sense of control.

Control is comforting.

Control feels like certainty,

yet comfort and certainty aren't always what's needed in a relationship.

Is it a child's job to be controllable?

Is it a child's job to give us a sense of certainty?

How do we impact children when we don't understand something they do?

And how much of our need to understand is tied to our desire to feel

like we're in control and we're sure about what's going on?

When are my efforts to control a child appropriate?

and when are they more about my lack of understanding?

Here’s a resource for working through the questions and feelings you will face as you let yourself ask better questions:

Restorative Justice and Conscious Parenting workshop. Happening Sunday, May 1st. Be ready for interactive exercises and group discussions, where we’ll learn the roots of restorative justice work, the basics of the restorative process, and how this supports your conscious parenting process, harm caused by supremacy culture, and other oppressive systems.

Discomfort is a significant part of understanding

Shout out to Ieishah who put this on the table and made us inquire about our relationship to discomfort. Ieishah reflects on conscious parenting and gentle parenting. Is our capacity for gentle parenting or to treat h

Support the show

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/

Welcome #fofcpod fam! This episode is the continuation of our Listening Party Replay around the letter A (for Absences) in PAUSE. We’ll be inquiring more about what’s missing, understanding, compassion, and boundaries as we navigate through the ups and downs that may arise from this PAUSEwerk. Domari of Positive and Purposeful Parenting is in da house along with Ana Maria, Lou, Antoinette, and Joni who joined us in the Live Chat. Let's get into it!

Domari named some of the things she has been noticing around her relationship with her children. The words that resonated the most for her were compassion and trust. She reflects on what compassion looks like for her and also questions the misconception around what productivity means, and how sometimes she had struggled by feeling bad and unproductive for resting, being “lazy”.

Boundaries do not require understanding

Our hosts chat about boundaries and the layers around them. Akilah mentions the struggles we might face with different parts of ourselves: the compassionate self (intuitive) vs the schoolish self, and mentioned the patois that needs to be created to hold our intentions, the other person’s intentions, and the thing we’re looking to create.

Akilah also shares the importance of trustwork, seeing relationships not as transactional/productive but as connections, as in what we notice together and what our healing work looks like.

This week’s pull from the Raising Free People practice deck revealed the Layer card (same card from the last pull):

• Layer: If I can access grace in this moment, I may choose to offer it in honor of all the many layers that comprise this person I love. And if I do, might that be enough for me, for now?

Next week we’ll be having a deep conversation about U for understanding, but for now, Madd Question Askin’ time:

• How can I check in with children about what they feel they need from me?
• What's being communicated in this moment?
• Which layer am I focusing on right now?
• Which layer feels present?

LIBERATION WALK

• Give us some feedback about this episode, reflect inside FOFC Village, or directly in our Make It Happen Family on Patreon
• Share some thoughts and press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side or email Akilah and think about what feels missing? at [email protected]
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel

Support the show

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/

Here we go #fofcpod friends! Let’s continue with this 70-day PAUSE journey, along with the amazing Domari Dickinson of Positive and Purposeful Parenting.

• P is for Pain Points
• A is for absences
• U is for understanding
• S for sorting or shedding
• E for exploration

Episode 247 is part one of the Listening Party around the letter A (for Absences) in PAUSE, so we’re offering you affirmations and snippets from conversations all in service of our current PAUSEwerk. What’s missing? What feels lost or otherwise missing from your relevant relationships?

Akilah and Domari place their attention on some of the things that once, or even now, feel absent in their relationships or practices. The invitation is for you to slow down, discern, and align.

Since healthy boundaries tend to be one of the more common missing elements, we touch on those in this episode, and will expand that exploration when we touch U for Understanding in two weeks. In the meantime, what’s your relationship to boundaries?

Are you a confident boundary setter?

Cautious but willing boundary setter?

Do you suck at setting boundaries?

SING ALONG

Hush Little Parent Homie, sung by Val Sinclair:

Hush little parent homie you ain’t gotta say a word,

but some of your beliefs are pretty absurd,

they came from your Mama and she got them from hers,

but it’s time to stop and think ‘cause they ain’t gotta be yours.

Hush little parent homie don’t perpetuate

schoolish colonizer-minded traits,

We took them in, in attempts to survive,

but they don’t apply now; we tryna thrive.

So, hush little parent homie don’t perpetuate

schoolish colonizer-minded traits.

• https://www.instagram.com/valandourplants/
• http://valandourplants.com/

AFFIRMATIONS

1. 

Boundaries are vital to my life’s design,

in fact, my boundaries are invitations for us to align,

it’s ok not to love it, I ain’t askin’ for no shrine,

just affirming what I need and honoring what’s mine.

2.

I am worthy, I am loved,

I am safe, I am free,

and when I choose to pause,

that’s liberation work for me.

I reject the option of performing a life

and choose to authentically design mine.

I am in partnership with this child

I am not in partnership with people’s opinions about my child.

I show up, I listen, I lean, I let.

Download this episode so that you can record your version of the words that you connect with. And join us on Monday, April 18th at 1 PM Eastern for part two of this discussion about what’s missing.

LIBERATION WALK

• Shout out

Support the show

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/

This week on #fofcpod we're serving insightful thoughts, feedback, and resources based on our current PAUSEwerk flow.

The letter of the week is P, for Pain Points: What’s the matter? What took you here? What things feel like pain, discomfort, uncertainty? What is coming up for you and for the people that you’re closest to right now?

This episode is our first Listening Party, the space where we focus on your feedback about an aspect of pausing, as well as our own insights and struggles.

Akilah and Domari continue unraveling the layers of perfection vs pleasure: they speak about Black Excellence and the pressure of feeling that all that you do is never enough.

Can pause be a privilege?

“The more success I feel, the harder it is for me to accept that I can pause.” - Akilah

“I don’t like that. I’m not like that”. - Domari

In this episode, you’ll notice that we’re just getting the hang of the tech for this new format—but you’ll still get a feel for what these listening parties are about!

Every other Monday, we’ll be at it again, so join Domari and Akilah as live audience members (no video necessary)!

The next Listening Party is Monday, April 18th at 1 PM Eastern.

We LOVE feedback

We listened to Zeba Savage from Savage Learning Environment who brought up the importance of pausing, and the pressure of being perfect. Then, our homie, Vanessa Molano, shared their thoughts from one of the cards that Domari pulled from the Raising Free People practice decks (the Layers card), and pointed out their experiences with boundaries and grace. Raising Free People Card Deck is available now, click here to order it.

These comments are gems in the work we do, so thank you for contributing to this ecology that moves us away from tools of oppression and towards our personal healing journeys.

More Resources

Dr. Sundiata teamed up with Maryella Marie and Tomis Parker, two other SDE-minded facilitators, to create an amazing offering: The live virtual training, “Co-creating a Thriving Family Culture.” This will take place on the weekend of April 23 to the 24. They’re offering tools that will help you on being intentional about learning new skills and processes to make decisions and resolve conflicts in peaceful and collaborative ways.

Liberation WALK

Here are a couple of gems to take your time and think about:

• “If I pause, who is going to fill the space left by all of the people who told us how to be in the world?”
• “Can I afford to pause?”

Give us some feedback about this episode, reflect inside

Support the show

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/

It’s storytime #fofcpod fam and we‘re so excited to continue with this 70-day PAUSE journey along with the amazing Domari Dickinson of Positive and Purposeful Parenting.

Ep 245 is live! We’re listening and taking a look at the skills that are happening in between the defined things. In this episode in particular, we are observing the ways we react to our pain points, so breathe in, breathe out, pull out your pause pad, take some notes, and let’s play together! Remember that we’re in the process of noticing what sometimes can’t be easily named nor understood, so try to feel into the experiences that you have with these questions, without expectations, without judgment, only your attention.

**Use this link to join our live audience (no video, just chat, unless you ask to join us on air in the chat) on Monday, April 4th at 2PM Eastern.** These every-other-weekly listening parties are where Domari and Akilah invite you to play and struggle through specific aspects of pausewerk with them, real time. Listen to Episode 244:There is Real Power in the Pause tho! to hear details on the flow of this season’s 70-day pausewerk focus.

Today is P day and we’ll work through all the pain points: What’s the matter? What took you here? What things feel like pain, discomfort, uncertainty? What is coming up for you and for the people that you’re closest to right now?”

Domari pulled a card from the Raising Free People practice deck.

Layers: If I could access grace in this moment, I may choose to offer it in honor of all the many layers that comprise this person I love. And if I do, might that be enough for me, for now?

The Raising Free People Card Deck is available now, click here to order it.

“What would change in my life if I chose to pursue pleasure instead of perfection? - Domari

Domari shares her experience with her children on how they respond when a conflict appears. Akilah talks about the struggles and worries that may show up for parents around how and whether learning is happening, and how pausing can offer the space we often need to learn how to recognize and trust learning.

“I’ve now started to look at my children’s resistance as one of their gifts. One of the things that society—which I am part of—didn’t pry out of their hands.” - Akilah

Akilah speaks about Marley and Sage’s approaches to resolving conflicts, and how much she is learning from their approaches. Both hosts also speak about the nuances of the term “readiness,” and the role of resistance as a powerful gift in our efforts to raise free people.

Throughout Akilah and Domari’s convo there are 10 points of Madd Question Askin’ energy for you to get into:

• What brings you pleasure?
• What does pleasure look and feel like to you

Support the show

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/

Season 8 is here and we are kickin’ it with the homie, Domari Dickinson of Positive and Purposeful Parenting. She is our co-producer for the season, and we’re in alignment about the need to spend all season on the importance of slowing down, and pausing.

We’ve got invitations, resources, and some songs too! We are so grateful to you all #fofcpod fam and Make it Happen family for your love and connection throughout this journey. Our team got some rest, and we’re back with this focus, so we hope y’all ready to get and do this PAUSEcast werk!

If you want to get familiar (or re-familiar) with Domari’s dopeness, listen to Episode 185: Parenting Paradigm Shifts in Black Families.

Here’s what to expect this season...

We are working on being more mindful about the ways we show up for ourselves. So this season, we invite your consent to show up as you are, slow down, and feel into the ups and downs of this 70-day pause journey.

Starting next week, each letter in PAUSE will get our full attention with two episodes each: - the first episode will bring you into the work with a story, a song, or a skit; the second episode will be live, and we’ll invite you to play and struggle through that aspect of pause.

Acronym:

• P is for Pain Points: What’s the matter? What took you here? What's hurting them? What’s coming up for you and your relationship with yourself or your family?
• A is for absences: What’s missing? What feels lost or otherwise missing from your relevant relationships?
• U is for understanding: dialogue as a practice; conscious parenting; how have you been operating as a parent or educator? Under what premises?
• S for sorting or shedding: What’s good for your family and what might need releasing or re-imagining?
• E for exploration: what are some resources you can tap into, based on where you are right now?

Then we’ll keep that going until we feel all the way through P-A-U-S-E. Through this game, Akilah and Domari will engage you beyond the moment to feel the PAUSE as an experience. So make some tea, pull out your dedicated pause pad, and join us for a 70-day journey of affirmations and reflections in the ecology of Raising Free People. Do you want to play with us?

Season’s 8 flow - Raising Free People Card Deck

Akilah pulled a card from the Raising Free People practice decks:

• AUTONOMY: Take up space, let them take up space too, practice allowing yourself and them to take up space. Work it until it invites boundaries that work.

The set of Raising Free People Card Deck is available now, click here to order it.

Season Witnesses: We are working together to offer bridgework for folks in the philanthropic world.

What is a witness? Our witnes

Support the show

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/

Ending season 7 with gratitude, reminders, and major writing mojo

Closing out season seven with major gratitude for you, #fofcpod fam! Your feedback and encouragement have been part of an active listening practice that opens up our mindset to different possibilities as we grow this village of/for people raising and being free people. This episode brings us some resources, reminders, and clues of what’s to come in season eight. See you in a few months!

Here are the Season 7 series in case you missed any episodes:

Fare of the Free (Man) Child series: Co-produced with Tony Galloway's series on manhood and masculinity.

Episode 224: Deschooling Adulthood with Tony Galloway

Episode 232: Learning (and Unlearning) Masculinity

Episode 233: Deschooling Manhood and Masculinity

Episode 234: Kris joins Tony for the recap of #fofmanchild (Feel Trip)

Māori Mother Wisdom series: Co-produced with Ieishah Clelland-Lang liberation-centered parenting and living.

Episode 237: On Māori Mother Wisdom (The Language Episode)

Episode 238: On Māori Mother Wisdom (The ‘Old Knowings’ Episode)

Episode 239: Vibin’ off Māori Mother Wisdom (The ‘Feedback’ Episode)

Episode 240: Series Closing: Māori Mother Wisdom

Some announcements and reminders

• Thanks to our Make It Happen Family. There are already 252 of you and we deeply appreciate it!
• Raising Free People book was translated into Spanish version, shout out to Ruben, Citlali, Isabel, Abby, Kris, and Miguel!
• Shout out #fofcpod core team: Juan Pablo, Daniela, Kris, Fatima, Vanessa, Romain, Marley, David and Vicki; Co-producers: Tony Galloway and Ieishah Clelland-Lang
• Shawna Murray-Browne, a liberation-centered integrative psychotherapist will be part of SDE weekend. Akilah will be there with many other folks sharing great experiences and content around Self-Directed Education. Be sure to check in from 7th – 9th of January 2022

Audio by Raising Free People Network

In addition to Fare of the Free Child Podcast, Audio by Raising Free People Network produces other podcasts from which we hear some updates throughout this final episode of the season.

Check

Support the show

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/

We're continuing our language vibe this week on #fofcpod episode! First, you'll hear from Juan Pablo Pérez, audio manager of Fare of the Free Child, as he shares his thoughts on Episode 241: Freeing Your Approach to Language Studies (with Marley Richards). He talks about his experience as a Spanish native speaker who, like Marley, taps into language as a way of developing an identity that includes more than the culture he was born into. Juan's interests in music, for example, sit outside his cultural background, and those experiences help Juan Pablo to feel a strong sense of self that isn't limited by location or familiarity.

For the rest of the episode, Akilah gives us some gems about the importance of language and the many ways we can engage it as parts of our unschooling and deschooling practices. And of course, #maddquestionaskin is all up and through the episode.

Is there a difference between a definition of a word and an understanding of a word?

How have words evolved from having a definition to having a meaning?

Akilah refers to language as something that goes beyond the accent and vocabulary, and something we can see as being part of a whole culture and context, and not some isolated thing that we pluck from a culture.

Who is this language tied to?

What are some of the non-verbal cues of this culture? How can I learn more about body language, symbols, and other elements of communication and culture?

Akilah shared some of the conversation she had with Zakiyya Ismail (at the Summerhill Festival of Childhood) about the evolution of these particular words in their unschooling journeys:

Learning

Power

Trust

Community

Resistance

Akilah pulled a card from the Raising Free People practice decks and invited us this activity:

1. Think about these words (that comprise this deck),
2. Choose two or three of them and sit with the evolution of your understanding of that word.

Akilah explains through her experience with Spanish the insights and learning process of making associations. She also talks about words that are very specific to her practices and the understanding of them. She then reflects on the her experiences that came with recognizing herself as both oppressed to oppressor, and how that shows up in her motherwork.

LIBERATION WALK

• Listen and jam along with Miss Lou - Long time Gal on Bajanbloom Bloom's Youtube channel
• Akilah would love to receive some feedback about this episode. Think about the Card Deck words. Go on and press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side or email her at [email protected]
• Join our

Support the show

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/

Welcome #fofcpod fam! Today's vibe is insightful conversation about language acquisition, culture, and how to learn stuff, with seventeen year-old unschooler, Marley Richards. Japanese and Korean languages are integrated parts of Marley's daily practices, so she shares with us some of the ways these languages have influenced and impacted her identity as a Black girl. Marley also speaks about some of the tools she uses for language study.

What are some ways you can support your/a child in expanding their experience with a language they want to learn? #maddquestionaskin

Long story-short…

Many children are learning Japanese and Korean as a result of their appreciation for Anime and K-pop culture. Marley was among them; she started learning Japanese at around age 7 or 8, when she got passionate about Anime. Soon enough she started feeling the limitations of the translation that she was getting from English subtitles, and felt she was getting a diluted version of what the people who made the thing had intended. By learning Japanese, she felt a wider understanding of the world as language was connected to other elements of life, and of her interests, and of broader world culture. For Marley, studying a language went beyond grammar and accent, and transformed into a way of being and living.

Marley’s key elements for language study:

• Being highly motivated and intentional
• Full exposure to the foreign language - Immersive experience
• Making associations from what you already know
• Japanese tip: Anime series help in general with the nouns, verbs, and sentence construction BUT in terms of vocabulary and accent you should check for a different source

Akilah shares her own learning process and experience with Spanish (check below for some resources). Then, she and Marley chat about the expectations people might have based on language stereotypes and assumptions people may make about others.

If you integrate different elements from another culture, does that make you less Black, Korean, Latinx…? #maddquestionaskin

LIBERATION WALK

• Check out these Spanish sources that Akilah has been nurturing from: Erica Ray and Mike Ben
• Also, go and see Mike’s video: How to Find a Good Language Tutor/Language Exchange Partner - Things to Look Out For
• https://howtospanishpodcast.com/ This is another dope Spanish language learning resource (podcast)
• Akilah would love to receive some feedback about this episode. Do you have any language tips? Go on and press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side or email her at [email protected]
• Join our

Support the show

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/

This week on #fofcpod we are closing the Māori Mother Wisdom series about liberation-centered parenting and living. We've had the pleasure of connecting with Māori stories from Mea Rapata, Angella Smith, Moana Reihana, and Tina Talaić. These are select excerpts from our feel trip (live group meetups about our episodes), where Akilah and our series co-producer, Ieishah Clelland-Lang, vibed with Mea, Angella, and some of our Village family. We reflect on the importance of the trustworthiness of feelings, and the levels of connection that live inside active listening, and non-verbal language, as well as other kinds of human technology like collaboration, echolocation, identity and community-building.

Who we innately are - The Energy of Feelings

• how aspects of Māori spaces have been compromised by colonialism
• the significance of going back into a knowledge space that recognizes connection to land, ancestors and relationships
• an intrinsic feeling and connection to their original epistemologies.

“We don't have to compress what we are in order to be together”. Akilah S Richards

Angella also points out the sacredness of their indigenous language Te Reo Māori (Māori language) and how important it is to speak up and take action to keep the integrity and the sacredness. We also chat about identity and the mindful work of looking at your indigeneity, and looking beyond the labels so it can open up spaces to regenerate, heal, and identify with authenticity.

In case you haven’t heard the previous conversations we’ve had on this topic, be sure to listen to Māori Mother Wisdom series from the start:

Episode 237: On Māori Mother Wisdom (The Language Episode)

Episode 238: On Māori Mother Wisdom (The ‘Old Knowings’ Episode)

Episode 239: Vibin’ off Māori Mother Wisdom (The ‘Feedback’ Episode)

Don’t miss next week’s episode! We will start another series of conversations with Marley, an unschooler and SDE advocate who will chat about language. See y’all soon!

