Kara S. Anderson

Homeschool connection, not perfection.

It’s not Perfection, it’s Indiana Jones

by Kara S. Anderson

Over the weekend, I made a big announcement: I’ve decided to close my shop here at karasanderson.com.

I know the whole shop closing probably forever thing may have been a little unexpected.

And beyond closing my shop, I’m making some other big changes as well. I’m going to put my blog and social media on hiatus soon too.

(The plan right now is that my blog posts will remain available, but any free downloads on posts might not be available because I’m pausing my email service.)

***

As many of you know, my son started college in September. You don’t know that my daughter has grown up so much in the past couple of months – driving, getting her braces off, getting a job, plus she has big plans to start dual enrollment classes in January.

And so things here are changing drastically.

For a while, I was telling people life felt like that game Perfection. Do you remember? You had 60 seconds to get all the pieces into place or the game would “pop,” and you had to start over. (Dear Lord, they still make it.)

Sidenote: I feel like this game is at least partially responsible for the perfectionism and anxiety I have dealt with since I was 6.

***

But recently I was doing a speaking thing, and realized it’s not the game Perfection – it’s that scene from the third Indiana Jones movie:

Indy is rushing through a series of secret rituals in hopes of retrieving the holy grail, a cup that can be filled with water. One drink grants eternal life, and in this case, the grail will also save Indy’s father, who has been shot.

Indy has to make a literal leap of faith, and when he does, the path appears.

***

And so THAT is really more what it’s like, friends. I don’t have to put all the pieces in place. I just need to have faith and take the next step.

I will tell you since beginning this process, I have felt so much lighter. I don’t necessarily see a path ahead, but I feel it. And for now, that’s enough.

My whole deal – writing, podcasting, my book – they’re all about homeschooling with you. I’ve never been an expert offering advice. I’ve always felt more like a big sister – sharing the raw truth with you, and trying to remind you to be kinder to yourself, more patient, gentler …

***

Right now, I need those things.

I need slow.

I need to knit, and read, and drink tea and yes, write, but maybe not for public consumption just yet.

***

So please know, that as I find my way, I will miss you.

A few people have said “Kara, maybe THIS is the next step – maybe you help mamas navigate what to do as their children grow up and move on.”

And maybe. Maybe at some point.

But it’s all so raw and new – it would feel like serving you crudité instead of a lovingly slow-cooked, nourishing vegetable soup.

It would be fine, but you’d be hungry again in a half-hour.

***

That said, I’ll share a few things that are helping me:

In fact, during that speaking thing last week, the host asked where people could find me and I answered “therapy.”

It’s true. Therapy is a tremendous help.

And you know what my therapist asks me every session …

She asks what I am doing for self-care.

Self-care is a big deal to me, because I didn’t think I had time for it for a long time, but what was really going on was that I didn’t think I was worthy of it and also, I thought that to be a good mom, I had to give my kids every ounce of me.

That is not the recipe.

The actual recipe should go more like, give your kids some of you and then take REALLY good care of yourself so you can wake up tomorrow and have something more to give.

I’ve written a lot about self-care over the years, mostly because I’ve been trying to figure it out.

It isn’t easy. It’s a practice.

***

 

Which brings me back to perfection … the life-choking trait, not the game.

A long time ago now, I changed my tagline on this blog to “Connection, Not Perfection.”

And here I am, seemingly disconnecting.

What the heck, Kara?

So let me tell you this: This is the part of the movie where the hero (YOU!) realizes that she has had everything she needed inside her this whole time. The other character, let’s call her Dumbledore, was just there as a guide for a while.

And it still stands – what I hope for you and your family is connection, not perfection.

Friends, let connection be the lighthouse you seek when the seas get rough, and you’re not sure how to get home again.

I can’t tell you if I’ll be back, or when, but I can tell you – it’s never been about perfection, Dear Heart.

It’s about courage and showing up and continuing to show up, and connecting and reconnecting, and then knowing when it’s time to let go.

So much love to you,

Kara

P.S. A lot of you have asked about my book. It’s not going anywhere. You can still grab it in paperback, ebook or audio.

