The Menstruality Podcast - 95. How Cycle Awareness Unschools and Restores Your Creativity (Lucy AikenRead)

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Six years ago dedicated imperfectionist and mushroom-foraging witch of business, Lucy Aitken Read moved her family from South London, UK to a yurt in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand where they share their off grid farm with another family and are all unschooling their kids. She now writes and teaches about sustainable living, attachment parenting and living a life without school on her blog, youtube channel and in her courses.Lucy is also passionate about cycle awareness and today we’re talking about how intimacy to our cycles is the best possible foundational for anything we’re creating, why we all need to be more mammal, and how to free ourselves from the structures that hold us back from creatively expressing ourselves - aka how we can each unschool our creativity.We explore:The power of play, making mistakes and detaching from outcomes when it comes to embodying our creative flow (and how Lucy’s unschooled kids have taught her new ways to have fun and follow her instincts).The mini-death of menstruation and what it teaches us about surrendering to the creative process. The three steps to unschooling our creativity, and what becomes possible creatively when we unfurl out from the shape that institutionalised education shaped us and our thoughts into.---Join our free webinar: How Menstruality Can Teach You to Live a Wildly Creative Life on July 12th - www.redschool.net/creativity---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyLucy Aitkin: @lucy_aitkenread - https://www.instagram.com/lucy_aitkenread

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here, for listening. It's been really great to hear from many of you in response to our request for your creative questions and challenges and I'm just loving being in this conversation with you, more about that later. So today's episode is the second in our summer creativity series where Alexandra and

Sharni will be exploring the creative cycle teachings which have emerged from years of menstrual cycle awareness and have held them personally through the creation of Red School and the writing of both of their books and so many other things. And the series is also going to include special guests who are creating all kinds of brilliant things in a cyclical way. And today's the first guest episode and it's for you if you're looking to unleash your creativity and play more. So our guest today is Lucy Aitken-Reed. Six years ago this dedicated imperfectionist and mushroom foraging witch of business moved her family from South London in the UK to a yurt in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand where they share their off-grid farm with another family

and they are all unschooling their kids. She now writes and teaches about sustainable living, attachment parenting and living a life without school on her blog and YouTube channel and in her courses and Lucy's also very passionate about cycle awareness and today we talk about how intimacy with our cycles might be the best possible foundation for anything we're creating why we all need to be more mammal and how to free ourselves from the structures that hold us back from creatively expressing ourselves aka how we can each unschool our creativity sorry I'm in such a giddy mood I'm not sure I love a giddy mood let go let it go go with it I was organizing a podcast with somebody today and I mean it's somebody I know

quite well and we like have really deep sessions and also we laugh our socks off and I was like you know I just hope this podcast can be in equal parts wise and silly I just think it's great to just you know have a good giggle sometimes on a podcast. So I'm all about just getting rid of professionalism, just being human and just going with whatever comes up. So yeah, I just honor your giddy state. Thank you. My giddy state will make sense when we do our cycle check-in, which let's just start there. Tell me where you're at in your cycle and how it's making you feel today. Okay, I am on day 26, which is for me a bit of a bridge between a few days of feeling really antsy, sore boobs, everyone's chewing too loudly. And I get like

a little bit of a reprieve, a lovely reprieve for a couple of days before I then drop into yeah, the peace and kind of restfulness of menstruating. So I'm about two days away from that. Since practicing cycle cycle awareness I absolutely love getting my period and I don't have any of the drama that I've had in my life yeah so I started practicing a cycle awareness when I was 33 and and then increasingly the practice has just dropped me deeper into the magic of menstruating. And now I'm at this stage and I just start getting really excited. I'm like, yay, my period's coming.