LIBERATION WALK

• Join our Podcast Village so you don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations
• Check on Lou Hollis of Grief, Growth and Goals Podcast for some great content
• Akilah would love to receive some feedback about this episode. Go on and press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side or email her at [email protected]
• Join patreon.com/akilah and support the show
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Support the show

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/

#Maddquestionaskin

What does it mean to own your sense of sovereignty?

Welcome to another #fofcpod episode. As you know we’re in the thick of the wonderful Māori Mother Wisdom series, and are vibrating with gratitude for your engagement with us, in all of this goodness. We kick off this episode with feedback from author, speaker, activist and educator Sonya Renee Taylor who has been listening to this series and loving it! We also share some feedback we’ve gotten from Jonie, Yolande, Got2BOshun, and Kateri (thank y'all!). Then Akilah and Ieishah Clelland-Lang revisit some gems from these previous conversations, and speak about migration, reparenting, echolocation (yes, chile!), unschooling, and then some.

Don’t miss our Feel Trip to close out the Māori Mother Wisdom series, where Akilah and Ieishah will kick it with the Village family, and a few of our series guests are slated to join the chat. It's happening Friday, December 3rd. Join our Podcast Village so you don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations.

Akilah pulled a card from one of the Raising Free People practice decks:

Reparenting: “No way around it, so gather some resources around your pain and change and growth and self-trust so that you can move out of situation and into self.”

PAIN, SELF-TRUST, MOVE OUT…

Akilah reflects on what moving away means, centering migration as a keyword in this conversation. They speak about looking back and respecting the past versions of themselves, appreciating the wisdom each has brought to them. What does it mean to move away from the elements of parenting that we were raised with? What positives and difficulties are implicit in quitting the parts that don't resonate with us? What is the cost we pay to seek our authentic selves? What are we currently moving away from?

“Reparenting ourselves is not about what happened back then, but about what we have the right and the wisdom to do now.”

Location system - Migrating into our authentic self

Ieishah and Akilah talk about how the ability to "locate" ourselves in certain situations can be a form of good resistance, to how the knowledge of why we must observe, listen and question different mindsets and ideas, it’s a never-ending process that evolves and changes all the time.

“Trust, resistance, education, that’s how I can put my understanding into practice”. Akilah S. Richards

Reclaiming culture: Take and give back

Ieishah and Akilah speak to the relevance of culture and nature as key points in unschooling, and Ieishah brings more insights from her related experience at the unschooling camp in Aotearoa. They chat about the "intelligence energies" that come through the

Support the show

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/

Welcome #fofcpod fam! We’re getting into our second exploration on the Māori series co-produced with the incredible Ieishah Clelland-Lang. This 4-part series centers Māori unschooling mothers’ knowledge and narratives, to invite us to deepen our understandings of the layers within motherhood, childhood, community, and culture. Join us and listen to Ieishah’s conversations with Angella Smith and Tina Talaić, plus a a bit more from Akilah.

If you're feeling these episodes, don’t miss our Feel Trip about this Māori series! On Friday, December 3rd at 4pm EST, Ieishah and Akilah will join the other members of Fare of the Free Child Village to talk, to ask, and to listen, with this series in mind and in heart. It's free and it's part of the My Reflection Matters Community vibe, so put that in your calendar, bruh! Here's the direct link again (it'll prompt you to join My Reflection Matters for free).

As a reminder, last week, Moana Reihana and Mea Rapata shared some unschooling mothers’ wisdom and invitations; go and listen, in case you haven’t: Episode 237: On Māori Mother Wisdom (The Language Episode).

Notes from this week...

Children will show you the way.

Angella grew up in a dichotomous environment, on one side she was sharing Te Reo Māori (Māori language) as a living language at home in her Marae with her family, and on the other, her student life going to a convent school where Christianity was King. She speaks about her transition into unschooling and why she decided to go through that path when she gave birth to her children. Angella also talks about the importance of listening as a point of connection, to surrender and listen to our intuition. She explains that our intuition remembers, and that children already have their inner knowings and that these are important, innate qualities.

White privilege - what we were conditioned to be.

Angella and Ieishah speak about racism, colonialism, and white privilege. Angella explains that white privilege was something she couldn’t understand as a child, her people were conditioned to be compliant and very subservient. Then, as she grew up, she gathered some understanding and was able to make a rediscovery and question for herself what Māori is, what’s hers and what’s not, what has been taken away, and what can be transformed to thrive and survive. This level of madd question-askin is part of what continues to support what the people in her circle have been building as a community. As they build, they create their own definitions of success, and for Angella, part of that succession lives in the way new generations get to grow up to be free people.

Unschooling Camp Reflections.

Tina a

Support the show

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/

Basically this:

We talk about reclaiming language, sovereignty, relationship with motherhood, community, culture, intergenerational relationships, childhood, ancestors, and unschooling among other key topics. In this episode you will hear about intentional living and parenting why's and what's in Te Reo Māori (Māori language) and also in English.

The whole story...

#fofcpod has teamed up with brilliant writer, nomad, and unschooling mama, Ieishah Clelland-Lang to co-produce this 4-part series centering fours Māori unschooling mothers' wisdom and invitation. They are all based in Aeotearoa (Māori name for what we know as New Zealand), in the South Pacific. You'll hear about these women's relationships with reclaiming (when necessary) and sustaining strong connections to their community and culture. Through these narratives we can all expand our perceptions of mothering and honor the different layers of motherwork.

This week, in Part 1, you'll hear from Moana Reihana and Mea Rapata, in addition to hearing from Ieishah and Akilah. Over the next two episodes, you'll also hear from Angella Smith and Tina Talaić, as well as the energies that all 6 of us bring into the space through meaningful inquiry and real commitment to keep much of our culture alive and thriving beyond us.

Three generations to regain a language - Unschooling and tradition

Moana shares her experience and the reason why she learned her native language by herself as an adult. None of her family members were able to speak the language at that time, so they also started to regain this ancestral knowledge years later. This helped Moana to reclaim traditional knowledge that she wanted to share with her children and future generations. They also speak about the importance of language as a liberation tool and as a choice that offers connection and more ways to listen. How do we deal with newer generations and balance our ideas with tradition?

Learning how to be a guest

Ieishah and Akilah talk about the importance of “witnessing” as a way of making space through observation, and being willing to stop and listen to others so that we can be the least intrusive when we are guests in someone else’s space. Moana and Mea allow us to listen to their stories from vulnerable and authentic spaces by sharing their connection with nature, their ancestors, and themselves. They speak to a sense of belonging and invite us to think about what we are being instead of focusing on what we are doing. Ieishah and Akilah also speak to how unschooling can help us with our observation skills so that we can develop trust in our partnership with our children.

More about Ieishah...

Ieishah is a writer, nomad and unschooling mama of two brown girls. She is a New Yorker of Caribbean descent. If you want to hear more from Ieishah you can listen to previous conversations on

Support the show

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/

This week on #fofcpod, we’re inquiring about the idea of an unbothered child. Is “unbothered” a status reserved for worthy adults? Or can children claim it too? We’re moving through some thoughts around liberation work and education perceptions that center the decolonization of intergenerational practices, so this also means Madd Question Askin’ time!

Listen in as Akilah acknowledges how our family members and friends might feel about unschooling during the holidays, and some of them may not understand what unschooling and other types of Self-Directed Education look like. Because of this, they sometimes openly question some of the ideas and practices around them. How might we learn from their reactions and begin to recognize our mindful responses as actual skill sets?

Here’s a 2017 episode where Akilah points out a few specific ideas, and recommendations of what we can do: Episode 56: Managing Unschoolers' Holiday Anxiety.

Excerpt source.

"Dis Long Time Gal Mi Neva See You"

"This is a song that tells of two people who have not seen each other for a long time. The singer invites the other party to allow him to hold her (gal/gyal) hand in a greeting as they wheel and turn and dance and jig.

https://youtu.be/_Fy39wPedmY

The first video is of the legendary Jamaican icon, Mrs Louise Bennett Coverly, singing the song. She was very instrumental in breaking cultural barriers that saw the local language (patois) being frowned upon by the "most affluent" in the Jamaican society who would have preferred to have everyone speaking the adopted "Queens language" or proper English. Miss Lou (as she is fondly called, got people to accept the fact that our language is our language no matter whatever other language we may adopt. She also played a very instrumental role in the Jamaican folk songs rising to prominence."

Madd Question Askin’ out loud!!

• Do children get to be unbothered? If so, what does that look like for a child?
• Is unbothered a skill reserved for grownups like trust or respect?
• Are children not trustworthy?
• Minding your business is community care and self-care
• What unbothered might look like as a skill set?

LIBERATION WALK

• Join our Podcast Village so you don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations!
• Share some thoughts by pressing that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side to let Akilah know what do you think of this episode or email her at [email protected]
• Subscribe to

Support the show

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/

Welcome to another #fofcpod episode! We hope that you enjoyed Fare of the Free (Man) Child series as much as we did. Thanks to Tony for co-producing these insightful conversations around masculinity, identity, adulthood, diversity, childhood, gender, and other topics that resonated with us. We had the chance to question, name things, deschool and discuss—it was so good, and so necessary!

In case you haven’t heard, here are some previous episodes with Anthony:

Ep 12: How He's Using His Gifts

Episode 31: Solutions to Whitewashed Self-Directed Education

Episode 61: Deschooling Release Party: Time for Self

Episode 215: Fare of the Free Man Child (A Tony Galloway Ting)

Episode 224: Deschooling Adulthood with Tony Galloway

Episode 232: Learning (and Unlearning) Masculinity

Episode 233: Deschooling Manhood and Masculinity

Episode 234: Kris joins Tony for the recap of #fofmanchild (Feel Trip)

Nowadays, we are feeling surrounded by the energy of migration away from schoolishness and into more sovereign, more human-centered relationships. As we move forward in Season 7 you’ll be hearing more from our earthwide community, others well on their migration journeys, who have useful tools and toys for our journey. We’re here to share and offer resources for more self-directed ways as we’re raising and being free people.

We’re gonna go back in time and listen to a snippet from a previous Feel Trip that we had with Domari Dickinson in a convo with Tony Galloway. You can find the full conversation for free at patreon.com/akilah.

You'll also hear from Tebogo Modisane to listen as she spoke with us about a current project she and part of Limpopo’s community are working on in Mabose, South Africa. She describes it as a natural building adventure and her vision of sharing knowledge on plant-based nutrition, vitamins, and herb information to consumers. Tebogo recently acquired a small property where she plans to establish an organic and indigenous herb plantation, tree producing, storing, and agro-processing homestead called Ha Se Lehola. In this space, they will be offering education around plant identification, growing, and preparation of plant remedies. The products that have been in production include avoca

Support the show

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/

We're closing out Tony Galloway's series on manhood and masculinity this week, and the convo, as usual, is fyah! Kris Richards joins Tony to wrap up this season's Fare of the Free (Man) Child series with reflections from past episodes and current events. The two talk about identity, adulthood, diversity, childhood, gender, manhood, power dynamics, masculinity, and some of the different labels around those topics. Because definitions are always going to be biased to our experiences, they discuss some of the ways their environment has molded them as they grew up, and reflect upon what they were taught compared to what they currently understand and feel about those definitions.

People's commitment to labels - Category is… Manhood

Tony and Kris also chat about the interactions that take place when we speak about power dynamics in manhood. They share their experiences and the way people label others in partnership, how people put so much trust in the traditional definitions of manhood and womanhood, and the issues therein.

Then they talk about masculinity and its categories. They mention that this definition keeps changing based on varying ideas about manhood, including who men "should" want attention from, and the need to perform certain “male” characteristics to feel accepted or validated by the otherness.

Marketing and shadow figures

Patriarchy and sexism leave serious damages in society, Tony talks about shadow figures that profit from polarizing and normalizing hegemonic discourses that benefit only a few.

Tony's last four episodes:

Episode 215: Fare of the Free Man Child (A Tony Galloway Ting).

Episode 224: Deschooling Adulthood with Tony Galloway

Episode 232: Learning (and Unlearning) Masculinity

Episode 233: Deschooling Manhood and Masculinity

LIBERATION WALK

• The full conversation that includes 10 more minutes will be on patreon.com/akilah join us to have some more
• Get to know more of Tony and check his artwork
• Share some thoughts by pressing that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side to let Tony know what do you think of this episode
• Join our Podcast Village and don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations!
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel

Support the show

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/

Welcome to another #fofcpod episode! As you know, October is Fare of the Free Man Child month, so get comfy and join our special host Tony Galloway Jr. in conversation with ten of his college fellas: Elijah Martin, Terry Lyles, Travis Amsterdam, Markyle Rondon, Kyle Moore, Sheps King, Fred Spite, Henri Battiste, Deshon Jones, and Curtis Webb.

Each shares their thoughts on gender roles, accountability, and the complexity in naming masculinity due to the many layers around its meaning. Tony and friends navigate and question some of the previous notions and narratives they had around manhood and identity, like what it means to be strong, to be the provider and other stereotypically masculine qualities. They also speak about their experiences growing up and the patterns they began to unlearn throughout that journey. They explore some of the ways their understanding of the relationships and interactions between the masculine and the feminine have changed over time. They pose questions like, what does deschooling manhood and masculinity look like?

This group also chat about the balance between intuition and rationality, which characteristics or qualities are part of that dichotomy, and how rich it is to find different shades within it. Deep and interesting convos up in here, so you don't want to miss them!

In case you haven’t heard previous episodes go ahead and check them all:

Episode 215: Fare of the Free Man Child (A Tony Galloway Ting).

Episode 224: Deschooling Adulthood with Tony Galloway

Episode 232: Learning (and Unlearning) Masculinity

LIBERATION WALK

• Follow Tony on Instagram!
• Share some thoughts by pressing that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side to let Tony know what do you think of this episode
• Join our Podcast Village and don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations!
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel

Support the show

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/

Welcome #fofcpod fam! We are so excited to share a new episode with our special host Anthony “Tony” Galloway Jr. This is Tony's third venture on the Fare of the Free Man Child series. If you missed the first two episodes go check them out:

Episode 215: Fare of the Free Man Child (A Tony Galloway Ting).

Episode 224: Deschooling Adulthood with Tony Galloway

In this episode Tony and two of his college roommates, Anthony D. Janifer and Stanley D. Cochran Jr., explore their perspectives around masculinity and manhood. They question, among other topics, the way they perform their masculinity and the patterns and distinctions around it, they also speak about personal relationships, power relationships, dating, shadow work, gender, stereotypes, and sexuality. 

Defining manhood can be a tricky task, even more so when you live exposed to dominant stereotypes of what masculine or feminine bodies and attitudes are supposed to be. Tony and his friends chat about their experiences and the way each of their environments and families modeled or influenced them to think masculinity in certain ways.

What we are supposed to be | We don’t want to be “weak”

Vulnerability is seen as a weakness and something more characteristic of the feminine, this makes us question toxic masculinity. Is the version that we got around masculinity so narrow that it starts devaluing femininity? 

Men that embody certain mannerisms or sensitive attitudes tend to be mocked and categorized in a negative way as “less of a man.” Tony and friends discuss how these stereotypes make us more aware of the aspects within ourselves that we might shift just to fit in outdated “standards” that we must overcome. 

They also speak about feminine and masculine seen as energy and the balance in knowing when to show up, because Identity cannot be limited, it’s a wide spectrum of definitions and nuances, defined by culture and context.

LIBERATION WALK

• Get to know more of Tony and check his artwork here.
• Share some thoughts by pressing that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side to let Tony know what do you think of this episode
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel
• Join our Podcast Village and don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations! 

Support the show

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/

This episode is so that we can bring some new moon energies as we understand them, to some of Akilah’s motherwork, to the ways that she is continuing to understand resistance from the perspective of her daughters resisting things, sometimes resisting her, but other times resisting things that she feels like they should not resist, things that they should accept, things that feel important or healthy for them to accept.

If you've been rocking with us here, you know we've talked about versions of this many times over in past episodes in terms of resistance as a roadmap. Also in terms of recognizing ourselves as oppressors (potentially and sometimes realized) in our relationships with children, particularly if we live with them.

This episode closes with #maddquestionaskin about resistance. Here are some of the questions that popped up for Akilah. Listen to the full episode for the full list.

• Is resistance the problem? Or is it the map?
• How might my excavation, exploration, invitations around this have helped me not to force my children to accept something I feel that they should accept? Or believe? Or know?
• How have I resisted and how has my resistance saved me?
• What has my resistance cost me?
• What is my personal experience with resistance in children?
• What am I willing to do with this experience of resistance?

(This particular question can be good for, at the moment, when you're in the middle of a space of resistance with a young person)

• Do I recognize questioning as my right? As my responsibility?
• Do I recognize questioning as a beautiful and necessary part of how my children evolve into themselves?

LIBERATION WALK

• Speak up and press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side to share some insight with us
• Join our Podcast Village and don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel

Support the show

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/

Subject Sprint: a learning method for designing a mindful approach towards learning and structure in a sustainable way. - Marley

What does productivity look like and feel like when we get to choose topics that interest us? #maddquestionaskin

This week on #fofcpod, Marley Richards, 17-year-old unschooler and SDE advocate, brings a follow-up from Episode 193: Developing a Self-directed Mindset. She speaks about her learning struggles in 2020, and the ways she used Subject Sprints  to re-center her passions.

Marley asks and invites questions about the progression of education, the differences between quantity and quality, the real meaning of productivity, managing feelings of perfectionism, self-care as a point of clarity, and more. This path has broadened her access to different opinions, and ways to communicate, showing up as a constant progression, a transformative and helpful structure that has boosted her sense of fulfillment and her confidence.

Thinking of a mentor session with Marley?

She’s open to a few of those.

Learn more here.

In addition to our new patreon supporters, we also beam our deep gratitude to all of the folks who helped us fund and actualize the translation of Raising Free People Book en Español. ¡Gracias!

LIBERATION WALK

• Join our Podcast Village and don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations
• Come through and press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side to share some thoughts with us
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!

Support the show

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/

We’re back from our much-needed break and ready to rock with you for Season 7 to continue this journey together of healing, exploration, liberation and change. Thank you for being part of our #fofcpod fam! This season we’ll keep our three-part flow, with a few deviations from that structure wherever it feels right.

Here's what to expect during Season 7:

This season our contribution to the many ways we invest in our liberation from tools of oppression will include continued collaborating with some of the busiest folks in this moving for liberatory learning and living:

• Maleka Diggs, Ep 200: Being Busy, Black, and Unschooled in 2020
• Kelly Limes Taylor, Ep 169: The Chance to Go Further
• Leslie Bray, Ep 207: Updates on Plant It Up + Introducing P.O.U.R.
• Tiersa McQueen, Ep 191: Why & How We Unschool
• Lou Hollis, Ep 208: Lou of Grief, Growth, & Goals Podcast
• Domari Dickinson, Ep 185: Parenting Paradigm Shifts in Black Families

And...