In fact, play this if you need a little hug:

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Stop trying to do it all in your homeschool

by Kara S. Anderson

Well first, let me apologize for the bossy title.

I’m not normally so forceful, it’s just that I happen to have encountered a lot of moms lately who are dealing with burn-out.

Like, drag-me-up-off-the-floor-to-make-a-quesadilla level of burn-out and exhaustion.

I think a lot of things can cause us to burn out, and right now, I think a lot of us are still coping with pandemic exhaustion.

Yesterday I was talking with some friends and we decided that the pandemic has made everything at least 15 percent harder.

Everything.

Some things are even harder than that.

  • My son opening a bank account –  at least 40 percent harder than it used to be.
  • Our family just bought a car – minimum 50 percent harder than it was two years ago when we bought a car.

And this applies to everything right now.

Enough

Yesterday on the way to physical therapy, I realized I forgot a mask, which is still required at the clinic. I found one ON THE FLOOR OF MY CAR, picked it up, inspected it, and put it on my face.

Near my mouth.

Where the food goes.

(Speaking of food – food is just always hard. Forever. Send Doordash.)

So if you are like me, you are always looking for ways to make things a bit easier.

That’s where this post comes in.

And my bossy tone.

Giving up?

Because none of us feels like it’s OK to give up, right?

Our culture tells us moms are supposed to work hard, be exhausted, surrender to the messy house and messy bun, and then start drinking wine at 4 p.m.

Yikes. (Yikes about the wine being the answer – I have proudly rocked a messy bun pretty much every day of my life since college).

We’re constantly told that to BE ENOUGH, we have to DO “ENOUGH.”

Now, I wrote a whole book about how this is not true, but still, I get haunted by the lies. They sneak up on me like ninjas whispering: “your bathroom sink is gross right now, you are a Complete Failure As a Human Being.”

Doing less in your homeschool

A while back, I sent out an email to my blog friends (you guys!) asking about your Number 1 struggle with homeschooling.

It was kind of incredible – the answers varied, but many, many of them said the same thing: being consistent.

Now I’m not saying I have all the answers, but I definitely think I have an answer to this:

Do Less.

Doing less it just easier than doing more. It’s a lower barrier to entry. It’s attainable and therefore less intimidating to start.

I know – we think homeschooling isn’t supposed to be easy, because then we aren’t “doing enough“.

But I promise you, that isn’t the case.

And if trying to do it all is causing you to feel exhausted and burned out, you’re kind of shooting yourself in the foot, friend.

Simplified homeschooling

The past several weeks, my daughter and I have been doing a pared down, simplified version of homeschooling.

And amazingly, we’ve been really consistent about it.

Here’s the thing: Less is more when you do it more often.

 

 

And you know how I know it’s enough?

Every day Almost every day, we get through everything we set out to do.

Is it perfect? No.

Is it fancy? No

Is it infinitely Instgrammable? Gosh no.

Do those things really matter?

Hell to the No.


A mindset shift

So as you plan our your days and weeks, I have a few resources for you to simplify things:

 

Sending virtual hugs friends, and a reminder that you don’t have to do it all to homeschool really well.

I promise. 💙

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How I know that you’re enough, homeschool mom

by Kara S. Anderson

I can still remember the day that I quit homeschooling.

I was on our cordless phone (this is an old story), pacing in my dining room. I was talking to the woman at the nice Montessori-esque school, and she was walking me through how to enroll my son to start in January.

And I’m going to tell you, in that minute, it didn’t feel like giving up. It felt like such relief. It felt like getting good news from the doctor.

If we’d had any extra money then, I might have celebrated.

Because I had tried homeschooling for an entire semester, and I couldn’t hack it. But in a few weeks, all the responsibility wouldn’t be on me anymore.

Hi there, Doubt

Our homeschool story doesn’t end there, of course.

My son attended the Montessori school for 5 months, and it was great, but the next year, they wanted to move him into the 6-9 year-old classroom because he was an early reader. We were sent home that summer with instructions to work on handwriting every day.