I'm so, so excited. Yes, I've had a really lovely day. I also like really start paring back massively, you know, so I guess that's why I enjoy bleeding so much is because you know I get those few days where I'm like oh my god can everybody just stop chewing and feeling kind of annoyed and but you know I'm like it's okay you're not a monster you know what's happening and then that kind of goes away and then I just start to uh stop doing things until I bleed and how does that work with your like family and setup do they are they all connected to this do they know that this is your time to rest and yeah they're huge fans, huge supporters in the menstrual honoring. And so my husband checks in with

my calendar on a regular basis to see where I am in my cycle, so that he can sort of play his part. And yeah, the girls just have the language for what's going on. In fact, it was solstice last week. And so I spent the day in bed, I was getting a bit sick, but I wanted to just do some personal ritual as well around solstice. So I was in my room with candles and my Oracle cards and my journal and books. And Ramona like burst in, she's my eldest, she's 12. She burst into my room and then immediately stopped and whispered, Mom, you're menstruating. I didn't think it was time yet.

And she was so confused because the scene before her is, you know, the scene of usually my day one. And, you know, that's when they don't come bursting in. And I do like recognize that that is when I'm I'm in my bed and I'm doing all those things but because I was doing it on the solstice she was so confused and she knew that it wasn't my time even she was aware on some level that it was like 12 days too soon yeah that's so beautiful I love that I. I'm on day seven, so hence the giddiness. But it's really interesting because to be in connection with you, a being who I know is so dedicated to play and to freedom, I to your videos, immersing myself in your world. And I feel so in tune with this like childlike playfulness that isn't always the easiest thing

for me to access in my inner spring. Because I'm like, we could have a whole podcast about this, but ever since I turned 40, a couple of years ago, my inner spring has been like coughing up all of this inner maiden stuff from my life to process to be seen to like to heal and to understand so coming into this conversation with you about unschooling as I'm in this phase of my cycle where a lot of my crap from my school years comes up to be seen is like a really potent combo but mostly what I'm enjoying right now is is the giddiness and I like your invitation to go with it so yeah play play and wisdom um yeah and I'm raising a little guy now you know he's two and a half he goes to forest school every morning but he is you know likely to be entering the school system

I think and so I'm in an interesting place with this because I'm looking at school and going wow this is going to be an interesting transition and so I'm looking forward to speaking to you to hear about you know alternative ways and like other approaches and yeah yeah I'm excited so I'd love to hear a bit about your story first um from the outside in it looks like you're an immensely creative person like you've created this life for your family off grid on a farm you've written books you've created courses you make brilliant videos you know you're you're, you've created courses, you make brilliant videos, you know, you're, you're doing, you're creating, you're making a lot. And you've been unschooling your kids, like your kids have never been to school, which I imagine is a massively creative process

in itself, you know, hourly, daily. And I'd love to to hear and you could bring cycle awareness into this too if you like like what what fuels this creativity for you and what sustains it as well um great questions there are so many things just in that little paragraph that I'd love to leap into but I am naturally creative and I was very much encouraged that way so I was always sort of as the artistic one because I was shockingly bad at all the normal stuff at school so I kind of like was given that label in a way which is good and bad because I'm also not naturally very talented but I was sort of just given you know the the space and kind of time to just let that kind of flow and how that looked when I was a kid was just, you know,

I can remember getting like a can of spray glue and I decorated my room by just spray gluing objects all over my wall. So like old cans of Coke, I spray painted a full-size pair of purple flares on my wall so I didn't even do well in art class but there was just a sort of acceptance that I was the artistic one um you know so I I think that that was very helpful in a way I didn't have um a lot of creativity wounds to kind of overcome I I actually really believe that we're all creative I'm sure that's a part of your um you know the narrative and the culture that you're developing in these conversations is the idea that we're all creative but often by the time, you know, we're in this next stage of motherhood, we have so many wounds to sort of be healing often before we feel that full liberation into creativity. And I didn't have that. So yeah, I went from gluing things to the wall to then doing more courses in art.

