143_SS_Akilah
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Monica: Welcome to the Revelation Project Podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the chance of unworthiness and to guide women, to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a revelation project and what gets revealed gets healed. Hello everybody. And welcome back to our summer series where we're reaing some of our most provocative interesting.

Touching and transformative episodes from the last two seasons. And we've got another couple of weeks and then we're going to kick off a whole new year and I cannot wait. I can't wait. I'm so excited about so many returning guests to deepen what we've already talked about and also to welcome new guests, new thought leaders.

Evolutionaries revolutionaries thinkers, visionaries. I mean, innovators. There are so many cool, amazing revolutionary people that will be joining us for the new seasons. So I'm just thrilled. I really am. And I wanted to thank you. In the last episode, I really got, got teary eyed in my gratitude towards all of you for.

Listening and supporting me and continuing to cheer me on because I didn't start out being great at this. In fact, it's really been a process of me for me. And the reason I know this not only is because of course I'm the one in my body, but when I do go back and listen to some of these older episodes, I'm like, oh my gosh, like even Austin who edits the podcast is, you know, noticing things that now he just he's become such a better editor and I've become so much better at asking questions and summarizing.

And I feel more, so much more comfortable in my own skin as I've continued to do this. And it's honestly through your support, it's through your love, it's through your testimonials and your reviews that I it's continued to just encourage me forward. And so. If you ever think that if you reach out and you know, that I won't notice, or, you know, see what you've said, whether it's in an email or on a review or on a social media post, please know that they're like nourishment for my soul.

And I listen to and read and love any interaction that you have around an episode. So please, please, please continue to do that. And I just, again, thank you. Thank you for continuing to be. Part of this community and growing with me, honestly, because I think that's what this is really all about, through the interviews, I have met so many incredible people and I've been honored to bring those conversations to you and I've grown so much over time.

And I know that that's true for so many of you. Who've been listening now for quite some time. And many, many of you who've been listening since the very, very beginning. So if you're new here, I wanna welcome you. I am so pleased to have you, and this episode might occur as new for you because. This was actually one of my earliest episodes it's episode 34, but this episode is so powerful.

It's with the amazing Aquila Richards who founded an organization called raising free people. And she's really, I will call her the queen of the unschooling move. But let me be clear. If you think this episode might not apply to you, trust me. It does. Because if you've heard me talk about unbecoming, there is so much here for us adults to learn.

And I don't care if you have kids or not like get her book. This is incredible because I'm betting that if you are listening, you went through a school system, you went through elementary, you went through, high school, you went through public school, you went through private school, you went through charter school.

I don't care. Listen to this episode. It is so incredible. And. It will start to unravel you in places and poke questions in places that you maybe are resting certainty. And there's some massive assumptions that I think she begins to poke holes through that I think are so revealing just, and you know, what gets revealed gets healed.

So I want to read a little bit of her background, but before I do, I am reaching for her book. This book is just filled with highlights. I mean, you know, I love reading and I believe dangerous women read. And by the way, if you are listening right now and want a list of resources, you're gonna have to go and follow me on Instagram at revelation woman.

And I have built a resource guide of over 300, actually, I think it's or 500 episodes at this point, I have built a resource guide that is second to none and has really directed a lot of women to, you know, bust the trans of unworthiness. Through film books, podcasts, online courses, you name it, it just, and it continues to grow.

So you're gonna have to follow me on Instagram and go ahead and click the link in the bio. And that will give you access that you can download and raising free people is one of the books on it. So I'm gonna read you this and all of it. This book is just incredible and it, it hadn't been written when I interviewed Aquila in July of 2020.

So here we. At some stage in life, we all encounter the unlearning of ideas that are not germane to our particular nature. One might discover in her forties that she actually doesn't hate reading. She just spent years as a student reading dense text and reciting it back on tasks with little time for reading that felt pleasurable or even informative.

Or one might learn that he cannot in fact, stay at this good job, quote unquote for another two years, because despite its benefits and the validity, it brings to his existence, he loathes the industry, despises the work and feels utterly unfulfilled by how he is spending his energy. As an adult unschooler, I am constantly learning about myself, putting habits and ideas away and claiming or reclaiming others as a result of my growing understanding of my way of learning and of managing my emotions and relationships, which by the way, is something we don't learn about in school.

So I think this episode is going to blow you away. I know it did blow me away and please be gentle with me because it is an older episode and there's lots of ahas and UHS and you. All the things in this episode and my incredible editor was still learning. It didn't make me look quite as polished as he does now.

Just kidding JK. Okay. Here is some background on Aquila. Aquila Richards is passionate about mindful partnerships and parenting since 2016, she has hosted fair of the free child, a lifestyle and parenting podcast about the connection between liberation learning and parenting, particularly among black non-black indigenous and people of color.

BIPOC communities, parents, educators, unschoolers, and entrepreneurs tune in weekly to connect about unschooling deschooling conscious parenting and self-directedness discussions center around emotional wellness, learning and children, parenting self care, and self love the voice and work of this Jamaican born digital nomad have been featured on NPR Forbes, NBC TV.

Good morning, America's blog and in several literary and in-person spaces throughout the us, Jamaica and South Africa, the TEDx speaker, digital content writer and facilitators, highly anticipated book, raising free people, unschooling as liberation and healing. Will be released and is released in the fall of 2020.

So you can now get this because now it's 2022. You can now get this book and here's her quote that I love so much. We can't keep using tools of oppression and raise free free people. I welcome Akilah Richards. Congratulations on that Akilah. 

Akilah: Thank you so very much Monica.

Monica: You know, I, I was actually, when I booked this thinking, wow, I wonder if she has a book, so that's gonna come out very soon.

