After Homeschool

I visited their school today. Their new school.

Home was their first school.

For over 12 years I've been home-educating, watching them explore and learn and create. It's been so much of who we are.

But in three months, that changes. That entire identity shifts.

I just want the certainty that it is changing for good. That it will be okay. That my decision isn't going to do harm.

I just didn't want to do it anymore. I'm tired. Inspiration has vanished. I'm surviving to bed time. That's not the mom I want to be for them. So we are changing.

But only one of the four of them wants the change.

So I sit with their anger and their fear and their anxiety and I grieve the last season as the salt of my tears hits my tongue.

There is grief in the times I'll miss. The slow mornings. Kids trickling in as they wake on their own time. Their big learning breakthrough moments.

And there is grief in the way I wish things had been...the way I wish I had been.

I don't know what it will feel like to have them out of the house every day. Will I be lonely? Will I be relieved? Will I be bored?

People ask me what my plans are when they are in school and I try not to immediately break into sobs. Instead, I default to humor and say I'm going to take a really long nap. But the truth is, I don't know what I'll do because I don't know who I'll be.

Because it turns out, I don't know who I am if I'm not a homeschooling mom of 4...

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