I did art A-levels and then had an art practice while I was at uni and was selling canvases, painting and selling. But then when I became a mum, definitely that's when all my creativity went into motherhood. It became the channel for everything so um as you as you say unschooling is a hugely creative process and so it served really well as a vessel for that creativity you know just every day you know building a life that you feel really aligned with is an act of creativity isn't it oh my gosh say can you say that sentence again that is it did I say something like creating a life that you align with or just making a life that you align

with is an act of creativity that's it yes but then then my kids are older now they're 10 and 12 they've got their own missions they got their own projects so I do have quite a lot of time and during lockdown a couple of years ago I took a an abstract painting course online and yeah just got right back into paintings after a decade of doing no sort of official art then I I took it up again and had a an exhibition at the end of last year and yeah so doing lots of different bits and bobs now really. That sentence is just everything for me that living a life that you feel aligned with is an immensely creative act because that's the truth of it isn't it so many people because of

the kinds of wounds that they might have had around creativity in their life don't think that they're creative just because they're not they haven't written a book or painted some paintings and just live finding our way to a life that is truly ours is is so creative every day which is why I think maybe one of the reasons why you felt called so much to cycle awareness and why cycle awareness and creativity go so hand in hand because the practice of cycle awareness is calling us into alignment um day by cycle day by cycle day by cycle day isn't it how do you see the connection between your cycle awareness practice and your creativity as it grows and changes yeah well as you say it that's so true I also think there's the element of um not worrying when you don't feel like your creative juice is flowing

I think there's so much fear around not being creative or your creativity drying up or your ideas drying up or your practice drying up that maybe people don't even get going on it. Whereas for me, one of the main gifts cycle awareness has given me is to not worry about when I'm not feeling something. I just don't worry about it. If I'm not feeling creative, I don't worry about it. If I'm not feeling creative, I don't worry about it. If I'm not feeling happy, I don't worry about it. If I'm not feeling like doing my work, I don't worry about it. Because I know that I'm just in a season, I'm in a phase, and that it's going to wheel back ground again. And so to me, cycle awareness is an absolute release into whatever it is that is moving within you

and so when it's creativity I just dive in and I'm like and I just like paint all of the canvases uh you know write all of the things put all of the ideas in my google document called ideas and then when there's nothing coming I don't worry about it I'm just like cool I'll read a book today yeah and so I think then you're put you know it's a funny thing because when you feel that relaxed and that in surrender to, you know, the seasons, you're then in much more of a kind of fluid or in touch relationship with sort of source energy, you know, and that, that kind of grace actually leads to more creativity. That's one of the ways there's so many things I could keep chatting about but I'm sure you have a great next question I mean I could just keep asking questions and questions about that but I do want to talk about

unschooling because you're I can feel an atmosphere around you where there is this fluidity and there is this a kind of freedom like you're not there there aren't boxes around you telling you what you need to be and what you should be there's there's a liberated feeling around you and I wonder if it's very much to do with these 12 years of unschooling that you've done with your kiddos so can you tell us briefly what unschooling is or how you understand unschooling yes so unschooling is living a life free from school at its most basic, but it's actually much more about the values of consent and curiosity. So it's being free from coerced curriculum, free from unwanted teaching. It's putting learning back into the hands of the children. It's seeing children as the only important agents in their own learning journey so um it's seeing the child's brain and their thoughts and their bodies as their own they are their own sovereign beings and it is not any adult's job to think

um to fill their brains with information and teach them lessons um it is simply our job to give them as as much space as possible to um as they're these sovereign beings to bloom into who they are shani asked me to ask you this it's a big question, but watching your kids' creative process, you know, without having these imposed, coerced curriculums, what do you see about their creative process? Like when they go from an idea to manifesting that idea? So what I will say is I'm not going to speak on behalf of all children. I really think that every being has such a unique relationship and creative process. So I can only speak to what I observe. And my kids are different to what I see other unschoolers being like.

You know, I've got friends who are unschooling their kids and their kid is the youngest wedding photographer New Zealand has ever had you know they had their own business when they were 15 they were winning awards I have another friend who her child was the youngest filmmaker. She was unschooled and by the time she was 18, she was making films full time, winning awards again, you know, all these like high achieving. And obviously my kids are only 10 and 12. They might go on to be that way. But actually what I observe in my kids is a pretty gigantic capacity for rest and play and simply being. My kids are not spending several hours a day on projects. They, at the moment, funnily enough, they are actually outside doing a project.