Akilah: Yeah. And it's actually my 10th book, but it's the first one that I am not self-publishing but all the other ones are still on Amazon. And I love the process of just writing the book and not having to do all the other pieces. . 

Monica: Yeah. Well, and are all of the books on the subject of unschooling? 

Akilah: You know, I think that everything is about unschooling.

So if you ask me the answer would be yes. 

Monica: Oh, I love that. Yeah. 

Akilah: However, some of them were written before we really immersed ourselves in unschooling work, but all of them are deschooling. All of them are about personal leadership. All of them are about life design because I'm always in one of those zones.

Monica: I love that. I often talk Akilah about the process of unbecoming. I feel like the first half of my life was about learning how to follow the rules. And the next half of my life is all about breaking them, you know? Yes. I really, I love this topic so much, my own children have gone to a Waldorf school, but I've often looked into the unschooling movement and I'd love to start by asking you how this all started for you.

And may maybe about a little bit more about your upbringing. 

Akilah: Sure. Definitely. It's it's really funny because people who are either Caribbean, themselves, or very familiar with Caribbean folks or Jamaicans. They're like how in the world is a Jamaican family unschooling because it's so it's like I laugh, but some of it is funny and some is kinda like, ha ha hell, because it's really, we come from a very British colonial.

Idea of what it means to, you know, like be out of your house and be very performative and very polite. And you know, all of these things, proximity to whiteness is the goal in all of the different ways. And so, and also the fear, the idea that the people in power didn't look or sound like you. And so as an adult, your job was to try to allow your children as much as possible to assimilate so that they can be safe and they can, make progress.

So the idea of Caribbean people in particular, deciding that their children are free to like live their lives and, and be who they are. And our job is to partner with them feels really absurd. to a lot of Caribbean people. And it did for me at first too, but how it started for my partner, Chris and me is that our daughters Marley and Sage who are now 16 and 14, they had

such a level of consistent pushback around conventional education that it eventually got me and Chris to stop being like extensions of the school system and actually start listening to our daughters. And that's really what fueled the transition. So they were in elementary school, in a public school, they were doing really great cuz it's elementary school and, you know, their basic needs were taken care of.

They were both labeled, gifted and talented and went up a couple of grades and, and all the checklist things. And though they were progressing. Academically, you know, even in elementary school emotionally, they were shrinking 

Monica: mm-hmm .

Akilah: And so that's something that Chris and I started to notice and we're like, Ugh, this feels really uncomfortable.

But I guess this is just like the adjustment that they'll make, because school is hard. Hey, life is hard and blah, blah, blah. And they're gonna get stronger as a result of working through the problems that they're having. And you know, a lot of the things that we really believe is responsible parenting and it feels like it at the time.

So they continue to push back and, you know, Marley, our oldest would talk about. How she has so many thoughts, but she doesn't have time to think her thoughts because someone else is telling her what she should do with her time. And their thoughts are more important than hers. And we're like, why were you getting this from this?

That's ridiculous. You know, we just couldn't, connect to it as valid. It just felt like something that would go away. But we also noticed that on top of her just vocalizing her concerns, she also was becoming different. She wasn't comfortable asking questions if she wasn't sure a about the answer to begin with just very schoolish things.

As I call them Sage, our youngest who's a very comfortable introvert would say. They, they were peopling on her and that she was really uncomfortable and that when she got home, all she wanted to do was like be in her room because of all the peeing. And you know, so Monica, after a while, we just started really paying attention to those things and saying, okay, if they're continuing to tell us that the place that they go and spend the majority of their like waking hours, it doesn't feel good for them.

And we as the adults that we want, the adults that we want them to have the most trust in are saying, they're there, hun, we hear your words. However, this is what we understand. So you just need to push through wouldn't that like affect their capacity to trust us. Wouldn't that make us less trustworthy.

And so it. Like we needed to figure out what to do. And then after a few months of wrestling with that, they were in school for about two years altogether. But after a few months of recognizing and then wrestling with what to do, we realized that the first thing was to just withdraw them from school, stop sending them to the place that they were not comfortable and maybe figure out what to do from there.

So that is really how we got started with the idea that learning needed to look differently than had looked in the past. 

Monica: What's coming up for me is first of all, just how courageous it was to take them out. I, I often think of, you know, this, just this phenomenon that you're talking about as it relates to academic growth at the expense of.

Their emotional wellness. 

Akilah: Mm-hmm 

Monica: and I have heard this over and over and over again. I also, um, I have two children as well. I have a boy and a girl. Um, my son has just turned 15. My daughter is 18 and I had almost like an unnatural anxiety as it related to making sure that I was going to get them actually in the, the Waldorf education.

I was so worried when I married my husband and we decided to have children. Mm-hmm that like, this was even before I had children because of my own upbringing and my own really struggle through school. And finally feeling like I could be myself when, when I got to the Waldorf school and you, you had talked about kind of watching them, their person, their personalities kind of diminish.

And I, and I think, you know, there's nothing more disheartening as a parent when we see our children. Stop becoming animated or self-expressed. 

Akilah: Yes, exactly, exactly. And that's the thing that Chris and I were just really wrestling with because so much of what we felt was the right thing to do was really to help them become more acclimated to school.

You know, that like we never could have imagined that our role was actually to listen to them and honor what they felt they needed, ah, in terms of an agency and autonomy, it was more so like, well, you're a new human and the way of the world is schooling. And so my job is to acclimate you to that. And that's why for me, unschooling.

Very much is about partnership. It isn't about whether they are in or not in school for some children. It is. But really the overarching thing is that it's a trustful relationship between parent and child or, you know, intergenerationally that is really about building confident, autonomy, and a huge part of confident autonomy is that you feel want a sense of ownership to some extent over your time and tasks, but also that you're in trustful relationships with people in power, which in my daughter's case, it's Chris and me.

