"You Can Do That??"

This is the text of a presentation I gave at the Northeast Unschoolers' Conference, held May 23 through May 25, 2008. (Note: Thanks are in order to Kelly Lovejoy for the idea for this title ~ she's so smart!)

There has never been anything I have found myself compelled to say someone else that I did not, sooner or later, discover that I needed to hear for myself, so thanks to Kathryn and Beth for apparently recognizing my need. And, thanks to all of you here for fulfilling this need. I hope you will get as much out of it as I will!!

I want to begin by reading something I wrote about my unschooling life with Liam, my 13½-year-old son, last February.

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I'm bursting with joy about Liam. He is an amazing, brilliant, wonderful, super-cool, super-sweet, extremely fun person, and I'm enjoying him as well as our journey together more and more and more.

I have been particularly enjoying witnessing his acquisition of literacy, growing awareness of the world, and other skills that are typically, albeit perhaps superficially, acquired early on in a school setting in this culture. It is impressive how well he has acquired for himself reading, spelling, math, and other such skills without, as my father sweetly pointed out, having it rammed down his throat.

But, I don't want you to think that I have not spent some of this time chomping on my nails! This unschooling journey is about nothing if not trust and faith. Having been around the block a few times, now, I already knew the possible outcomes that are offered in the school setting: the boredom, the ridicule, the irrelevance, the condescension, the busy work, and, yes, the very real possibility that a kid might connect with a loving, concerned, interesting, interested adult. But that possibility notwithstanding, we opted to err on the side of dignity, wholeness, slowness, and unremitting joy. I will never regret that choice.

Helpful to me was reading things other folks had written about their unschooling journey. I've always been one of those folks who thinks that if someone else can do it, so can I. I particularly recall reading an article entitled, I Can Breathe Again—My Children Finally Learned to Read by Carol Rice-McClure, and that article was very, very calming for me. It may have helped that one of her kids was named Liam, and he didn't acquire reading until he was 16.

What's astoundingly beautiful to me is that during those years when my Liam might have been contorting himself and forcing his brain to acquire skills he clearly didn't need or want at the time, he was able to acquire and refine other kinds of skills, perhaps not as readily identifiable or quantifiable as reading or calculating the area of a particular circle or knowing the intricate details of the Crimean War. Instead, he was and still is a student of himself and his world around him. While other kids might have been reading some irrelevant story or learning parts of speech, he was playing with a hose in our yard, watching how water melts snow or watching two ant colonies battle for supremacy or exploring how he could dance like Donald O'Connor in Singin' in the Rain.

As a natural consequence of this abundant time he had for self-exploration, Liam, while beautifully preserving his child-like nature, even at 13 years of age, is perceptive and wise beyond his years. He is thoughtful and has a self-understanding that I wish I had now, let alone when I was 13 years old and getting myself into all kinds of trouble over my lack of self-awareness and the desire to please others and fit in. He is generous and sees this world as a loving, giving place. He naturally fits into that as a loving, giving person himself.

Another cool aspect of unschooling is that Liam owns his own learning process! Truly, we all ultimately own the process for acquiring the skills we have, but chances are that we may not know it. Many of us have been led to believe that someone else, someone who may or may not even care about us, deserves credit for the things we learn, a la the bumper sticker that pontificates, "If you can read this, thank a teacher." What a load of crap we have bought into! Sure, we can be helped (or hindered) by other folks. But the responsibility and the credit for learning the things we learn, no matter what the venue, fall squarely to and belong solely to the learner, not the so-called teacher!

Liam is aware of this Big Lie, and he is aware of the Bigger Truth. He is aware that it is *his* fantastic ability to learn, his desire to learn, his ability to decipher and reason and retain and inquire and ponder...all these things are to his credit and no one else's. He is aware that this is true not only for himself but for everyone, only most folks in our society don't get to live in the light of that reality as he does. This awareness is so much more empowering than the ability to read or calculate alone.

How fortunate am I to be his mom and be here for this process!?!

I am so acutely aware of how special each and every moment is with him. Forgive me for being morose, but I am keenly aware of how uncontrollable and unpredictable life can be. I am reminded of this all the time, and I believe that this awareness is a gift that helps me appreciate our nows much, much more.

