#94 Charlotte Addison | Finding Freedom Through Unschooling

Charlotte Addison is among our favorite people: A fellow traveler, unschooler, and someone with whom we have co-lived for an extended period and more to come. 

Together with Charlotte, we delve into how unschooling and lifelong learning can redefine educational choices and personal growth. We challenge the idea that formal qualifications are the only markers of success. Instead, passion and real-world experiences can unlock doors to opportunities often reserved for those with degrees. This conversation is a testament to the magic of continuous learning through formal courses or self-directed pursuits and the importance of letting children explore life freely.

In a world full of societal norms and expectations, we ponder what it truly means to lead a life aligned with one's values. This episode is an invitation to reflect on parenting and lifestyle choices, embrace emotional and spiritual fulfillment over societal pressures, and cherish the ongoing journey of growth with gratitude for every shared moment.

🗓️ Recorded November 10th, 2024. 📍 Krakow, Poland

Follow Charlotte on IG: https://www.instagram.com/magickalhealingmama

Chapters

• 0:00 Nomadic Family
• 11:45 Unschooling and Lifelong Learning
• 26:58 Navigating Non-Linear Family Rhythms
• 39:23 Freedom Through Constraints
• 47:23 Awakening to Alternative Parenting Paths
• 52:08 Navigating Parenthood's Personal Journey
• 56:54 Emotional Growth Through Time

Transcript

00:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So today we're together with one of our favorite people. It's Charlotte Addison. First of all, thank you for joining us on our podcast. 

00:09 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
Thank you for asking me. 

00:11 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So, as we are a full-time traveling family, we often spend time and co-live with other families, and Charlotte and her families are one of the families we really love to stay together with. We have already spent one and a half months together, and inside the next year I think we will have lived together for four months, and it's a big joy. 

00:36 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
Yeah, and it's very new for us and it's worked really well. 

00:39 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah. 

00:40 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It came as a surprise, didn't it, that they were nice? No, it came as a surprise, didn't it? 

00:43 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
That they were nice. 

00:49 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
No, just that it would be this much. It's great when we meet a lot of great people while traveling, but sometimes you just find that perfect match where everyone and it's not about I mean, I'm not trying to put down all the other people we love, but in your family, your children and our children and us, the adults we just level so well and the co-living has been so easy and yeah, so it's quite overwhelming to get such great friends so fast. I mean literally I can't say literally, but yeah, I can. Three months ago we didn't know each other and now I feel like I've known you forever, yeah, so yeah, now we want everyone else to get to know you. 

01:39 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yes, and and, and the one more part of it is as world schoolers, full-time travelers. We are now in Krakow where we are attending a world school pop-up hub, and we actually brought two of your teams and we are very grateful because they are a big joy to hang out with and, yeah, we laugh a lot and read Shakespeare in the evening. And it brings me back to the first question a long go around, merry, go around before we get there, which is we kind of met each other but didn't have a lot of talks. Back in 2019, where your family and our family attended Lainey Liberty's World School Summit in 2019 in Granada, which is, I think, a life changing moment for many who was there. How did you actually end up there? 

02:34 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
Wow, yeah, that was a huge, huge pivot for us. So I am like naturally nomadic and never quite quite feel at home. I feel at home everywhere but never quite found home. If that makes any sense at all, I can make my well, yeah, I'm sure it does. I can make myself at home anywhere and I have done really, or we have done really successfully. Um, but we were, yeah, it's. 

03:02
It's almost hard to just talk about 2019 without like the prequel, but like the short story is that we had embarked on renting. We've moved in a similar area for quite a long time. We embarked on renting a house for a year and three months in the landlord said, by the way, we've sold to property developers. And like my heart sank and because I thought like, oh, maybe this is it, maybe this is where we'll put down roots and like build more of a community in a life. And the kids did have their little clubs they went to with their friends and, um, yeah, I was basically, from that point, searching for something else and I was looking for a bus. I kept, I almost bought like three American school buses and they never quite worked. I was just and I'd like drawn the plans out like, just, I was always searching for something and then I was like we should go traveling, we should do this. I was just always coming with different ideas. And then I don't know how Laney's uh meet up, houdini's meetup, came across my path. I'm in all of the Home, eddie, unschooling world schoolie groups. I'm sure it just appeared one day, and I think it wasn't until about the August, that I just said we're just going to go travelling, we're just going to leave and go travelling. And my husband Anthony was like, ok, like he is with all of my ideas, it just goes along with them all. 

04:26
Um, and yeah, and then we left mid-September and planned a few things, but the only real hard and fast plan we had was to be in Granada by I think it was like the 12th of October that year. Um, we hadn't even booked our accommodation. I booked it on the way from, like, valencia in the car and found our accommodation that way. Um, but it was a very, very, very pivotal, life-changing moment really. Yeah, I remember, I remember you guys very well, but we never fully had conversations. I remember Jesper with the pan drum and sitting in circle with you, cecilia, but yeah, just, we didn't. I just remember following you online since then and I know our friends are mutual and I was like Facebook friends with the comrades. I just followed your journey but yeah, that was a very pivotal moment in our lives and and what about the whole idea of homeschooling? 