In turned out that trying to force a kid whose fine motor skills were not ready for handwriting to practice handwriting EVERY DAY was a fairly miserable way to spend a summer, so we gave that up pretty quickly, and in the fall, I registered him for Kindergarten, but then panicked and decided to try homeschooling again.

Now we’ve been at it for almost 12 years, and we love homeschooling, but let me tell you, I have dealt with some doubt.

What’s interesting is that I haven’t doubted my kids.

But I’ve doubted myself A LOT.

When a particular homeschool method didn’t work 100 percent in our home, I blamed myself.

When a certain curriculum wouldn’t work for my kids, I figured I was doing it wrong.

Maybe I wished for a minute that my kids weren’t so wiggly? Or that they didn’t dislike timed tests quite so much?

But again, I saw that as my own failing. Better moms would be better at getting their kids to sit still. They would be better at instilling perseverance!

For so long doubt was my companion in our homeschooling journey.

What changed?

So what’s changed?

I think things began to shift when I started writing to you.

Of course it helps that I’m actually seeing my children succeeding. At 13 and 16, neither of them have become bank robbers or Mob bosses.

But what really changed things for me was writing here – sharing our struggles and wins, and all the bumps and U-turns.

Because homeschooling is anything but a straight and simple path – but that’s kind of a benefit, isn’t it? We get to chart our own course.

Like Magellan.

Or Oprah.

Of course, any time we do something different from the norm, it’s a little scary. So doubt still creeps in for me.

It’s just that now, I know I’m enough.

And I know you are too.

I know because I feel my intense, overwhelming love for my kids, and through talking to all of you, I’ve learned you have that too.

In fact, for so many of us, it’s that intense love for our quirky kids that led us to homeschooling in the first place. It’s that love that keeps us going, even when we hit rocky patches – days, weeks, even months.

But I believe in us and our love for our kids – so much that I wrote a whole book about it.

It’s called More Than Enough: Grow Your Confidence, Banish Burn-Out and Love Your Homeschool Life.

It’s for all of us who feel scared and overwhelmed sometimes. It’s definitely for all of us who doubt ourselves – for those of us who wonder if our family is cut out for this.

(Can I tell you a secret? The very fact that you worry means that yes – you are equipped to homeschool. Because that worry is just our intense love peeking out.)

I truly believe that you are enough, your family is enough, and your love for your kids is more than enough to homeschool well.

So if you need that reminder right now, I hope you’ll check out my book, available here.

I KNOW that you love your kids endlessly – so how could you possibly fail?

Favorite tools for managing my anxiety

by Kara S. Anderson

On Thursday, I woke up with dread.

But I didn’t feel anxious. I felt down. I didn’t really want to get out of bed.

So I did all my first-step things for when I have a rocky morning.

I got up and made tea. I started my diffuser with some oils for encouragement – peppermint and orange.

I lit a beeswax candle. I turned on my decorative lights.

I did a morning meditation to reset.

And it all helped.

Until it didn’t.

Unfortunately my anxiety started creeping up on me.

The thing with true anxiety is that it doesn’t need a reason. It can pop up out of nowhere, because it’s not situational. And it’s kind of a jerk.

Thriving with anxiety

A long time ago, I decided that I am not going to be ashamed of my anxiety.

And I’m also not going to let it hold me back.

But, I want to clarify that. I don’t want it to hold me back big picture. The very nature of anxiety means that there will be times when I need to put my mental health first.

But overall, I don’t want it to keep me from living an awesome, fulfilling life, and showing up for my people most of the time.

The skinny on anxiety medication

So today, I want to share some of the things that help me manage my anxiety.

Full disclosure: One of those things right now is medication.

In fact, I want to dive deeper about that because I get a lot of questions about medication.

First, I resisted medication for a very long time.

Looking back, I can remember having anxiety symptoms and panic as young as age 6. But I was 36 before I started taking medication. And it changed my life.

But then that medication stopped working. And other medications weren’t working at all. And my general practitioner ran out of ideas.

So I went to a psychiatrist’s office and it was scary and odd and so disconcerting that I felt lost and abandoned. My general practitioner was saying I needed a specialist, but the specialist was downright creepy. What now?

