Harvest Your Year (Instead of Rushing Toward Everything Else)
The change of seasons always gives me pause. Every year around this time, I can feel it in the air: that shift from "cozy fall" energy into "oh my gosh, it's almost the end of the year, accomplish ALL the things" energy. And every year, I just... don't have that kind of energy. I don't want to sprint toward December. I want to sit with what I've already grown.
Last weekend was the harvest moon, and I did something I come back to every year: I wrote down 10 seeds I planted this year, and what it would look like to actually harvest them.
The Harvest Moon is the first full moon after the Autumn Equinox. This year it also feel shortly after an eclipse.
Some were big. Leaving my teaching career to found Wildly Wondrous Homeschool is the obvious one, the kind of seed you plant once and spend years growing. But most of them were small, day-to-day things. Taking time with my senior during her last year living at home. Creating meaningful experiences with my kids. Taking a weekend away. A date night once a month. Coffee with my sister-in-law every single morning.
The big things are great. But life lives in those little moments just as much.
So here's what I want to offer you instead of another list of end-of-year goals: before you push into holiday season, before you chase down everything that's supposed to make this season "magical," take some time to reflect on how far you've already come. Grab your pumpkin spice (yes, I'm basic and proud, you will pry my year-round pumpkin spice from my cold dead hands), find somewhere cozy, and ask yourself what you've actually harvested this year.
Last night, my business coach made a comment that stuck with me. Every single person in our group said they weren't making good progress. And every single one of us was doing amazing things. Our pace might be slower than we'd sometimes like, but step by step, we're winning the race.
What small steps did you take toward your goals this year?
I think we feel this exact same way in homeschool. We're with our kids every single day, and some days it feels like we've gone over the same thing again and again and again. (Seriously, why do they not capitalize the first letter of a sentence? How is this not second nature by now?) It's so easy to beat ourselves up in those moments. It feels like our kids aren't making progress.
But when we take a step back, we can see exactly how far they've come.
There's no such thing as behind. You're going at exactly the right pace for your family.
If math has felt like one of those "again and again and again" subjects in your house this year, lots of repetition and not a lot of visible progress, that's not failure. That's the slow, steady step-by-step. And if you want a little momentum heading into the rest of the year, I'd love to show you what that can actually look like. I’m hosting a free Math in Real Life webinar on October 20th and would love to see you there! We’ll talk more about how to make math feel easy and relatable rather than stressful and scary. More details to come soon!
