Quiet

I apologize for silence here, but there is so little I feel I can say right now. How is knitting or "holiday rush" at all important in these past few days?


This tragedy feels particularly personal in such a strange way. After hearing all this news over the weekend and striving to find the real information in the midst of all the speculation, it became so very real to know the children lost were mostly first graders, 6 and 7 years old in that safe little town.


My oldest son is 7 and if he attended school he would be a first grader too.


As I was beginning to feel just a bit of distance from this awful case, Jamie Martin (editor of Simple Homeschool, a space where I have written a few times) shared that Newtown, CT is HER town, and it all became that much more personal.


We're all so different in the way we process things and just as many of my friends processed by turning off the news and going out of their way to not hear anything, I felt it imperative to my mental state to find out what really happened. I started looking for more accurate information on Sunday; Friday and Saturday were both so full of wild speculation that it was hard to listen to anything at all. And I read in more than one place where people being interviewed said that this tragedy is more than enough to make them consider homeschooling.


Dear friends, we don't homeschool out of fear. No one should. We aren't afraid of public schools or other people or that minuscule risk of violence breaking out in a first grade classroom. We homeschool as a lifestyle choice we have made, and not one we feel anyone else should make.


Yes, I hold my kids tight today. I look at my 7-year-old and know exactly what was lost last Friday in those young ones. But the actions of this one man don't make my decisions for me. We choose to continue our educational life at home, not out of fear of what may come, but out of the joy we have found here.