• Next week Marley will do a follow-up episode from Ep 193: Developing a Self-directed Mindset, so tune in next week. The week after that we’ll release a New Moon episode to bring the ways we care for ourselves inside this intergenerational liberation work
• More great work from this season's core team: Juan, Fatima, Dani, Romain, Kris, Marley, and Vicki
• Raising Free People book’s Spanish version is pretty much done! Watching, learning, and stretching with Ruben, Citlali, Isabel, Abby, Kris, and Miguel has been such a joyful experience. Thank you to every one of you who donated dollars, wished us well, or shared the fundraiser, we appreciate you!
• Instead of sponsors we'll be doing season spotlights, and the first one is Tebogo Modisane. You’ll hear from her in next week’s episode. In the meantime, listen to Tebogo on Ep 119: Educating the World to Our Children (Soweto)
• Raising Free People is being recorded as an audiobook and Akilah has been collabing with the energies of sound and voice to make it happen. All the production process will be done by mid-October
• October is basically Fare of the Free Man Child month! Anthony “Tony” Galloway Jr. and some of his friends talk about manhood and masculinity in their 20's and 30's. If you haven’t hear

Support the show

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/

Just dropping by with an in-between seasons episode filled with invitations and big announcements! #fofcpod 

• Sign up to the email list for Raising Free People Workshop 2021, this year we'll be focusing on Discomfort and Discovery, so join us for a virtual workshop divided in two segments, one on Family: Adult-child dynamics, parenting, the other (the Grown folks segment) will discuss Adult relationship dynamics, particularly in marriage/romantic involvement.

• Be sure to visit Black Worldschoolers Bookstore, a wonderful project from our fellow liberation-minded mama, Natalie Pipkin. Listen to some of the previous conversations with Natalie on #fofcpod: Episode 171: Black Child You Are Seen and Episode 196: But Yo, the TRUST Comes After the Choice

• A powerful duo will join us in our upcoming Summer Feel Trip, Domari Dickinson and Anthony “Tony” Galloway, Jr. Yay, Don't miss it!

Here you can find some of the convos that we have had with them before: Episode 185: Parenting Paradigm Shifts in Black Families, Episode 204: (REPLAY) Solutions to Whitewashed SDE, Episode 215: Fare of the Free Man Child (A Tony Galloway Ting) and Episode 224: Deschooling Adulthood with Tony Galloway.

• Chemay Morales invites us to My Reflection Matters August Open House, all membership events from the My Reflection Matters Village Network will be free. Listen to Episode 35: My Reflection Matters and Episode 125: 4 Conditions in Support of Raising Free People where we got the chance to share with Chemay in previous episodes

LIBERATION WALK

• Join our Podcast Village and don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations 
• Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side and share some thoughts with us
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!

Support the show

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/

We’re so excited to share our Feel Trip recap and final episode of Season Six. We will be playing some snippets from a live conversation that Akilah and Kris had with some of our listeners and Make It Happen Family members. They reflect on trust, language, destination peddling (nope, that ain’t a typo), and how all of those things affect our most important relationships. They also chat about the opportunities for facing and resolving our struggles with attachments. Watch the video of the entire convo on our Youtube Channel. 

Raising Free People Está Disponible en Español!

Shout out to the 25 people who helped us reach our goal, because now Raising Free People will be available in Spanish too! As soon as we get more info we’ll let you know, for sure, but in the meantime, some members of the translation team put together a superdope Spotify playlist you can vibe to! Check it: Raising Free People en Español.

Thank you so much for joining us on this amazing journey so far! For Season 7, we will stay on our three-part flow, and include solo episodes like Fare of the Free Man Child and Plant It Up Podcast episodes. In the meantime, here’s what to expect in the coming months:

• Stay tuned for inbetweenisodes (episodes in-between seasons)
• Remember that in addition to Fare of the Free Child, more podcasts are produced in our Raising Free People Network mix:  She Said We Shed with Aja; How She Got Free Podcast with Katrina, which will launch right when we are taking a little rest; Grief, Growth and Goals with Lou Hollis; Plant It Up with Val; and P.O.U.R. (Purposely Opening Up to Relationships) podcast with Leslie Bray. Subscribe to get all this goodness!

LIBERATION WALK

• Don’t miss Raising Free People Workshop 2021!
• In August Chemay Morales from My Reflection Matters will be offering open house events
• Join our Podcast Village and don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations

Support the show

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/

It’s the second-to-last episode of  Season Six, and today we’re going back in time to our Season One intro while we reminisce for a bit. Later this week, on July 10th we’ll play a clip from Episode 0 to celebrate our 5th anniversary! Today though, you’ll hear what some of our listeners had to say about last week’s episode Episode 225: Deschooling Our Marriage (Pt 1) and about Episode 224: Deschooling Adulthood with Tony Galloway. And one listener, Dani McClain has a great book you should check out titled We Live for the We.

4 things happening in-between seasons 

1. Tweenisodes (episodes in-between seasons)
2. Card deck playdates 
3. Newsletter “The Monthly Sevens”
4. Raising Free People Workshop 2021!! 

Tune in this Saturday for our finale episode, 227, to hear clips from our feel trip with Kris and Akilah. and members of our Make it Happen Family. Make sure you don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations by joining our podcast village.

LIBERATION WALK

• We are so excited to share with you that we reached our goal! Thanks to all of the people that contributed to translate Raising Free People book to Spanish, we did it! / ¡Estamos súper emocionados y queremos compartir con ustedes que logramos nuestra meta!. Gracias a quienes nos ayudaron en la traducción del libro Raising Free People al idioma Español, ¡lo logramos!
• Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side and speak up
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!

Support the show

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/

This week on #fofcpod: We are now all up in Part 1 of this 3-part season finale flow! Listen to this insightful conversation between Akilah, her partner Kris, and their oldest daughter, Marley. They process their feelings out loud about how trust, language, and "destinations" help us move from performance and fake-assness over to practicing authenticity and partnership in our relationships. Stay tuned for our Feel Trip with Kris and Akilah on July 6, 8:30 pm EST. Make sure you don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations by joining our podcast village. Here are some of the gem-drops you’ll hear:

Trust happens over time.

Akilah and Kris share their experiences with relationship-building and how many of the normalized processes and practices in marriage leave us with dynamics that have prefabricated structures around marriage role models that don’t fit actual people in real life. They also point out the ways that we replicate these roles and expectations without taking into account the quality of the relationship. Deschooling helps us question these structures and the way we live and face reality and relationships over time.

We can deschool our language.

You’ll hear the trio’s take on the importance of naming and speaking up about feelings and insecurities when we want to be held accountable and also be supportive. Communication and language are key components for a partnership, so consider the benefits of madd question askin’ like:

How is language useful? How do we nurture our feelings while trusting the process?

LIBERATION WALK

• Thanks to all of the people that have contributed to translate Raising Free People book to Spanish, we’re just $230 away from our goal. Please donate! / Gracias a quienes han colaborado para traducir el libro Raising Free People al idioma Español, ¡estamos a 230 dólares de llegar a nuestra meta. ¡Por favor dona!
• Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side and let us know what you think!
• See clips from this episode on Akilah’s Youtube Channel!

Support the show

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/

First, a special Thank You to all of the people that have contributed to translate Raising Free People book to Spanish, we’re almost there! / Gracias a quienes han colaborado para traducir el libro Raising Free People al idioma Español, ¡ya casi llegamos a la meta!

--

Welcome to Anthony “Tony” Galloway, Jr’s second Fare of the Free Man Child episode. Missed the first episode? We gotchu... Episode 215: Fare of the Free Man Child (A Tony Galloway Ting). Tony is co-founder, director, and facilitator of The Heartwood School, a local (Atlanta) Agile Learning Center, and one of our Presence Counselors at Raising Free People Network.

On this episode, Tony covers the topic of childhood and adulthood from the perspectives of 

• how childhood and adulthood coexist
• how adults tend to relate to children
• how parent-child relationships change over time
• the importance of nurturing emotional intelligence
• honoring and cherishing childhood

He goes on to offer insights and reflections on how childhood and adult-child dynamics play out in a Self-Directed Education framework, and he speaks to some of the aspects of adulthood that sit within the confines and expectations of certain structures of power that center production and achievement over all else. 

LIBERATION WALK

• Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side of the site and tell us what you think about Fare of the Free Man Child
• Learn more about The Heartwood School
• Follow Tony on Instagram
• Get podcast clips and replays of video events on our Youtube Channel!

Support the show

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/

This week’s #fofcpod episode is a solo jawn, mainly because Akilah wanted to share the local community spotlight segment that will be part of Season 7. So, expect for the 3-part episode flow to be accented by single episodes like this one and Fare of the Free Man Child with another ATL local, Anthony “Tony” Galloway, Jr. who you’ll hear next week. Today’s guest is brilliant entre/edupreneur, Karema Akilah Greene from The Genius School. So much goodness in here!

Karema shares how she got interested in Self-Directed Education, and how, as a detail oriented person, she struggled with some habits from her schoolish mindset, and eventually arrived at some of the tools that helped her to support learning with her children and other ways of connection.

She also speaks with us on how her deschooling process evolved into the offering of a supportive community that focuses on education as something that we build up together, allowing for space where children can be themselves, and get to know their strengths and weaknesses in order to nurture their independence and confidence, giving the tools for them to excel with a trust-based foundation.

LIBERATION WALK

• Don’t miss any of the Genius School events and check on The LOL Portfolio App details here
• Join our co-learning for liberation village inside the My Reflection Matters Community
• Thanks to all of the people that had contributed to translate Raising Free People book to Spanish, we’re halfway there! / Gracias a quienes han colaborado para traducir el libro Raising Free People al idioma Español, ¡ya recolectamos la mitad!
• Share and question by pressing that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side of the site!
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel

Support the show

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/

• In an effort to bring all of you more deschooling resources and liberation tools Raising Free People Support Suite which includes the Card Decks has a Workbook material coming up in collaboration with Leslie Bray from P.O.U.R Podcast (Purposely Openly Up to Relationships) 
• Thanks to all of the people that had contributed to translate Raising Free People book to Spanish, we’re halfway there! / Gracias a quienes han colaborado para traducir el libro Raising Free People al idioma Español, ¡ya recolectamos la mitad!

• Shout out to Val Sinclair from

Support the show

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/

Sending love to all of the families and descendants of theTk’emlúps te Secwépemc community, who are dealing with the tragedy of discovering the bodies of 215 children who lived at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. We share the official statement from Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir. May their families find a way to be at peace.

---

On this week’s #fofcpod you'll hear feedback from our community members. Regina, Sarah, and Ana Maria share their thoughts about previous episode 220: Iris Chen on Culture, Childhood, and Consent with Iris Chen from Untigering but also Ana Maria took the time to share her impressions on episode 219: All In My Feelings About Family Meetings. As we realize now, feedback won't always be about the most recent episode, people find episodes that talk specifically to them all the time (folks are still listening to season 1!). 

Today, members of our listening community share some realizations based on conversations and experiences with their children. They share reflections on empowerment, boundaries, rewriting our narrative, and then some. You'll also hear from a local ATL unschooler wondering about tools of oppression in the context of parents who use them on their adult children.

Dr. Sundiata also shares some insights about The Theory of Indivisibility, Tools of Oppression in contrast with the Tools of Indivisibility. Head over to Sundiata's website to learn more.

And we are super-stoked and grateful that Akilah’s book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing work, will be translated into Spanish, and that the ALC Network has launched a fundraiser to match the $5000 needed to get us published in print and digitally! Will you donate and share? Here’s the link with details.

Our next Feel Trip is coming up with Iris, Akilah, and Tiersa on June 7, at 5:30 PM EST. Here’s the link to register. You'll hear a recap of that next week. Make sure you don't miss any of our Feel Trip invitations by joining our podcast village.

LIBERATION WALK

• Got an insight or a question? Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side of the site and tell Akilah.
• Subscribe to Akilah’s

Support the show

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/

This week’s episode opens the first segment of our three-part flow from a mindful conversation with Iris Chen of Untigering. Iris is an unschooling mom and author of Untigering: Peaceful Parenting for the Deconstructing Tiger Parent, an authentic and vulnerable narrative about parenting as an Asian-American with cultural awareness, consent, love, and survival all blended in. Iris will also join us next week on a Feel Trip episode and we would love to hear some of your feedback prior to that! The week after that (on Saturday) we’ll bring you a recap of that Feel Trip. Make sure you don't miss any of our Feel Trip invitations by entering our podcast village.

Iris chats with Akilah about the process that led her into writing her book, a process that started two years ago as she was blogging about her family experiences. Akilah and Iris also speak about the expectations and the pressure that we sometimes create around our children by seeing them only as extensions of us and not also as individuals.

"We can be agents of change instead of victims to tradition" - Iris Chen

Iris challenges the idea that we are trapped by our culture and rules, because we can celebrate but also question. Iris asserts that we are more than our stereotypes, and Akilah agrees with that and invites us to embrace the elements that are aligned to who we are while we reject what doesn’t vibe with us as part of our evolution. Iris also talks about the importance of language and the influence that culture has to offer as a tool that enhances connection and more ways to expand understanding.

They also talk about consent and emotional intelligence skills and how important it is to re-parent our inner child to heal and understand the ways we can be influencing our children's behavior, because this can shape the practices that help us unravel our schoolish mindsets as we grow together.

LIBERATION WALK

• Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side of the site and share some thoughts
• Learn more about The Homeschool Association of California
• Here you can read Parenting in a Climate of Anti-Asian Racism by Iris Chen
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!

Support the show

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/

In this week’s #fofcpod episode, you’ll hear the first part of a conversation that sprunt up after a family meeting Akilah, Kris, Marley, and Sage had earlier this year. Akilah is calling this episode an “all in my” situation because she sees herself as being all up in her feelings (and fully accepting the presence of those feelings) while she’s unlearning the power-over dynamic. For sure, this conversation comes from a vulnerable and intimate space, and it felt important to Akilah and Kris to share the raw feelings without trying to offer “solutions” to resolving them. 

Kris and Akilah point out the importance of healthy communication, change, boundaries, process, and practice. They also discuss the levels of involvement and the struggle that we might face when we want to be held accountable and supportive. What does support look like as you grow together?

They talk about the layers that come with a process and the practices around recognition and listening. It’s important to be able to think beyond our reaction and ask questions in order to move away from the schoolish mindset of punishing the reaction instead of exploring the cause. Asking for help to get a different perspective can guide us through a better solving process.

Stay tuned because we have nine more episodes in Season 6, including one of Fare of the Free Man Child with Anthony “Tony” Galloway, Jr. Also, get ready to listen to Iris Chen from Untigering who will be joining us on the next edition of our three-part flow.

LIBERATION WALK

• Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side of the site and share some thoughts
• Remember that SDE Weekend (Self-Directed Education Weekend) is coming soon! From 21st till 23rd of May 2021 “The SDE weekend is an “all you can (L)earn,” 3-day, international, online event in which you choose the sessions that match your intentions and participate as much as you want.” 
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!

Support the show

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/

On Episode 218 we’re sharing snippets from our Feel Trip recap with Amelia Allen Sherwood (Montessori and Anti-bias | Anti-racism Educator at Elm City Montessori School and founder of Sankofa Learning Center) and fellow unschooling organizer,  Tiersa McQueen. Amelia shares her perspective on the Montessori method and describes it as a tool in which we can decolonize processes and honor our children. We discuss the need to continue to question everything related to schooling, and to nurture ideas that improve autonomy-building, community care, partnership and trust-building. Listen and watch the full conversation here.

In case you haven’t listened to the previous components of this three-part flow, here’s Episode 216: Exploring Black Lived Montessori Experiences, and Episode 217: Black folks in Montessori (Pt 2) where our listeners shared their feedback.  Make sure you don’t miss any of our feel trip invitations by joining our podcast village.

As you listen, you’ll hear Akilah notes the reality that most educational models focus only on the becoming (the eventual “success”) and forget about the human (the person experiencing life today, right now), and Amelia agrees with that, and notes that her center is called Sankofa because it was about a type of returning, in that it centers the learner, not the thing they’re supposed to do. Akilah sees that as a rehumanizing of learning, as does Amelia, and she (Amelia) talks about the ways that we can use Montessori tools to create environments that are supportive of our authentic selves, and how communal spaces can help us to understand how to trust learning and children.

We talk about the importance of naming our internalized racial oppression in order to heal both as an individual and as a collective, being aware of the commitment that involves community care. By being present we honor the connection within ourselves and our body, going back to our intuition.

Amelia talks about her vision of the African-centered Montessori program in New Haven, Connecticut, Sankofa Learning Center, and shares her gratitude for the community that has been showing up in different ways for this collective dream.

LIBERATION WALK

• SDE Weekend (Self-Directed Education Weekend) is coming! From 21st till 23rd of May 2021 “The SDE weekend is an “all you can (L)earn,” 3-day, international, onlin

Support the show

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/

Hey y'all! Thanks for staying tuned and welcome to another Fare of the Free Child podcast episode. In this conversation we are sharing some feedback from Episode 216: Exploring Black Lived Montessori Experiences with Montessori and Anti-bias | Anti-racism educator, Amelia Allen Sherwood. Join us to hear from our listener-fam, Regina, who has a couple of questions about the history of Montessori and whether Montessori programs serve teenagers. We also have some special invitations and liberation tools that will enrich and help us strengthen our raising free people muscles.

Need-to-knows:

• Don't miss our next Feel Trip with Amelia Allen Sherwood. We will be questioning and sharing great content related to Montessori experiences. Sign up here to join us live on May 11 at 8pm eastern. 
• SDE Weekend (Self-Directed Education Weekend) is coming! From 21st till 23rd of May 2021 “The SDE weekend is an “all you can (L)earn,” 3-day, international, online event in which you choose the sessions that match your intentions and participate as much as you want.” 
• In an effort to bring all of you more deschooling resources and liberation tools Raising Free People Support Suite has a Workbook material coming up in collaboration with Leslie Bray from P.O.U.R Podcast (Purposely Openly Up to Relationships) 
• In addition to those resources we have two Card Decks: One is focused on parenting practice and the other one is an overall Raising Free People practice

LIBERATION WALK

• Shout out to Britt Hawthorne, Montessori educator who currently works in a collective liberation work
• Check out the Kulima Montessori program
• Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side of the site and let us know what do you think
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!

Join patreon.com/akilah and support the show!

Support the show

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/

This week’s #fofcpod is a sweet blend of liberation-focused invitations and an insightful conversation with Amelia Allen Sherwood, a Black Montessori educator who currently serves as the Anti-bias and Anti-racism Director at Elm City Montessori School. Amelia joins us to talk about how the Montessori method has impacted and inspired her to dream and develop communal spaces like Sankofa Learning Center. Stay tuned ‘cause Amelia will be also joining us in a couple of weeks on a Feel Trip episode. Make sure you don’t miss any of our Feel Trip invitations by joining our podcast village.

