The master doesn’t talk. She acts. When her work is done the people say, ‘Amazing. We did it. All by ourselves.’ - Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Meet my friend,
. We originally connected via substack and then in person whilst her family spent time down on the Peninsula. Our daughters, who are similar ages, hit it off instantaneously and in truth so did Nicola and I. This was prior to their move to the mid-north coast of New South Wales where they now call home, but Nicola’s story takes us on journey from Melbourne to Byron Bay, Vanuatu to Far North Tropical Queensland. Hers is a story of profound loss and grief, of spirituality and discipline, of wanting to be the person to teach her daughter to read and of being deeply connected to the natural world.This is episode 40 of Australian Homeschool Stories, Nicola’s story.
Summary:
Nicola, her husband Roger and their two girls aged 7 and 9 months were previously living in Vanuatu in an eco-village in the depths of the rainforest about as far away from contemporary civilisation as you can get. It was here they were aspiring to live close to and in harmony with nature.
In 2021, tragedy struck their family, losing their son Raphael at just 16 months old.
“We're grieving. We're in a state of intense emotionality. We spend time in nature. We do little things every day to make our days meaningful. This is the sound that the letter A makes. This is how we harvest fruit. So whilst dealing as a family with the intensity of this grief, we at the same time took on the disciplines of learning. Learning about ourselves and showing Rosie through our own example what it is to be attuned to very intense states of consciousness and emotionality and how the world really works.”
When they fell pregnant with their youngest daughter, they chose to return to Australia. It is here where they have found their home on 236 acres of forest in the mid-north coast of New South Wales. This is a place where they plan to grow a space for self-realization, higher consciousness and meditation.
“We have a gorgeous garden growing and a house crafted out of wood and stone, wood imbued with beauty on many different levels and so this is the situation that we've arrived in where we live and we learn and we grow.”
Nicola grew up in Melbourne, right in the thick of the city, opposite the MCG. Hers was a very conventional 90s upbringing, being upper middle class and having two professional parents. She was sent to an all-girls school, with a competitive, academic environment in which she excelled at English and Languages.
The only thing she ever wanted to do was study English Literature at the University of Melbourne. It was here that her studies centred around English and Russian literature, Milton and Dostoevsky.
“I think the main fruit of my university years was writing and publishing a novel, which I did at 25, and that in the context of my intellectual development was probably the peak, but I did experience a number of severe burnouts along the way, which led to a spiritual awakening, which led me to abandon completely the sphere of conventional academia.”
“There came a point where academia ceased to hold an intellectual interest for me because it didn't encompass the more direct truths that began to emerge in spiritual practice.”
Nicola recalls her journey escaping Melbourne for Northern New South Wales, where she met Roger and together they lived in an Ashram, a place dedicated to meditation, for a number of years.
“And from that point, I got sick of people and I wanted to go as far away from them as possible. We happened to meet someone who had been part of the eco-village in Espiritu Santo. And I was fascinated by it. And the first chance I took, I just, I went over there. I lived in the forest and ate lots of fruit and meditated by the river a lot.”
When their eldest daughter Rosie was born they were living with a home birthing, homeschooling family and they provided a template for a different way of life.
“We didn't have to look very far for inspiration… they were really instrumental to a lot of the decisions that we made in establishing the culture of our family.”
“I knew when Rosie was still a baby, very deeply, that I wanted to be the one to teach her to read. That was the start. From that point, I looked into the different ideologies, modes and methods of homeschooling from unschooling to classical and Charlotte Mason. I found the approach that worked for me is academically classical but with a lot of presence in nature, an overall context of spiritual practice and the discipline of meditation too.”
Nicola’s shares the story of wanting to teach Rosie to read but not knowing how.
“I hit upon the well-trained mind and the approach of just saturating in language and ideas from a younger age, just made complete sense to me.”
If anyone who's listening has ever been through a big loss, you lose yourself. You lose yourself. You don't have a self anymore when you're in a state of bereavement and when you're caring for a young child you have to come together as a person for the child. You have to show up as a parent. You have to do small things. And this mirrors the process of learning how to read.
“As I was learning how to be a person again, in our first year of the bereavement, I was teaching Rosie her letters. When it's impossible to do anything else, you can teach a child something.”
While she was four, she was five and she was six, it was every day, there was a little bit of reading. And because it's very hard for children to settle into that reading mindset, it has to be a daily discipline. It really has to have something of a military approach about it, because as a parent, you can see the whole picture. You can see what will unlock for the child when the child knows how to read you know that there's something really sweet for them at the end of all the struggle.
“I think when a child begins to explore their own agency particularly in something like reading, then the leaps start to drive themselves.”
Nicola believes the effort that you make and the discipline that you put into the day-to-day practices are important as a parent. But you also have to give enough space for a child to take leaps on their own.
When you allow that space, a child will take a leap because the child is starting to realise their own agency.
“I think that’s a really important theme in homeschooling: how we cultivate a child's willingness to learn and agency as a learner.”
Just being homeschoolers has completely changed their social framework as a family because it's so entrenched in their culture and way of doing things.
“Everywhere we've lived, in four different places in the last year, we've found our connection in our community with other families who are choosing to educate at home as well. We’ve found such a breadth and depth of connections are possible.”
Nicola talks us through a typical day of home education in their family at present, beginning with an early start, focusing in depth on two subjects, allowing for flexibility and flow and heading outdoors for the afternoon.
“The garden is an education in and of itself. So just being there is a vital education for everyone. It doesn't matter what we're doing as long as we're there together.”
Food costs a lot these days and as homeschoolers what we have is a wealth of time.
Nicola and her family volunteer at a local organic farm for tasks like weeding and pruning, in exchange for veggies and she highly recommends others seek out similar opportunities in their local communities.
“Who knows what the future holds? What I know is that for the time being, I think what we can create is a culture for the family that is wholesome, that is sustainable, and that really does offer that antidote to the meaninglessness that's out there. I think that's what Roger and I continue to emphasize in how we live and the choices that we make and how we structure our lives as well, that meaning is here.”
“Nature is our teacher and I like the idea that there's always a point that we can put the books down and just be present with what is.”
Home We Homeschool:
invites home educating families from all over the world to share a day in the life of their homeschooling lives - the highs, the lows, the magnificent and the mundane. If you are curious to read stories about the nitty gritty, ins and outs of homeschooling from all walks of life, ages and stages, than you will find a treasure trove to trawl through at How We Homeschool.
Dive Deeper:
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer
Connect:
Substack - Surrender Now
This podcast is recorded on the lands of the Bunurong people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. This always was, always will be aboriginal land.
Original Music by Daniel Garrood @garroodcomposer
Listen on Spotify here
Australian Homeschool Stories the podcast can be heard on all major podcast streaming platforms.
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