But they're getting a lot of support. And my friend has a friend over and they're doing a craft project together. It's more like a relational activity. You know, they don't, I guess when I began unschooling you know I'd read a lot of books about unschoolers I knew a lot of unschoolers with adult children who were like you know these fantastic creatives and I I guess I thought I would be observing my kids doing things and like writing books that they've self-directed on. That does happen a lot. But also what happens, I believe, is that you kind of get the sense that maybe we produce too much.

Mm-hmm. we produce too much and actually if you look at other mammals they're not out there producing things you know and so I don't this is very the general thoughts here like I've never spoken this out loud before but I I just wonder if and this it's something I see in my kids like their creativity doesn't produce things it doesn't make objects for me to admire very rarely it does their creativity is in their conversation and in their spontaneous dance and in their witty humor and their creativity is just oozing out of their beingness yeah so so that's what I observe I feel so moved hearing you speak it's like when you said we produce too much and they have this immense capacity to rest something in me just opened and softened sort of like fell open of like oh god are we allowed are we allowed to do that are we allowed to not produce I can feel the conditioning in me of

go go go drive drive drive and we'll talk about this you know capitalism patriarchy white supremacy is all driving this culture of push drive grind oh so delicious deconditioning moment there from that from that system right yeah that's really beautiful to hear Lucy that's so beautiful it's not it's not the answer I thought I would have given um you know and it's not the answer I would have expected to arrive at before being able to observe it do you know what I mean like we hold up a lot of poster children of unschooling like oh they they won a Minecraft competition or you know they they won an award doing you know like I even I've even heard myself say when I've been talking to people about unschooling because it really fascinates me like oh well I've heard that like Yale and Harvard are seeking out

these unschooled children and I'm like okay so it's only good if like the systems the authorities that be think it's good so okay like that's interesting programming yeah totally and that's that that's quite a lot of the rhetoric actually about unschooling is like all these like mad successful unschoolers but you know I don't know I think it actually if you're prepared to very radically decondition and deprogram from capitalism and school fixated society and other power archives if you're really gonna do that you have to be very prepared for where you get taken to and um yeah I think the results are often pretty messy and quite invisible um yeah I talk about that the invisible work of unschooling a huge amount of it is completely invisible yeah let's look at this because you

speak really beautifully about how unschooling has changed your relationship with yourself already doing that and with your creativity and people listening who you know perhaps they don't have children or they have kids and the kids up their kids are in school and they're not going to be doing this unschooling with their kids how can we take some of these like principles and practices and ways of being and work with them to unleash more of our own natural creativity and you you made a video about how to unschool your creativity, which I just watched this morning. And yeah, I'd love to ask you first about something that you said in that video, which was, yeah, you were talking about how the process has deconditioned you from so many unhealthy patterns, especially around relationships and success and body and food. Could you speak a bit more about that and maybe particularly the success piece? Because I feel like we were just starting to get into that with like Yale and Harvard and all those ideas.

Yeah, so those are some of the concepts that I have essentially, you know, what we call de-schooled, which is trying to get rid of the programming of school fixated society it's very similar to um decolonizing so trying to get out from under supremacist culture and all of the myths and pressure and um sort of enforcement of uh modern capitalist society so it's all very very similar work so when I say de-school um you could replace it with possibly decolonize or um de-institutionalize because a lot of my wounds also come not just from school but from church and yeah the institution of patriarchy so but de-institutionalize is quite a big mouthful so yeah in terms of my art practice at de-schooling my creativity,

and this might be fresh in the mind from what I've just said, but I would say the most significant thing has been detaching from an outcome and detaching from a finished piece. And basically last year, when the possibility of an exhibition came on the horizon, it totally changed my experience with the art I was producing because I had been having the best fun ever,

really embodying the kind of detachment from production that my kids had been showing me and revealing to me. So instead of going in there and being like I'm gonna make it a beautiful town that I'm gonna make a work that is gonna blow everybody away I just go in there and just literally have fun following my instincts and and I keep having these wow moments like wow that looks really good like totally surprised at where my intuition and my kind of like just presence to the colors and my paintbrush would just make something really magical and I'd be like there's no way I could have planned that in a million years and so I would get to like a finished piece and