Because we had discovered and embraced unschooling when Liam was so young, I feel that we have been given a pass to avoid the usual pitfalls that many folks may believe go hand-in-hand with living with a teenager. Liam has always been shown consideration, compassion, empathy, respect, and kindness, and he is now extremely considerate, compassionate, empathic, respectful, and kind. I guess I was that way, too, as a kid, but perhaps a bit more out of fear (fear of punishment, fear of judgment, fear of ridicule, fear of a butt-swatting). Liam knows no fear of these things. He is considerate, compassionate, respectful and kind because it is a sort of cultural norm for him (in our family's culture).

Liam understands fully that his purpose for being here on Earth at this time is to live a Joyful Life. How cool is that?

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So, that's what I spontaneously wrote a few months ago for no particular reason. Then, it occurred to me that I would be speaking here to you fine folks, and I had better give a little thought to what I wanted to, you know, talk about. I knew that I wanted to talk about relationships, since that's a big area of interest for me. But, every time I'd sit down to write about relationships, I'd get a little hung up. Then, the light bulb went on over my head and I realized that it would be disingenuous of me to talk with authority about anything other than -- me. I realized that until I could speak my story, I probably would not be able to access the other stuff I had to say. So, here's how things started for us.

First, you should know that I never, ever intended to be a mom. Not that the invitation to Liam's soul wasn't intentionally extended ~ it was; he was no "accident." It's just that all through my early adult years, I was focused on my musical life and life in general and felt, in fact, that I'd probably not make such a great parent. And, in retrospect, I can see that it was true. It was just not something I felt called to do, and I figured I'd never feel called to do it. Jim, my life partner, and I were living a joyful, carefree, musical, spontaneous life, and I believe that we were both content to continue along like that until we were old and crusty.

That was, until we accidentally conceived. When I found out I was pregnant, I was completely freaked out ... for about five minutes. Then, I was over the moon! Jimmy was still unsettled and unsure, being the more practical of the two of us. When his brother asked him whether he was hoping for a boy or a girl, Jimmy said, "I was kinda hoping for a puppy." But soon after that, not long into the pregnancy, I miscarried. After I got over my devastation, I realized that being a mom may have been something I actually wanted after all. I just never realized it.

We kept going along our merry, carefree way, though, but we noticed that we were getting a little long in the tooth, and if we were going to start down this parenthood path, maybe we'd better start taking the first steps. Which we did. That's when we extended the invitation to any soul who would be so brave as to accept these two ne'er-do-well, musician folks as parents. About two years later, an amazing soul accepted our invitation, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I LOVED being pregnant!! Nausea and food and odor aversions aside, I had never felt better or happier. In fact, when my midwife Irene confirmed my positive pregnancy test, I broke into prolonged hysterical laughter. She wasn't telling me anything I didn't already know, but I still was overcome by joy, and I laughed like a fool. She told me she had never seen a reaction like that in all her years of telling folks they were pregnant. I loved getting enormous and I loved the changes my body went through to accommodate this brave little soul.

I studied hard for my pregnancy, too! I read everything I could get my hands on about pregnancy and childbirth so I could understand precisely what my body was doing and what I should be eating, and I followed diligently the map of my growing baby's journey, savoring the awareness of each moment. It's not that I wanted to freeze time; I wanted to fully experience every moment of this miraculous thing I was getting to go through. The overwhelming feeling I had (and still have) is how amazed and honored I felt to be experiencing all this.

Then, one day around the beginning of my sixth month, it occurred to me that I was not just pregnant. I was going to have a baby. Whom I would have to care for. All the studying about *being* pregnant was cool, and preparing for childbirth was cool, but what about *after* the baby was born? I began to realize that my body knew what to do, and the best I could do was get out of its way and allow it to do it. What I needed to start doing was prepare to be a mom.

Hence, my first La Leche League meeting. I went when I was six months' pregnant and hoped I wasn't too late! Not too crazy, right? I picked up a copy of the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, and fell even more in love with this whole being-a-mom idea. I. could. not. wait.

That said, you should have seen me after Liam was born. I was utterly panicked! I recall having a dream one night that I was able to put him back in the womb ~ just for one night ~ so we could go out to dinner. This whole thing was so *real*. And I felt so *responsible*. Which allowed me to instantly recall *why* I had felt so unqualified to have children in the first place; I didn't want to be that responsible for anyone else's life. I was OK with utterly messing up my own life, but the thought of botching up another's life was just too much for me to bear. But, it was too late now. I had put in my job application, I was hired, and now *this* was my gig, and quitting wasn't an option.