We are the people in the positions of power who help to make decisions about their lives. And just like with government, for me, if I don't feel like they're, they have my best interest at heart, or they're even listening to. Then I'm not in a trustworthy relationship and trust was more important than whatever could happen academically.

Cuz they could learn a thing whenever. But if they weren't in trustful relationships that was gonna impact everything, all of their relationships, their entire capacity to live and be let alone to learn, you know? 

Monica: Yeah, I do. And, and I know that this is probably old hat for you, but for the sake of our listeners and our audience, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what it was like then to.

I often think about, you know, when we go against the current when we go against the tide, there is inevitably a tremendous amount of pressure and conflict. Yeah. And second guessing that goes into making decisions that go against the flow of kind of the way society works. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that and how did you not succumb to it and maybe you did at times, right.

Or human, right. Certainly. 

Akilah: Yeah. Sure, sure. So of course, most definitely. We had those things. We have layers and layers of that, that look like everything from, oh my God, they're gonna be like less smart now, because school is where you go to get smart. To me being someone who my family migrated from Jamaica to the us, and very much bought into the American dream, which had so much to do with proximity to whiteness.

So you needed to be groomed in spaces where you sounded a certain way and all of that. All of those things that felt like, oh my gosh, I'm like going against what my poor parents were working so hard to create, because what if my kids don't X, Y, Z, all of those things were very much present. And we didn't like put them away after a few months in a neat little box and, you know, go into liberation, work, all of it.

You know, as we say, back home, everything is everything, you know, whatever it is that you're dealing with, there's an opposite to that. And there are all these nuances in between. So what was really helpful for me at the time was to know, I call it just serving multiple gods. Like what, what is the God that I'm serving at the moment?

What is my focal point? Is it what may or may not happen? Or is it what I know for sure is happening? That was the question that I was constantly asking myself. Chris was constantly asking me, we were asking each other and what we kept relying on and falling back on is the knowledge that. What we know for sure is that Marley and Sage are saying that they do not want to be there.

They don't wanna go into the classroom and spend that time if we know that for sure, which we do then, is it possible for another structure to emerge as a result of us honoring what is present and also just continuing to be present. And we figured maybe so it wasn't conclusive. It wasn't, you know, for sure.

It just felt like we know what's not working. And that has to be enough because one of the major conversations that he and I had repeatedly Monica was that we are raising what, who will become black women in America. Even though we travel to other places, primarily we're in America. A disservice we would do to two black women.

If we groomed them in a space that basically mimicked what happens outside of a safe home structure, where the people in power are saying, in order for me to value your opinion, your perspective, your life, your, all of these things, you need to do these things to make me comfortable. You need to perform in this way.

You need to show up this way. You need to impress, produce all of these. That's why I say we can't keep using tools of oppression and expect to raise free people. That phrasing came to me as a result of really being with the same thing you asked, like how do I go against these things and, and be okay. So for me, I wasn't really looking at the things we were going against.

I just kept going back to what we do know now. And that our intention was to build a trustful relationship with Marley and Sage where learning was still happening, but that they didn't feel like the people they were supposed to trust the most were just not trustworthy. That, that fueled a lot of things for us, Monica.

And then. Logistics also helped a lot because when we left traditional schooling or conventional, sorry, I never call it tradition. Cuz tradition is actually much more holistic and beautiful, but conventional education when we left that there were so many rewards, it was really hard. Of course, for all the reasons that you mentioned and all the reasons many of us listening can imagine.

But it also meant for example, that we could go back to Jamaica, for example, in. April or in September when no one else was traveling and when the prices were low, because we weren't like under the, the guise of what was happening in school in terms of a schedule and high season and low season. So it meant we could go to Jamaica during quote unquote school time, which means the tickets were less expensive, which meant wherever we were staying was less expensive.

So we were like, oh, so we don't need to have a million dollars first before we can take the kids. 

Monica: Like just looking at all of the disguised gifts from yes. And also what I'm hearing is that there was something in you that wasn't actually looking for permission or approval no. Around you to do this.

Akilah: Exactly, exactly. Because I mean, story of my life, so much of what I have done even before becoming Marley and Sage's mama was, you know, contrary to what looked like the right thing to do. I got a full scholarship to Florida state and I said no to it because it was in Florida. And I didn't wanna be in Florida cuz that's where I went to high school and I wanted something different.

And I went to Clark Atlanta, which was a private school and you know, I figured it out. We had $0, my family and me, I still figured it out and got multiple small scholarships and worked primarily throughout college. Like my, I have a pattern of making a decision that doesn't come with a bunch of certainty, but feels like it's the right direction.

I know how to do that. 

Monica: And I'm a big fan of the word feels because, because again, I think that if you were to kind of look at how we're raised in society, we're raised to negate our feelings. We're raised to override our feelings and suck it up. Yeah. And do it anyway. And I love that you said, you know, that you talked to Marley in Sage about this and it became, you know, family decision and that their happiness or their unhappiness in this case was a good enough reason for you.

Yeah, absolutely. And I often think again, like, I call it the Oracle of the obvious, because it's always right in front of us. But again, I believe so many of us are entranced into these systems that don't serve us have possibly never served us. Yep. 

Akilah: It's just what we know. It's what 

Monica: we know. They were always designed to, you know, really make us into productive citizens.

Yeah. And then you look at, at what cost, you know, and I go back to what you said about academic growth. Well, what about just. the financial wellbeing of a family at the cost. Exactly. Yes. Not, I mean, these families are growing up. They don't know each other. They're they're living in their own house. They're not, and again, like, we're, we all struggle with this.

Yep. And it, you know, the school system, when I think about just again, like the fact that we spend most of our lives not being together, it starts to just seem insane. 

