Education!

The past few weeks have been a real lesson for us in the Knixter household!

We've definitely been through a period of mourning for the loss of our friend Lin, and, in my case especially, this has resulted in losing my way a little and finding myself eating unhealthily, not meditating like I want to, getting angry and worried about a whole range of things. I've also been suffering with a knee problem which has meant my physical health has not been where I want it to be, and has made me a bit more aware of how I need to focus on my diet and moderate what I am eating and drinking to lose the weight that I need to to be healthier and happier.

It's one of the easiest things to fall into bad habits when you are experiencing upsetting or distressing moments in life, and it's easy to find some form of comfort in those things, despite how bad they are for your health.

Thankfully I've been able to take the time to rest and recuperate, and reflect on the decisions that have been made, and what I can do better next time to try not to fall into bad habits again, and what I can do in the here and now to fix and heal from any physical (or mental) troubles.

Life is a constant lesson of mistakes and suffering, and learning from those lessons to make them happen less often, living a life free of anger and worry, and full of love and compassion for yourself and others.

I've always believed that everyone is both a teacher and a student - even those people who are great teachers to others study, and learn from other teachers, as well of course, from the greatest teacher of all - life itself.

The Knixter household has had a rather big change - we have decided to home educate our daughter Freya. After experiencing a year of home education with our eldest son Matthew, we knew that for Freya, if she wanted to, we would look into home educating her if she was young enough and her education was already in a good place, which has very much been the case for the last couple of years, well ahead for her age in both Maths and reading.

She expressed a desire over the most recent summer holidays to be home educated, and so we decided to go for it.

The home education community is really big in Birmingham and we have our pick of where to go to meet up with children of all ages to really give her the variety of activities and social interactions that needs and that we feel she can really get the most out of.

Education is also really important for us, so as well as a good amount of weekly outdoors activities, we will be reading and writing daily, cooking, baking, bushcraft, fire-lighting, cleaning, washing, ironing, meditating, modelling, art, working through history projects on the Egyptians, Romans, Vikings... trips to science and space museums etc. Life skills that will help her grow as a person, whilst maintaining a high level of the essentials, like reading (we are big readers at Knixter!)

For me, the themes of the past few weeks have been about the lessons of grieving, identifying bad habits that have crept in, keeping up with self-care and ensuring that we don't give up on our dreams and aspirations, even when challenged and confronted with what could be viewed as an obstacle.

I will go into some of the daily habits and routines that I often use so that I am able to return to a state of inquiry and reflection, even after periods of 'disconnection', in future blogs.