What brings Amelia joy:

• Being outside and biking with her kids
• Watching Carmeon Hamilton win Design Stars and following more Black interior designers on the gram
• Spending time with her partner and finding moments to love each other
• Visioning out Sankofa Learning Center with her incredible Advisory Collective

What has been growing Amelia:

• Learning from people she loves and that continue to challenge her and hold her accountable
• Reading anything by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (right now she is reading Dub and just finished M Archived)
• Meet the Mother: Amelia Allen Sherwood
• The Embracing Equity Leadership Cohort
• Anything that Joy tells her to do, she listens!
• And of course catching up with the episodes of Fare of the Free Child!

Amelia' recommendations of dope Black Montessori folks to follow on Instagram:

• Afrocentric Montessori
• Montessori Madre
• Jenile Brooks
• Jamila Mapp
• Lyric
• Nicole, M.Ed
• Ahoefa| Montessori inspired
• School at Home and Beyond™️
• Mothering

Support the show

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/

In collaboration with Atlanta-based Self-Directed Education profession and facilitator, Anthony “Tony” Galloway, Jr, we are so hyped to broadcast the premiere episode of Fare of the Free Man Child!

Tony is one of our Presence Counselors here at Raising Free People Network and the founder, director and facilitator of The Heartwood School, a local Agile Learning Center. Throughout this series, Tony reflects on his own self-directed journey and his views on adulting and adulthood as he approaches his 30’s. Tune in to hear him riff on finances, politics, mental health, race, schooling, unschooling, manhood, and masculinity.

“I was raised as an academic and baptized in the way of the scientific method. There were many creative outlets I participated in as a kid but they were just fun things to do on the side. Things like music and art were extracurriculars and hobbies to make me a well-rounded applicant but they were never a priority”. - Anthony Galloway, Jr

In this episode, Tony talks about the struggles that we might face when trying to apply certain Self-Directed practices to our lives, about how exhausting it becomes to compare ourselves and our children's processes, the external pressure full of expectations, and preparations that pull us away from the present, missing the essentials. He also shares the importance of prioritizing the fulfillment of personal challenges while taking care of responsibilities.

LIBERATION WALK

• Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side of the site and tell us what do you think about Fare of the Free Man Child
• Follow Tony on Instagram!
• You can listen to Tony on previous #fofcpod episodes: How He’s Using His Gifts and Time for Self
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!

Support the show

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/

This week, we’ve got important need-to-knows to share with you, plus a feel trip recap from our conversation with Karen M. Ricks from the last two episodes, and Tiersa McQueen, who always brings the real-real! We shared experiences and stories around food and learning, and you’ll hear about our connections between food and memories, food and relationship building, food-centric education, food habits, food joy, and the many ways that food is related to our consent-based practices with children. 

In case you haven’t listened to the first part of this three-part flow, here’s Episode 212: Food, Play, & Mindfulness, and here’s Episode 213: Food, Play, & Mindfulness (Pt. 2) where our listeners shared their feedback.  Make sure you don’t miss any of our feel trips invitations by joining our podcast village. 

Resources and Invitations

• Presence Counselor, founder, director and facilitator of an Agile Learning Center in Atlanta, Georgia Anthony Galloway, Jr. gives us a hint of his new project, Fare of the Free Man Child, in collaboration with Raising Free People Network. Anthony reflects about his own self-directed journey, and his views on adulting and adulthood as he approaches his 30’s. He’ll be speaking about finances, politics, mental health, race, schooling, unschooling, manhood, and masculinity. His first episode airs on April 21, so make sure you’re following our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, so you can hear it. 
• SDE Weekend (Self-Directed Education Weekend) is coming! From 21st till 23rd of May 2021 “The SDE weekend is an “all you can (L)earn,” 3-day, international, online event in which you choose the sessions that match your intentions and participate as much as you want.” 
• The Fix Yo Face Deschooling Parenting Challenge starts soon! Get details here and save your spot

LIBERATION WALK

• Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side of the site and tell us what do you think about Fare of the Free Man Child
• Check out Our Kitchen Classroom on Youtube 
• While you’re there, subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!

Support the show

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/

INVITATIONS: 

The Fix Yo Face Deschooling Parenting Challenge starts soon! Get details here.

Want to join our Feel Trip with Karen next week? Register here.

---

Today we’re featuring listener community feedback from Episode 212: Food, Play, & Mindfulness with Karen M. Ricks. Join us to hear listeners share their love and experiences with food and how it all intertwines with the processes of natural learning and connecting with family and community. We’re also joined by Val from Plant It Up Podcast who tells us all about her relationship with nature and how the process of planting food can be a synergy between self-preservation and joy! 

We also have a special invitation for all of you to attend our next Feel Trip. Through this communal space we get to question and share some insight with you guys, our listeners! The live group meet up will be held on April 13th, register and save your spot. In case you can’t make it that day, we still got you, we’ll replay parts of it on April 17th here in the podcast. If you want to make sure you never miss our Feel Trips invitations you can join our podcast village.

In addition to Fare of the Free Child, remember that we nurture Audio by Raising Free People Network with shows by Black women in podcasting, including: She Said We Shed with Aja Marie; How She Got Free with Katrina Monique; Grief, Growth and Goals with Lou Hollis; Plant It Up Podcast with Va Sinclair; and P.O.U.R. (Purposely Opening Up to Relationships) podcast with Leslie W. Bray.

LIBERATION WALK

• Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side of the site and speak up!
• Be sure to check out Ebony Janice’s content!
• Shout-out to Thea Monyeé from Shaping The Shift Podcast
• Check out Our Kitchen Classroom on Youtube 
• While you’re there, subscribe to Akilah’s

Support the show

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/

Season 6 of Fare of the Free Child Podcast begins today, and we are so excited!! This season we’ve slowed down our listening process so that every topic can get three full episodes of conversation and connection. The first part is an invitation to deepen our perspective on a relevant topic, the second part we’ll be listening to community feedback about that topic, and the third episode will be a recap or replay from a live, group meetup (we call those feel trips), to bring our knowledge and questions together real-time. Want to make sure you don’t miss feel trip invites? Join our podcast village. On today’s episode, Karen M. Ricks of Our Kitchen Classroom, world traveler, life learner, mother, wife, chef, entrepreneur will be joining us to talk about joy, food, travelling, languages, Montessori ways, and her special take on worldschooling. 

Food Joy

We talk about boundaries, consent, relationship-building, and the importance of partnership between parents and children. Karen explains the way food can work as a medium through which we have a chance to connect through multi-sensory experiences, for example, the process of including the children in preparing meals. We talk about sense memory and how it is tied to a deeper personal involvement, and how this makes food a wonderful way to notice everyday learning.

Montessori Ways  (The world is our classroom)

Karen speaks about her experience running a Montessori school in Japan, about how this process exposed some of the drastic pedagogical differences between cultures, and the level of resistance that can live within us when it comes to trying a less schoolish approach to learning anything, including a new language. 

We chat about the cultivation of language as a tool that enhances communication, a tool to connect with the otherness, to share ideas and concepts, and to expand the possibilities for the richness of learning from every experience, person, and place.

Building upon the Curiosity

Karen shares the joy that food has given her by seeing culinary education as a cultural exchange, and a way of connecting with families and communities. With her project, Our Kitchen Classroom, Karen shares a different way of learning through the experience of food.

LIBERATION WALK

• Press that “Leave a Voice Message” button on the right side of the site and speak up
• Learn something new at every meal! join Karen at Our Kitchen Classroom
• Join Karen at Our Kitchen Classroom on Youtube 
• While you’re there, subscribe to Akilah’s

Support the show

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/

We are starting our feel trip replays this week, which is why this episode is first airing on a Saturday instead of our usual mid-week thing. We used our mid-week time to meet up with Tiersa McQueen, unschooling advocate, @tiersaj on Twitter, to chat about the difference between a process and a practice, especially in parenting, and specifically in Self-Directed Education. We talked about things like:

• Using unschooling as a means of control
• We answered a brilliant question from Nicole who asked what does it look like to do nothing 
• We talked about our experiences with the adult gaze 
• I introduced some language from my current work around destination peddling in parenting, and about passage, and giving way
• Tiersa offered recent examples from her lessons with Phoenix, her 15 year old son. 

Just soooooo goood!!

So, you'll hear a few segments from our March 24 2021 feel trip today, and we are having another one, this time with Karen M. Ricks of Our Kitchen Classroom, world traveler, life learner, mother, wife, chef, entrepreneur, etc!! She is co-hosting our next Feel Trip in a few weeks, and we'll talk about that next week for the premier of Season 6 where you'll hear my conversation with Karen, and get the invitation for our next live FOFC Feel Trip.

LIBERATION WALK

• Press that "Leave a Voice Message" button on the right side of the site and speak up
• Full replay is available here. Watch, Like, and Share.
• Join Tiersa’s community on Twitter and also on Instagram

Support the show

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/

Welcome back! Today, As promised, you’ll get all the details on how we'll be flowing in this new season on Fare of the Free Child Podcast. Season 6 will be filled with practice tools and liberation content related to the ways we are building community. Our community is part of My Reflection Matters, come through and join us in Fare of the Free Child Village.

Put these important dates on your calendar:

March 24: A live session with unschooling mama and advocate, Tiersa McQueen, to talk about the difference between process and practice.

March 27: You’ll hear a replay (or a recap) of our live session with Tiersa here on the podcast!.

March 31: Launching of Season 6! 

Three Part Flow

Every conversation will get three full episodes, Akilah is slowing it down to go deep in every topic.

Part I (INVITATIONS)

Here Akilah will be having a conversation about the main topic either with guests or solo.

Part II (FEEDBACK)

The following week we’ll be hearing community feedback, other people's opinions, questions, resources, so we can enrich the way we interact. 

Part III (FEEL TRIPS)

Then we get together and make a live session inside #fofc village, to engage more with each other's opinions and gather soul conversation bits to share here on the podcast.  

In April we’re collaborating with conscious parenting sister, Domari Dickinson, to co-host a parenting challenge, thinking primarily of people transitioning into Self-Directed Education, to offer some tools and resources. This collab is part of a larger effort to populate parenting and education spaces with the support  to navigate the deschooling journey. 

LIBERATION WALK

• It’s easy to give us your feedback! Just press that little button on the right of our website that says “Leave a voicemail” on the right side of the site, or email [email protected]
• Join Leslie of P.O.U.R. Podcast in the first Community P.O.U.R. Session
• Connect with Tiersa on Twitter
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel

Support the show

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/

On the last stop of Akilah’s tour of introductions to all the hosts on our network, you’ll meet Katrina Monique and hear about her upcoming show, How She Got Free Podcast. Katrina Monique and Akilah have an insightful conversation about what liberation can mean in the process, the many layers that self awareness and healing have, the struggle and joy when Katrina completely embraced herself, what does it mean to live with depression and more.

Before that convo, Akilah gives a hint of what’s coming next month with Season 6, and tells you her plan for making sure, as her granny would say, “har eaz nyam grass!”

As we reach the end of this love fest, don’t forget to subscribe to all five podcasts! In addition to Fare Of The Free Child, we produce She Said We Shed with Aja; How She Got Free with Katrina; Grief, Growth and Goals with Lou Hollis; Plant It Up with Val; and the upcoming P.O.U.R. (Purposely Opening Up to Relationships) podcast with Leslie Bray.

Redefining liberation

How She Got Free Podcast is inspired by a book and retreat that Katrina and Akilah created and nurtured during 2012-2013. This podcast version is designed to show us ways we can generate healing for ourselves and invite others to acknowledge and name their own healing needs too.

Katrina shares her experience with her own mental health diagnoses, examining her relationships to concepts like strength and joy, and how something that looked scary ended up liberating her. They also speak about the impact that colonial society has in mental health, and all the things Black women and Black people in general have been impacted by and still struggle with.

Notables you might dig...

Akilah and Katrina point out how our ancestors developed mechanisms to survive and thrive without realizing they could suffer from depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses that harmed them and caused intergenerational trauma among communities. What arose during that discussion was

a) what wounds came from fighting for your freedom, and

b) how do we not turn our wounds into weapons against those we love?

Also, trauma shows up in our relationships with our bodies, with our children, with our community, and Katrina talks about building structure around trauma, embracing who we are, naming things by speaking up and accepting the trauma not only as an individual process but also in community.

LIBERATION WALK

• Watch the video version from this episode on YouTube
• Join Katrina’s community, How We Got Free on Facebook
• Join Akilah's email list

Support the show

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/

Our featured host and guest during this week’s version of our month-long love fest is Lou Hollis of Grief, Growth and Goals podcast (#3GPod), a space for sharing insights about healing work while parenting after grief and depression. 

Lou is a model and actress with more than 25 years of experience in the talent industry, both as talent, and as talent management and mentorship. Grief, Growth and Goals podcast (#3GPod) is a healing space where Lou chats with child talent, parents of talent, bookers, agents, agency owners, about business, but more so about managing life and staying grounded through it all.

On this week’s episode, Akilah and Lou speak about power dynamics in relationships and the importance of changing the narrative to advocate for their children from a partner-centered lens. Lou talks about how empowering it is for her to hear other people's stories, particularly how they’ve learned to raise their voices, and how that has inspired her to make sure she is showing up and sharing her spiritual transformation. 

To meet all the hosts on our network, be sure to check out our main page: https://raisingfreepeople.com/network/

LIBERATION WALK

• You can also watch the video version from this episode  
• You can listen to Lou on previous #fofcpod episodes: Episode 73: How Grief Unschooled Her and Episode 194: Language for Unschooling
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!
• Join patreon.com/akilah and support the show!

Support the show

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/

In this in-between episode on #fofcpod Akilah chats with Val Anderson, creator and host of Plant It Up podcast, and Leslie Bray of the upcoming podcast, P.O.U.R (Purposely Openly Up to Relationships). 

Plant It Up podcast is part of a larger plant initiative, and focuses on Val's deep love for plants and how it relates to self-care and liberation work practices as well. Make sure you connect with Val and Our Plants and Juicecapades!  

Leslie’s segment includes a few clips from her old episodes, as well as details about P.O.U.R. Podcast. Leslie is the founder of Kid Cultivators Homeschool Community, a homeschooling collective that makes space for alternative ways of learning. She talks about what P.O.U.R. has to offer as a community building approach, where she will explore what it means to show up and be open to new relationships, what it takes to build those relationships, and the rituals around these practices, both individually and as a collective. Follow Leslie for updates.

LIBERATION WALK

• Kelly Limes Taylor shares with us the two upcoming courses from Ours First Series: Stories Of Our Pasts and Younger You. Be sure to register!  
• You can listen to Val on previous #fofcpod episodes: Episode 176: ‘Cause Ginger Root Brings Her Joy and Episode 180: Partnership Practice with Plants
• You can listen to Leslie on previous #fofcpod episodes: Episode 18: Self-Care + Sacred Space and Episode 110: Leslie Talks Conscious Community Collectives
• Raising Free People Network’s Presence Counselors Leslie Bray and Anthony Galloway are here to support unschooling and deschooling processes for families and organizations
• Hosting, or are part of, a Raising Free People Book Club? Tell us by emailing [email protected] with the details about that book club. Akilah would love to come through, right quick!
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!

Support the show

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/

Welcome back! We are still in-between seasons on #fofcpod and for the next month we’ll be sharing with our hosts from Raising Free People Network! This week we chat with Aja, single mom, freelancer/entrepreneur and unschooler who has lived outside of the United States - host of She Said We Shed Podcast.

“Created by Aja, and produced by Raising Free People Network, She Said We Shed is a reclamation project for defining a motherhood that acknowledges and helps us heal from the unresolved trauma-induced parenting practices among Black mothers. Aja is raising her Black son while healing from the trauma of being raised by a woman who didn’t heal from whatever harmed her. Black mama trauma is the topic, and honest, love-centered, reclamation and healing are the intentions. Join Aja as she and invited guests get vulnerable and deliberate about legacy shifting with support, back-up, and truth-tellers.”

Akilah and Aja speak on Black motherhood, intergenerational trauma, privilege in relationships, setting boundaries (even with our children), and healing work that includes more than praying and going to the “good doctors.”

She Said We Shed Podcast - Wanting to heal not wanting to hide

Aja talks with Akilah about what has happened with She Said We Shed and what she’s been noticing through her own liberation journey. They highlight the importance of the resources and decolonizing tools that She Said We Shed has to offer, and the value of speaking up about these topics in order to shift and heal intergenerational trauma.

Aja transports us into a living personal experience, a reclamation project, a space where women are willing to come and share their stories, having straight-up conversations that seek community around them learning how not to expose children to the same parenting behavior that wounded us. This podcast is an opportunity to build relationship tools that acknowledge the power of motherhood along with the responsibility that comes with it.

Slowing down

Aja talks about the struggle that she faced with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) and how that forced her to stop and rest so she could heal and have deep realizations. She also talks about how this situation impacted her physical and emotional well being but also helped to pull her back. By trying alternative methods, she gave the chance to other ways of healing and made her see how vital it was to set boundaries for her and her child, as she says “we need to listen to ourselves to know what we need is a process”.

LIBERATION WALK

• Kelly Limes Taylor shares with us the two upcoming courses from Ours First Series: Stories Of Our Pasts and Younger You. Be sure to register!
• Check out

Support the show

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/

We are still in-between seasons on #fofcpod, so Akilah picked another amazing replay full of liberation talk and mad question askin’ -- episode 40 from season 2!

Special guest Yolonda Coles Jones, founder of Empowered Journey Company, creator of the Empowered People trademarked formula as applied within her Empowered Me/Us, Empowered Families and Empowered Teachers Programs & within her Empowered People Deliberate Love School. She is talking about her experience with her partner on raising four free people, two daughters and twin sons.

Akilah will also be reading a little excerpt from chapter 2 of Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work. Yolonda's story is in chapter two as well, so grab a copy of the book for the details! 

We'll be back in the second week of February with more great content! Peace and love.

LIBERATION WALK

• Raising Free People Network’s Presence Counselors Leslie Bray and Anthony Galloway are here to support unschooling and deschooling processes for families and organizations
• Here is another great conversation with Yolonda, Ep. 59: Deschooling through Rhythm! 
• Hosting, or are part of, a Raising Free People Book Club? Tell us by emailing [email protected] with the details about that book club. Akilah would love to come through, right quick!
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!
• Join patreon.com/akilah and support the show!

Support the show

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/

We are in another in-between episode on #fofcpod, this time replaying episode 31 from season 2! On this reboot Anthony Galloway Jr, one of our Presence Counselors here on Raising Free People Network who also happens to be debuting with his first podcast series right here on #fofcpod, is joining us along with Julia Cordero, co-founder of Hearthwood Agile Learning Center, in an insightful conversation on Whitewashed Self-Directed Education. Let’s get into this replay!

LIBERATION WALK

• Developing a disruptor’s ear, a workbook for learning how to listen (despite schoolishness and pervasive whiteness) and what to do with what you’re hearing
• Raising Free People Network’s Presence Counselors Leslie Bray and Anthony Galloway are here to support unschooling and deschooling processes for families and organizations
• Hosting, or are part of, a Raising Free People Book Club? Tell us by emailing [email protected] with the details about that book club. Akilah would love to come through, right quick!
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!
• Join patreon.com/akilah and support the show!

