Within months of homeschooling my four kids, I knew I had to find time away. I felt overwhelmed. My Wednesday evenings at the local Starbucks where I sat with a latte and pumpkin spice scone and a journal and pen was my lifeline.
Months after my regular Starbucks appointments, I decided to record those stories via a blog. I added some photos but no keywords and didn’t know anything about blogging, email newsletters, podcasting, or creating a business.
I just wrote. I wrote about my experience as a homeschool mom. About stories from my kids’ lives and how I was experiencing my kids. Stories about where we travelled and what curriculum or philosophies worked and didn’t work. I wrote about everything related to this new lifestyle.
It was a great brain dump, and as I wrote my stories, I was able to see more clearly what I was experiencing and get really clear on what I believed an education was, how to determine whether it was working for my kids or me, and how to manage philosophies, curriculums, and routines.
As I wrote, I began to own my stories and my experiences behind those stories. I processed the challenges and struggles. I coached myself. I processed what I’d read through an influential book, a conference speaker, or a good friend’s advice.
But I didn’t DO anything with that growing website & RSS feed. I just homeschooled my four kids, and I wrote every Wednesday.
Journey to Homeschool Mama Helper
Fast forward many iterations of homeschooling, traveling as a family around the world, purchasing many different curriculums, experimenting with many homeschool philosophies, and walking alongside four very different kids as they developed, evolved, and grew up. It was then that I decided to gather some of my blog posts into themes.
What were the themes I was most frequently writing? There were three distinct themes: self-directed learning, homeschool mama wellness, and worldschooling.
I read many comments left on my website that I should gather my thoughts and publish them in a book. I’d always written since I was young and imagined that one day I would publish something, but I finished a nursing degree before I became a mother instead.
So I settled on the topic of self-care and wellness for the homeschool mama as I deemed that as one of the most vital to the homeschool lifestyle: ain’t no one happy if homeschool mama ain’t happy.
I knew myself that it took nothing to feel overwhelmed, stressed, and irritated by the lifestyle I had chosen. (Not coincidentally, this homeschool lifestyle was chosen for freedom’s sake.) And I had spent years enacting practices that would benefit me: building boundaries, addressing my big emotions, fostering creativity, creating space and time for me, and deschooling my homeschool and life.
I sat in the fruit orchard where my two dozen hens pecked at my red-polished toenails, and I tap-tap-tapped on my laptop. I hired an editor and asked my mom, my husband, and one of my daughters to copy/content edit.
Helping More Through Podcasting
Sometime during the editing phase, I decided to jump into podcasting (aka chatting with other relevant homeschool parents/coaches/authors/influencers in my bedroom closet, as a homeschool mama podcaster does).
My first season, I released over fifty episodes once a week; my second season too. My third season was dedicated to new(er) homeschool mamas, the fourth season dedicated to the overwhelmed homeschool mama, and I’m presently recording my fifth season: how authorial influencers inform our homeschools (from Brene Brown to Leah Boden to Gordon Neufeld to Julie Bogart to Sarah Susanka).
Not coincidentally, I’ve been hosting a virtual monthly Homeschool Mama Book Club on each of these influencers too.
After many, many, many conversations with other homeschool parents about how to homeschool, how to make homeschool work for mom, or how to make it work for the kids, I clarified my focus on how I could help homeschool families.
Life Coaching for the Love of Homeschooling
It dawned on me that what I was offering was a marketable skill, life and homeschool coaching. It was a marketable skill that was fueled by my natural bent and passion: helping and supporting others as I comfortably held space for other people’s big emotions and challenging stories, where I could be fully present with others, and where I could help them clarify their present challenges, help support them to work toward solutions that felt real for them, and help them feel supported in their journey.
And so I began.
Now I regularly write and post on my own website www.capturingthecharmedlife.com. I also write and speak for others in online conferences too. I offer homeschool life support through my Patreon Support Group twice a month. I offer group and one-on-one coaching for mom’s big emotions, deschooling, dealing with being overwhelmed, new homeschoolers, virtual retreats, building boundaries, fostering their creativity, and building new businesses too.
If anyone would like to learn more about any of these resources, you’re welcome to schedule a conversation with me to learn how coaching might help you in your homeschool life.
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I’m looking forward to getting to know you and your family. Xx Teresa
Written by Teresa Wiedrick
Teresa helps homeschool moms shed what’s not working so they can show up in their homeschools (& lives) authentically, purposefully, and confidently. Teresa has been a homeschool mama to four kids (now aged 14-21). Her writing forays turned into life coaching to serve the homeschool community.
She offers virtual retreats and group & personal coaching on deschooling, self-compassion, boundary building, and reimagining our homeschool lives. Teresa hosts a podcast and creates a community for homeschool moms who want to show up on purpose in their life.
Teresa can be found at www.capturingthecharmedlife.com.
"Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6).