So eventually I went back to my general practitioner, and she referred me to a different office. It took months to get in. But when I did, I met with a new doctor who has not only helped me with my medication – I am able to check in with her every 6 to 8 weeks to make sure the medication is working.

So my advice (and please know that nothing in this post is meant to replace medical advice – I am simply sharing my own experience) is to keep fighting to get the help you deserve. It might not be easy, but it’s very worth it and so are you.

You need tools

One of my favorite tools for managing my anxiety is therapy.

For years I had an incredible therapist.

Of course, she retired. And she’s entitled to retiring. I just don’t see why she couldn’t keep going for another 74 years. (Kidding.)

Finding a therapist can be really hard. And finding one covered by your insurance can be extra tricky.

So my only advice on this is to keep looking, and keep interviewing. Don’t settle. There are tons of therapists out there.

I’m lucky to have finally found a new one I love, and one of the things she talks about a lot is tools.

Tools are basically things we can use to help our anxiety. It doesn’t mean you don’t have anxiety or that you don’t have bad days. But when the bad days strike – we aren’t just standing there waiting for it to end. We have some comfort measures.

It’s like when you have a cold. Orange juice and chicken soup may not CURE the cold, but they sure can help you feel a little better.

What helps me

Several things help me every day – other things help when my anxiety ramps up.

Let’s talk about the everyday stuff first:

Mediation

In his book 10 Percent Happier, Dan Harris shares perfectly how meditation helps him. He says it makes him about 10 percent happier. It also calms his mind, and helps him deal with the stress of a very public career.

I love this book because it’s written for skeptics.

This is the book to read if mediation makes you think of incense, crystals and chanting, and that makes you want to run and hide. 😉

My favorite meditation resources are Headspace, Calm, and Insight Timer.

Prayer

I’m not going to go too deep into this one, but if you have a spiritual tradition, you probably know the comfort it can bring.

If you don’t, no judgement. Spirituality and religion are complex for many of us.

Journaling/Writing

Keeping a journal can be helpful for so many reasons. It can be a place to put the swirling thoughts and for a lot of us, we can’t articulate exactly what we’re feeling until we write it out.

I also love brain dumps! (But I hate the term). Basically brain dumps are writing out the swirling feelings, and just getting them on paper and out of your brain. I find them so helpful for letting go.

I keep a bullet journal and it helps a lot.

I think it also helps a lot of us with anxiety to know that things like appointments, etc. are written down or at least saved somewhere.

Movement

Last year, I tried CrossFit. I wanted to love it, but it just didn’t work for me.

I was extra sad because a few pals have told me how it helps their anxiety and depression.

But I wasn’t getting those results.

You know what works for me?

Two things: gentle movement, like yoga or walking, and lifting weights. I KNOW. The weights thing is weird. But it literally gives me all the endorphins!

So maybe experiment with this a bit.

Diet

All I want in life is to be able to eat like a Gilmore Girl.

But I can’t.

I have to be careful. Not too careful, because cutting out food groups and having to maintain a super strict diet creates more stress for me.

But in general, I have to be a little careful about how I eat.

I can’t do too much caffeine or sugar or I get terrible blood sugar crashes that mix with anxiety to create a really nasty situation.

I also always have healthy snacks with me. You know. Like I’m a toddler. 😉

Essential oils

I love essential oils for support.

I love learning about them, and using them in my home.

Oils like lavender, basil, rosemary, and frankincense are very grounding to me, while oils like peppermint, orange and lemon help brighten my mood.

But, oils are just support to me, and I think it’s really important to know that many of us can not just use oils in order to manage our anxiety and depression. I like to say that no one has ever told my diabetic husband to just put oils on his pancreas.

Supplements

I find magnesium really helps my anxiety on a daily basis – especially these.

Keeping up my Vitamin D and Vitamin B levels is also helpful for me. But be sure to check with your doctor about any supplements.

More Magnesium

I tend to keep a lot of my stress in my muscles. So epsom salt baths help a lot. I love these two kinds: Lavender and Rosemary-Mint.