Support the show

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/

Welcome to another in-between episode on #fofcpod! This time we are sharing with Trelani Michelle, who we’ve already heard on episode 4 on Black Queer Mothering, episode 14 with Self-Mothering While Parenting and most recently on episode 197: A Deschooling Word About Boundaries, Babies and Business talking about parenting practices, dating life and all about her project Krak Teet: A Catalog of Savannah’s Black-in-the-Day (biographies that centers the life experiences of native Gullah Geechee elders from 1920 on through to 1970). Don’t miss this replay! 

LIBERATION WALK

• Don’t miss The Parenting Decolonized Conference. “The mission of the summit is to provide parents and caregivers with action plans, resources, and tips for conscious parenting during stressful times, reimagining education during the Coronavirus, and the radical shifts required to be more confident, conscious, intentional parents.”
• Raising Free People Network’s Presence Counselors Leslie Bray and Anthony Galloway are here to support unschooling and deschooling processes for families and organizations
• Hosting, or are part of, a Raising Free People Book Club? Tell us by emailing [email protected] with the details about that book club. Akilah would love to come through, right quick!
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!

Support the show

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/

We’re in between seasons on #fofcpod, and as we promised, January will be filled with specially-chosen replays sprinkled with some new-new announcements and invitations.

This time we bring you an update from Monique Allison who we’ve already heard from on episode 6 back on Season 1. Listen to Monique giving us some insight on She Said We Shed Podcast

Monique talks about what she’s been learning through her deschooling journey with her son, Pharaoh, particularly how she’s becoming a better observer, and learning more about adaptability, flexibility, and trust.

Monique is a single Black mom that is raising her son who has sickle cell and other chronic illnesses. They shifted to unschooling, attended an Agile Learning Center, and are still happily unschooling nearly five years later. Listen to Episode 6, (Reclaiming and Learning) to hear their story.

Akilah reminds us not to miss The Parenting Decolonized Conference. “The mission of the summit is to provide parents and caregivers with action plans, resources, and tips for conscious parenting during stressful times, reimagining education during the Coronavirus, and the radical shifts required to be more confident, conscious, intentional parents.”

Akilah shares her testimonial on Iris Chen’s book, Untigering: Peaceful Parenting for the Deconstructing Tiger Parent. The ebook will be FREE for the next few days in early January so download early before the promotion ends!

"Iris's book felt like a familiar conversation with someone who insisted on telling the truth and letting it show up as potential healing space. But it was more than the sense of truthful reflections; there were so many powerful invitations to listen to my own nudges, as well as confront my own biases, too. It looks like a notebook the way I wrote and scribbled and hell-yea'd all through those pages! Untigering is a welcomed addition to the growing list of resources for people raising free people, and unlearning/reclaiming ourselves in the process." - Akilah

LIBERATION WALK

• Check out Monique’s other previous episodes on #fofcpod: Surviving Survival Mode – Emerging Out… and Surviving Survival Mode – Getting Unstuck 
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!

Support the show

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/

Welcome to the fifth season finale of Fare of the Free Child Podcast where Akilah gives a State of the Podcast (and network!). She shares resources and invitations focused on the opportunities for rest and reparations and for the deepening of this movement. Thank you all for listening and supporting, this conversation is centered on some of the healing that we've done, the healing that we are looking to do in collaboration with others and the opportunities to invest in that healing work at variant levels.

Keep on sharing, shedding and questioning. In January we will be replaying some all-time favorite episodes with some new additions, so don’t miss it!

What we've been able to accomplish

• Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work is out! Akilah shares her gratitude to the listeners, for the feedback she had from everyone interested in continuing on this deschooling and liberation journey
• Fare Of The Free Child had major coverage in the New York Times, Forbes and countless podcasts and local media
• All the new equipment and resources to keep jamming with our dope content in Raising Free People Network is thanks to you!
• Voice-Ups as a safe space to talk about specific issues
• Disrupting academic and corporate spaces in partnership with Black unschoolers

Structure of Raising Free People Network: Three Initiatives and One Offering.

• Raising Free People Unschool (RFP Unschool): Online unschool with courses and coaching
• Audio by Raising Free People Network. Don’t forget to subscribe to all five podcasts! In addition to Fare Of The Free Child, we proudly produce She Said We Shed with Aja; How She Got Free with Katrina; Grief, Growth and Goals with Lou; Plant It Up with Val; Wait for an upcoming surprise from Leslie Bray about community care, soon!
• Raising Free People Book and upcoming workbooks
• Offering: Leadership consultations with schools or corporations looking to decolonize their environment / culture

Where we are looking to go

Mentorship and other types of support with emerging community change agents, helping them to develop w

Support the show

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/

This week on #fofcpod, Maleka Diggs from Eclectic Network and Akilah are chopping it all up about this year. Get ready for an insightful conversation about what they’ve been noticing around deschooling, self care, pervasive whiteness, movement, decolonizing, and then some.

WHAT WE DISCUSS

Self care practices

Maleka shares aspects of her decolonizing journey, the harmony between working and playing and defining priorities around self care practices. Akilah talks about deschooling her leadership practices.

They also talk about the power of stillness and silence, how necessary it is to be more aware of ourselves, our thoughts and our bodies. Akilah shares her experience of reconnecting with herself through dance and movement, the way she gets information about herself from her body and paying attention to what she is noticing.

Unravelings - The joy of failure

They chat about Maleka’s projects and what they have been noticing around pervasive whiteness. Akilah speaks about the sense of responsibility that comes as a Black woman who unschools and advocates for her community, also about her experience working in predominantly White spaces.

Maleka also talks about her love of cooking, and the real roots of curry. She tells how food can be a way of resistance and decolonization, and how every dish has its own journey and meaning.

Then they talk about failure and how it can be understood as an opportunity to pivot and learn, not seeing it as the end of the path but as a direction. That’s one of the skills that we root with self directedness, “the joy of failure”, this will show up differently and will evolve depending on each person’s processes.

Consumption and Schoolishness

They reject the notion of metrics, and connect most forms of measuring and data with consumption and standardization.

LIBERATION WALK

• Get your tickets so you don’t miss The Parenting Decolonized Conference. “The mission of the summit is to provide parents and caregivers with action plans, resources, and tips for conscious parenting during stressful times, reimagining education during the Coronavirus, and the radical shifts required to be more confident, conscious, intentional parents.”
• Check out Eclectic Learning Network’s merch!
• Here are some dope music producers, check out their material!: Jamie a.k.a, Serotonin, Jared Akeem, Rhyan (Richie Flex) and Only Black Cosmonaut
• Our growing community is part of the My Reflection Matters ecology, in our own

Support the show

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/

This week on #fofcpod we are talking about prioritizing wellness amidst entrepreneurship and unschooling with one of our #fofcpod repeat guests, Kim Hester (with the big, beautiful smile!). Kim is co-owner of Life Strength & Health holistic center, and she co-hosts Akilah’s favorite wellness podcast too! In episode 195: Black Unschooling Dads, Kris Richards (Akilah's partner) and Jamal Hester (Kim's partner) had the chance to chat about Black fatherhood and unschooling. In this episode Akilah talks with Kim about the importance of awareness as part of a wellness process, and how all of that is connected to natural learning, deschooling and our capacity to thrive.

WHAT WE DISCUSS:

When you feel good you move through life differently

Kim speaks about pivoting away from toxic environments and the changes that came with that shift. She also touches on the importance of being aware of her feelings and decisions, being consistent with the changes she applied in her routines, and how that all of that showed up in her relationship with her husband, her daughter (SaHura), and in her own mind and body.

Kim and Akilah also speak on decolonizing parenting styles and how they had to question themselves by identifying schoolish patterns in their parents and in themselves that were/are directly influenced by the colonial narrative. They give examples of that, and chat about their experiences with their children and how they felt at a certain point in their adult lives about not having developed the tools to overcome certain realities, like being afraid of making a mistake, that sometimes blocks them from seeing the whole spectrum of possibilities in a given situation.

Awareness and deschooling

Akilah talks about awareness and how it is intrinsically connected with deschooling behaviors that disrupt patterns in order to build up healthy, consent-based, autonomy-nurturing practices. Kim is caring for her partner’s elderly parents, and brings up the way that our awareness of the stressors can be helpful if we acknowledge them and do little things to manage those feelings in our bodies and in our minds.

Kim brings up the importance of movement and changes in environment when possible, especially at this time where we’re more sedentary at home. She talks about unschooling during COVID-19 with SaHura, and the things that give her joy like dancing, summer camp and sharing with her friends. She also describes the deschooling process of her and her family and the ways she and her husband work at being supportive and helpful.

LIBERATION WALK

• Hosting, or are part of, a Raising Free People Book Club? Tell us by emailing [email protected] with the de

Support the show

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/

This week on #fofcpod we have an insightful conversation about relationships and diversity with educator, organizer and speaker Crystal Byrd Farmer, she focuses on cohousing, Black, and polyamorous communities. Crystal is a Black, queer, autistic woman whose opinions and ambitions find her in a variety of communities where she is the only one with a particular intersection of identities. This “token” status is one Crystal does not shy away from, but instead uses it to speak up and invite change in the communities she chooses.

Crystal shares some of her experiences, and tells us about her book, The Token: Common Sense Ideas for Increasing Diversity in Your Organization. We'll also hear about Gastonia Freedom School, the Agile Learning Center (a type of Self-directed Education center, that Crystal founded to offer support in her North Carolina community.

“This is the book that is going to save you from theory and guilt trips disguised as training or solutions to issues of equity and diversity. Crystal has brilliantly highlighted her personal experiences as means of examining and learning how biases affect some Black women in particular, and many intentional communities across age and gender, among other differences. She then brings in the history and pattern of anti-Black racism in particular, and offers resources and conversation prompts to work through what she brings up in these pages. I found this book refreshing in its departure from scholarly research over real-life experiences, feelings that words often fail, and so much more in terms of nuance and layers. I loved this and I'm grateful to Crystal for adding her perspectives to the conversation about relationships and diversity without apology, and with no problem being dynamic and human in her approach. Read this book!”

- Akilah S. Richards’s review.

“The book touches key points like reality of bias, privilege and microaggressions, what marginalized people experience and what they might need to feel safe and comfortable in order to succeed. Crystal acts as the bridge between majority white organizations that are dedicated to social justice and "diverse" people in the community.”

Gastonia Freedom School is a self-directed learning center focused on children with disabilities, the support is one-to-one depending on their interests, they work on the development of social skills respecting their agency and independence. Crystal talks about how they’re managing this SDE space since COVID started, the challenges and also the perks of it.

Akilah also took some time to share her appreciation to the Fare Of The Free Child Community and invites to continue on this deschooling journey of healing and liberation work.

LIBERATION WALK

• Here’s Crystal talking abo

Support the show

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/

This week on #fofcpod, we're talking about boundaries - ways to affirm them, and ways to honor the development of boundaries as they show up, shift us, and determine so many elements of how we show up in our bodies and in our relationships. Listen in as Trelani Michelle, our modern-day Zora Neale Hurston, offers some sweet and insightful storytelling about the recognition and re-affirming of her boundaries in her work, her parenting practice, and in her dating life. Trelani also shares the origins of her celebrated project, Krak Teet: A Catalog of Savannah’s Black-in-the-Day Biographies that centers the life experiences of native Gullah Geechee elders from 1920 on through to 1970.

WHAT WE DISCUSS

How shedding/deschooling ain’t just about habits, but can also include relationships.

Trelani and Akilah talk about the shedding elements of deschooling. Shedding, in essence, is about stopping certain established patterns or norms that are out of alignment with what you’re learning about your authentic self -- your thoughts, your  body, your actions, and what best suits your healing and liberation process. Trelani’s deschooling process led to many shifts, including divorce. It also aligned her with many things, including the 10-fold rewards that came with her decision NOT to conform, but instead to affirm her boundaries.

Teaching with Consent

They also talk about some of the dynamics around teaching and learning and how those dynamics support a deeper layer of understanding and acceptance that doesn’t compromise each other’s boundaries. Trelani shares her experience with Kobe, her 11-year-old daughter, and how they are getting acquainted with each other’s boundaries, and developing what Akilah describes as a set of vital life skills that are developed, in practice, over time.

LIBERATION WALK

• Not feeling all the positive, uplifting energies right now? Akilah wrote a short book for you about it. Check it: Perfectly Rational Reasons To Be Okay With Not Being Okay: A Self-Care Guide For Embracing Your Feelings Even When They Are Negative (The Radical Self-Expression eBook Series 1)
• Raising Free People Network’s Presence Counselors Leslie Bray and Anthony Galloway, Jr. are here to support unschooling and deschooling processes for families and organizations
• Hosting, or are part of, a Raising Free People Book Club? Tell us by emailing [email protected] with the details about that book club. Akilah would love to come through, right quick!
• Subscribe to our Youtube Channel!
• Join patre

Support the show

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/

Reframing Trust and Proof

Proof and trust have become very schoolish. The way I see it, trust is often a thing to choose, not a thing to be earned. In deschooling, the proof of trustworthiness often comes after the decision to trust a process. There’s no need for proof, the proof is part of a bond of trust we build up in our daily lives, it's about the people, the processes, and the way we forge our relationships--trust emerges from that.

- Akilah #raisingfreepeople

We've got a birthday episode on deck! FOFC family member, Natalie Pipkin, turned 35 today (Nov 26, Baby!), and we get to celebrate with her AND with her city as Natalie and family launched their mobile book store on this special day!

You'll hear all about it today, and you'll also hear how Natalie offers us detailed, really specific examples of how unschooling shows up in her life. She goes on to share how she's understanding it as liberation work, and how she facilitates it in community by embodying the skills of it and bringing it to spaces where we can practice it, and see the benefits of it and then want to do it more and more. This opens us up to a lot of the deschooling that comes with the desire to get more of the type of experiences you have when you start facilitating learning, instead of trying to simulate it, or force it.

Natalie and Akilah talk about a lot of the highs that came from that, along with the concerns that caused Natalie and her husband to pull their boys from school right before CO-VID 19 hit. They had fears and concerns like anyone else, but since that decision, they've deepened and grown in ways that bring her family so much comfort about their choice to empower their sons in their educational journey by removing the lies, confines, and willful omissions that constantly show up in classrooms.

You'll hear about that, in this episode, and it is so important for these experiences to be shared, for you to get that all through your ears, your mind, and all through your body. I know that so many among us are trying to figure out what it means now to nurture learning, outside of both the confines of conventional education. And also dealing with feelings of loss from the sense of framework and other adult support that made conventional education really useful for some families in many ways, even with its deeply problematic elements.

LIBERATION WALK

• Check out Natalie’s previous episode: Ep 171: Black Child, You Are Seen 
• Here she is again on Parenting for Liberation podcast
• Here’s that book Natalie mentioned on Spiritual Self-care
• If you are hosting or are part of a Raising Free People Book Club, message [email protected] to i

Support the show

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/

Today we’ll be joined by two unschooling dads, Jamal Hester and Kris Richards. They will be pointing out some insights on Black fatherhood, re-parenting and unschooling! 

Jamal is the co-owner of Life Strength & Health holistic center. They also have a podcast where we can find great resources on healing work. Kris Richards is a graphic designer, artist, and creative brander. He’s also Akilah’s partner and Marley and Sage’s dad.

What We Discussed:

Colonial Narrative

Jamal and Kris talk about how their labels of “who they are” as parents, sons, partners, are under certain expectations and are mostly validated by someone else's perspectives. They also chat about the importance of re-configuring parenting styles to have a different approach to the way we are raising our children, and the kind of relationships that we want to nurture. 

Intergenerational relationships

They also discuss seeing some patterns from their behavior reflected in the ways that their own parents and other elders beliefs and parenting styles were directly influenced by the colonial narrative. They give examples of that, and speak to their struggle to change that, so their children can see things from a different perspective, and can understand that it's okay to make mistakes, to speak up, and to question things, in order to grow and to thrive.

“Domesticated” parents raising “wild” children

Kris shares how his relationships with his daughters shifted when he realized that he was imposing ideas about what he believed was best for them. He had to step back from his thoughts on things like screen time, but at the same time consider the importance of giving them context so they could navigate through and question what they were watching on that screen. The skill he began to learn was how to start showing up from a space of listening, and of trust in order to get in sync.

Jamal speaks about his relationship with his daughter, SaHura, and how he and his wife, Kim, use essential oils as part of a supportive environment  for their daughter to manage and understand her emotions.

Quote from Jamal about his daughter: When SaHura understands, there is no resistance. When she’s just told, and she gets no context, it never goes well.

Deschooling is like an onion

Jamal uses the metaphor of the onion, peeling back the layers of an onion is like letting go of the things that we believed, and in doing so, there are certain conditions we have to change and others we decide to keep. It’s a process of learning what works and what doesn’t, and it is affected by everything, including the food we eat, our fitness and the overall ways we take care of ourselves.

LIBERATION WALK

• Don’t miss TRUE: Towards Radical Social Change Unschooling and Pa

Support the show

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/

Want to learn some unschooling vocabulary? If so, listen good because this episode brings a big opportunity to decide upon, and to question your own definitions and understandings, and pivot wherever the need arises. Add your own vocab to this. What words need to be on the next-next episode?

See the full definitions at raisingfreepeople.com/194

• Unschooling
• Self-Directed Education
• Re-parenting
• Shadow Work: If you missed it, listen to Genesis Ripley on episode 182: Genesis Ripley on Partnering with Our Pain, she shares the importance of Shadow Work and why we can’t continue to contemplate the world in a binary spectrum, ignoring the shadows, the nuances that are also part of it. We visit the unconscious, that is where Shadow Work happens.
• Change-up: A process of creating and iterating agreements based on underlying needs, values or desires. The agreements are worked on through various levels of practice, until they become fully integrated as a norm or new way of being. To learn more listen to Monique Allison and Thomas Parker in Episode 78: Surviving Survival Mode – Emerging Out.
• Schoolishness: As it is defined at schoolishness.com/: “Conventional practices that are rooted in binaries, and generally accepted by adults, but rejected by children and teenagers, either overtly or covertly. A living out of someone else’s goals or narratives of how and what we should be. Schoolishness models an authoritarian approach to adult-child interaction as well as respectability ideas rooted in the notion of adults’ innate superiority in knowledge.”
• Confident Autonomy
• Deschooling
• Pervasive Whiteness
• Subject Sprint
• Points of Access (PoFAS): Awareness, disruption, deschooling, unschooling

LIBERATION WALK

• Don’t forget that Kelly Limes Taylor’s second course Stories of Our Pasts is now open for enrollment
• Download 100 Ways To Be Cosmic! Howard Cosmonaut Palmer's guide for becoming cosmic and learning the path to a Higher Self
• Grief, Growth and Goals podcast, hosted by Lou Hollis, is a healing space where we will chat with child talent, parents of talent, bookers, agents, agency owners, industry folk from the business aspect, to life, management and how one stays focused and grounded.
• Raising Free People Network’s Presence Counselors

Support the show

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/

On this week’s episode you will be privy to an intergenerational conversation between mother and daughter, as our special guest is Marley @mrlamai, unschooler and SDE advocate.