Akilah: Exactly. And that's exactly what I think is happening right now. Like with this pandemic that we are living through. A lot of what we see as issues in education are really issues about human relationships.

We don't know because we have very little language, let alone practice for being ourselves together. What we know how to do is perform together. The version of me that my mom knows is the version that my mom needs to know. Mm. The version of me that my kid knows all of that stuff. And right now, since everybody's at home and we're still trying to plug into the old normal, from a new normal, that's trying to emerge, that is not gonna work.

So a lot of it's like my kid won't do this and we need to figure out what education looks like. No, we need to reman. Our communication and our relationship so that what actually can allow us to thrive emotionally and logistically and educationally can emerge, but it cannot emerge out of the same structure that is designed to either make us food or have us make the food, you 

Monica: know, mm-hmm

Yeah, I do. And, uh, I think the point that you're making too about the relational skills, these are skills, not only we're seeing lacking in families, but the world over, yes,

Unbecoming: You are a successful woman who knows how to make things happen yet. You sense that there's still a part of you hiding. You have an entrepreneurial spirit, but feels stuck unsure of how to make an impact in these chaotic and challenging times you are doing all the things. And you're best with what, you know, you've been reading books, listening to podcasts, practicing self care, but you still find yourself confused, overwhelmed, and exhausted.

You often think what's wrong with me. These are all symptoms of the patriarchal trance of unworthiness, and you are not alone from the time we were little girls, we have been taught to be pretty pleasing and polite. Anything that was deemed unbecoming was suppressed, invalidated or punished because to disempower generations of women means that the system of domination and control will keep you believing that you will never be enough, but we have had enough.

And that time is over. We are unbecoming. Women are awakening to our enoughness and we are becoming full of ourselves. The truth is that you are a revelation underneath layers of conditioning are unexpressed, talents and gifts that the world desperately needs. And now is your chance. Join Libby, Bunton, embodiment, coach, and founder of self approval school and me Monica Rogers for an online coaching circle and an initiation into revelatory feminine leadership.

Join this intimate group of women who are ready to break the bullshit rules and reveal the truth of who we are through the process of unbecoming. Join this intimate group of women who are ready to break the bullshit rules and reveal the truth of who we are through the process of unbecoming. Join us for this groundbreaking opportunity and learn the tools, integrate the teachings and activate the embodiment practices of feminine leadership.

Not only will you disrupt the trance of unworthiness in your own life, but for all of the generations to come, the world is burning. And unfortunately this is not a drill. It's a time of unbecoming from who everyone told us to be, to reveal the truth of who we are gather with other awakening, women who are engaged in this transformative work of unbecoming.

Get on the wait list today, and we will send more details in the coming weeks by going to sign up dot join the revelation.com/unbecoming that sign up dot join the revelation.com/unbecoming unbecoming beneath a lifetime of conditioning is remembering the truth of who you are.

Monica: I I wanna kind of now talk more about how you see unschooling as related to. Liberation. 

Akilah: Yeah, it is. They're so interconnected for me, just, as you mentioned, Monica, about the, the unlearning, you know, the things that you realize a, a certain stage in your life, you transitioned from the doing, as you're told and all of that into a more, a space of introspection and going in the direction of what I call confident autonomy, that is liberation, that is sovereignty.

And I think that one of the easiest spaces for us as adults to recognize where things are not sovereign is in relationship to children because we tend as society to see them. I think, similarly to the way. People who colonized saw colonized people. They saw them as fertile space and land to cultivate to make something useful out of, and from at the expense of the people.

And you do that, not necessarily by intentionally doing it at the expense of the people. Like when we think about colonization typically, but we do it sometimes inadvertently because of the environment of colonization. So for me, unschooling is akin to deschooling is akin to decolonization is akin to unlearning.

And when you start to do those things, there's a process where you feel something isn't right, because we're human and we feel, or something happens. And it, it invites a particular feeling. And then you move from that feeling to questioning it. You ask you, you really allow yourself to be with it. And then you look at trust, where is there not trust?

Where is there trust? Where is there suppression, oppression? How am I participating in that? What can I start doing differently? Usually the answer is to listen. Okay, what do I do when I listen? And I feel uncomfortable. Usually the answer is to observe how you're responding instead of weaponizing the feeling.

These are all unschooling skills. So the reason that I, I see it as very much tied to liberation is because it allows you to question and to unlearn so that a structure that is human and partnership centered and equitable, not equal, but equitable. Can emerge in, in relationship to whether it's your child or another adult, because when you unschool you don't unschool your child, you unschool together.

So as they are sitting in their room, staring at the screen for that four or five hours, and you're pacing and thinking, this is ridiculous. I need to get in there and talk to them about the study that I read, because I know that kids get addicted screens. That's not productive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You go through that. But as an unschooler, you allow yourself to question those feelings and say, what is it that I'm afraid of? That's gonna happen here? Am I sure about that? Wh what is the role of control in this? How much of educational marketing is influencing? How I feel here? Can I prove that this thing is, this is related to this, is this more about how I will feel when my mom or mother-in-law comes and sees that they're in their room, you get to be with all of that Monica.

And so it allows you to free yourself. From all of those things that you did when you were super plugged into the matrix and didn't question anything and then not necessarily in this order, but it also allows you to free young people to now tell you what they need. Like what partnership and support looks like for them, so that you can actually do that.

So you can be in a trustful relat. That's how those things are connected and, and it also spills out into your relationships with other people. Why am I judging her for this thing? She did. Oh, because I don't like this thing about myself. Oh, can I work on this about myself instead of making this, her problem?