05:31 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
so you're, you're older, 16, but what happened? What made you go down this route? 

05:38 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
okay. So yeah, they both of my older, two 15, 15 and 16, only a year apart. When I had a long story short again, I had a friend who had a Montessori school and there was only like 10 to 15 children on the books and I put Arabella, yeah, I put my daughter's name down and then Freddie arriving a year later when it came for the time for I don't think she'll mind me using her name, I'll ask her, but arabella, um, to go there my friend said, oh well, we don't have room for freddie next year. And I was just like, oh, that kind of I was like because I just saw this small little, I didn't, I didn't know anything about homeschool except from probably films and like the weird kids were homeschooled, like that was my perception of homeschooled kids from 90s films, probably, and yeah. So it just kind of threw a spanner in the works. I was just like, ok, what am I going to do? In the works I was just like, okay, what am I going to do? 

06:47
And Anthony's mum was a nursery school leader at a prep school, a private school in England, where they wear ties and blazers and little hats and bags and all of this stuff and I had no concept of what a school should or would look like. So she was like why don't you come and have a look around? And I, she was like we're very Montessori based. And da, da, da, da. And I was just like, okay, I mean, it looked, it just had toys. I just saw toys and play areas and small little groups within a larger group and I didn't know any different, to be honest. So I was just like, yeah, okay, um, and then, because it's the done thing, we tried to put them in the younger class before they would go with their nana, and there were tears. I tried to go back to university. There were tears and there was not wanting to go and I was just like, okay, this isn't right. So I was like I don't need to go back to university. It was a want to finish my degree, but I don't need to do it right now. So I was just like, okay, this isn't going to work, they're not happy. I didn't know what it was, but I was like this isn't going to work. And then, um, and then the following year it was Arabella going in with her grandmother, so she was obviously perfectly happy to go into that room, and it was a couple of mornings a week, um, yeah, and very long story short. Then the next year came and she wasn't going in with her grandmother but Freddie was. So Freddie was happy, arabella again wasn't, and I wasn't. 

08:11
I just had this like incongruence of like dropping my child with a basic stranger um, but in my head it was like but this is what everybody does, this is what you do. I went to school, anthony went to school, everyone I know went to school, um, but I she was crying. I was crying. There was like why, why am I doing this? But I didn't know that there was any other option, um, so that was like reception age, like four or five, um, and then we just ended up in the train of school for a couple of years, um, but we also ended up in the struggles that come with that as well, like the being forced into small boxes because it's the done thing, like you must fit into this round peg but you're square or whatever, and I kind of kept going along with it. 

09:00
But it was causing all of this friction. 

09:04
We had, yeah, just more friction at home of like well, I've got to force you to do these things because I'm being sent home a book that tells me you should be doing this, and then it was like extra lessons for one of them and extra this and like extra help, essentially to get them to the place where the schools thought they should be, and we kind of got stuck in that a little bit. 

09:30
And then I, after the birth of my third child, um, in 2014, about six, three to six months in I just I kind of looked out the window one day and I was like this is a very nice life, but it's not mine. I felt like I was living a slightly nicer version of like my mum's life, with maybe a little bit more connection and maybe a sort of like nicer relationship with my husband and my kids, and that kind of thing. I was like this isn't my life and I just set the ball. I was like, right, we're gonna take the kids out of school and move to Spain, and apart from that, I didn't have a plan, um, except taking them out of school, and we had two steps, all right very very hard you know which one to do first? 

10:15 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I love it. 

10:16 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
Yeah, I was just like because I lived in Spain as a teenager and I'd only moved back at 22 to meet Anthony or 21, and my mom was still there and I still had my friends there and my little community and I was just like, yeah, let's go to Spain. And that was kind of, uh, the beginning. 

10:33 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I'm curious, was it really looking out the window, literally sitting there with number three in your lab? 

10:41 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
and it was a literal moment of this is not my life, like it's very lovely. I'm sitting in a really nice detached house because isn't that's what everybody wants in England with a garden, and my kids are in private school and I drop them off at school and I go and exercise, and then I come home and I sit on the sofa with the baby after I've cleaned the house and everything's perfect and back in its place because there's no kids to play with it, and just waiting for them to come home all day and just like, well, what do I do now? And I was always the mum that loved the school holidays, because we would either travel or I'd take them to London, like we were always in the museums doing stuff or going to London or going to Spain to visit my mum or um, we were just never just at home. It was like we, I was living for holidays or living for weekends. And then I was just like, okay, why am I actually doing this? And um, yeah, and then Spain happened and I didn't really have a plan. 

