👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hey there! I’m Kimberly, the woman who traded the traditional classroom for the kitchen table because I wasn’t vibing with the rushed, performance-heavy script of a 9-to-5 life. Now, The Ten AM goes out to thousands of parents bang in the thick of the mess and mayhem of raising humans in the wild, who are still trying to find the magic.
I’m a homeschooling mom of two, a coffee devotee, and an RV lover who craves the autonomy of the open road, and here is where I muse on the building blocks of our unscripted life: the rhythm of our days, the chaos of the in-between, career pivots, cold brews, and finding the courage to raise kids who actually know themselves. Call us rebels if you want, but heck if I don’t grab onto this messy, beautiful autonomy with both hands. It’s a wild, unscripted ride, and I’m doing it with a heart (and a coffee mug) that is (mostly) full. Welcome to The Slow Pour.
You don’t realize just how noisy your world is until you finally put away the AirPods, turn off the TV, and step out into the quiet of the backyard. It’s only then, in that sudden vacuum of sound, that you realize you’ve been buzzing like a high-voltage neon sign. 🫨
If you’re anything like me, you’re living in a state of constant, high-voltage stimulation. Your kids need help. Your house needs a miracle. And your ears need a podcast playing at 1.5x speed just so you don’t feel quite so alone in the madness. We’ve slowly curated these layers of noise to form a bizarrely comforting hum of productivity to cover the fact that we are, in fact, incredibly overwhelmed. 🤪
The hardest part isn’t the work itself, either. It’s the fact that we’ve forgotten how to hear ourselves breathe.
We’ve turned our lives into a series of tabs that never get closed, and frankly? The ol’ internal processor is overheating (and that isn’t just from perimenopause, #thankyouverymuch).
It’s that feeling where your heart rate is at a steady 110 while you’re just whipping up some eggs in the morning. It’s why we’re bracing for a blow that never comes. You ever wish you could just… stop? Not "vacation" stop. Not "glass of wine" stop. But a deep, cellular level of I am allowed to exist without producing something right now stop.
Sometimes, you aren't actually busy, either. You’re just redlining at a frequency the world told you was the only way to keep up with the girl nextdoor who doesn’t have her sourdough starter mold every time she starts it.
(Side note: Anyone have a tip for how to not make your sourdough starter mold? Because I’m 0/2 this month. Hit reply with your tips! I need ‘em.)
You’ve been sold a version of motherhood that looks like a high-speed chase, and you’ve started to believe that if you slow down, the whole car flips.
But what if we flipped that script on its head? What if the clock you are racing doesn't actually exist? 🤯
I had this epiphany a few days ago while I was holding a bow and looking at a foam deer. This past weekend, I competed in my first archery tournament, where we had twenty 3D targets every day, our phones were mostly offline, and the competitors and I were marching through the tall desert grass, slinging our arrows.
I realized very quickly that I have no idea how to take my time. I found myself in this frantic loop of checking boxes in my mind: load the bow, come to full draw, quickly line up the pins because people are waiting and your arm will get tired, align the bubble, remember what your range finder told you, remember where the rings were, then fire.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes I felt everything lined up, and I knew it was good. But the times I rushed through the motions because I felt like I was taking too long? Those were the times my cotton candy colored arrows flew right past the target and into the brush.
I was rushing a sport that requires stillness. And I realized I’ve been doing the exact same thing to my kids.
How often do you do this in homeschooling? How often do you rush through the curriculum or the day? And why?
As we were leaving the tournament, my oldest got sick, and the "why" hit me like a ton of bricks. Public school taught you that there are no delays. It taught you that taking time off means "falling behind." You were trained to power through. Sick? Too bad. We’re all moving on without you, and it’s your job to catch up or drown.
But in your home? It is different.
In homeschooling, you aren't on a conveyor belt. You are in the woods with the bow. You get to rest. You get to pause when you need to. You get to fire quickly when you feel it, but you also get to steady your breathing and find your center. You get to take your time to feel confident, and then—and only then—hit that target dead center.
So many people cry out about how homeschooling gives you "freedom," and they usually imagine the freedom to sleep in or take mid-week field trips. And while that’s true, we forget the bigger, gutsier freedom:
The freedom to be human.
The freedom to go at your own pace. The freedom to breathe through every single challenge you encounter instead of suffocating under the weight of an imaginary deadline.
How often do you rush? And why?
Are you rushing because you’re afraid of the quiet? Are you rushing because you think speed equals mastery? Are you rushing because you’re still trying to prove to a system you already left that you’re doing enough?
The answer to your chaos isn't a better planner or a faster podcast listen speed. The answer is the pause. It’s realizing that a sick day or a slow morning isn't a delay.
Stop firing arrows and moving onto the next target before you’ve found your center. It’s time we stop treating our lives like a race we’re about to lose.
The target isn't going anywhere. You have all the time in the world to hit it…
…and when you give yourself the freedom to slow down long enough to steady your mind, your chances of nailing it increase exponentially.
XO,
Kimberly Crossland
