Back

Small pockets of resistance | Day 323 of my 2023 Journal

Cecilie Conrad·Nov 20, 2023· 3 minutes

🇩🇰 Read in Danish 🇬🇧 

Embracing Radical Unschooling: A Mother's Journey

What kind of mother am I?

I use the hashtag #radicalmother, but what does it mean? Well, Banksy said it all with this piece.

The Radical Unschooling Philosophy

I am a radical Unschooler, which means I strongly believe in my children’s right to spend their time the way they find best. But that does not mean I don’t have any options.

I have strong options.

They come from deep down. They came from deep down before I read books about them.

I believe in freedom. And a lot of it. And all that comes with it.

Finding Strength in Community

These days I spend with my friends who also are freedom people, and I love these pockets of resistance. I have to trust a few people can create a lot of change, and when I look at the history, it seems to agree.

As we also say, just a little light can spread a lot of darkness.

Balancing Motherhood and Individuality

So, as a mother, I am happy to cook meals, wash clothes, do yoga, travel the world, and leave my children be.
As long as they know why freedom is so important, as long as they understand the rules of the game(s), as long as they don’t forget to eat their lunch and make the kind of trouble, they are set on this planet to make. That is the goal.

The Essence of Freedom in Parenting

I am not blindly “allowing” whatever. It is not that I don’t care. I was born with a freedom gene, and I see it in my children just as I saw it in my parents; a powerful element of our personalities can not obey, can not jump when told to, and will never surrender our freedom. Therefore, it is of great importance for me as a mother to support and sustain the urge to make trouble, to say no, to resist, to find like-minded, to talk about freedom and act accordingly, and to stay with the truth.

It can look very pleasant on the surface, like someone cooking and smiling and petting the dog. It is not just that. It is so much more than that.

With love

Cecilie-Underskrift-300x133

Cecilie Conrad

🇩🇰 Read in Danish 🇬🇧 

Thank you for reading
I would love to hear from you. Listen to your thoughts and reflections - or praise :) It is often emotional to share our lives like this, and we get very happy when we get your feedback. So feel free to share a comment below 😋 

We are grateful to have a life from which we do not need a pause. We have created and allowed ourselves a life with freedom enough to decide how we w…Read more
Traveling from Sicily to Copenhagen between the beginning of March and late May will give us three months of spring. Being Danish, escaping six month…Read more
As anarchists, we are not much for rules. As self-directed, we don’t do rules. The structure of a rule is not flexible and can never take into accoun…Read more
Crossing the Italian boot west to east was a humbling experience. I have said it before, but it is worth repeating. Mountains really are big. Read more
The secret room in the Archeological Museum of Naples has its own story. The Roman culture in Pompeii had a thing with the penis. Huge aroused ones a…Read more
It is important to remember to ask the question: What if it was easy? How would it look? Because easy is not impossible, very often, it is the first …Read more
Some days can be defined by a single moment. I will let this one stand with its rainbow. The day was packed, but the rainbow alone would have been en…Read more
We arrived in Sicily in mid-December. Now we are leaving. Sitting on one of the beaches, watching my seventeen-year-old son walking along the coast, …Read more
It is a question of mindset, again. Choosing to be happy even when you get a flat tire on the top of a mountain. When I am tired, it can be challengi…Read more