11:35
When I got there, um, I remembered ordering a book on Amazon I can't actually remember which one, it was probably a John Holt-y type book and it came. You know they say, well, why don't you buy this bundle? And I bought a bundle of books and a couple of other books came and I read it and I was kind of introduced to like radical unschooling and it kind of just pivoted. Everything kind of went a bit left for a while and then brought it back a little bit, but um yeah. 

12:05 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think that works for most of us. You come from somewhere, if, if you, some, are lucky enough to be introduced to the concept of unschooling before they have children, maybe even as teenagers, maybe even they are unschooled and then can be a more stable thing. But well, I just noticed how you said I did this because this is the thing you do. You didn't. You knew about home education when we put our first child in school. We didn't even know it was a thing. I never heard about it. The school we chose and the life we chose was the freest thing I could even imagine, and the reason we're doing this podcast is to open that imagination for more people out there, because it's really too bad that you don't even know. And then, once we knew, things changed. Yeah, but then it goes a little. 

12:56
You know it's quite what it's quite, yeah, it's yeah, it's not just looking out the window and make a two-step plan, or at least when you arrive at the second step and you're walking into the unschooling. That's a very chaotic moment in life. 

13:15 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
Everything changes yeah well, we kind of arrived in Spain and I wasn't sure if I would put them in the Spanish system yet. And then I went to the local school and I learned a bit about the Spanish system. I was just like, oh, I'm not really sure I can put my kid not even to learn the language. I was like it's not really worth putting them through that because they're quite regimented and militant, and probably more so than the English system in many ways. Like the English system is more. It's a different, it's a different setup. It's kind of looks quite pretty on the outside, um, and I was so that I also tried to sit down. 

13:53
I bought workbooks, tried to sort of like let's do some workbooks, just met with like huge resistance and um, so then we just started like doing like they would paint, like play football, we'd do just anything. They're just going. We were near the beach, we were like near Marbella. We had like it was a perfect like city, beach living all rolled into one. It was a very nice thing and yeah, it was just the books kind of just completely pivoted it. But it was a very much like oh, we've been living like this, going to completely throw that out, throw all the rules out, everything out and it it was. It then took years to kind of find the the path that worked better for each child. I think, um, that came after because I have five now, but um, yeah, it's been a ride. 

14:48 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
How do you feel about some people who would probably look at it as she threw her education out the window? She didn't use it for anything because you didn't use it for the redesign job. It is still knowledge you have obtained, of course, but this whole personal um growing the idea of how life should be out the window with the education and all that, how had this worked for you? 

15:20 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
in my education or theirs, mine your life, yeah, yeah to be honest, I've never stopped learning, um, and even my sort of way into university was slightly different to other people. I didn't do a levels, which are normally a prerequisite, I just wrote a letter and explained my life experience. I've had quite, I had quite a huge life experience before the age of like 18. So at 21, I'd had an extra couple of years of a journey. I mean, it's more. It's different now that at 41, looking back at that but I'd done a lot or seen a lot or experienced a lot emotionally and mentally and probably spiritually as well. And I wrote about that and they interviewed me and I kind of have told the kids this as well, because they say you have to have A-levels to get into university. But I already proved that wrong, because they saw that I was articulate, they saw that I could write, they saw that I could explain a life experience and how it would help in a psychology degree and they let me into university and I did a lot of learning. 

16:30
I'd never really written an essay before I went to university but I taught myself because I had a deep desire to learn how to write essays and I wasn't the best at maths at school but I had to learn maths because I had to do statistics and all of that stuff. 

16:44
So I already felt like I had and I yeah, I didn't go back to my physical degree, but I never stopped attending courses that I wanted to learn. I did counseling courses, I did transactional analysis courses, I did various, I did yoga training. I've done so many things that, oh, if I want to learn something, I'll find the person. If I need to learn from a human, and go and take that, and or if I wanted to learn crochet, for instance, youtube taught me. So I feel like I have my journey alongside my kids has been learning what I wanted to learn, from whichever source I needed to learn it, wanted to learn from whichever source I needed to learn it, and maybe coming out with a certificate sometimes, and sometimes not just having the breadth of knowledge that I've, yeah, gathered. 

17:35
And there's always been a slight niggling, like, oh God, I didn't finish my degree, but it's probably with the outside societal pressure of like you need a piece of paper to prove that you have this knowledge or that knowledge. And, um, yeah, I'm. 

17:52 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I don't always now think that's true oh, I definitely have no clue where it is. I just realized recently. Oh, I wonder if I can like apply for a new copy. But if. I need it if someone asks for it, for proof that you know, I mean I'm, I don't know, I don't know what situation anyone would ask me for proof, but um, I actually just realized I don't know where it is and I do not have a digital copy that I know of having, which you know might have been smarter. 

18:31 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
Yeah. 

18:32 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, learning all the time. Was there in your question a little bit of the go out in the world and have a career kind of element, because Charlotte is answering just like I would you know I never stopped learning. I'm happy, I know knowledge, all the time was. Was it about? 

