Tag Archives: recovery

Isn’t this why we don’t send our homeschooled kids to public school?

I was four years old. We were visiting my dad’s childhood home in New York, and we went to the house of an elderly lady who used to be his neighbor. She had a caretaker, a single mom homeschooling her son, who was around my age. My favorite TV show was Barney the Dinosaur, myContinueContinue reading “Isn’t this why we don’t send our homeschooled kids to public school?”

How ‘The Village’ illustrates isolated, fear-based homeschooling

I grew up in the Village. The first time I watched M. Night Shyamalan’s 2004 film, my head hurt and one of my roommates asked me if I was okay. I didn’t have words. Sometimes I find those books, those films that resonate so strongly with my own experience, that the bittersweet rush of knowingContinueContinue reading “How ‘The Village’ illustrates isolated, fear-based homeschooling”

Purity Culture isn’t just a Christian thing

I spent my teenage years immersed in purity culture, in both evangelical and fundamentalist Christian circles. If you were homeschooled, went to youth group, or wore a purity ring, you probably know what I’m talking about. Purity culture was an ideology, a movement complete with books like Dannah Gresh’s Secret Keeper, promoted in concerts by Christian artistsContinueContinue reading “Purity Culture isn’t just a Christian thing”

How gender roles affect discussion groups in churches

So I moved back to my hometown and I started going back to my very first church. I haven’t gone there since I was 10 years old, and there’s such a blending of nostalgia and the now, and it’s wonderful and healing for me. I feel safe in this place, so old and new allContinueContinue reading “How gender roles affect discussion groups in churches”

Sometimes I realize I’ve been lied to: Revisiting narratives we tell ourselves about terrorism + extremism

I visited the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial in September 2015. Do you ever still feel a nauseating shock when you realize you’ve been lied to? I know many of us have expressed feeling this when we got out of homeschool-ville and fundamentalist Christianity in one way or another. I visited the Oklahoma City bombing memorialContinueContinue reading “Sometimes I realize I’ve been lied to: Revisiting narratives we tell ourselves about terrorism + extremism”