Did I just turn my issue into a weapon? Yes, I did. I need to apologize cuz I have language and practice for that now cuz as an unschool, it's like a third of all I do is apologize for the messed up stuff that I did when I wasn't paying attention. Ah like yeah. Well 

Monica: and, and I love now I completely get what you're saying about, you know, that the, the unschooling available to us is endless and, and it's really it's it's fostered and nurtured and expanded inside of these endless questions.

This endless. Yes. Yeah. This endless self inquiry, this endless, you know, taking a look and asking the, the questions. 

Akilah: Yes, absolutely. And being really getting comfortable over time with the recognition that these questions that is the path there. It's not to ask the question to get to the right answer so that you can now be awakened and unschooled at level 10.

It is not that at all. It, I call it mad question. Ask if I play on a hip hop term too, that is like, I'm just gonna mad question ask. I'm gonna ask these questions like incessantly, because what they're doing is bringing me inward. What they're doing is bringing me into what we absolutely know is like a feminine perspective.

Moving away from the masculine of thinking and doing over into a question. I ask all the time it used to be on my business card, but how do you want to feel? Mm. But how do you want to feel? Yes, these 17 things are going and these emotions and, but how do you want to feel. and if we can go in the direction of that for ourselves and honor that for other people, then we are rehumanizing.

Now we're talking about, yes, I know what you're saying. And I hear how this thing makes you feel. So if I didn't bypass that, but instead try to develop language and practice so we can work through that together. What a sense of community is emerging here from us learning how to be ourselves together, which is essentially what unschooling and deschooling.

Those are the skills that they help us to, to name and practice. 

Monica: So Aquila, how do you, how do you. See, I mean, I, I have so many talk about having mad questions. I, I have, I have mad questions and I, I love that term. I think I've been a mad question asking diva for a long, long time. Love it. Yeah. Yes. You know, since, since I was just a little girl and I often talk about, you know, sitting in church, I think about, you know, some of the religious structures, right.

So I grew up Catholic and just, I just, I really noticed all of the hypocrisies, all of the omissions, all, I mean, it was glaringly evident to me and it would make me feel to use your language. It would make me feel unseen. Unheard unvalidated. Yes. Unimportant. And it literally would hurt my heart. You know, it would hurt my being.

Yeah. And if I look back at. You know, my inner child who is now so much happier , you know, than she was way back when I really, I see that point where I just stopped being who I was. Yeah. Because it was easier. Do you know what I mean? It was easier to just give up and conform 

Akilah: absolutely. And everything, and everyone around you rewarded you for that too, you know, and I use that in air quotes, but absolutely there's a currency that comes.

Compliant. And it becomes a thing that we either end up craving, or it's the only thing that allows us to feel safe. Or as you said, we just kind of trans out until something happens, but something will always happen. Always constantly. Things are happening that bring us out of that because it is unnatural.

And so, you know, religion is another one. It's a very typical thing that people end up reframing or reclaiming or rejecting as a result of an unschooling journey. I remember I created a whole course about spiritual self care. When I realized a part of my deschooling process was to move away from what I was raised in and to instead.

Claim and understand spirituality for myself. And so I realized that I missed some of the rituals that came with the things I grew up in, and it took me so much time to give myself permission, to just make up something else. Mm. You know, and, and to, and then to have that something else feel just as good and valid and bring me into the mental space or spiritual space that I wanted as the other thing used to do when I didn't have a choice.

So it, it is very much reclamation work. It is. Reparenting. It's shadow work. All of that is it's, you know, moving into the Sophia century in terms of feminine, the feminine energy and, and really respecting and honoring and calling that up and out and through you, that's really what comes up when you really make a commitment to unschool.

And I call it raising free people, which includes the self to free the self as well. 

Monica: Uh, I mean, self liberation is where it starts. It is it's where, when we, I think when we give ourselves permission in all of those ways, that compassion, right, for really it's, it's that phrase of, you know, when we know better, we, we do better, but really I think offering ourselves self-compassion, especially when we kind of awaken to some of these.

Mm, some of these concepts that can feel, I think overwhelming because they're, they're like a thread. And when we start kind of unraveling all of these conversations that intersect as these, you know, systems become more revealed, you know, mm-hmm, in, in our, in our understanding of how they work. And we really start, like you say, asking the questions, mm-hmm, , it's easy to get overwhelmed and almost start beating ourselves up for not kind of looking at this sooner or whatever it is, right?

Akilah: Yeah. It is. It is. And it's like, and that's, we have to recognize that also as a part of the systems of oppression, because if it isn't feeling good and not moving you towards the direction, you're, you're looking to go in, cuz we know that with feeling, we don't necessarily know that with words because words are so like reductive , you know, it they're so reductive, especially because language wise, we don't even.

We're not even speaking our original tongue, no one is mm-hmm so many people are not. So what we there's so much that is lost, not forever, but that we can reclaim when we start to do this deschooling work. When we start doing mad question asking when we start recognizing that in a lot of instances, including, and particularly with children, often time, their resistance is the roadmap.

It's, it's not the route to something else to try to make them compliant. It's the roadmap to move away away from that thing, because it really is about the feeling, the humanity in a space, but we're all so steeped and groomed in the opposite of that. The production, 

Monica: yeah. Groomed is such a perfect word.

It's such a perfect word. So I'm so curious Aquila about. What the pandemic. So, so just to orient ourselves for a minute, the pandemic I am making up has really started to have, uh, a ton of questions come up for parents around what alternatives are available to them as it relates to their children in schooling come the fall.

And I'm just wondering if your, you know, if your passion of unschooling and your line of work, have you seen an increase in curiosity around it? 

Akilah: Oh, for sure. Yeah, absolutely lots and lots and lots. It's been so beautiful and encouraging because in the middle of this scary thing, it's, it's scary in a lot of ways.

It's tragic in a lot of ways, but they're also, you know, as so many of us are recognizing also opportunities here. So a lot of the conversations I'm having are with people who. Going back to the feelings who are like, oh my, my kid is a different person right now. Mm. Like the apathy has reduced significantly.