18:51 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
no, no, it's. It's and the question that I think it is this about uh, that you were on the path of going back to university, continue this life, which you, I think very, um, I really like the picture said a better version of my mom's life, a slightly nicer version, more connected on different levels, and and it made me think about my own one, where I'm like where am I on that level? I freed myself kind of young. I were going down the path. Everyone said I should, till I was 15, maybe, and then I wanted to make art and projects and film and my parents were like you need to at least have a high school degree. I took that and around 23,. I had a crisis and I was like, okay, maybe least have a high school degree. I took that and around 23 I had a crisis and I was like, okay, maybe I should go to university. And I ended up not doing it because I got a job in the media industry and have just worked ever since. 

19:56
Sometimes I have, um, but many years ago now I have looked back and I've been like, oh, could it have been cool to have one of these kind of papers. Uh, but my track record of life is proven enough and I'm turning 50 this month and a friend I talked with a friend who said that his friend said to him when he turned 50 it was, um said 50, no, no. His friend with the didgeridoo said to him yeah, he said when I turned 50 it was uh, said he's 50, no, no. His friend with the didgeridoo said to him yeah, he said when I turned 50. The good thing about that is you stop giving a fuck about what I'm doing I think I stopped giving a fuck a while ago. 

20:37 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Some of us do it happens a bit earlier for women, but men, men, men develop a little slower. 

20:45 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, maybe, but but it is excuse me but? But living a homeschool mom life? Uh, as both of you do, and and your husband work a lot from home, I work a lot from home. It's a very different life to what we have been brought up to looking at, and and I still sometimes consider if I'm good enough at it. Yet I still have these tick boxes and part of me is like maybe I should just chill even more and just enjoy life or spoons I love the spoons I've got. 

21:32 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
The collection is great for the listeners. 

21:34 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yes, we recently took up whittling yes, and we going into a space of talking about how it is to live a life that's different from everyone else. And do we some sort of a life that's different from everyone else and do we have some sort of doubt? Is that where you're aiming? 

22:10 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
at. It's the doubt, but it's also what made us it's difficult to. I will talk around it. I think all of us have grown up with parents going to work, uh, with an idea of uh kind of what life is, or we had this image of how you live a good life, that you, you get a career, a house or the detached house, as in uk, and then that is the thing what does end there with this perspective on life. 

22:48
um, one of the things I know I've been attracted to most of my life is the people who are like artists and stuff where, but it has also been with fear that they trusted life so much. I was standing in a fear space looking at them and thinking can you just like, go along, live your life, and then you make a project from time to time and do what you really love, and then go out there again? And that is me remembering back where I was not where I am now, but I think it is. For many people, this more free life we live is maybe scary. 

23:26 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, I definitely think it's scary and I think lots of people probably think I'm crazy. Oh, I know they definitely do, and I think also people have dropped away over the years as well. I think relationships change and even family relationships, I think, change and I think it's probably through fear as well, like their fear of how we're living might screw up the kids, but I know that, like the way that I was brought up massively screwed me up, and that was a very on the outside, like the kids in private school lovely big house, nice cars, um, but everything brushed under the carpet, emotions, never talked about secrets, shame, everything and um, and I think a part, a lot of the journey I'm not just going to say unschooling, because it's our life um, a lot of our life journey and with our children has for both of us I think I can speak for Anthony too has been an undoing of um, our stuff, if that like um along the road, um, because if you're, if you are with your children and your husband all the time, things are coming up all the time and sometimes it's not very easy to deal with them and it's like I can't deal with this. I'm going to bed, I'm gonna go and just like cocoon for a bit, because this is a lot. Um, that's a more recent thing. I've learned that I can do is just take a step out of life for a couple of hours if I need to. Um, but I think it's been an undoing of yeah, the stuff that we carried through or the stuff I carried through my life. 

25:13
Um, yeah, and I changed a lot with Anthony. Like he did work five days a week in London until we went traveling, our lives hugely pivoted in 2019. I was at home all day with the kids. I did all the cooking, the cleaning, the washing and then sort of as the children numbers went up and he worked at home more that the, the balance of life became a bit different and that's been a massive adjustment about of not really knowing. It's just been a bit of a. Yeah, there's been lots of adjustments over the last four years, with all the of the world stuff that happened and it's been a. It's been lots of adjustments over the last four years with all the world stuff that happened and it's been a. It's been a different kind of time. 

25:55 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, I don't really know. I find it really hard to understand. Or maybe I do understand, but when I look at how our life could have been, with four kids in school and you and I going off to each an office every day and and you know we would have paid off the mortgage by now and I just with the life we do live, I have a hard time understanding how people would have the time to do those things. Because the importance of the things we do instead, the things that fill up our life, the thousands and thousands of hours of conversations we have with our children, and all the little things, all the little observations, the hugs, and all the little things, all the little observations, the hugs, the little poems we read, the I don't know making the bed and I don't know. All the and the big things, the adventures, the oh, let's go look at that bridge or cathedral or piece of art. They are so important. They are so important. They are such a huge part of being and becoming what we want to be and who we want to become, and filling up the cup of life with, I don't know, the golden liquid of what's meaningful. And I see how, if I had that structure, you know you're going here and I'm going there, and then we have to take the there's the dinner and you know, and the yoga class and your violin lessons, and there wouldn't be any space to realize how important the other things are. 

