Weekend with Naomi Aldort

I'm back from a wonderful weekend submerged in unschooling and most importantly lectures with Naomi Aldort. She has written many articles for Mothering Magazine and has written Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves. A book teaching how to question our thoughts, our stories that hold us back from treating our children with compassion and respect. I feel I've just come out of intense therapy. I am learning how to accept myself and get rid of the shoulds that I tell myself and understand who I am today not yesterday or tomorrow. For example, the last post I felt I needed friends in my life that share my intersts and belief system. The truth is I have a few and what I don't have I don't need at this time or I would be out there hustling to get more. The truth is I don't try and I'm honestly not that social and there is nothing wrong with that until I make something wrong with that. In our society being a mingler, a social butterfly is celebrated and valued, I have always felt that is what I should be, and there is a problem or something wrong with me when I am not, which is most of the time. My thoughts make me miserable not the truth. This has affected my daughter, she says she is so sad she doesn't have friends and how she wants a friend her own size, where does this come from? ME. She has heard me say this about myself and has felt my sadness. She has friends down the street and they do come over. They are a bit older, what's wrong with that? Do toddlers of the same age really play that well together anyway? Not really. Think about it. Do they understand or want to share? Do they get frustrated easily? I'm not saying they shouldn't play together, I'm saying there's nothing wrong with having older or younger friends either. And this is true for me as well, should all my friends be a clone of me? NO! and none of us are exactly the same anyway. What would be fun about that? I was creating a sense of loss or sadness in a place, the friendship department, where it didn't need to be, I felt I should be something I'm not which simply isn't living in reality.
And in the end it's all about ME.

Here's a few more layers to the painting. I've started 2 more of these and this will be a set. BTW not sure where I'm going with these, I'm just enjoying the process without a preconcieved outcome.