Anyway, I went to my first LLL meeting and I realized that I had come home. First of all, I loved the idea of breastfeeding, which I had only first heard about on the radio ~ believe it or not ~ when I was 17 years old. Some woman was being interviewed about the breastfeeding advocacy group La Leche League and I thought, stupidly, "Oh my god! *That's* what they're for??" I honestly had no idea that this was something a person could do! (I must have cut school the day they were talking about human lactation. Or, maybe they didn't bother!) Anyway, I thought, a little less stupidly, "Cool! If I ever have a baby that's what *I'm* going to do." I knew that much.

I went to every LLL meeting faithfully, and I developed for myself a wonderful community of other like-minded moms; many of us had this crunchy thing going on that made me feel a lot less scared and like I was from another planet, if you know what I mean. One of the LL leaders pulled me aside one night and recommended that I borrow from their library Jean Liedloff's book, "The Continuum Concept." I did and was delighted to discover that this book was about the the very same folks, an Amazonian pre-Columbian indigenous tribe, the Yekuana, whom my anthropologist cousin had written about for his doctoral disertation. (I know this because I typed his manuscript for him, which was later published.) Anyway, I read the book and many of the ideas about parenting deeply resonated with me. I was further delighted to find out that there was a group of women who met every week to support each other in incorporating some of the concepts discussed in this book into our practical mothering lives here in late 20th century American life. And, it was in this group that I first learned about Unschooling.

"Oh my god! You can do that?" That was my initial reaction. If you could have seen the bruises and contusions I still bore from my then-distant school career, you can then begin to imagine how powerful this was for me to hear. To say that I hated school is probably a gross understatement. Loathed. Despised. Repulsed by. You get the idea. When I discovered back in the 8th grade that I could actually cut classes, this was another of my you-can-do-that? moments. I became an incorrigible class-cutter. And, I always got into trouble for it. Only thing was, I didn't exactly feel righteous about it! John Taylor Gatto and John Holt weren't household names back in the late 60s and early 70s, and nobody in the mainstream was impugning the merits of compulsory education. *I* knew there was something rotten here, but no one was giving me any quarter, me being considered to be an educational miscreant.

Truth is, I felt a great deal of intense shame about my inability to step up to the plate here and not all virtuous. I felt like I had been dropped here from another planet! Why *couldn't* I tolerate school? Everyone else could. But, I just couldn't make myself do this thing, no matter how threatened, shamed, punished, berated I was; no matter how sad and puzzled my parents were. When I was fortunate enough to stumble across a subject or a teacher I liked, I did do pretty well. But, if I felt the teacher was a jerk or the subject was boring to me, I physically could not make myself go, even though it meant all kinds of annoying drama and trauma and shame and punishment. In fact, I'm probably still grounded!

Anyway, The school question was one I actually hadn't considered during the pregnancy. We figured somehow we'd find some funky alternative-type school for our kid. Through our friends, before we even were considering pregnancy, we had become a little familiar with Waldorf, although it gave us a vaguely creepy feeling, and Montessori, and we figured we'd probably do something like that. We still didn't much like the idea though.

So, finding out that there was such a thing as this "unschooling" was like finding the Mother lode for us! And, the more I investigated it and the more I learned about it, the more right it felt. Jimmy, a recovering Catholic school student, was totally down with the idea, too. So, now we had *this* piece of the puzzle and we were just waiting for all the other pieces to fill in around it so we could put it in place.

Fast-forward four years. We had moved by this time to a different community. We had been living in a suburb of New York City, and there were great things about it. Coincidentally, it was the town I grew up in, but despite that there were good things about it. But, we both felt that it was important to provide Liam with abundant access to nature, so we found a great little house in the woods in a semi-rural part of New York state where Liam could fully be Liam. The more I learned about this spectacular person who had accepted our invitation, the more I became delighted and amazed that I was the one whose invitation he accepted.

It was becoming increasingly apparent to me, though, that this was a boy who loved to be around other kids. And, where we lived there was only one other kid. And, that other kid was going to school. And, getting a little weird in the process. We were still full steam ahead with our plans to unschool, and I had gotten pretty well informed about what our state required of us and how we were going to do that. But, I was starting to get these niggling, nagging little thoughts and ideas about making plans and decisions for Liam without his being fully informed about his options.