Marley and Akilah talk about some of the ways that the skills that come with self-directedness are translatable in our current context of being at home, as we figure out how to pivot away from scholishness. Marley talks about some of the experiences and differences that she had with friends that have been raised with a conventional schooling mindset in comparison to her unschooling peers.

WHAT WE DISCUSS

Emotional skills management

Marley shares what she perceived as a lack of emotional skills management that schoolish people tend to have, the difficulties in communicating emotions, expressing their needs and taking action on those needs. If people come from a place where they have the tools to communicate their emotions, identify boundaries and develop emotional skills management, they’ll be able to nurture healthy and trustworthy relationships with others and themselves.

The skills that are honed in a self-directed practice show up quite usefully in moments of conflict. It’s key to be able to think beyond the reaction and be able to ask questions, and move away from the schoolish mindset of punishing the reaction instead of exploring the cause.

Efficiency vs Long-term relationships

Akilah talks about cooperative leadership, the importance of focusing more on the people that are involved in the processes rather than just thinking about the efficiency factor. They chat about how in SDE you can find ways to have efficiency from a human approach in a long term process. Unschooling needs to be seen not only from an educational framework, but also in how we want things to be developed in our own lives.

Marley also talks about her experience on how to be financially responsible and how she still struggles with the fear of not being capable of managing her money: Scholishness shows up when you are not equipped with the skills that you need to act upon it, by being really hard on yourself.

Think, Ask and Listen

They conclude that self-directedness is developed over time, and is a mindset that is applicable to everyone, though it can look vastly different for each person. A consistent deschooling practice will give you the tools to develop a connection with your emotions, needs, and boundaries, and those of others.

LIBERATION WALK

• Connect with Marley on Instagram
• Want great content on plants and self care? Come get details from Val and Our Plants of  Plant It Up Podcast!
• Shout out to Natasha Bazile, of our make-it-happen family! Check her podcast if you want to know more about education & guidanc

Support the show

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/

Today's liberation talk will be with the amazing Makeba Celeste (@makeba_celeste) as she speaks to how schoolishness, and her life in medicine, limited her capacity for authentic self-exploration and healthy intergenerational relationships.

Makeba is a former medical doctor who turned into an unschooling mother, writer, tap dancer and artist. The former South Londoner and her partner, Soliheen, are raising free people on Ohlone land in what is now called the Bay Area in California.

WHAT WE DISCUSS:

Scholishness vs Confidence: How parents' expectations can sometimes negatively affect children’s confidence. Young people worry too much about trying to be “perfect” and getting their parents’ approval, later on this can show up as trust issues within one’s self, and one’s capacity to do anything other than what others have deemed you “good at” and “good for”.

Belonging is human: The pressure that a child can have by being put on a pedestal. They feel that they can never fail because they will disappoint everyone. And when they inevitably fail at something, it can feel like their reputation among the people that put them on that pedestal is being tested all the time, which can drive a deeply effective wedge between young people and their adults.. Why? Because these human beings are not being nurtured and respected, but instead left to take care of the other people’s expectations so much that they do not learn how to take care of their (emotional) selves.

Makeba talks about her experience on homeschooling her children, and how they decided to unschool with their first child, he was 1 year old. Years later he was diagnosed with autism and unschooling has really proven to be a great approach for supporting his learning process. They also unschool with their daughter, and Makeba describes the unschooling process as not having to struggle to humanize or limit their learning, for them it has been a liberation-centered approach.

Liberation-centered approach: Scholishness was getting in the way of Makeba’s capacity to thrive, and she talks about which tools helped her in her deschooling processes. She navigated a lot of unsolicited opinions about everything from going vegan while she was pregnant, to who she should date or marry before that. Makeba shares that when she decided to marry a man who was Muslim, she (at the time Christian) was told by her father that it wouldn’t work out because they were “opposed”. Still, Makeba followed her gut and started deciding for herself. That felt liberatory! She could make her own decisions and have her own opinions on things she hadn’t even considered before. She began to see that her life was more than just being a doctor, her identity was far beyond her profession, and so she started self-exploration through the Arts,  and empowered herself through different activities including writing, painting, tap dance, and most importantly, authentic joy.

LIBERATION WALK

• Check

Support the show

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/

Episode 191 is all about the deeper work after we accept self-directedness, and get into the layers of transitions, consent, emergent structure, children and trust.

We'll be chatting with Tiersa McQueen, and SDE advocate, wife and working mom of 4 children (including twins), who is serious on how to develop new tools for liberation-centered relationships. We’ll be making mad question’ askin on power, boundaries and decolonization.  

“I tweet for the Black married moms who homeschool. We outchea. Unschooler. Gentle parenting.” - Tiersa McQueen

WHAT WE DISCUSS

Digital community and liberation tools: Tiersa talks about how Twitter has given her the opportunity to discuss unschooling as a liberation tool towards she and her husband’s commitment to raising free people. 

Intergenerational trauma / intergenerational healing and unschooling: We move forward to Tiersa’s experiences with her four children. She describes her unlearning process as something that happened in a very organic way, by observing her children, checking the way they spent more time in things they were interested in, as opposed to the things she told them to do. It became an ongoing evolution of emerging structure. She also points out the importance of listening, returning to what learning already is, and to relationships with trustworthiness in ourselves and towards children.

Let it be. Intuition, trust and relationships: Akilah and Tiersa talk about the importance of letting things just be, and how something apparently passive can open up so many possibilities. When we don't force any of the learning processes of our children, we can learn  from what’s already happening, and develop partnership practices from that space.

Relationships based on power vs trustworthy relationships: They also chat about how conditioned we are under certain structures that are supposed to work out as ideal to educate our children, Tiersa shares how good it’s been for her to unschool her children.

Community and Self-Directed Education - Boundaries and responsibility: Akilah and Tiersa conclude by discussing how freedom includes responsibility, along with intention, therefore we need practice in our home environment to ready our children to be responsible in communal spaces. They talk about unschooling as a series of transitions to get to a deeper relationship, and a means of learning some ways to be supportive while also honoring our and other people’s boundaries.

LIBERATION WALK

• Check out Tiersa’s Twitter for great content and more insights on unschooling and self-directed education. Here’s also Tiersa McQueen’s Youtube Channel as another resource!
• Unschooling was in the

Support the show

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/

This week on Fare Of The Free Child Podcast we’ll have a mix of resources and liberation talk!

Ieishah Clelland-Lange, writer, nomad and mother of Freeda (7 years old) and Toni (4 years old), will be talking with us about how to redefine power in our parent-child relationships. Thea @theamonyee of Shaping the Shift Podcast talks to us about The Blacker the Brain, the Free Joy Experience, and more opportunities to decolonize, reimagine, and heal. And we close out with a reminder to come see and share with us at  RaisingFreePeople.com/book.

WHAT WE DISCUSS

Akilah and Ieishah chat about movement, location independence and community. Ieishah shares her traveling experience and how she sees it as a vehicle to learn how to be more engaged with earth and places in a different way. She also talks about how this dynamic changed in our current context and became an opportunity for her to settle into more fluid and meditative ways.

Then they shift the conversation into partnership skills, observation and learning. Ieishah shares her experience before unschooling with Freeda and Toni. They talk about the burdens that we put on children, the expectations on how they’re supposed to manage boundaries and express themselves, and that when this happens, we are using tools of oppression (scholishness and colonization), trying to control their processes. By being aware of our limited knowledge of their process we can open our gaze towards a more observative attitude to look for alternatives. Ieishah experienced this with her daughters and started paying more attention to how they learn and the elements that facilitate the development of that knowledge, the space they needed. By doing so, Toni and Freeda started a process of self-awareness on how to manage their boundaries and understanding that they are allowed to make their own choices. Then they go deep and talk about redefining power in our relationships, what do you do with that power.

They conclude by putting earth and childhood at the center of the discussion recognizing the importance of those two key things, parenting and protecting our children and the earth. What change can we be part of?

LIBERATION WALK

• Check on Ieishah Clelland-Lange travel blog, TRAVELKIN. She also wrote an insightful piece: Dying to be seen: The only time white mom groups care about Black lives. Why does it take a Black person’s death to acknowledge Black lives?
• Ieishah also wrote a piece for Tipping Points, the online magazine from the Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE)
• Akilah’s book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work is available! Go to rfp.com/

Support the show

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/

Another Mad Question Askin’ episode! Episode 189 addresses this question from our Make-it-Happen family:

“Hi Akilah and community! Episode 182 with Genesis Ripley (Partnering with Our Pain) was so amazing! I need to listen again so I can absorb all the thought provoking things you both brought up. Akilah, you and Genesis mentioned Colonized Unschooling. I had this idea that if you do Unschooling with your family, especially Radical Unschooling you are automatically on the path to Decolonization. I definitely don’t want to do Colonized Unschooling! What does that mean? I think you and Genesis said something about how Colonized Unschooling is letting your kids do whatever they want and then supporting them. And this is related to the Colonial idea that white people think they own the world and can rape and pillage and dominate without caring how they are harming and impacting the community. So is Colonized Unschooling basically narcissism? What does Decolonized Unschooling look like? We give our kids a lot of freedom and support them in doing pretty much anything they want as long as they aren’t harming themselves, other people or the environment.”

Moji Yai and Kris Richards share their responses as unschooling parents and social justice oriented people.  Moji, who we've heard on Episode 168: Resistance + Returning, Episode 62: Deschooling Through Deciding is an unschooling mother and entrepreneur from Benin, West Africa. She recently moved back to Benin after spending much of her youth and adulthood in the U.S. South, and offers women and families space to study, an environment to explore, and a community to gather with, learn, play, and expand knowledge. See Moji’s invitations online at Wise African Woman (WAW). Kris has chatted with us on episodes 186 and 187 on the topic of community and capitalism, if you haven't heard don’t miss them! We’ve also heard Kris talk this season about Deschooling Corporate and Community Relationships and about the Ways Capitalism Invites Indoctrination.

WHAT WE DISCUSS:

Moji and Kris chat about their perspectives on decolonization and privilege as they relate to unschooling. Moji talks about privilege as ignorance, pointing out the importance of paying attention to pervasive whiteness and how disruptive it is to acknowledge, unlearn and shift away from it, by recognizing it and questioning how the things that gave you that sense of privilege are the things you need to let go of, so that your “privilege” becomes a useful

Support the show

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/

Today’s episode features consent educator, sexual literacy advocate, speaker, founder of Consent Parenting, host of the About Consent Podcast and change agent, Rosalia Rivera. Rosalia works with parents who are survivors of sexual abuse to help them learn and teach proper abuse prevention and consent to their children.

“I'm a mom of 3 little lovely consent-empowered humans between the ages of 4 and 8. It wasn't always like this. They didn't know about consent, boundaries or body safety. They were little chicks and I was the hen that hid them under my wings.⁠ I'm proud of how far they've come and how much more confident I am in their ability to speak up for themselves.⁠”  Rosalia Rivera.

WHAT WE DISCUSS:

Akilah and Rosalia chat about the implications that a lack of bodily autonomy can lead to, as well as the importance of strong foundations in children in terms of mental and body boundaries. Rosalia speaks to the immense value of acknowledging children’s rights to speak up in situations that could make them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, and giving children the tools to speak up about their needs and experiences.

Rosalia also talks about consent culture vs rape culture and how childism indoctrinates children into a notion of following authority without questioning said authority, and how that sets them up for being more easily victimized.

They conclude by noting that effective communication and partnership are what facilitate emergent structure, deep listening, and the capacity to develop and offer tools in support and education around consent culture. The intention is to make sure more adults know how to identify potential predators and help children set boundaries that can lead them into healthy, respecting relationships with others.

LIBERATION WALK

• Nervous about screen time? Moji is offering a 3-month course for that! She is offering support to families who are deschooling and raising free people. Tap into some of the insights that Moji gave us back in Episode 168: Resistance + Returning
• Unschooling was in the New York Times! Did you see it? It’s called ‘When You Get Into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion’ by Molly Worthen
• Akilah’s book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work is available! Go to rfp.com/book to get it, and tell Akilah what you were feelin’ or what you discovered or what got you hyped... all of it. She’d love to know!
• Raising Free People Network’s Presence Counselors Leslie Bray and

Support the show

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/

Here is Part 2 of an insightful, intergenerational conversation between Kris @iandidea and Romain (Rom) @pharo___ on the topic of capitalism and community. Both are college graduates with Marketing degrees, so their perspectives on capitalism in particular are nuanced as they work both as people affected by and carrying out some of the notions of capitalism. And they are not alone, as it is virtually impossible to untether from capitalism altogether. Still, we can critique it and we can imagine and build and practice beyond it, and this part of the conversation wants to usher in that type of energy.

This week, they touch on some of the ways capitalism conflicts with our commitment to being in community with each other, and how we can shift and deschool by being more aware of the differences and implications between transactional vs human-centered relationships.

Core question for you: How is capitalism showing up and influencing your relationships with young folks in your life?

WHAT WE DISCUSS:

Kris and Rom talk about the importance of recognizing a business entity for  what it actually is, which means we must see them as entities, not human beings. By knowing this we can build more human-centered skills, make genuine human connections, begin to deschool our mindsets, and turn community-building into a familiar, effective practice.

They also chat about the differences between communal spaces and businesses. Celebrities and companies have capitalistic based relationships, it’s transactional in that we can’t have two-way conversations, they’re only giving us information, a type of product propaganda, unlike community-based relationships where there is reciprocity and actual listening.

They go on mad question-askin’ on capitalism and how it shows up as indoctrination in that we are led to believe that as long as we stay with the system, we can achieve certain life goals. This directly influences our expectations about what a person should be doing at a certain age: graduating from college, buying a house, owning a car, being busy. How then can we learn how to be in community/partnership and not in a constant transactional dynamic? How does capitalism affect childhood environments and our overall relationships?

LIBERATION WALK

• Akilah’s book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work is available! Go to rfp.com/book to get it, and tell Akilah what you were feelin’ or what you discovered or what got you hyped... all of it. She’d love to know!
• Get ready for some storytime on patreon.com/akilah, if you ain’t over there yet, come drop your coin in the river and join our make-it-happen-family!
• Shout out to Maude and Javaughn and the whole Green Love kitchen crew, one o

Support the show

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/

Welcome to another episode of Fare Of The Free Child Podcast.  This week, our intention is to expand our understandings of deschooling and self-directedness beyond children and education. So, let’s listen to Part 1 of a conversation between a 20-something freelance marketing and social media consultant and a 40-something year old creative branding entrepreneur about discerning between capitalism and community.

What Kris Richards and Roman Sinclair began to explore in this conversation is that if we go deep and question further, we can begin the level of liberation and healing to redefine and revitalize our relationship dynamics across generations.

WHAT WE DISCUSS

We are so hyped because Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work book is finally here! Please support independent publishing and order Akilah’s book from PM Press.

If you’re hosting a book club around this or you’re hosting a convo around it, Akilah will love to be part of it, so reach out to our Operations Manager, Fatima Mookadam at [email protected]

Kris and Romain talk out loud about their own deschooling around their perspectives on community. They talk about the importance of discernment in those moments when support becomes more of a leveraging that brands use to promote themselves.

Kris points out the importance of connecting with companies as businesses, not communities. If a company wants to help they should know the community, listen to them, understand their realities and see how they can make an impact in a different way, but capitalism doesn't come from a human approach, and we need to know that, and operate accordingly.

LIBERATION WALK

• Sending special 101st would-have-been birthday love to my favorite poet, lecturer, performance artist, and activist Dr. Louise Bennett - Coverley, you can read one of her piece, Colonization in Reverse, here
• Register for the second course, Stories Of Our Past from the Ours First Series, offered by Kelly Limes-Taylor. Registration begins on October 25. Classes begin on the week of November 8th and ends on the week of December 6th!
• Support the show at patreon.com/akilah
• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel

Support the show

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/

Today’s episode is a deschooling conversation with the amazing Domari Dickinson. Domari chats with Akilah about how she became more aware of what it took for her to begin, moving away from a controlling approach and towards more positive and purposeful parenting.

WHAT WE DISCUSS

Domari speaks from her own experience as a Black woman on how the resources and theory about homeschooling lacked diversity. She didn’t see herself or her family represented, in homeschooling communities online and in books and podcasts. Domari homeschooled her children for two years before sending them to public school.  Her children immediately had conflicts because of the way that their teachers were managing their learning processes, so they asked to go back to homeschooling.

Domari and Akilah also talk about what positive parenting means and how moving from a schoolish setting to a more partner centered way of being allows trust to happen, supporting practices can create an environment where children can feel safe reaching out to their parents.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Deschooling work for adults: Remember that Intuition Work from the Ours First Series, offered by Kelly Limes-Taylor, is now open for registration. Classes begin the week of September 13th and ends the week of October 11th!

From October 2nd to October 4th the National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) is hosting their Virtual Conference, Age of Youth! It's happening from the evening of Friday, October 2nd to the evening of Sunday, October 4th. Register at ageofyouth.eventbrite.com.

We are so excited to announce our second Presence Counselor Anthony Galloway, Jr. He focuses on unschooling and deschooling for families and organizations, as well as people looking to create or grow a Self-Directed Education school or center.

LIBERATION WALK

• For our stress management is vital to sleep well and rest, shout out to Kim and Jamal Hester from Life Strength & Health holistic center for recommending Akilah Avocado Green Mattress, 100% organic latex, wool and cotton. You as a Fare Of The Free Child listener get a special discount of $215 dollars OFF when you use the code ‘fareofthefreechild’
• Book a free consultation with Domari here
• Follow Domari on Instagram and Facebook for more healing resources
• Want to be part of the Parent Collective to start making the shift?

Support the show

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/

Today's episode features Shawna Murray-Browne, a community healer and the founder of Kindred Community Healing, licensed clinical social worker. Akilah and Shawna go deep and talk about the skill sets that allow a professional to see the whole person and how the quality of care is not taking into account the whole spectrum, the collective experience, because true healing happens in community. They also talk about collective trauma and what liberation looks like when we decolonize practices that have been rooted from a settler-colonial framework.

Shawna points out the importance of relationship skills and collective healing by remembering our roots, how do we heal collective trauma? It's about thriving, taking therapy out of these containers, these concepts that have been naturalized as an only truth. She started a virtual space for mental health professionals who are looking to liberate themselves and their practices. You can find it on her webinar replay, 6 Crucial Steps to Decolonize Your Therapy Practice. Support and receive more quality content from Shawna, full of black healing, resistance and African psychology on patreon.com/shawnamurraybrowne. You can also find her on Instagram.

We are also sending so much love to the people that have been affected by the multiple troubled and heightened realities happening right now. We are handling so many emotions at once, and it can be exhausting. Deschooling and self-awareness work can keep ourselves at the center of a collective liberation, and being in community can help us thrive in spite of the circumstances that we may be living in our daily context.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

We are so excited because Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work book is almost here, click here to Pre-order.

Don't forget that Kelly Limes-Taylor is offering an opportunity to get closer to self-directed practices through a process (in the form of a course) called Intuition Work.