They're coming downstairs and sitting on the couch, like on purpose where everyone else is, and not like hidden away in their room. That just moves me to my core every time mm-hmm because it's an indication that that person was in a harmful space and now they can move over. Or you have people who are seeing how their children are thriving, uh, intellectually, you know, they picked up on something and they will not let it go.

And, and since they're not going to bed at the exact time that their parents said, you know, all these little schoolish things are now, those, those fences are lower. Now they're getting to actually see their child and they want more of it. and I think that's really beautiful. So I am seeing an increase in it.

So many of us who are in this movement of self-directed education, particularly for, by POC families, because for a long time, again, the idea of assimilation and proximity to whiteness, we, you know, all people, no matter what your background is, all of us are indoctrinated. But when you walk around in a black body or in a non-black indigenous body or a person of, of color body, there's another level of suppression of your personhood.

There's another level of feeling of necessity to be as normal or regular as possible, which really is talking about Eurocentric as possible. So that you're safe. So now people are saying, okay, what, what might it look like to feel safe enough? To move outside of conventional education because clearly my child feels safe now, but how do I support that in a, in an anti-black world, for example, you know, or in a world that that says the more degrees you have, the better you are or a world that's so focused on money, which feels very tied to school.

Now we get to have these conversations and we get to look at the reality that unschool. Is not just for rich white people. Unschooling is not just for people who are into family households. That's what I love about what my podcast and these other conversations offer. How do people who do not have all the resources and resource land still end up doing these very liberatory partner centered things?

And the fact is we are doing. Lots of people are figuring out what does it look like to know my neighbors? And to know that these two neighbors actually are retired and they're brilliant. And they love being around young people, especially when we're not holding them to a structure of a particular curriculum or curricula.

So my kids interest can really be explored because there's a bakery down the road. And we can actually talk to the person who owns that bakery. And the three kids who are into baking can be there. And when they're there, there's so much math and science and community building skills that they're gonna learn that they would not learn in a classroom just focused on math, but they're gonna learn all of that anyway, in the bakery.

And they're gonna know the person down the road, so they're not gonna go to Kroger or whatever, and order a thing. They're gonna be in relationship with the actual. This is what happened. 

Monica: This is what happens. I know. Right? I know that being careful about how I'm saying this or trying to, because I know that all children are different and yeah, nobody, there's no comparison here.

And I know because I know it's true for me. And I'm I'm, as I'm gonna assume that it's true for you is that when you're, when people meet your children, are they often kind of like, where do these magical beings come from 

Akilah: All the time? Right. All the time. And I'm like, there's a bunch of us. This is, and I say, I mean, I even say it to my girls all the time.

My oldest, we do workshops together and especially pre COVID. We were doing them in person. And I would say, y'all, she knows this she's she's not extra special. Mm-hmm and she knows what I mean by that, because of course she's amazing and special and you know, my own little amazing, oh my God, I can't believe you exist for both of my daughters.

Also, what you're seeing is not because they are unicorns it's because they're in relationships with. People in power adults in the case of children who respect them as people who are including them in decisions about their life and time, who allow for their perspectives about life. Even with a limited perspective, because they're newer humans, we wanna make sure they understand that those things matter.

And when you treat a human like that, you just have a different type of human. 

Monica: Yes. I mean, yes, yes, yes. I, my, I think, you know, again, when I. My daughter went. So our Waldorf school goes through the eighth grade. And I know that Waldorf is certainly not unschooling, but it's certainly not traditional schooling either.

Mm-hmm and you know, a lot of just the feedback that I always kind of get are, you know, they're so comfortable in their own skin. They're so centered. They're so grounded. They're willing to talk to adults. Mm-hmm and it's again, I go back to kind of that dimming of the light that certainly happened to me.

And I feel like I had to fight most of my adult life to figure out who the heck I was when I wasn't looking for validation from everybody else. 

Akilah: Yes, and yes. 

Monica: And I've been, I've almost been, I have to say I've almost been obsessive about protecting my children from influences that want to, you know, control them, or so for example, other parenting advice, or, or even even putting it out there, because again, not looking for permission, not looking for agreement for how I raise my children.

And again, that has served me, but what I really am kind of. What I'm really interested in is not having other people have to suffer to the degree to, to get there. And also 

Akilah: Exactly.

Monica: And also I get that, you know, a Waldorf school, right? There's there's privilege there. There's tuition. Right? It's private, all of that.

But what I'd really love to talk about here with you is that if we have some listeners and I know we will, because I know that this has been heavy on so many parents' minds, also college coming up. Things are changing. And again, I say, I say it with reverence too, for all of the pain and anguish and fear that's coming up for people, but there is something here.

I think that is so extraordinary happening in the breakdown of so many systems at once. Absolutely. And I just really want people out there to hear what an extraordinary opportunity is available to start pursuing other alternative ways of maybe looking at how you want to redesign 

Akilah: Yes. In all of the ways, because it's not, we're gonna need to be doing something different like this, this is an opportunity to co-create a new normal, it is an opportunity to, co-create a new normal that is actually using the language and practice of humanness of humanity and not of.

Perpetuating something that is systemic and that will pivot and meet us wherever we are, if we are not deliberate and consistent, because of course, Waldorf and spaces like that, I'm in con conversation, especially now with lots of people in those spaces, because as much as it can be wonderful, Again, if, if it's not inclusive, if there are entire groups of people who not just because of money cannot feel comfortable and safe in those spaces, is it humane?

The answer is no, it is not. No. So without these conversations and without the voices of the people who have been oppressed, which includes children without their voices and not just their voices for the sake of representation, but for redesign, as you mentioned for co-creating new culture. Those are the things that we need to do.