Although I had not yet heard the term "consensual parenting," that was what I was attempting to do. I decided that for the most part I would try to defer all decisions that would materially affect Liam until he could make an informed choice, unless it was absolutely, truly necessary in my best judgment at the time.

This school thing was bugging me now; I knew that he liked to be with other kids and I knew that he loved to play and play and play. I knew that public school as I remembered it would totally mess him up and undo all the wonderful things he had been developing so far: His sense of himself, his creativity, his intense individualistic style, his joy, his brilliance. But, how, I asked myself, could he make a decision about school if he didn't understand all his options? And, how could he understand school without, you know, experiencing it? (It's at this point in the story that I would like to be able to jump into a time capsule and go back and have a heart-to-heart with myself about this subject. I'd remind myself that Liam has his whole life to make this decision; it doesn't have to be made now. I'd remind myself that things are going along beautifully as they are, and there are other ways of finding kids to be with; just put a little more effort into that. But, there you have it. I have no way to go back and affect the past.) Absent the time capsule idea, what I really needed back then was this conference, but Kelly hadn't had that first wonderful conference yet, and I didn't actually know any other practicing unschoolers I could work this out with.

So, a friend of mine had heard about a local Montessori school being run by a woman who shared many of my ideals and values. Liam and I met with her and I told her all about my views on education. She had never heard of John Holt, but she was fascinated. We liked each other, she liked Liam, Liam liked her, I liked Liam, we both liked her dog, the dog liked us. Okay. We'll try it. BUT, I said, you must never "make" Liam do academic stuff. I told her that he needed to initiate all learning activities. Furthermore, she allowed me to work there so I was still with Liam. We'll see.

Working there went against almost every natural instinct I had. I HATED it. For one thing, Liam's peers were these extremely young kids (youngest two and a half). I believed in my heart of hearts that they should be with *their* moms, not Liam's mom! A big part of the philosophy there was getting kids to separate from their parents, and I felt that was fundamentally wrong. So, I was unwilling to make it easy for these moms to be away from their kids. Not that I wouldn't comfort a crying child: Of course, I would. But, I would also contact these moms to let them know that their kids needed them.

Anyway, as much as I was saddened by the this whole thing, Liam loved it. He was totally in his element, playing, playing, playing all the time with a whole smorgasbord of other kids ~ older and younger ~ who were also into playing, playing, playing. Creative, dramatic play had always been his element, and other kids were happy to follow Liam's direction. And, our hands-off position regarding academics was totally respected. Nobody approached Liam about reading or math or colors or letters.

And then, there was The Work. I found this part of Montessori practice pretty silly. The "rule" was that a kid could not just walk up to one of the shelves, pick up whatever interesting-looking thing was there, and start playing with it. A kid had to have a "lesson" in it. Like, the teachers were going to show kids the proper way to play with this thing. And then, the proper way to put it back. What the...? Show a kid how to play? That's like showing a dog how to eat! It's adults who don't know how to play, right? I got in trouble for this more than once because I negligently allowed some of my charges to play with the "work" without my having ensured their competence to do so. After all, think what might have happened. Wiser now, I shudder to think of the possibilities!

Liam was unfazed by this because he was never fooled about the "work." He knew that he was not an adult-in-training. He was a Person. Already whole, already there. He needed lessons on how to play with stuff like he needed lessons to breathe the air.

Anyway, this all went well... until the next year. The next year would be Kindergarten. In order for Liam to be able to stay with this person and her dog who we all liked so well and who liked us, he would have to attend this thing full time. It was either that or continue to go half days but not be with our friend, who we loved quite well by now. So, we opted to immerse ourselves more in this world, not less. He'd be able to stay with his buds and I'd be able to continue working there and doing a sort of loose music program. It was all good. Or... that's what I told myself.