Another fantastic course, offered by Bayo Akomolafe, is called We Will Dance With Mountains, Let Us Make Sanctuary. Bayo has authored two books, We Will Tell Our Own Story! and These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home. He Also happens to be the Foreword author of Raising Free People's book, and Akilah will be joining Bayo for a session of his course.

Shout out to our Make it Happen Family members! Thanks for al

Support the show

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/

Today's episode is full of liberation and healing talk with life learner Dominique of DommiesBlessed. She shares some insights on natural learning, which we’re hoping will usher in changes around learning and relationship-building. Check out Dommie’s blog on natural learning.

WHAT WE DISCUSS

Before we talk to Dommie, Akilah gives a shout out to entrepreneurs, Kim and Jamal Hester, creators and developers of Life Strength & Health holistic center. Listen to their podcast for more healing work!

Also, as we are raising free people and nurturing self-care habits, check out the latest episode of the She Said We Shed Podcast, hosted by Aja Marie. Click here to subscribe to all five podcasts on Raising Free People Network.

Today, as we deschool with Dominique on the topic of natural learning, we are mad question askin’ about how learning looks and feels. The intention inside this episode is discover, or perhaps explore, a more intuitive and self-directed way of imagining and practicing self-care. Self-care is a key aspect that needs to be nurtured if willing to raise a free person, it’s fundamental for healing and liberation work.

Dominique shares the experience that she had with a more schoolish setting for her children and how she ended up homeschooling them for the best. She also talks about how natural learning shows up for families as healing work and the importance of focusing on practical life skills, paying attention to what your children are passionate about and what their strengths are, so that we can learn how to  support learning in a holistic way. Natural learning as the enhancement of our human skills and love centered guidance from family and from lots of different places.

In parent-children relationships we see a partnership. Learning is something that’s done together and the practices and skills that both develop also need to be mindful on how to take care of each other, the process of taking care of our children as we take care of ourselves. Co-learning with our children as a collaborative approach based on trust.

Click here to get 40% off the signed, special edition hardcover of Akilah’s book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work! First, go to "Format," then you'll see the arrow for the drop-down menu. Then, click that drop-down menu arrow and then select the "Signed hardcover" format. Type "unschooling" (no quotation marks) in the coupon code section to activate the discount. You will get 40% off the signed, special edition hardcover.

LIBERATION WALK

• In episode 182 Chemay Morales-James from My Reflection Matte

Support the show

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/

Episode 182 is a mix of communal spaces, tools, resources and of course liberation talk. Genesis Ripley will be joining us to chat about shadow work and the importance of being more aware of our unconscious as we are moving into a more self-directed way of being. Genesis is an LA-based mother, natural learning advocate, decolonizer by design and unschooler momma. 

We’ll also be sharing some great resources and invitations to continue through this healing and self awareness process, and you’ll hear from Kelly Limes-Taylor and Chemay Morales-James about ways to do that work.

WHAT WE DISCUSS

Kelly Limes-Taylor, is a former college professor and unschooler mother of five. Kelly speaks about the relevance in naming our failed structures and how these structures, built on a settler-colonial framework, are reinforced through conventional schooling. Kelly points out the importance of trusting our intuition and brings us a valuable resource: she is offering a course series called The Ours First Series in order to help adults to settle into the practice of listening to their intuition and themselves for their own answers. 

Another communal space shared by Chemay Morales-James from My Reflection Matters community, is a virtual co-learning community for primarily BIPOC families that can be looking for support in raising and educating free people. My Reflection Matters Village seeks to create a virtual space that supports caregivers that may be wanting or are already on the path of self-directed education with their children, offering access to resources that can help them in their deschooling processes.  

Akilah and Genesis have a conversation full of layers on the topic of liberation and healing work as it relates to the unconscious. Self-directed skills to embody the level of confident autonomy in partnership with children.

Genesis shares the importance of Shadow Work and why we can't continue to contemplate the world in a binary spectrum, ignoring the nuances, ignoring the shadows that are also part of it.  She also points out the importance of diversity as sacred, intellectualizing the plights and issues without the people involved is to dehumanize and undermine the voices that need to be heard. 

 LIBERATION WALK

• Genesis wrote an insightful piece emphasizing anti-Blackness called Essay: Shadow Work as Embodied Anti-Racism Work
• Check out Genesis’ previous episode: Episode 39: Mask-Free Relationships
• Pre-order Akilah’s Raising Free People book

Support the show

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/

Welcome back, homies (and new homies, too)! Y’all ready for season 5? In today’s episode Akilah shares ideas and invitations for what’s to come in the new season of Fare Of The Free Child.

WHAT WE DISCUSS

Akilah talks about deschooling and unschooling, not as something we learn from a curriculum nor a thing we perform, but as a way of being. It’s through the experiences and different points of view that we get to understand the otherness, question our own truths as part of a liberation work, and work at understanding more than being understood. She touches on the naming and shrinking the ways that we've been forced to separate things in a schoolish way, and how that needs to be decolonized, not only in our learning process but in our relationships overall. We have the capacity and resources to thrive and heal through these embodiment practices, so this season will be all about the ways we have done that, and can do it more, and in community.

We’ve also got more goodness in store through Raising Free People Network’s Presence Counselors. Besides Leslie Bray who will be doing one-on-one support for the people transitioning from schoolish to self-directed ways of living and learning, there are a couple of new folks in the mix, including more collaborations with Maleka Diggs and some incredible offerings by Kelly Limes-Taylor. 

Lastly, here’s the big invitation: We need your help to share more local stories, experiences, conversations to know what is happening with self-directedness in different places. If you're willing to send voice messages to Akilah's team so that your local raising free people work can be shared with the Fare of the Free Child community, click here.

 LIBERATION WALK

• Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel
• Organizations like Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund are organizing collective help for Atlanta’s BIPOC families affected by COVID-19 – Please donate
• Support the show at patreon.com/akilah  
• Join our Facebook group

Support the show

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/

We are so ready for some indoor plant tips from Plant It Up Podcast. As a close-out for the fourth season we decided to do one more episode with @valandourplants - you’re welcome :) And remember, Akilah will be back on August 12th with Season 5! In the meantime, listen as Val (Akilah’s resident plant lady who also happens to be her Mama!) talks about the importance of having plants at home and shares some of her favorites, along with the many benefits of each one. There’s a special appearance by Marley Richards too, ‘cause we ‘bout that intergenerational life! Enjoy!

LIST OF PLANTS MENTIONED:

Peace Lily, Rubber Tree Plant, Bamboo Plant: purify the air in the home and remove toxins from paint

Lavender: improves sleep quality

Mint (Spearmint and peppermint): great for teas and drinks

Rosemary: great scent and helps with memory

Spider Plant, English Ivy, Philodendrons: remove formaldehyde from the air at home

Aloe Vera, Pothos Plant: maintain the quality of the air in the home

Snake Plant: absorbs carbon dioxide inside the home

Palm plant: provides more oxygen and reduces dust levels at home

Orchids: beautifies the look and feel of the home

 LIBERATION WALK

• Subscribe to Val’s Youtube Channel and Pinterest page
• Listen to the first episode of Plant it Up Podcast: 'Cause Ginger Roots Brings Her Joy
• Organizations like Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund are organizing collective help for Atlanta’s BIPOC families affected by COVID-19 – Please donate
• Support the show at patreon.com/akilah  
• Join our Facebook group

Support the show

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/

Welcome to the fourth season finale of Fare of the Free Child! Today’s episode features Kris Richards, he and Akilah will be talking about some upcoming surprises and topics for the fifth season.

We also shout out the members of our Make It Happen Family; thank you all for your comments and support! Akilah just saw more than a hundred comments on her  Youtube Channel, particularly from the How Good Morning America Got Unschooling Wrong video, some of them from you, dear family! Thanks for that, and be sure to subscribe for more information and conversations about love and liberation work.

WHAT WE DISCUSS:

Akilah will be taking a little break but the podcast will be back on August 12th with more amazing content.

We wanted to thank all the listeners for the messages and support we got for our zeroversary. We are excited to have new people coming in for season 5 as well as some of our previous guests like Moji Yai, Maleka Diggs, and Kelly Henderson.

Kris and Akilah give us a sneak peak of some of the topics that will be part of next season. They go deep and chat about how unschooling can’t be seen just as an alternative for education but as part of a healing and liberation process that is not only up for children but also for parents in order to connect with different perspectives and create opportunities for communal growth and self discovery. They want to offer tools and resources for both people that may be in a phase of discovery and people that have lived this as an everyday struggle throughout their lives.

Akilah talks about the importance of intergenerational connection, looking back at our ancestors and the self. We can learn how to be in community, young and elder, with an exchange of knowledge and not as a controlling approach. Discerning between the moments when support becomes more sort of a leveraging way brands use to promote themselves, capitalism and community... these and many more topics will be discussed in the new season.

The Homeschool Association of California is having their 30th annual Conference, this will be celebrated from August 6 to 9 through a virtual platform. For the past three years Akilah and her family have been involved and invited. This time Akilah will be doing two workshops, one called ”Shifting from schooling to Self-Directed”, and another one called ”Deschooling our Communications, practical practices for being a better listener to children and teens”. Check it out here.

Check out our Liberation Walk in the full show notes page.

Support the show

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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/

We are so hyped about today's episode because the day of publishing, July 10th, marks our zeroversary, the 4-year anniversary of Episode 0! It's been quite a journey since Akilah started Fare of the Free Child podcast back in the summer of 2016. Even though it started from a painful place, we feel so very thankful to the community that has come from this podcast—our listeners and members of our Make it Happen Family—for the support and love through all these years. Here you can listen to Episode 0, Welcome and Why This Show, where it all began. Today, in the middle of some painful realities, we hold on to ways to move outside these injustices. We stay resilient through happiness, not afraid to speak up, from a space of awareness and love. We invite you to celebrate that with us today, doing whatever feels good for you.

WHAT WE DISCUSS

Akilah recently launched From Schoolish to Self-directed, an audio course in support of the transition that many are experiencing as this pandemic ushers in a swift shift from conventional learning ideas over to innovative ones that center people and learning in various ways, using technology and creativity more than memorization and predefined curriculum.

To celebrate four years of Fare Of The Free Child, Akilah announces Raising Free People Network's first Presence Counselor, Leslie Bray, who you already have heard from and will be joining us on today’s episode. Leslie is  a community organizer and will be doing one-on-one support for the people transitioning from schoolish to self-directed ways of living and learning. Here you can listen to previous episodes with Leslie giving us some insights: Self-Care + Sacred Space and Leslie Talks Conscious Community Collectives.

Akilah and Leslie chat about boundaries and self-care as we are constantly deschooling, not necessarily transitioning.

Part of the conditioning that we carry based on a schoolish mindset is the comparison. We’ve all been indoctrinated at different levels, and much of this conditioning comes from a colonized space. Comparing yourself and your children with others and their processes will duplicate a schoolish setting at home. Leslie invites us to put self-care (ours and our children’s) above all of these insecurities.

Observe, ask, and listen, that is how you get to support, facilitate and advocate for your children. It is not true that being self-directed means that children have to figure out everything by themselves. The key is to figure out when is enough for you as a parent to help and advocate for them, by establishing boundaries in order to nurture self-care skills. Leslie also points out that we need different things at different times, as we are dynamic also our behaviors and

Support the show

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The Raising Free People Practice Card Deck
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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/

Episode 177 features podcaster Howard Cosmonaut Palmer. His podcast explores inner universes through mindful guided meditation. Today Cosmo gives us some tools to center both harmony and joy, important aspects of our liberation work. Find his podcast: Only Black Cosmonaut

WHAT WE DISCUSS

Our lives are under a constant saturation of feelings and thoughts as a result of a subconscious conditioning from a schollish framework and due to the exhaustion in our daily context. Cosmo talks about learning how to be in control has been the biggest part of our conditioning, it’s in the acceptance and letting go that we can find peace within ourselves.

The hardest part of this conditioning are the expectations that we put on people and situations in life. Cosmo uses the juggler as an analogy in life, we are the jugglers that happen to be managing multiple realities and pains at the same time. In order to handle this, we can learn to trust our inner selves, relying on intuition and letting go the fear of not being able to handle all at once.

LIBERATION WALK

• Shoutout to Shawna Murray-Browne, community healer and founder of Kindred Community Healing. Here you can find her webinar replay, 6 Crucial Steps to Decolonize Your Therapy Practice.
• Organizations like Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund are organizing collective help for Atlanta’s BIPOC families affected by COVID-19 – Please donate.
• This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp.com. In our Black and in broader BIPOC communities, self-care, community care, mental health care—the need and means to prioritizing these—are encouragingly increasing in conversation. In Akilah’s search for that, she has found that s Betterhelp.com has been a great resource for her mental health. She was able to center her preferences and only choose from mental health professionals who, at base, wouldn’t seem to be in conflict or out of context for my particular beliefs and preferences. Explore for yourself, and use this link Betterhelp.com because Fare of the Free Child Podcast subscribers have 10% off in their first month.  #sponsored #verified
• Join our Facebook group.
• Support the show at patreon.com/akilah 

Support the show

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/

Last episode Akilah talked about the importance of our capacity of resistance and the relevance of trusting our dynamic selves in order to find balance to center our joy. Today’s episode is about Black Joy, and how happiness can be understood as a way of liberation and activism. 

Can joy be a radical way of resistance?

WHAT WE DISCUSS

Marley, Akilah’s daughter, shares some thoughts on Black Joy and how she perceives happiness as a way of resistance. The way Black people live their lives doesn’t have to be a constant struggle, people are capable of having multiple feelings. Joy and happiness can be a conduit through liberation.

We then listen to the first episode from Plant It Up, a podcast hosted by Val Sinclair, Akilah’s mom, where she celebrates the power and pleasure of plants. 

Beyond the health benefits and plant-care advice, these stories are related to self-care and liberation work practices that lead us towards a better understanding of human relationships and our connection with nature. In this episode, Akilah and Val chat about their experiences with ginger as a nutritional and medicinal source.

This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp.com. In our Black and in broader BIPOC communities, self-care, community care, mental health care—the need and means to prioritizing these—are encouragingly increasing in conversation. Maybe you, yourself, have been thinking about what’s interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals. In Akilah’s search for that, she has found that s Betterhelp.com has been a great resource for her mental health. She was able to center her preferences and only choose from mental health professionals who, at base, wouldn’t seem to be in conflict or out of context for my particular beliefs and preferences. Explore for yourself, and use this link Betterhelp.com because Fare of the Free Child Podcast subscribers have 10% off in their first month.  #sponsored #verified

LIBERATION WALK

• Be sure to follow Shawna Murray-Browne, community healer and founder of Kindred Community Healing. Here you can find her webinar replay, 6 Crucial Steps to Decolonize Your Therapy Practice.
• Organizations like Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund are organizing collective help for Atlanta’s BIPOC families affected by COVID-19 – Please donate.
• Join our Facebook group.
• Support the show at

Support the show

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/

Ways we’re sharing our feelings and experiences

Last week we took a pause in our Deschooling Release Party to address everything that was happening with the protests and related feelings. That same week another life, that of Rayshard Brooks, was taken by violent police officers. It feels necessary to take some space and talk about it, and we’re gonna take however long we feel is needed. As we talked about in the last episode, these disruptive times make us more reflective, but also can fill us with emotions that can turn/become overwhelming. In order to provide more communal spaces and healing resources, Akilah is offering more invitations and tools that can help with breaking the patterns of oppression, in resistance, from a space of love, education and self-care. The main message in this episode is this: discussing and sharing is important, but action is vital to our capacity to thrive.

Find the complete show notes page with useful resources at https://www.raisingfreepeople.com/175/

LIBERATION WALK

• Organizations like Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund are organizing collective help for Atlanta’s BIPOC families affected by COVID-19 – Please donate.
• Join our Facebook group.
• Akilah’s book Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work signed hardcover edition is now available. Publishers said since we’re out here selling pre-orders, let’s offer something special. Enter the coupon code unschooling for a 40% discount. When you go to the webpage to pre-order, you'll see the "format" dropdown menu where the default item is the paperback. Click that dropdown menu and then select the "Signed hardcover" format.
• This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp.com. In our Black and in broader BIPOC communities, self-care, community care, mental health care—the need and means to prioritizing these—are encouragingly increasing in conversation. Maybe you, yourself, have been thinking about what’s interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals. In Akilah’s search for that, she has found that s Betterhelp.com has been a great resource for her mental health. She was able to center her preferences and only choose from mental health professionals who, at base, wouldn’t seem to be in conflict or out of context for my particular beliefs and preferences. Explore for yourself, and use this link Betterhelp.com because Fare of the Free Child Podcast subscribers have 10% off in their first month. #sponsored #verified

Support the show

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/

In today's episode we are making a pause from our Deschooling Release Party Vol. 2. Akilah addresses anti-blackness and its consequences. These disruptive times are making us more aware and reflective, and we have so many reminders and invitations to be more present.

WHAT WE DISCUSS

In the summer of 2016 Akilah was starting Fare Of The Free Child, a podcast with the purpose of amplifying the underrepresented voices and unique concerns of Black people and other people of color, looking for viable alternatives to oppressive systems, ways to practice more self-directed ways. This was also a result of the communications that were happening when Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were lynched by the police.

Akilah shares her story about the first direct physical encounter with a violent police officer in her early teen years. This shows as a continuous pattern, Philando and Alton back in 2016, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in 2020, history repeats itself. Akilah talks about how this gets her tired.

It’s in the collective, in the stories of the unheard, of the ancestral knowledge, that we can hold on and speak out, inspire change and demand that shit, too. Live into it despite attempts to dehumanize and colonize.

Mad Question-Askin’

What are some ways that you are being supported right now?

Where are some spaces or relationships that you are being supportive right now?

Akilah shares some episodes that she believes can be supportive right now.

LIBERATION WALK

• Organizations like Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund are organizing collective help for Atlanta’s BIPOC families affected by COVID-19 – Please donate.
• Here's Maleka, Melissa and Bria’s Deschooling Group.
• Deschooling: It’s A Thing!, an Eclectic Learning Network project, a global, monthly, virtual meetup for caregivers who are committed to explore ways to shift their parenting practices.
• Check out Akilah’s article, Fear of the Free Black Child – Alternatives to Fear-Based Parenting Amid Police Violence.
• Join our Facebook group.
• Pre-order Akilah’s book.
• This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp.com. In our Black and in broader BIPOC communities, self-care, community care, mental health care—the need and means to prioritizing these—are encouragingly increasing in conversation. Maybe you, yourself, have been thinking about what’s

Support the show

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/

Message from Akilah

“I felt compelled to bring the sounds of my current city into this episode. I literally missed my deadline to submit the raw audio, because Spirit said Don’t record that intro in the corner of your closet, Sis. Instead, open your window, let the city sound off while you try to speak to some of what you’re feeling. I obeyed. And later that evening, the voices and emotions of the people of Atlanta sounded off too, in the form of peaceful protest. I was able to see some of it from our apartment, and I watched with Kris, Marley, and Sage, swaying in between a stream of emotions ranging from anger to exhaustion. I didn’t know that the audio I was called to document, to hold, would be the calm before yet another storm here in the American South. Peaceful protests were interrupted by police; humans raged; the government retaliated; helicopters and curfews circled the city; more rage, more fear, more resistance.