27:45
And so, yeah, for the first five, maybe seven years years, I would have frequent days of deep despair, of doubt and and fear that we had just screwed up our children's lives and I lost my opportunity to ever have a career and all these things, and too dependent on my husband and all the things. Now I'm completely beyond it and I'm actually bled and and sad of how much life is being lost into this mainstream idea that I had it, just like you. I had it in my mind, this is how you do. So that's what I do. I'll do it in a feminist way and I'll do it in a free way, and I'll do it in a hippie way, but I'm still doing it. And until I realized, oh, I'm doing the same thing, I'm just tweaking a little, I'm painting it colorful, but it's still shit. 

28:37 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah. 

28:37 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
Yeah. 

28:39 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
What Cecilia said made me think about two things. One is a little math, which is it is not like we get exactly the double amount of time with our kids, uh, but because there's weekends but but we get at least eight hours more per day, uh, than than many people with their children while they're growing up, while they're going through this enormous experience of becoming a grown-up, a young adult, and I mean it is almost double amount of time if you also take in extracurricular stuff, and it's all the good hours and it's all the good hours. 

29:23
It's just a wild gift to give yourself to have so much time together with your children, and I think that was the other thing I came to think about. One of the reasons it was doable, and it was a thing I have questioned sometimes, is the circularity of life. But the how can I say the idea that the week resets life, the idea that a day resets. The fun way of looking at it is in my internal calorie intake. I've like it is only 24 hours. Then the next day, if I ate like too much calories yesterday, it's when I start. The day after it's kind of on zero. Then I can start all over. 

30:15
But life is linear and and I know you love the moons and circles so I'm like actually no, no, but that's why I am. I think we are cheating ourselves with some of the circular thinking that life repeats Monday to Friday and then we like go to work Monday and that's how I think that people can actually stand this life of oven. So there's something in the circular motion where we cheat ourselves. But then there's also we live on a planet that spins. There's the moon and everything. So I'm a little schizophrenic about how I feel about, about it, and I would open up the ball for, for thoughts from your side on this um, yeah, um, yeah, I I, I understand. 

31:04 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
I don't see that as cyclical. Yeah, I understand, I don't see that as cyclical. The week, I know the week goes from Monday to Friday and then you have the weekend. I get the kind of reset that people will experience. Oh, we get our kids back at the weekend if they're not playing sport or they're not going to their friends' houses, because by the time they're what 12 or 13, mainstream kids generally want to be friends houses, because by the time they're what 12 or 13 mainstream kids generally want to be like with their mates all the time rather than in the family home. That's kind of what I witnessed. 

31:36
Like this whole, like teenagers don't want to be around their parents, which I don't experience. That. I mean, I know my kids are with you now, but that's just because they've got a like amazing opportunity to experience the world. But if we could be there to get away from the amazing? No, I'm aware of that and that's why I make that point. Like, we have the opportunity to send them because, like our younger kids do have clubs and commitments here, which is another conversation. It's it can be a bit of a tie at times, but I see that as quite a linear week, but it's it's more like a conveyor belt, I think there's just mold into the next and um, yeah, I don't know if I'm answering this right like um. 

32:21 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I'm not sure what the question is either yeah, if I can go short. I know that we're talking a lot today. I think your problem is not linear versus circular. The problem is the idea of reset. Nothing resets. 

32:38 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It's all one flow that we use the weeks and the weekends. Has this inbuilt? Oh, there's a reset and I start over on Monday and then I can change up, because it's a new circle and I think it's a lie. 

32:56 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
Yeah, I suppose if you're living a more mainstream life, like the kids are at school all week, you're at work all week, you all get together at the weekend and then it's like, oh, that's over, we're going to go back to Monday again. And that's not the same in our lives, like the weekends have a slight little bit of difference for us just because Anthony isn't actually on his phone working, whereas Monday to Friday he's more inclined to be needing to be more working if he's got work on. That's kind of like the the thing that I have to adjust to more yeah, not so much, but yeah yeah, and it's just because his work is more. 

33:37
It is only really Monday to Friday, so there's just like a slight. It's not actually a shift that the kids notice. It's I notice with him being more here because his mind isn't with work like that's just. That's the shift. It's an energetic shift. It's not a physical one, because he is here pretty much every day unless he has a couple of days in London. So, um, it's a different thing. 