Turns out this setting was a bit more rigorous for Liam's peers. There were, for example, weekly goal sheets. That would have been cool, I suppose, if the goals had been those of the kids'. But, the goal sheets were filled out by the head teacher ~ yes, our friend. So, the kids were bound to accomplish not their own goals but the teacher's goals. Does anyone see anything funky with this? Now, Liam was starting to feel the heat a little. *His* goals all focused on continuing along the path he had been enjoying all along. That makes sense, right? Our friend, however, did not share his goals. She didn't understand them, didn't want to understand them. And, she couldn't get why this kid was showing no interest in the reading games she wanted him to play. Or, why he wasn't interested in memorizing the scientific names of the shapes of leaves. Don't all kids want to do this? And, when all the kids sat in "circle time" in the morning, she couldn't understand why he didn't find what she had to say as more important than the plans he wanted to make with his friends for that day's adventures. Now, I know there were other kids who were similarly not interested in the approved academic activities, but these kids did not have the support of their moms. They were really on their own and had to do as they were told. I shudder now to think about it.

Meanwhile, we need to talk about the other fragile individual involved here. My ego. Miss Head Teacher and I were dear friends, hanging out and laughing and sharing our personal trials and triumphs. You know, friends. And, she got the idea that I should a head teacher, too. She wanted me to go to Montessori Teacher School and become a bona fide Montessori teacher. Because, while she didn't entirely understand (obviously) my educational philosophy, she was interested and open to these different ideas. She certainly didn't shut me down, and that was encouraging. Plus, these kids, ranging in age from 5 to 10, were fun to hang with. Sweet and affectionate and generous and funny and generally delightful. Some of my fellow assistant teachers were kind of bizarre, and Liam definitely had struggles with those folks, as did all the kids in fact.

Anyway, as the year wore on, I became aware that Liam started changing a little. Although he wasn't being pressured to perform academically, other kids were, and what I didn't realize at the time was that he was comparing himself ~ unfavorably ~ to other kids who were being forced to acquire skills he didn't yet want or even need. And, he was beginning to form an opinion about himself based on this comparison. His play time was still going well, beautifully, really, at least during recess when they were permitted to play, but the day was starting to become a drag for him, and he was starting not to want to go there. My friggin' ego was, in the meanwhile, messing with me as I was thinking about this new career path. I'd go from being poorly compensated musician to being a poorly compensated Montessori teacher. Who could resist that?!

So, there Liam was one day, in a huddle with one of his best friends, planning the day's play at recess, when I overheard one of the teachers say, "Liam, are you working on your goals?" Of course, an absolutely accurate, honest answer would have been, "Why yes, Miss Teacher, I am working on my goals right this moment! Thank you so much for your interest!" But, Liam has always been a sweet, lovely boy, not the wise guy his mom can be, and he hung his beautiful head and was thwarted once again. My heart breaks thinking of it.

..sigh..

By February ~ somehow ~ the cavalry in the form of an epiphany showed up. The cavalry arrested my ego and reminded me that I was no Montessori teacher. I was an unschooler for heaven's sake! I was Liam's mom, and I was losing him. His spirit was being squashed and the only one in the world who could rescue him was me and there was not one second to waste. So, I did my first brave act ~ probably the first in my whole life. I called my friend (who's house we had, by the way, just purchased about a month earlier) and told her that I had negligently abandoned my role as Liam's partner. I told her that my life is not about me so much as it is about him, and that because I had made the conscious choice to invite Liam to be my son, my commitment was to his goal sheet, not mine. In fact, his goal sheet was my goal sheet. I had had 37 years before he came along to work on my goal sheet. Since he was glorious enough to give me the opportunity to be his mom, was I now going to abandon this incredible individual by switching paths? No way! Of course, my friend didn't like it. We argued for about two hours on the phone (not my style at all!) and in the end went our separate ways. I did not care. When it came down to choosing between my friendship with this sweet person or the well being of my son, there was no contest. When it came down to choosing between my ego or the well being of my son, a much more subtle choice, again, there would be no contest.

I am continually filled with gratitude for the clarity to have seen that we were on the wrong path and that we needed to get out of there quickly and without wasting one more second.

It took a few years to reverse the damage that our brief experience caused. It was a few years before Liam could see himself as the whole, brilliant, individual he is. The only thing I can say for the experience is that it left him with absolutely no doubt that unschooling is THE way to go.

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For us, unschooling has always boiled down to relationships, and we have kept good relationships as our sacred priority, and this has informed all of our decisions and choices. This has not necessarily been intentional, though. We have found respectful, joyful relationships to be a natural outcome of traveling this radical unschooling path. And, how could it not? When the goal is joy in each moment, then it stands to reason that each moment will be joyful. Or will, at least, tend towards joy. If joy is our goal, we will natural choose thoughts, words, and deeds that will lead us to more joyful moments. And, I have found that doing this has created a culture of kindness in our home. That is not to say that conflicts don't arise; of course, they do. But, in a culture of kindness, each member strives towards finding a compassionate solution to conflict. I know that this may sound kind of airy-fairy and other worldly; it is anything but. We are not perfect, and we don't float around the house. We are simply committed to each other's wholeness.

