memoirs of a sad-eyed lady

My mother name me after Bob Dylan's Sara, his song of loss and bittersweet memory. The song could have set the tune for my life, with cries of Gypsy violin and harmonica. Instead it gave me solace, a sad music place where I felt at home.

I wrote my memoirs after my father died. His death prompted me to reorganize and redefine my life as a way of moving forward. My childhood was an abusive and chaotic one and my memoirs are framed by my father's death and told through a lens of grief. However, it is not an altogether unhappy story.

Remarkable even to me is that I believe I am a happier person than many who had less dramatic childhoods. The painful experiences gave me motivation to always search and reach for something happier.

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Read and Review at Authonomy | Read and Review at Urbis

Sara's Memoirs & Bio Zone | Six-Word Memoirs | Squidoo
[Video]

Unschooling: A Lifestyle of Learning

People who feel drawn to the philosophical ideals of unschooling often ask how to unschool. While acknowledging that each family approaches the unschooling lifestyle from a unique standpoint, I offer the details of my family’s experiences, along with specific advice for meeting legal requirements without sacrificing your ideals.

[See What is unschooling?]

The term unschooling offers somewhat of a misnomer inasmuch as people tend to associate schooling with learning or education. However, let’s make clear that let’s make clear that unschooling does not imply unlearning or uneducating. Unschooling simply describes living and learning without the limitations of school. Let’s imagine a life of unlimited possibilities!

In the absence of school, what do children do? They play. They do what brings them joy. They do what calls to them. They do what they need to do to get from point A to point B, learning useful skills along the way.

The unschooling approach to life, in general, describes the way we learn naturally when left to pursue our own personal interests. As unschoolers, we own our interests–our passions, dreams, and goals–and also the responsibility for pursuing and attaining them. We respond to our desires. We go after our dreams with enthusiasm.

Unschoolers recognize that
We learn all the time;
All learning has value; and
We learn best by our own motivation, in our own ways.

Unschooling parents and their children live and learn together, helping each other, making discoveries, solving mysteries, and sharing adventures. Ready to have some fun?

Topics Include

• Natural learning
• Deschooling
• The learning environment
• Learning experiences
• Recordkeeping and legal requirements
• College and career
• A multitude of resources

For more info: Press Release (Examiner): Unschooling handbook on learning without school
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Buy on Amazon (also available Kindle edition)

You may also enjoy:
Homeschooling 101: How do you unschool?
Homeschooling 101: What is unschooling?
What are the Washington standards learning requirements?

For more books and supplies: Unschoolers' Bookstore

Why do we write these "misery memoirs"?

Why would anyone want to read about another person's horrible childhood?

One reason: Because our stories are bigger than ourselves.

I read other people's memoirs to feel less alone than I felt when I was growing up. I felt absolutely alone - cut off and different from the rest of humanity. For that reason, I wrote my own story to extend that same hand to others.

I also wrote my stories to put them into a form that would allow me to sort through my thoughts and feelings, identify and bring them to consciousness, explore them, and to see the bigger picture ~ my life is more than the abuse. For a long, long time I identified strongly with the victim role.

[See Child Abuse: How to Move On]

The healing process (escape from dysfunction) for abuse that occurs during childhood can follow a long, hard road. Many people never escape. They lead lives full of pain, mired in the past. However, those of us who keep seeking something that feels better can become freer and freer as we move forward into a happier life.

I wrote my story, in part, to release it. I also wrote it to show that one is not doomed to suffer until death, irreparably broken, or any of the other ways I once described myself.

I read memoirs to learn of the discoveries others have made along the healing path. People in active pursuit of a better experience have wisdom to offer others on the path. People who have experienced a lot of pain and have learned to move beyond it often want to help others to feel better, too. This becomes a calling.

[See Child Abuse Memoirs and Autobiographies]