be like what I love this Lucy could never have produced that that is literally just an outcome of me like releasing to these paints and this canvas with no agenda whatsoever and then when the exhibition came on the horizon big agenda oh my god gotta have a lot of paintings finished framed up on the walls and I did it and it was amazing and I'm so glad I did it and my kids went around this art exhibition with their jaws on the floor like you know it seemed so kind of professional but my paintings are crazy and I think my kids were just like how does mum's crazy paintings end up on a wall in an exhibition that was very all there was all sorts of hilarious um but definitely in the in the like sort of month and run up to the exhibition my relationship with the art changed as the agenda came in and I found

it you know I did I did it completed it but um it was a really big lesson and how much having an agenda and an attachment to your outcome hugely impacts the liberation of your creativity and maybe even the genius of your creativity so um that has been the biggest way that I think I have de-schooled my creativity um you know I did a level art so you know you have to you're on a tight schedule you have to produce this stuff you gotta make up all this bullshit like you know portfolio about how you ended up at your finished piece there is no allowance for an intuitive relationship with the paint and divine source there's no room for that in a level art so um yeah that that's something that I yeah really celebrate in my de-schooling creativity journey if you would like support around something that you are calling in or creating in your life at the moment I'd love to invite you to join us Alexandra and Sharni and I for a webinar on

July the 12th it's called how menstruality can help you to lead a wildly creative life and it's for you whatever phase of your life that you're in and whatever you're currently creating. Alexandra and Shani will look at three core ways that our cultural conditioning is hindering our creative process and three ways that a cyclical approach to creativity can transform this. They'll introduce you to the creative cycle, this blueprint that's emerged from decades of menstrual cycle awareness experience and research that can hold and contain and inspire and ground you as you embark on all your creative endeavors. They'll guide you through an embodied process to get a taste of this creative cycle and they'll also

share more about our new upcoming course your creative power which is starting in september so you can register for the webinar for free at redschool.net forward slash creativity that's redschool.net forward slash creativity what I'm feeling as I'm hearing you speak is the fruit of many surrendered menstruation phases because there's something about being with these you know five chambers of menstruation as alexandra and shani teach them that take us through separation just where we have to drop agendas into surrender where my god and my birth taught me so much about this as well just where I just have to become uh lose myself drop myself become the process and then you use the word genius and that feels so important because it's like then something opens for this for life to pour through

and that feeling of being intuitively with the pain or I can imagine like someone with their hands in the soil in their garden or cooking up something really delicious where they're just throwing lots of ingredients in they're not quite sure what's going to happen it looks so many different ways doesn't it I can really feel how the practice of surrendering into menstruation is a really grows our metaphorical muscles for this, you know. a monthly death practice. It's a time of downing tools, of stepping away from your role as worker and producer. It's a little mini welcoming of death and the, maybe the indignity or the, maybe even humiliation. It's sort of a negative word, humiliation. Maybe humility. Oh, I wonder about the root word of those.

You know, the humility of not being able to carry on with your agenda you know yeah so you've got this practice of the of a mini death every month which is as you say absolutely strengthening that muscle for letting go of your preconceived outcomes for either your art or maybe your other stuff and bringing in success and that's a huge part of my work and my business is having a dream having a goal and an absolute surrender to whatever needs to happen um whatever comes my way um an absolute detachment from the end thing um while still having a dream and I think that is I mean I don't want to bring everything back to cycle awareness god but it's a little like that right because a cycle is is sort of like having a dream like creating a fruit and then letting it all die and surrendering and and I think success and

livelihoods kind of can really thrive amidst that sort of energy of like having a dream having a goal and then detaching from it and surrendering to it and regularly letting things compost and then allowing like seeing what else is going to come out of that delicious fertile composting soil I feel maybe I've just gone so metaphorical here I mean are you still with me I'm still with you and I know that the people listening are still with you because I think cycle awareness just does open up this capacity to think on multiple levels at the same time yeah and so we're all we're all here with you I'm totally with you and I really want to ask because this this question comes up so much now I run a program at Red School called Your Cyclical Business so we're helping people we're learning