We need to allow for these uncomfortable conversations and they cannot be led by the same people who are leading number four, because those people do not have the knowledge and practice of, of trying to create something else. They are too far steeped in what is mm-hmm so this is an opportunity for a new normal, and I love that you brought up college again, because that's very much also one of the systems of oppression, ah, not itself, but the idea that your entire life is oriented towards getting your kid into college.

So you make $30,000 a year. Yet everything that you're doing. So you're not at home cuz you work in two jobs and you're doing all of these things. So your kid can get to college and they get there and they're in debt and maybe they have some great classes and they learn some things and they leave. And they're not even in a better position than you.

How is that progress? Mm-hmm mm-hmm but these are the conversations we have to have. And I know why college feels really good. You know, again, as I talk about BI POC communities, we fought so hard just even for the right to, to have education. So it feels really scary to be like, where, what do you mean they're not gonna be in school?

Do you know how hard? No, for me the unschooling movement is the evolution of brown versus the board of education. This is what we fought for, for the right to educate in a way that is around. Liberation and knowledge of self and community, not at the cost of all those things. 

Monica: Oh, I'm speechless. I really am.

I, I , I'm really wanting to, I mean, there's so many different things going through my head, but it's this, it's this kind of excited urgency is, is what I'm gonna call it because it's almost like, I can't think of a, just a more worthy conversation about kind of the unschooling of America for heaven's sakes.

Akilah: Love it, the world, the world world. Yes. Cuz it's everywhere. These isms have been really fortunate since we've been unschooling. You know, we've been in a lot of different countries and spent good amounts of time often with unschooling communities. And they're usually also tied to social justice work because again, everything is everything.

And as you start to recognize oppression, you see the places where you've been oppressed that's easy, but you also see the ways that you participate in it. So one of the many beautiful things about unschooling and other forms of self-directed education is that they're often very easily connected to social justice work, which is then gonna give us even more language and practice for dismantling, not just addressing, not reform, none of that dismantling completely. and allowing for something different to emerge, we can do that now. Mm-hmm we can mm-hmm 

Monica: Well, and those who are listening and, you know, really want to partake in that, you know, unschooling as one area is actually a very valid place to, to start doing just that. And so I'm wondering what you would say to some of our listeners about how would you encourage them to begin the inquiry?

Akilah: I love that question. and I love that you didn't ask me what book they should start with and what thing, what, you know, and I get that question, but I think that again, we have to remember that so much of what is present right now. So much of the opportunity is not about what we don't know or what we cannot do.

It is about what we've always known and always felt, but can now honor. So a great place to start if you're hearing this or you've heard anything about unschooling or self-directedness and you're like, yeah, I wanna feel that out. Where do I start? Start with your kid or yourself, start get a book, get a dedicated notebook or a Google doc or a Trello board or whatever feels good and start observing what you are noticing, like document what you're noticing.

I noticed that my son came downstairs today and talked to me for a few minutes. And typically that doesn't happen. I have to go upstairs and in his room, that felt really good. I wanna, I wanna invite more of that. I don't know how, I don't even know why he did it, but I wanna invite more of that. That's plenty.

Monica: Mm.

Akilah: You know, it might say, oh, I felt really uncomfortable when. I spoke to my friend and it felt like my kids were behind because I didn't actually enforce part two of this curriculum this month. So then I'm gonna write and feel, oh, how did that make me feel? And I'm gonna take, or I'm gonna use my phone and record the note and say, yes, I really sit with it.

It makes me think about that time when I was in the eighth grade and Vanessa said this thing to me, and then it made me feel like I wasn't smart because then my dad asked me, what was I doing? Why Vanessa got an a and I got a C oh, that's actually about that then. So maybe then I don't need to, maybe I just need to do more work to see what else is tied to that.

So as you busy yourself with deschooling work, cuz that's what that is. Then what you'll start to recognize are things that happen that are not about something you can think about or plan it's intuitive. You will intuitively even if you don't have a good relationship with your intuition, because you are making space and calling in this deschooling energy, what will happen is intuitively things will show up.

You'll ask a question at the right time, you'll be quiet. Instead of trying to make them do something, you will offer them something in their environment that might be useful, that they will be receptive to because they're starting to trust you a little more, cuz you're no longer talking at them as much.

So then you can just start to partner with what's happening. You don't have to have a plan, but if you slow down, observe and start to document what you are noticing, that is oftentimes a really great starting point to what might be the best move for you and yours. 

Monica: And of course, what is also coming in as I'm talking to you, is this, I wanna say argument, but it's, it's not an argument. It's a concern. It's a fear. It's it's oftentimes I hear, well, what about the socialization of children? 

Akilah: Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah. And I just started working with what I'm calling a presence, counselor. We kind of took the term guidance counselor, snatched it outta convention. 

Monica: Oh, I love that. Yes. 

Akilah: So I'm working with a group of presence, counselors and for this transition from foolishness to self-directedness.

And when that question comes up about what about socialization? What we say is, so tell me about socialization in school. So is the idea that you're sitting at a desk looking, somebody's looking at the back of your head. You're looking at somebody else's the back of their head. Somebody's telling you when to go pee.

Someone's telling you what to do at each time. You know, somebody's validating your level of effort. and then for about an hour during lunch, once you get to maybe high school, then you can just talk amongst your friends, cuz in elementary school, you'll, you know, be singled out if you're too loud or too, whatever, then you also have recess, which gives you assigned time to do a thing.

And also to play with friends for a few minutes is that socialization. And during all of this, you're in a space with mostly with people who are your age, cuz of classrooms, um, and who live in the, the area that you know, that you live in is that socialization. Do we, as adults feel really prepared to be around people who are different than us and to hold our boundaries and respect other people's boundaries.