34:00
But um, yeah, we have a different rhythm than some unschoolers because my one of my younger children, as you know, goes to like a forest school three days a week, which has been a huge adjustment and I'm kind of not looking forward to tomorrow because it means we have to get up at a specific time and then drop her off and then pick her up and it has that slight. Uh, it's not school when she's there, but the energy that I feel is a little bit like that school run of the dropping and then collecting my child and. But I have no qualms about who she's with and if she doesn't want to go, she doesn't go and if the like the person who runs it is the most in line with my thinking that I would ever want someone to be. If my child's going to be spending quite a few hours a day in a forest building fires and playing with mud like it's a, it's a cool thing, but it is, it is a um, it's a very different thing. 

35:00
None of my kids, since we left the system, like 10 years ago, have done that and it's been a huge, huge adjustment of like for everybody, I think, because it has been like, oh no, we can't do that because she's there and the same with you know, two of my girls do cheating, which is so out of what I um enjoy, but they do and I have that, that balance between they love it and get so much from it, but I feel trapped by their, by having to commit to it and it's and I think that's part of what the school was I enjoy the freedom of if I want to go somewhere, I'll just go, and that's what we've had for until nearly two years ago. 

35:47
For eight years it was just like apart from the lockdowns, but it was just like if I want to go somewhere, I'm just going to go, I'm going to move house, I'm going to move countries, or I'm going to just like, oh, where do you want to go? Oh, we'll go there. And it's like there's been a shift in the last couple of years. But we have also found community. For the younger ones and, and obviously the older ones, it's been different and I've had to send them to late, like my daughter went to Laney to a a teen retreat, world schoolie thing, and met some of the kids who are now in Poland with her. So there's this like small community of world schoolers that they're now tapping into. 

36:26
And Freddie obviously wanted to go to Heff and then met you guys and that's how we're here now and it's he. Our lives are changing through his connections and I just that's just how I love life to work that, oh, we want to experience something. We don't actually know what's going to come out of the choice that we make. We're just directed towards something and then maybe our whole lives change, which happened in July or August, when you saw Freddie um, and just said, can we come? And I was like, yeah, let's do it. 

37:00 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
We didn't know, anthony, he said it first. 

37:04 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
I know, and he wants everybody to know that too. He's like I did it Because I'm always like, I'll plan it. I make decisions and everything we do is because of me. And he was like, no, but I told them they could come if they wanted to. You did, you did. 

37:20 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
You drove us away from Scotland. 

37:22 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
Yeah, and that's been a huge pivot. It's been such a huge like who knew that this was going to happen? And my kids would then be with you, and then we'd be going on and doing the next stuff we're doing around Christmas. Like no one can plan that the thing is the difference. 

37:38 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So we're all freedom. People, you know, try to constrain me and I or I I do something violent or cruel or you know. But when I in my mind think something is a is a lot is like holding me back, like you could think about the forest school or something. Even for us it's hard to commit something in our calendar and say we're going there that week and now I'm buying the ticket and I'm promising people I'll be there. I'm like, oh, but what about all the other places I could have gone. But I think the freedom that comes inside constraints is quite interesting. 

38:22
I remember when I had my first child. I was a single mom. I was 23 years old and and none of my equal age friends had children or were anywhere near having children and they were like you're losing all your freedom. And when I had my child, I was so clear on who was missing out and it wasn't me. There were so many options for meaningfulness and joy and and finding myself and part and and you know, seeing things clearly spiritual life. That came with having a child, that came with making a choice that stopped me from 10 000 other things, and so is, in a way for a school and so is, in a way, booking a place and deciding. I'm spending two months with these people in andalusia and I could. 

39:17
The plan was to be in japan, which sounds quite more adventure, wise, interesting, as I've been to spain quite a lot already. But it's just so interesting how the basic idea of freedom is to leave all the doors open, not realizing that sometimes, when we pass through a door, way more interesting and nourishing and amazing options are there. They are better, they are not as many, but they are better. And and yeah, that's what happened with with Anthony inviting us and we we would. I would probably have planned to stay more than five days in Scotland, but I decided to cut that short because this had a I could feel, a spiritual pull. I could feel this is what we're doing, and the kids were very much. This is what we're doing. So, yeah, it's just. I think we have to tweak that. Even us freedom people I know that there are lots of listeners who have the same freedom urge. Sometimes committing into constraints is freedom, which is weird. 

40:27 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
Yeah, but sometimes it's about growth, though, like there's growth in the constraints of like well, why am I feeling a certain way? And I think there's also growth in commitment which, when we moved here, for me it was about permitting to an everyday life which I've struggled letting go of like adventure, but trying to then find the things that fulfill me within that everyday, committed life, like building community. Because, circling back to where we started, like why did we go? Why did I go? Or why did we choose to go to Granada, it's because I was looking for community, I was looking for home, I was looking and I know home is always within me, which is why I can feel at home absolutely anywhere. I can take my little things and and my kids have always said that, oh, you make something feel like home straight away, and that's, I think, a gift. I love to make things feel homely, and for other people too, um, but I've always been searching for community and belonging, and, and now I've I'm half like split between like I love this settled community, but I'm also I found community with you guys now, which is a new thing, and that is a going to be a more transient thing, because we're not going to be together all the time, but you're out there and it's like, oh, we're going to have, we're going to travel more to see you and maybe send our kids to certain places to see you guys, like we are now, and it's, but it is the. 