together how to let our businesses be guided by cycle awareness and one of the questions that came up in the session yesterday is okay but money how does this work when it comes to money and actually having a sustaining a sustained income that can take care of myself my family I wonder what this looks like for you you know as you give yourself to these composting death and rebirth processes how has that looked like for you in terms of your capacity to be able to bring in the money that you need for yeah to take care of you and yours yes so I run my whole business too according to the cycles of everything so I call it the rhythm method um and yeah and I I we're probably sharing very similar things with our people um but to me and the the entrepreneurs that I work with

um what I'm trying to show and um reveal is that actually the cycles are the ultimate way to live in that abundant and thriving place that you want to be with your business and to me anything other than living outside of the rhythms or the seasons and be that your menstrual cycle or maybe maybe you do do this but basically I feel like every stage of your business every business project they all have their own little menstrual cycle your launch your idea phase your you know every bit every component of your business even a workshop even a podcast has its own little menstrual cycle and actually if you can really honor that and really play to it really work with it um that leads you to a super regenerative and thriving business I really believe it I would love to hear if you if you'd be willing to share what has helped you to trust say in the moments where money isn't

coming in as much as you like it to or would need it to or yeah what has helped you get to the place where you can give yourself to this rhythm and know that the money will flow? Because I know a lot of people who are in that moment of wanting to lean fully in, but it's hard to trust. Yeah, I mean, I think it is only trust, though. It's actually an act of faith at the beginning. And only in time do you build a body of evidence to tell you that it's really worth doing. I mean, it's an act of faith every time when you go, okay, this is my goal. I'm going to aim for this, but I'm actually going to surrender everything to divine source you know it's an act

of faith every time um but at the beginning you don't have the feedback but within a little while and certainly over the years of your business you build a body of evidence, that you can look back at and you can be like, see, it really works. You know, you can hold yourself, but so much of it is holding yourself through scary times. And, you know, that's a business practice. That's one of the ultimate business skills is learning how to hold yourself and steady yourself when you're feeling a little nervous, a little overwhelmed out of your comfort zone. And this steadying of ourselves and doing this. I want to describe this for our listeners, like Lucy has just got one arm um sort of arms crossed and is just gently stroking her arms and it's so soothing to watch and I can feel the kind of inner mothering

or holding that you're doing it makes total sense to my body watching you it's a havening it's called havening a havening touch um but it's a it's a systematic uh way to soothe our brains it puts us into delta so whenever we start to and whenever I think of holding myself through tricky times I you know it is this kind of movement I'm doing and it's yeah it's uh steadying myself and uh being able to allow my faith to carry me through something but like you say you do that in every menstrual cycle so you know if you can have a practice of down you know as as a sabbath as a ritual that you do and you're well practiced at it and you know that spring is going to come you know that spring is going to come in your business you know you know it because you practice it and you have seen it many times now but maybe at the beginning it's just this holding and that holding that soothing that can naturally come from that oxytocin wash that can

come from a rested bleed whatever that looks like for each of us it's such a gateway to this play that we've spoken about a lot in this conversation to this capacity to experiment explore splash around without an agenda it's like it's such a great fertile ground for it isn't it yeah honestly I think that um uh cycle awareness might be one of the greatest business skills ever if people are already practicing cycle awareness they come very well prepared for uh rocking a business I think and creating anything holding themselves through the creative process of creating anything actually I was just chatting to my hobby this morning because he's essentially creating our house right now. He decided we should move into this falling down crazy old building. And we've just been piecing it together as we go over this past year. And I said,

wow, I think you're one of the most creative people I know, actually. And he never would use that word for himself. But he's seen something and he's got a vision for it. He didn't have a clue how he was going to do it, but he knew he could probably figure it out and he's just doing it. I, I wonder, I'll just say this. I wonder how much he's learned from watching me cycle, you know, from watching me. Clearly that's how he's doing it all. It's just from my cycle.

It's all you really yeah yeah I'm building the house there were three steps in this video that you did about unschooling our creativity that I wonder if we could walk through because I feel like it's something practical that people could take away with them to start to like bring some of these unschooling ideas into their lives whatever they're creating and the first step was to simply get more curious about what you're excited about what intrigues you and what brings you joy could you speak to that yeah because I work with so many mums who, you know, they're just coming out of their trenches of motherhood. And they're sort of feeling like, oh, they do have a little bit more energy to give to something.

