Sometimes to have friends, you have to schedule it and make it happen.
Thirteen years ago I married and moved 600 miles from my family to live in the small community where my husband grew up. For the first 2 1/2 years I didn’t have a close friend besides my husband. It seemed really tough to ‘belong’ in a community where everyone else had always been there. I had my husband and a baby. Finally, I met another mom who had just had her first baby and was not a native of that community. A year later, we started a mother’s book study with 3 other moms. We would meet during the day for pot-luck lunch and conversation while our children played. We are all still friends, although 2 of us have moved away. When we visit my husband’s family, I make the time to visit my friends as well.
Ironically, four years ago, our family of 6 moved back to where my parents were living when I got married. I actually am not from this area. My parents moved here when I was a junior in college. So once again, the need for close friends arose. I have family nearby. I go to a very close-knit church, and I have many friends there, and some who homeschool. I am the only mother who uses Charlotte Mason’s methods, and so I needed a mother’s support system for the education I am trying to give my children.
May 2016…I posted on this discussion forum to see if there were any other Charlotte Mason educators in my area. In July, I got one response from a lady who was moving to my area. January 2017…We started the Clarksville-Area Charlotte Mason Discussion Group in Clarksville, Tennessee. I posted on charlottemasonincommunity.com to let others know that we were beginning a group (I had no idea if we would have any response) using Brandy Vencel’s study “Start Here: A Journey Through Charlotte Mason’s 20 Principles.” Interestingly, you can do this study on your own, but Brandy recommends that you pray for at least one friend, which I did. My husband prayed too and gave me his full encouragement to start this group.
At any rate, we started the group and it is still going one year later. It is small, usually 2-5 ladies, but we always have great discussions and I always feel rejuvenated when I get back home. Instead of feeling sorry for myself and all the things I have to do as a wife, mother and home educator (I know it’s easy to get down), I feel encouraged and enabled to do the tasks at hand. I am usually gone for 4 hours one evening a month and it is worth any sacrifice our family has to make to make this happen.
As a group, we have also met at the park for play dates and participated in a Charlotte Mason handicraft fair in Nashville.
As I was reading for our discussion group, I came across these words from Charlotte Mason:
<p style=”text-align: left;”>”Perhaps the main part of a child’s education should be concerned with the great human relationships, relationships of love and service, of authority and obedience, of reverence and pity and neighborly kindness; relationships to kin and friend and neighbor, to ’cause’ and country and kind, to the past and the present.” (School Education, p.80)</p>
We mothers are born persons, just as much as our children, and we need these great human relationships as well. I would encourage you to pray, take a leap of faith, and do what you can to make those relationships happen. You will be so glad you did.
~Rachel
P.S. If you live in the Clarksville/Fort Campbell area, we would love for you to join our discussion group!