I love all the magnesium.

ALL the MAGNESIUM! 🙂

I also have a neck wrap similar to this one that I love.

Charting

I think it can be really helpful to keep a note of when anxiety is high in a notebook or calendar. About a month ago, I had a stretch of very bad days and it scared me.

My first thoughts were, is my medication not working? Is this my new normal?

But it passed.

Being able to see that things can get really bad but then good again is incredibly helpful to me.

Support for the bad days

Finally, I’d like to talk about the really bad days.

On those days, I need more support and more tools. Here’s what helps:

Breathing

There are lots of breathing techniques that can help when anxiety starts creeping in.

A simple technique is box breathing:

Image credit: Neurohacker Collective

Weighted blanket

This has been a game-changer for me. It helps with my anxiety and my sleep.

When I feel especially panicked, the weight helps me tremendously.

Also, after YEARS of insomnia, I now sleep through the night.

I have this one.

Telling someone

Sometimes it helps to just tell someone I trust.

It helps to say, “I’m having a bad anxiety day.”

I think it helps me lower my expectations for myself to voice it.

Like, “Yup. This is happening. It’s OK, but I need to give this some time.”

Getting help organizing my thoughts

When my anxiety is at its worst, I feel very scattered. Even simple things seem overwhelming, and I can’t organize my day at all.

Sometimes I will call my husband and he’ll help walk me through things.

Making a list also helps a lot.

Sometimes I’ll even tell friends via Voxer.

Having an outside perspective can be so helpful. Friends and family can help you see what’s actually important, and what can wait. They can also offer support to take it easy on yourself on the hard days.

Blocking out noise

Sometimes lots of stimulation makes my anxiety worse.

I’ve been know to go lie down with an eye mask for a few minutes to reset.

It also helps me sometimes to block out noise.

I have these noise-cancelling earbuds and they help so much.

Ginger

Sometimes my anxiety causes my stomach to get upset.

I try to keep a ginger kombucha in the fridge. I also like these.

Eating what I can

So I said above that I try to be careful about what I eat. Unfortunately, when my anxiety is really bad, I sometimes don’t feel like eating.

So I eat what I can. Sometimes that’s crackers.

I know crackers are not a meal, but again, I try to think big picture. One lunch of crackers or toast is not a big deal.

Lowering expectations

I’ve mentioned this above, but when anxiety is really high, we need to lower expectations a lot.

Lower.

Lower.

Maybe a full stop?

Help getting to sleep

If my thoughts are spinning and I can’t calm my mind, these are helpful in getting to sleep. (But again, check with your doctor.)

My emergency list on my phone

You want to make one of these when you are feeling good.

Because the whole reason I made an emergency list on my phone is because when anxiety is high, I can’t think and I can’t Google, for crying out loud.

My emergency list is also known as my Self-Care Can Dos. It’s just a running list of things that might help.

Some are simple:

Drink a glass of water and put your feet up (advice from my midwife while I was pregnant, and experiencing tons of Braxton Hicks contractions, but it helps in all kinds of situations)

I also have direct links to meditations, a gentle yoga class, encouraging talks – I’m looking at you, Brene Brown.

Telling myself that it will pass

I think this is huge.

Sometimes, it feels like anxiety will never get better.

I have had months of anxiety every day. I felt like a mess, a failure … I felt like nothing was helping and I had exhausted my options and I was going to feel awful forever.

I guess the good news is that I’ve had anxiety long enough to know that it comes and goes.

There are also people who can help. It’s just sometimes it takes a lot of work to find those people, and you have to kiss a lot of frogs, and it’s incredibly hard to keep fighting when you feel terrible.

So please, if your anxiety or depression becomes unmanageable, get help right away. Call your doctor, go to the nearest emergency room, or you can call the National Alliance on Mental Health 24/7: 1-800-950-NAMI.

You are important. You are loved. You are worth it. Do not be afraid to ask for help.

It absolutely CAN get better.

Again, please know that nothing in this post is meant to replace medical advice – I am simply sharing my own experience.
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