Liam, of course, didn't start out this way; and we didn't expect him to. Liam started out as any baby should, all for himself, unaware for the most part of the cost others would endure to provide him with his wants and his needs. But, I was very fortunate to find the well-trodden paths of others to follow. The moms from my early continuum group, Anne Ohman, Sandra Dodd, Joyce Feterroll, Pam Sarooshian, Kathryn Baptista, Kelly Lovejoy, Deb Lewis, Ren Allen, Mary Gold and many, many more folks (I could probably just stand here and recite the names of unschooler folks for an hour who have made a huge difference in my life), had been down this path and told me that it was a good one. What they said was so logical and made so much sense to me, even though it flew in the face of all the parenting tenets I had ever heard and thought were true (without pondering them too much).

It's interesting to note that I was not raised like this, even remotely. Not that I was abused or anything like that, but I can recall many, many more times that I was spoken to disrespectfully as a small child and even an older child than respectfully. I don't have to go in to it here, but suffice to say, although we had a culture of love and affection, we did not have a culture of respect and kindness. I was ridiculed, told directly and indirectly that I didn't know what I was feeling, shamed, the works. In my family of origin, fear and shame were the great motivators. But, you know that can only get someone so far.

So, how I walked away from my family of origin and was able to reject that top-down, punitive parenting style is a little miraculous when I think about it. What Anne and Sandra and Kathryn and everyone else was saying resonated deep within me, and I knew that this path would be far more appropriate for me as a parent than the one that was modeled for me by my folks, who I know did the best that they could with the tools they had. Thanks to these conferences, I got to actually meet fine people and their kids and I could see that this wasn't just talk. They were telling me the Truth. And, I could see this truth for myself.

This was excellent confirmation for us. As an outgrowth of that Continuum group we attended when Liam was still in arms, as an outgrowth of all that I had read in the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, as an outgrowth of all that I had read about attachment parenting, the radical unschooling path has been appropriate and right in line with all that we had done thus far.

How has it worked for us? Radical unschooling has allowed Jim and me to get out of Liam's way yet hold a space for him to become himSelf. I'm sure that kids become themselves anyway. I know I did. But, whereas I had to struggle against others' ideas of who I was and who I ought to be, the radically unschooled child likely won't have that struggle. As a radical unschooling parent, my MO has been to hold a space for Liam to become the best Liam he can be, experiencing unremitting Joy whenever possible. Not for him to get the best grades (there are no grades). Not for him to get the highest scores (there are no scores). And, not for him to become the best Marji, either, by the way! The world already has a Marji Zintz. It doesn't need or want another one. What the world needs is a Liam Zintz-Kunkel ~ whole and himself. That was an epiphany I will always be grateful to have had.

I remember when I had it, too. When Liam was very, very little, I was adamant about having a no-violent-toys rule in our house. Truth is, I didn't think all that deeply about it. I was anti-gun, and I would not invite violence into my peaceful home. So, here we were living in the woods, no television, no violent toys, only natural stuff and music and all that. And, Liam goes outside, picks up a vaguely gun-shaped stick, points it, and says something like "pow." Where had he even *seen* a gun?? I had no idea, but I began to realize that I was messing with stuff that I maybe didn't understand. Then, Jimmy impressed upon me that he had guns to play with when he was a kid and he wasn't a violent criminal. Or a criminal. Or violent. I totally had to concede this point, and I relaxed about it.

But the epiphany that I had was that I had been trying to turn Liam into me, and that would be a doomed enterprise for sure. I finally realized that it was critical that I stop doing this. That I allow him to unfold and be himself. To learn what *he* likes and doesn't like. To support *his* explorations. This isn't Marji version 2.0.1. This is Liam, version one and only!

And what misery we have avoided just in that one realization! How crucial it has been to our level of trust in each other to be mindful of this. This clarity of vision has had a great effect on not only Liam but on all of us. At Liam's feet, Jim and I have learned to get out of our own way and choose more joyful moments. This has been the gift that Liam has brought to us.