Do you feel like you have those skills as a result of being in. And of course the answer is usually no, no. So you aren't socialized, you were just in a schoolish environment. Socialization happens everywhere, but school 

Monica: Back to the mad question back to the, exactly. Back to the mad question, asking and just really, I think what I'm hearing is that as our listeners might come up against or bump up against a fear or, you know, kind of the status quo way of thinking and to just start questioning it, start looking at it and, and start getting curious.

Akilah: Absolutely. Allow yourself to do that question, your children, not from a space of like, what are you learning? But a lot of things you can feel through what's present for them and you can ask them, what's present for them, get more involved in their world. You know, if they're, if you have a kid that's a gamer.

See, whether you can sit there for a few minutes without them being like, oh my God, why are you sitting here? , you know, ask them about the game. Yeah. You know, like get, get involved in the life that they are a part of that doesn't center, you or school. These are things that we can do. And my daughters talk all the time about why their dad and I feel trustworthy to them.

That's how we learn a lot of the things. Because they can say what's true for them. They can say something without, they can say, okay, I read this thing about, I don't know, dinosaurs without me being like great they're into dinosaurs, let me get all the dinosaur curriculum that I could ever think of and blah, blah, blah.

Like that's what makes an adult trustworthy? Can I share with you what I'm feeling and you don't try to fix it. These are things we can do without money. These are things we can do with our wifi. These are things we can do today. 

Monica: Yeah, it, I mean, it really it's, it's just all of these ways. And, and, and what I also wanna let our listeners know is we'll put, uh, a ton of resources in the, you know, in, in the actual podcast blog posts.

So you'll, you'll certainly have those, but there are plenty of resources around this subject. 

Akilah: Yes, they absolutely are. And I'm of course, as you said, there'll be some notes about it, but a couple of them that I can just say right off the bat, Raising free people.com that's my site. And what's so beautiful about it again, is that it will link you to the podcast, fear of the free child, where you'll hear from so many people across different levels of the spectrum of self-directedness and confident autonomy.

Um, also there's the Alliance for self-directed education, which is self directed.org, a really useful organization for going down the rabbit hole of unschooling. You will see tipping points, which is an online magazine that's connected to the Alliance. You will read, you know, so many. Pieces from people like me and Peter Gray, a research psychologist who's really deeply into self-directedness as a result of his own relationship with his son, Malika digs of eclectic learning network, another unschooling mama who does a lot of work around, you know, decolonizing our relationships with young people.

There are many resources. You do not need to know what to do. You just need to know what you're feeling and to learn over time, how to trust what you're feeling, because that's gonna allow what you need to emerge. That's the law that's, that is the cosmic law. 

Monica: That is the cosmic law. And I can only imagine that while you stumbled into this, what I'm really hearing is that it has become a way of life.

It's become also like where your inner leadership has really taken hold. I, I just see. 100%. Oh my gosh. I see so much possibility coming from this. And, and I guess my final question to you, Aquila is what is your vision for the future with, you know, your organization, raising free people? What, what are you wanting to happen?

Akilah: I love it. It it's mad question asking like at a global scale, that's what I want to happen. I want for wording, like confident, autonomy and trustful partnerships to be normalized in intergenerational relationships. I imagine school being a thing that young people and adults opt in and out of the way that we might do a bootcamp for a thing, or do a retreat for a thing.

Like we understand. School as one means of education, but we understand intuition and culture and, um, uncommon knowledge. That's unique to each person and common knowledge that everybody and they mom knows. like all of those things are things that we see as valuable and valid. So I could talk to my grandfather and see him as, just as valuable as professors such and such, because I have decolonized my idea of learning and I've taken it out of the, the context of school and made it something that is something that is innate as well as something that is ecological.

I can pick it anywhere, like when you're in Jamaica and there are fruit trees everywhere, and you can just pick a mango and pick a apple. And like that, those that's the way that I imagine, because it's also gonna rehumanize our relationships with each other. 

Monica: Well, and to me, it sounds like heaven on earth.

Akilah: Yes. Absolutely. 

Monica: It's just so it so occurs to me, like, gosh, you know, it's that fully permissioned self where we just are constantly giving ourself permission and like the bounty and the abundance of life is just all around us. 

Akilah: Yes. Because that permission isn't if we're,

Monica: if we're willing to allow it. Yes, yes.

Akilah: Yeah. And also if that permission is not in the way of other people's liberation, because that's, that's one of the things I'll say this last thing about unschooling that a big part of the work, the reason that I center by POC, voices and communities in it is because there's a, a perception of unschooling being again, a rich white thing, but also a thing where it's like, oh, kids just do whatever they want.

The freedom is about doing whatever. No liberation comes with responsibility. It comes with accountability. Otherwise it is not liberation because everybody ain't free. So then it's not liberation. So as we're looking at being free to do and say, and think, and. In all of that is also, how am I in the way of someone else's capacity to do that.

And do I have the skills to work through that and to fix that, that is an important part of unschooling that doesn't get talked about enough. 

Monica: Well, I cannot wait for the book to come out. I mean, I'm just, I, I wish this conversation could go on forever. Thank you. I just honor your time so much. This is such an important and compelling conversation.

It always has been, but I'm going to assert, especially now, and, you know, just thank your family for allowing me to have you for this time. Thank Chris. And of course, Marley and Sage. And I hope that we can do this again soon because I know that there are additional conversations I'd love to, I'd love to bring online with you.

Akilah: Yes. And thank you so much. Having me, it's wonderful what you're doing to really talk about, you know, those hidden things, those things that are not so much hidden, but more so, just not out in the open enough, and I'm really grateful to have the conversation. So thank you for your ear and for the space to do this.

Monica: Absolutely all so more to be revealed.

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