Anti-Black racism and the myth of white supremacy are present and prevalent now, as has always been the case in this country. And while some shit stays the same--violent, horrific, hateful--some things are changing, too. Where are you finding positive change around you? Seek it out, amplify it, fixate if you need to. Do what you can to remind yourself that storms come and go, but we have, and will always, find ways to weather them, and eventually to thrive despite them. I believe that. I believe in Black people. I believe that we can organize and plan and divest and dismantle and learn and lead and listen and love our way to liberation.” #blacklivesmatter

In this fifth deschooling release party session we talk with Danii Oliver, mother of two children, unschooler and owner of the Natural Beverage Brands: Island to Island Brewery, House of Juice and Brooklyn Jun Brew. Until now we had been focusing on the pivot and what is deschooling causing to pivot away from. This time Danii tells us about how she gave it a different approach, she realized that for her, pivoting wasn’t liberation, she decided to do something else instead.

Akilah talks about the importance of communal spaces and shares Deschooling: It’s A Thing!, an Eclectic Learning Network project, a global, monthly, virtual meetup for caregivers who are committed to explore ways to shift their parenting practices. This was made in joint effort with the Alliance for Self-Directed Education.

Community bonds us and makes us aware of the importance to pause and nurture ourselves. Akilah shares her experience joining in one of the community sessions with Nikolai and Takiema from Raising Readers, they give us great resources on Self-Directed Education and self care.

Support the show

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/

Welcome to the fourth Deschooling Release Party (DRP) session, a celebration of our commitment to unlearning oppression in our relationships with children and Self. Volume I was about self-care and this one (Volume II) is about pivoting from fear and panic over into what we're being guided to do. 

Melinda Alexander will be joining us to talk about the role in ritual in her mothering. More recently, she and her son Raider, started transitioning from schoolishness to unschooling.

“If you travel down a long ass road and find the intersection— of art, feminism, fashion, Buddhism, social justice and motherhood— you’ll find me standing there in a MuMu, having a yard sale, raising money for Black Lives Matter.” - Melinda Alexander

Melinda is an LA-based mother, activist, and entrepreneur. Influenced by her parents work as longtime anti-racist, civil rights organizers, both art and social justice kept at her center. 

After having her baby in a tumultuous transition/divorce, her life changed. The work she does now, which she calls Women’s Work, helps other women find their voice as part of a liberation and unlearning process, “Getting Free”.

Melinda is raising Raider, her Black son in an anti-Black power structure, with a feminist, social justice-oriented focus. 

WHAT WE DISCUSS 

Akilah and Melinda talk about the questions that are driving us in the direction of commiting to raising free people and how deschooling and unlearning show up in that experience. 

Raider was depressed and did not get used to the school structure. Melinda saw this and advocated for her son by emailing the teachers, it ultimately ended up in them transitioning to unschooling.

In her own experience as a former school teacher, Melinda shares some insights on how a scoolish structure can limit the children in certain contexts. Intrinsic value is not possible in a school setting, unless you are completely self-directed. Based on the pursuit of validation (did I do well?), the children have never been given a choice and always have been told what to do, and how to do it. By the time they finish school, they don’t know anything about themselves. 

They conclude that partnership and listening are what facilitate an emergent structure. The child is the curriculum and the parents are the facilitators, both are students and teachers.  

Thank you for your feedback on episode 170, we are always happy to hear from all of you! We were honoring mothering in its various forms and also launching our family of podcasts.

LIBERATION WALK

In order to continue through this journey of healing and self awareness process we invite you to subscribe to all five podcasts on Raising Free People Network, our liberation wor

Support the show

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/

If you enjoy this podcast, this is your kind of reading! Pre-order Akilah’s book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work!

We are back with our Deschooling Release Party sessions, Volume II. In today’s episode Akilah talks with Natalie Pipkin, founder of Black World Schoolers and Pulse Project Indy, a drumming community that promotes social, cultural and emotional development in vulnerable spaces. Her project seeks to disrupt dominant oppressive narratives, providing an environment of psychological empowerment through cultural awareness.

WHAT WE DISCUSS:

Natalie, like Kelly did in episode 169, tells us very early on what she’s noticing is actually stuff she has always felt, but feels uniquely compelled during this time, to pivot away from just noticing, over to acting upon. 

Natalie talks about problematic elements of the focus on Black Excellence and the dynamics that are involved when that excellence is rooted in white supremacy. 

Akilah and Natalie then go further and chat about the realities of unschooling as a privileged space, in some regards. They talk about how unschooling is not an option for all families, not every home is a safe environment, and if oppression at home exists, schools can become an escape from a tougher reality, there’s a certain privilege in choosing to homeschool. 

LIBERATION WALK

• Check out Black Worldschoolers and their Storytime Hotline: 1-844-950-1811. 

• Here you can find Natalie’s drumming community Pulse Project Indy and their blog.

• Make sure you head over to Maleka’s Patreon to see some webinar series that she’s been working on as a support for parents during these unusual times.

• Chill out and jam along with the rhythm of Buju Banton “Mr Nine”.

• Organizations like Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund are organizing collective help for Atlanta’s BIPOC families affected by COVID-19 – Please donate.

• Support the show at patreon.com/akilah

• Join our Facebook group. 

Support the show

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/

We’re interrupting our Deschooling Release Party flow to focus on the energy of Mother’s Day. In this episode, Akilah and Aja will talk about the four mothers whose new are coming to join Fare of the Free Child on Raising Free People Network: Val Sinclair, Katrina Monique, Lou Hollis, and Aja herself.

Aja chats with us about her relationship with motherhood and how it can impact our leadership and relationships. Her podcast, She Said, We Shed is a journey of discovery throughout the dynamics of what mothering can mean, and how types of mothering vary drastically, including the reality of Black Mama Trauma. We also introduce Plant It Up, a podcast where Val, Akilah’s mom, shares how the practices and dynamics of taking care of plants can be related to our own ways of interacting and connecting with the people around us. These stories are related to self-care and liberation work, a set of topics that lead us toward better understandings of human relationships. 

One of the other mamas is Katrina, whose podcast, How She Got Free, is inspired by a book that she and Akilah wrote together. Her podcast is designed to show us the benefits of sometimes speaking out from wounded spaces, it can be part of how we generate healing for ourselves and invite others to acknowledge and name their own healing needs too.

How to be empowered when you don’t feel like yourself, to make a pause in your life and manage it after an altering shift? With “Grief, Growth, and Goals” the fifth podcast on the Raising Free People Network, Lou shares her experience after making massive changes in her life, the process of healing through self talk and embracing her vulnerability. 

Liberation and deschooling are inextricably linked, as the result of a joint work, based on experiences that had shaped ourselves and others in order to contribute on a healing and self awareness process and to continue on this journey we invite you to subscribe to all five podcasts on Raising Free People Network.

LIBERATION WALK

• Listen to Aja’s Podcast She Said, We Shed and subscribe to her email list at shesaidweshed.
• Join Katrina’s community, How She Got Free.
• Here you can preorder my new book Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work.
• Some insights from Aja on previous episodes, Healing Black Mama Trauma, The Practice of Reparenting Ourselves,

Support the show

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/

At the top of this episode, I share the pre-order status for my book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work! If you enjoy this podcast, this is your kinda reading party right here. Pre-order your copy today.

In this second deschooling release party session, we will be sharing thoughts with college professor and unschooler mother of five, Kelly Limes Taylor about the effects of our current times on all institutions, schooling and leadership issues being among the plights that we are urgently being called, as a society to face.

Kelly invites us to consider the ways that our own patterns in life are often conduits for deeply valuable lessons. She shares her experience as a single mom, moving from a metropolitan area to a small town, moving on from divorce, and holding space, as an educator, for students who are feeling overwhelmed by the sudden shift in how education, outside of conventional school context, is being handled today. 

Kelly also speaks to the relevance of naming our failed structures, and how these structures, built on a settler-colonial framework, were not sustainable to begin with, and yet are reinforced through conventional schooling. Indeed, what learning actually is, and how it happens is not seen as a human approach, does not work in a reciprocal way, and we can’t limit that to academics, we are talking about connection of the whole self, not just the information-gathering self. 

Here’s an opportunity to relearn and reinventate; to observe all the ways the structures we’ve held on to are crumbling; here’s an invitation to notice a space to pivot and to heal. 

Image Credit:

Photos of Kelly by I. and C. Tiller (her daughters)

LIBERATION WALK

• Listen to Kelly on Episode 105 (Love, Trust & Identity). 
• Call Kelly by phone 706.314.9225; here’s her blog.
• Check on Kelly’s 2020 Voyage ATL Interview.
• Latinx Parenting supports parents in raising children with compassion & connection, while honoring ancestral roots, values, and strengths. Leslie Priscilla (Leslie Arreola Hillenbrand), wrote this epic piece with mad resources and zero sugar coating. Give Leslie her flowers.
• Organizations like Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund are organizing collective help for Atlanta’s BIPOC families affected by COVID-19 – Please donate.
• Support the show at patreon.com/akilah
• Join our Facebook group 

Support the show

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/

This is the first episode of the Deschooling Release Party, Volume II for 2020. Today we will focus on the pivot, what is deschooling causing to pivot away from, especially during these particularly disruptive times. We’ll hear from Moji Yai, my sisterfriend from Benin, West Africa, who was raised in north Florida, and is now raising herself and her 10 year old daughter, Sena, in between the US and her home land, Benin.

Moji opens our dialogue with a bit of her story on how she was led to turpentine, tapped from sap trees, and used to be part of the labor of enslaved Africans. Turpentine gum or gum spirits of turpentine, has been among the healing arsenal of brilliant black folks who have nurtured their relationships with plants and soil. They knew what plants to use and combine for many of the effects of their constant overexposure to the elements. 

The relationship that carries upon going back, returning to the origins to understand what might be forgotten or buried makes us pivot away from established systems, rooting through an intuitive-self that works in a collective way. Deschooling is about creating, creating new relationships and rethinking everything. Moji’s experience of returning to Africa with her daughter gave her another perspective, by interacting with the people, creating communication channels, observing, asking and having conversations without assumptions about the behavior or character that africans are said to have, a look without judgment, from a more human approach.

As Moji describes, learning to live with your child is a beautiful thing, the way you talk to them and behave with them, among other things is going to be carried into adulthood, so, the way that you’re gonna gain the tools for communicating without control, violence, manipulation and so on are the key to sustain a healthy partnership.

Be sure to check out Moji’s Upcoming Webinar (May 13) about the history and use of Pure Gum Turpentine. 

LIBERATION WALK

• Here’s Moji’s Wellness Spiral Podcast Series produced by RFP Network back in the summer of 2018, June to August, beginning with a brilliant episode entitled Disrupting our Disturbing Eating Habits

• Moji is working on reclaiming Indigenous healing practices that benefit communities in Benin and the diaspora; here her blog, and her Instagram.

• If you wanna remember our first Deschooling Party, here is Moji giving us some insights 

• Organizations like

Support the show

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/

This episode was supposed to be the first of the Deschooling Release Party, Volume II.  However, today’s episode features Marley and Sage, in response to an article from Good Morning America, and how their unschooling coverage got it all wrong.

Earlier this month, the ABC Television produced a show and published a blog post  about unschooling titled “I tried unschooling and here’s what happened.” I am cited in that article, and talked with the person that wrote this; I just didn’t know that it was for her to try out unschooling. In short, the article was problematic, so I wanted to address it in some kind of way, especially during this time at home with so many options for parents to put unschooling among their activities and as an opportunity for connection and growth.

The problem with that article wasn’t about showing her first experience or describe what she learned, it was about framing it, and put it in as the concept of what unschooling is, ignoring the nuances and processes that lead someone to unschool and the level of compromise and dedication that Self Directed Education has. 

It wasn't taking into account several variables, the fact that it’s a self directed way of educational process guided upon the children’s natural interest, trust and some levels of access that are in their environment, the relationship that is forged with the people and life itself.

Unschooling can be described as a partnership that will offer ideas that the child can accept or refuse, it’s about a dialectical process. The questions that might pop up are placed from an empowered space where the unschooler will offer ways in support of that, as we cannot frame people neither their learning process, it’s a constant resignification.

Expertise is developed over time, observe, listen and ask.

The second part of the episode is the audio from a video response I did to the GMA article, you can watch it here.

Join our Facebook group for people committed to raising free people. 

LIBERATION WALK

• Share the response video about unschooling on your social media pages.
• Organizations like Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund are organizing collective help for Atlanta’s BIPOC families affected by COVID-19 - Please donate. 

Support the show at patreon.com/akilah

Support the show

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/

This episode is a combination of resources and links to invitations that will help you as we are raising free people:

My dear friend Trelani Michelle, writer, storyteller, and founder author of Krak Teet, shares her experience with her 10-year-old daughter, Kobe, in response to my question about some of the wonderful, deschoolish things we might be noticing nowadays.

If you pay attention, you’ll notice how Self Directed Education helps to build healthy self-governance skills for our children, like Trelani mentioned. It can also, as you’ll hear from Racquel in this episode, usher in changes in the experiences around the learning and relationship-building process among siblings, when connection is left to be more organic, less imposed, and more of a partnership.

These and other stories are the reflection of the opportunities that we can take advantage of, to see what is forming and being discovered among the families. Such insights make us aware and move us towards a more reflective attitude, because sometimes we do need a disruption in our harmony as a reminder for how to better our self care habits.

Another way of connecting during this time of social distancing is through some digital tools that can help you with self direction during these hard times. Here’s one such resource from Chemay Morales James and the My Reflection Matters fam; they are having upcoming zoom events that can guide you through.

Unfortunately the pandemic is affecting the most vulnerable people, don’t forget that organizations like Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund are organizing collective help. Please donate.

Also, Tipping Points is an online magazine from the Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE), and are constantly sharing resources on their Facebook and Twitter pages, newsletter, and forums, so be sure to tap into those.

ASDE is also developing a page specifically devoted to resources to support parents at this time, and to specifically support parents who are struggling with conventional schooling-at-home and want to find connection and support in shifting how they view education. If that is something they are looking for, or if you have any ideas for resources to share on this page, please send them to ASDE through [email protected]

LIBERATION WALK

• Go and listen up my

Support the show

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/

We’ve got three important invitations for you:

1. Deschooling Release Party :: This year's theme is The Pivot

Two Locations:

Right here on FOFC Podcast and inside FOFC FB Group for post-episode conversations.

I'll drop the dates on social media and share them with you here when I confirm them, but we're definitely starting this month, April, 2020, so stay tuned.

   
   2.  A Request for Your “Noticing “Stories 

Join me in amplifying stories of the wonderful or insightful things you may be noticing now that your child is at home more often. I am curating a collection of stories about how, during these days of unexpected, and for some, undesired, school at home situations, some parents or caregivers are noticing little WONDERFUL WAYS that learning is happening, joy is happening, fear is subsiding, in relation to their child. I want to hear your moments:

- leave me a voice memo on raisingfreepeople.com

- email me: [email protected]

- message me in our Facebook group or on Instagram (@fareofthefreechild)

   
   3.  Y’all Alright? A Complimentary Check-In hosted by Maleka Diggs of ELN for ASDE

One of the communities I appreciate, and continually learn and grow with is The Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE). We recently decided to hold space for folks to share some of their feelings and experiences right now with this unexpected, and in some cases, undesired “being at home together all the time” situation. We’re checking in on how this is affecting young people and adults right now, and trying to get more clear about ways to be helpful. FOFC Family member, Maleka Diggs of ELN, will facilitate that discussion coming up this month, April, and I will be there listening and deepening, and would LOVE to have you sitting in that Zoom room right beside me! Be sure to follow Maleka online and keep listening to FOFC for the exact date and time, once that’s confirmed.

Support the show

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/

Dr. Sundiata is an Independent Educator, Anti-Oppression Activist, & Social Sustainability Facilitator. He is the co-creator of GROW, a network of people and initiatives designed to promote and create social, economic, and political systems centered on Liberation, Sustainability, and Unconditional Love. He is passionate about helping people discover the power of Authentic Dialogue, a communication framework that leverages complex issues in personal relationships and organizations to help them generate solutions that foster deeper understanding, cohesiveness, freedom, and trust. Dr. Sundiata is also the host of the Theory of Indivisibility Podcast which analyzes the evolutionary origins, current complexities, and future of our social, economic, and political systems, and serves on the board of Heartwood Agile Learning Center, a K-12 independent school that facilitates Self-Directed Education in the metro Atlanta region.

A few Mad Question Askin’ Moments:

What is the systems theory and how did it originate?

What is the symbiotic give-and-take relationship and what are some examples of it?

What is nature’s economy and how does it work?

Support the show

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/

This is is an opportunity to raise up out of what we are used to doing and that the practice of unschooling can help with that. A chance to put a few self-directed practices in place because this is where we can get super schoolish and just react to things around us, tossing healthy personal leadership aside.  

Times like these remind us of the importance of collectivism and community, to be able to check in with each other. That we can look at the ways we can ensure we’re not being a source of emotional weight on our children, family, selves. 

In the middle of the potential chaos is an opportunity for community; an opportunity to contextualize what it means to be ourselves together.

For many parents their children will now be home for longer periods than expected. Start practicing your observation skills and pay attention to the feelings that are showing up for you and in your children, gauge how you respond to the anxiety children trigger, see what they do to occupy themselves when you back away. 

These opportunities can enable parents to become better partners to their children and to become better leaders of themselves. Be in the space to look at the opportunities presented due to what’s happening. There are ways here that we can start to pay attention to what is happening around us instead of controlling it -- because we cannot.

Boundaries will be tested and assessed, defined and redefined as we reimagine and reconfigure what it means to be around each other as ourselves. Let that arrange you! Don’t run away from it. Be with what that might mean for you.

Support the show

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/

A few weeks ago, on Episode 160 we talked with Aja about the pain of being raised with trauma through the vessel of Black mothers, and her new podcast She Said We Shed. In that episode, we talked about “why” she’s doing this podcast and “what” the problem was...in detail. Those of you who listened to that episode (if you didn’t, please go back and do so) because in this episode, we’re going to continue that conversation and touch on “how”. She Said We Shed will not only look at and discuss the impacts of toxic mothering but also how to move into and within practice mode. Aja will speak on learning how, what and why we need to begin shifting our awareness in order to heal ourselves and treat our selves and children with respect and love.

Aja has been focused on this work and we believe it would be useful for us to hear about the direction--the pivot. 

Also In this episode, we share a clip of She Said We Shed’s first episode! In this clip, Aja takes us into her personal story and the impact her mother has had on her life. She shares where she is today in regards to her relationship with her mother and highlight’s steps she’s taken throughout the years to heal and improve their relationship. This shedding helps us to understand why she feels she needs to begin this podcast. 

We welcome Aja back in this episode as she talks about the pivot and how it's possible to move through the pain and into healing. 

Support the show

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/