But they're like, I don't know what I love. And, you know, they don't know where to begin. So, yeah, I just love the practice of noticing and just inviting people to simply notice what they love and then follow it up relentlessly. Don't judge what you are excited about, because actually, you know, if your kids are sort of like four or five, you know, you're starting to get a little bit more oxygen you might actually still be really just interested in breastfeeding um or co-sleeping or respectful parenting that counts as a really important creative interest it's okay to just follow that up relentlessly and like love it up and learn about it and you know yeah just charge

into it so just get curious without judgment you might discover I know a mum did uh who she sort of came out of the the early years and she discovered that she wanted to learn how to build a house so she became became an apprentice to a house builder and now actually she's a fully qualified builder but imagine if she had judged that curiosity imagine if she was like that's a bit bizarre you've like never been interested in that at all so yeah to just have a period of noticing and following your nose and um yeah really allowing random things to emerge for you and then throwing yourself into it and then talking about throwing yourself into it the second phase was like actually throw yourself

into it whatever it is that you're curious about pick it up as a hobby and like give it a go and I wanted to share that my example of this is my son is desperate for a fountain in the garden he wants there to be bubbling water in the garden I have no clue how to do this but I'm I'm gonna take your challenge and make it my hobby for the summer to learn about how to make bubbling water happen in my garden yeah that's so cool take the process with me absolutely I love it take it seriously take your hobby seriously I actually uh tell unschoolers that getting a hobby is one of the best things they can do for their their unschooling like the parents um you know because we can sometimes worry am I doing enough for my kids are they getting enough in their lives but actually if your parents are excited about life if they're in touch with their

curiosity if they're passionate about something that is just the best example ever for any child so hobbies are so underrated I'm a huge fan I'm like a obsessive hobbyist personally but I say relentlessly because you know a lot of other things will want to get in the way of your hobby you know and Clarissa Pinkola Estes really cheerleads us on and she says uh you know that women will clean every corner in the house in order to sort of gain uh a sense of self-respectability when actually we're here to create so she really invites us to forget housework and simply create and so I think you do have to forego some things if you're going to really find great amounts of joy in your creative hobby um so yeah be relentless about it don't let all the mundane things of life stop you from getting to experience that glee and that flow of uh your creativity

you've just so dignified the huge pile of unfolded messy laundry that's been on my kitchen table for seven days thank you yeah well I'm actually I'm a huge slob and I'm into it now. You know, I used to feel really bad about it. But yeah, now I'm like, actually, there's a direct relationship between my slobbiness and my creativity. So I'm down. I'll take creativity, unschooling my kids, living a life filled with passion, running a thriving business over a clean and tidy house any day

the third step in the video was notice what the thoughts that come up for you as you give yourself to this creative flow and probably suck at the beginning like you give yourself to a hobby that you probably aren't very good at and you actually were sharing how this is one of the best things we can do for our kids is show up for something that we're not very good at and let them see us do that so they can watch what it is to not be good at something and to carry on right yeah I learned to surf last year. And let me tell you, surfing is really hard. And it's extremely humiliating and undignified. And my kids watched me for an entire year hurt myself and not catch any waves. And then something in the summer clicked for me. And suddenly I could surf. All the work kind of paid off and I came in from a surf and um Ramona and Gina were in the front seat of the van they'd just been playing video games while I surfed and they went down the window and they were like yay mom we saw you ripping out there

and they um and Ramona said um you know we've we've seen you when you couldn't surf to save your life, she said. And now we've seen you skipping. And, you know, it was just such confirmation, actually. Our kids watching our learning journey going from absolute failure upon failure, mistake after mistake after mistake, and then, you know, persevering is a huge lesson for them and in carrying on and you know we talk about uh you know growth mindset but all it really is is your kids understanding that mistakes and failures doesn't is not a bad thing it's a great thing it's actually like the best it's the thing it's the thing that's the human experience mistake after failure after mistake after failure and it builds resilience which is surely in my opinion the one thing we all need to be cultivating so much more as we