41:56
I follow an astrologer in Australia called Tiani and she talks about the magic and the mundane and I can struggle with that but also find complete like an utter beauty in that, like if I'm in the right space. Oh, I love doing the cooking and making the bed and hanging out the washing, but sometimes it can be like I need more than just making the bed and doing the washing and I want to go to like the other side of the world. But then it's like, well, why do I want to go to the other side of the world? What am I maybe trying to avoid? That's inside of me and that's been a big thing in my whole life, like if I can go on adventure or maybe I'm gonna feel better over there or doing that thing or with those people, rather than just sitting with my emotions that come up in the everyday, mundane, sometimes exciting life, if that makes any sense makes a lot of sense and it points to one of the one of my unschooling kind of mantras the question everything. 

43:00 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, if you go to the other side of the world, you need to ask the question why do I want that? And sometimes it's because you have that traveler's adventurous, nomadic urge to see what's behind the horizon, which is sometimes what it is. And sometimes it's because you think you feel better in another place, or you're running from something, or you're looking for something that might be actually, um, in your local forest. You don't have to fly to the other side of the planet. So just the questioning and the level of reflection I think also is the reason we were such great family matches, because we kind of have those kind of thoughts in our minds a lot. 

43:45 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, I'm going back to the opening to John holt or one of the other books, um, and maybe a step further back, which is um when, when I look at the life we lived, we had our two youngest in in a world of um, kindergarten. Then two youngest, yeah, our then two youngest in a Waldorf kindergarten Our then two youngest. 

44:10
Yeah, our then two youngest and our oldest was in like a private school. That was very free and wonderful. And at some point it begins to crack, you know, and I'm considering now if what were the signs for us. I remember delivering Storm and Silke to the kindergarten, taking off their fingers from my arm and saying go in there. And the person in there, the leader in there, saying, oh, if you leave fast, then they stop crying very early. 

44:51
And back then and this, I think, is what I wanted to talk about is all the self-lying, self-programming I went through to make myself feel oh yeah, it's right, I just need to leave, then they won't cry where now I'm at. But you don't want kids that don't feel their emotions, jesper. And why are you leaving them there? They're crying for a reason. Why do you not want to be together with your children? But I lived that life. I made those change. I changed the reality of what was actually there to make myself believe that what I did was okay. Did you went through a period of this, or did you see the scratches in the surface? Or was it more sitting and looking out the window and thinking, hey, what is happening? Why should I? 

45:48 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
um, I think we got lost in school for a couple of years. I'm not gonna lie, like right, I described that beginning bit of they were happy to go to Nana because they just felt like they were going to Nana at first a year apart. Um, and then, to be honest, by by the time Freddie had gone through Nana he was actually okay, like he loves being around his peers he's that kind of kid a little bit like um Leela, like they love that yeah, the Piers thing and they always have, which is, yeah, freddie kept his same friends from Granada all the way through to now and no one else really did in my family. So he kind of just went through. Not too, there was nothing really rocking the boat. It was Arabella. That was very much like, I think, trying to show me like this is wrong. You're leaving me with wrong people and I. 

46:48
I had a kind of um, I suppose, like a spiritual mentor, a bit like a surrogate father person that I'd met somewhere along my life who would come and stay every now and again from Scotland. Super spiritual guy would like push my buttons of um like we. We tried in the beginning like the naughty step stuff with kids. I had no idea on parenting. So and he once saw me do it to Arabella and was like you go sit on the step, see how you feel, and like I never, ever did it ever again. He was that kind of teacher. He was like experience what you're trying to put your kid through, and then like, if you still want to do it, do it. And he checked. So he came and dropped um Arabella at school with me one day and saw Arabella sort of like doing that whole, like deer in headlights, not feeling safe, and then I was just crying and crying and crying and he was it. He, he was the first person that taught me to question everything. But I didn't know there was another option. So I was, I was like trapped in this cycle, which I suppose going back to what you were saying about that cycle of the every week and then getting them back again at the weekend. I was trapped in school. 

47:56
I didn't know there was another option, and everybody around me I was very young, like you know, I was 24. When I had a rubella, so my peer, my friends, hadn't had kids. Even when my kids were at school, they hadn't really started having kids yet. So everyone at the school was at least seven plus years older than me and so I was the young, I was having my 30th birthday when they were having their 40th birthdays. 