head into the uncertain times that we're heading into globally you know we need resilience we need flexibility we need tenacity so what do you recommend that people do as they commit to their creative process imperfectly and self-doubt comes up and shame comes up and fear of failure comes up what do you how can we hold ourselves and as we sort of notice these thoughts coming up right so one of the things um that Brené Brown found when she surveyed people about shame was that 85% of adults are living with shame experiences from their school years to this day to such an effect that it affects them on a regular basis as adults so 85% percent but then she found that 50 of those they were uh wounds of creativity it was shame specifically about creativity so it would be extremely normal to try and allow your creativity

to flourish and then have all these thoughts and messages and negative beliefs and self-talk start bubbling up in your brain because a huge ton of adults are carrying around these scars from these instances and this culture of school and I want to say that because I actually really want to name school as the culprit you know it really has scarred a lot of people and I think it's important to actually just name you know um so the thought comes up uh learning to self-soothe is a huge thing. That havening touch that I did is a really amazing instant nervous system regulator. So give yourself a loving hug and a loving stroke. Um, I also think speaking out loud, um, to a loving person can be extremely useful in fact brenny brown says that um a shame can't survive in um out loud it's something like that you know you've got to

to tell your story so i think if you have a loving friend and you can say I was doing my pottery this morning and a voice jumped into my head that told me I was garbage and then in as you explore it you can name where it comes from who it sounds like where you think it originated and all of that curiosity sort of interrogation about the kind of words and thoughts that are coming up is a massive part in starting to rewire your brain away from that negative thought so this is actually a huge piece on actually rewiring your neural pathways I think I probably do go into it maybe a little bit in that video, but that video was hundreds of years ago, so I can't remember. But yeah, just the idea that it's absolutely possible when you become aware of a thought, when you become

aware of a negative bit of self-talk, it's absolutely possible to rewire your brain. But it begins with the curiosity about who it sounds like, where it came from. And either doing that in your journal or talking it through with a friend can be a really key part of uprooting it. And then the rest of the work is replacing it. So choosing a thought that actually reflects more of what your heart believes for you and your creativity and in really energizing that thought. So, you know, if you're doing your creative practice in a little office, you might have your new belief emblazoned on your wall so that when you come in to practice your creativity you're like

the wall reminds me that I am actually a creative genius okay the main bit there is just the idea that our brains are so amazing and it you know even if we start having these really negative thoughts about our creativity, we can absolutely rewire our brain. You've got to hang in there. You've got to self-soothe and you've got to do the work for it. But you can absolutely rewire your neural pathways to support your blooming creative self this is so beautiful Lucy how can people connect with you if they're loving what you're saying and want to journey with you more and hear more from you so if people are on Instagram they can find me at Lucy underscore Aitken Reed and I'm also on Facebook as Lucy Unschooling Support I believe

and then I have a website called discolearning.com and I send out a newsletter every couple of weeks called Jukebox which includes a great song every time. Thank you. I'll drop those links into the podcast page on our website at redscore.net so that people can find you. Thank you so much. I've loved this conversation. I feel just absolutely raring to go to get my paints out,

which I've been wanting to do for months and months and months and just play and splash. Yeah, no no agenda splashing around just be like a mammal just think of a how a gorilla would paint or how a dolphin would paint they wouldn't paint to produce none of these mammals are caught up in this production cycle and performance uh vibe they're just living their life eating playing uh banging I think that's pretty much all they do my new mantra eat play bang

oh I had so much fun in that conversation and I think what I really enjoy the most about Lucy is how she embodies an antidote or an alternative to this hustle grind like productivity obsessed culture that we find ourselves in and it was such a delight to be with her. If you would like to explore how to free up your creativity and how to work creatively in a cyclical way please join us on July the 12th for our webinar. Please invite your friends. It's called How Menstruality Can Teach You To Live A Wildly Creative Life and you can register for free at redschool.net forward slash creativity. Okay that's it for this week I look forward to being with you again next week and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.