48:21
It was a very strange thing, but in a weird way I felt like I was accomplished because the life that I'd been brought up in if your children went to private school and you had a four-wheel drive car and like you lived in a specific house, you were successful and you were married like that was success. So I still had this view of success, successful life being like children, school, the holidays every now and again, and it all being related to money. There was nothing about emotional maturity or like spiritual life or. But then I think the looking like my, my third birth changed me. I had my first home birth after trying to have two more and she, she shook me up, she like shook up our lives. And then I had the like out the window thing, not too far from where we're living here, and it was just like this is not my life. So it was. Then it was like, well, how do I change it? And then I think I got. 

49:19
I. I kind of went mainstream, kind of went on a spiritual journey, had kids got trapped in the mainstream and then woke up from it again and came back to question everything. Basically, do what you want, try not to give a shit about what anybody else is thinking, and I haven't really looked back from that point. And um, and Anthony's come along for the ride. Um, because it seems a lot in our circles that the women are leading the revolution of parenting and traveling and childrening and luckily we're supported by these dudes that just crack on with it yeah oh yes, yeah, I mean this, can this whole? 

50:11 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
where's the freedom? Where's the drive? Why do we do this? Do we give a fuck? How did it change? 

50:23
It's a very interesting, very tangled theme of how to be in this life when we have all the basically obligations we that come with having children, but are also on a personal journey and I often say I feel like I'm running alongside a train, the train is just I can't keep up with the demands on me. 

51:00
I have to be so smart, I have to be so strong, I have to be so spiritual, powerful, I have to be so present, and that train is just going and when you think about it, it's more than one train, not necessarily going in the same direction, and we just have to try to keep up. And I find that, well, it is what it is. Most days I'm okay. Most days, I'm just accepting that I'll never be sufficient, it will never be enough. I can never do it with a gold star and and I can just, yeah, try to accept the framework and try to question things and try to not spend my time being tangled up in things that don't matter, um, which sometimes happens. I think, in a way, that's what we've talked about today how to untangle ourselves from that and and stay in that space and just keep going. See if we can keep up with that train. At least it's our train. 

52:12 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
It's not mainstream train, it's yeah, and the train, and maybe each child's train as well that what they want and I think, from witnessing your children and my children and them all together as well, was such a beautiful thing and just seeing that just and I've listened to others of your podcast and I think the theme that I hear through it is like providing that environment for children so they can do the things that they want and feel the things that they want, and be heard or be seen and go down paths that aren't available to them If they are trapped in that everyday mainstream life, like they can explore different avenues and like go traveling or stay at home or like spend time with another family and just the learning that my older team will be getting from just living with another family without their parents for a month. 

53:10
We've never done that before but like I'm not going to know the learning for years and years. That's just a life experience and I think the environment that they all have is the making of whatever they will choose to become whenever they become. But they are already what they are now and I think that's the difference between mainstream and non-mainstream. I'm not waiting for them to become who they are. They are who they are and it's just a journey. I think, like mine is too like an unfolding, and I'm able to do that alongside them because they are who they are too, if that's making any total sense that makes total sense. 

53:52 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
And also, I mean, equally, we can talk about the learning that comes from going with another family away for a month to a different country. 

54:00
But I know that, yeah, that's part of it, but the main part is the fun we're having right now. That you know, yeah, life is about living now, not living for the exam for the future, for whatever evaluation or job you could have later, and yeah, that's for me, that's the balance. Of course, we have to think about that. We have a future not burn all of our money today or whatever, but in a way, what we and I am doing things with purpose, thinking about. I mean, I plan to live another 50 years, so, and I hope that my children will live even longer than that, and they have to do things to make decisions that will affect their future. But at the same time, I think the most important thing is to fill up the moment and be able to be present in the moment and in that moment it is a lot of fun To have your teens with us. Thank you for letting, thank you for having me. 

55:05 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
When I look at your children and our children. Envy is the wrong word, but I see that some of the things I am working with still To delay to grow through a master and I get all emotional when I think about it because that is the true value, with the time we can give them. In those super strange and formative years that the teens are, they have time. Time I didn't have because I had so much I had going on. I was like swimming three times a week. I went to high school, I was had a big hobby and, man, there was no time to actually grow. And I'm turning 50, as I said, and I'm like some of the stuff I'm learning now I'm just like, oh, fuck it, they already know that's what's amazing about this life that we're able to whatever we have indirectly done for them. 

56:15 - Charlotte Addison (Guest)
They are growing emotionally as humans in a way that I never could and they will surpass us if they haven't done already in their like, spiritual, emotional lives, because they have the space to do that, and that, to me, is the sole reason for living like this. Doesn't matter if they like like work in a cafe or fix cars or do whatever they do. It's the emotional life that I was not able to mature and deal with my shit until still doing it now, like you said, but they can deal with things in real time in relationship with other humans. That is a. I think it's a gift, like that is beautiful to experience. 

56:56 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It was wonderful to have you on our podcast and it will be the first of hopefully many more of these talks also besides just you and us, that you also can share with other people. Thanks a lot for being yeah, thank you, thank you.