RISING TRIBES

Living your Truth

I understand now why something like unschooling or let’s call it “living your truth” is so meaningful to humanity.  I have been watching my daughter and my son for the past month intently, observing rather, with patience and focus (two very hard things to do in the midst of everything else that needs to get done!)  However, this has proven to be the most delightful of practices, as well as the most insightful.

I have actually learned a bit about how my children learn, how their mood is affected by their energy, what they eat, how they rested, the weather, etc.  I have even learned that when I support  their own choices about what to do and how to do it, they create a  process of mastery, which I have come to understand as a deep sence of self.   Understanding the self in a holistic way: what can my body do?  how does this make me feel?  what do i need?  what do i want?  how do I meet my needs? and of course I can go on.  It is when we know ourselves in this deep and holistic way that we can achive mastery in our lives.

Back in my teaching/facilitating days at El Puente Leadership Center, the program made mastery one of their values, it achieved this by providing amazing artists to facilitate workshops in the After School program as well as exposing them to people that were masters in their field.  While those areas are just as important, I was also awere that youth who finished the program would find themselves really crippled by the lack of support in their new environments (work, college, etc).  The youth that continued empowered in ther learning experiences were those that trusted their abilities and were determined to reach  their goals after leaving the program.

I find that  as a parent I am priviledged to have the opportunity to observe two human beings become and evolve from themselves, and often find it difficult to back off, to let go of control.  So much so that I often confuse my care and responsibility to them with controling what they do and how they do it.  I guess that is the challenge of all parents, but its hightend for those of us who can learn from home.  It is quite tricky to navigate discipline with the freedom to be, but I have found (mainly from conversations with my partner and trial and error) that it is imperative to be clear about those boundaries.

Often at home you will hear one of the parents say “you don’t always get what you want” when dealing with something like “i want to stay up late tonight,” and I do feel very mixed about that statement.  Historically speaking, humanity has used–and continues to use–power, control and violence to keep folk from getting what they want.  In turn, we turned into a global network of consumers that are constantly spending so much money, specially women, buying stuff to make up for not getting what we wanted as children.  Whether it was love and attention or one more turn in the swing.   By default, parents have “inherited” the responsibility to protect and prepare the child from what she will experience in larger society, which states “you cant get what you want, but buy this instead.”

This is my question, why not understand what is at the root of that “want” and not only understand but actually acknowledge and work together to meet the root need?  All it would take in our example is “why do you feel you would want to stay up late?”  Whe we took this route  ourselves, we found out that our 4 year old is in need of time with her parents, without the constant putting her needs aside or being asked to wait because of her little brother’s needs.  Time where she can be reassured of our love by having healthy attention and care.   Instead of giving her the message that “she doesn’t get what she wants sometimes” she was able to hear, “what you need and want is important, thanks for listening to yourself, and for being able to express it. Since we didn’t plan it for tonight can we make sure to do that tomorrow night?”  Having done that made me much more aware of the fact that I too “wanted a late night with her and my partner!”  we had a blast together being a family.

If we don’t allow ourselves to have a deep connection with our Self,  to “live our truth”  how can we evolve and heal our very hurt society?  Are you living your truth?

Birth of Ceiba

2004 (Ink and Felts)

My pregnancy progressed and by my 8th month I was in pure creative bliss.  As the days approached our birth, my partner and I began cooking food to freeze.  He painted our whole Bronx studio apartment with murals of trees, and I climbed on top of our window sill holding on with one arm while the other painted a mural of the sun on the ceiling for Ceiba to look at.  By this time I was having regular conversations with our child in the womb, and this image is the representation of those conversations.  While I would commute from one end of the Bronx via 2 subways to another tip of Brooklyn (a 2 hr commute) I would pull out my pens and paper and work on this image.  Ceiba is named after the Ceiba tree.  A tree that inspired the love in my partnership, but that dates back to our ancestors on both lines.  In this drawing I am presenting Ceiba my daughter to the ancestral Ceiba who we all travel through, as its believed in various Maya and African traditions.    Ceiba’s grow around the ecuator and is sacred and useful to many ancient cultures around the globe.

Making your own grain milks

Recently, it dawn on me that this is what  the old ladies in the Mercados (outdoor markets) were doing  back home  (San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico) on their Aguas Frescas stands selling Horchata.  Sadly though, by the time I was a  teenager a delicious and nutritious home made milk turned into a commercial store bought syrup with tons of corn syrup and who knows what else to mimic the delicious flavor of this Mexican Rice drink (and  create a new epidemic of cavities, mine included).

Grains have been used for thousands of years as a drink in many forms, tea, atole, milk, fermented drinks. This has lead me to finally understand that, “when broke, buy a sack of grain!” Not only will you have drinks, but with this sack you have flour, numerous cereals,  grain dishes, toasted grain dishes.  My ancestors and probably yours too, would show you (go back to when you family was farming) that you either grew your grain or made sure you had something to trade for it.

Back to the liquids, since the recession hit the island we live in, and our work, I have been busy at work in the kitchen.  I went from focusing on my regular penny saving strategies to how are we saving ten dollars here and there?   Crazy but true, this is not a rececion folk, its another great depression (don’t be fooled).  And so, the times call for drastic measures in the home front.  So I digged back to my roots and I  recalled that my Tzeltal family is able to survive with corn alone and wild edible plants (as does my grandfather) and my Polish ancestors could make delicious crackers with flour and water or with a little potato and yeast some awesome baggles; finally when I came to my Mexican roots what stands out is  Horchata and Atole. There is nothing that can beat a cool refeshing glass of  Horchata in the middle of a hot day or a warming mug of Atole in the cold mornings of San Cristobal.  The triggered memories lead me to hone my grain milk making skills.

So this is what I’ve been doing:

1.  I chose to buy a sack of rolled oats   (I tried to get organic,  most often bulk organics are so, so, so much cheaper, so its worth the search and the effort, local food coops are great in that regard).  If a sack is to much, buy a few pounds at a time.

2.   I researched the different things I could do with that grain.

3.  I blend the grains dry in a regular strong blender to use as coarse flour or mixed cereal (Recipe below).  I use left over breakfast oatmeal to make oat milk (Recipe below) or I soak oats over night, or for 20  minutes in hot water.  I have use oat milk  for smoothies, baking needs, as milk and thickener of soups, hot chocolate, ice-pops.  With a grinder I make flour and use the flour for baking needs.  Toss oats in honey and spread thin layers in a cookie sheet and bake for granola.  I’ve also made granola bars.

4. I give thanks to the farmer and the world for this Grain!

5.  I watch my family love the DIY (Do It Yourself)  process and smile at the delicous versatility of oats.

Recipes:

Breakfast Cereal

In a powerful Kitchen blender blend to you preferred consistency as fine, coarse or in between as you like.  I often find that the bigger chunks of rice and millet add a nice body to the cereal:

1/4 Cup of Rolled Oats

1/4  Cup of brown rice

1/4 Cup of Roasted Millet (Roasting or soaking Milled helps to alkaline the grain, which is otherwise pretty acidic, roasting works best for this recipe as well   for tea)

1/4 Cup of your choice (barley, khasa, quinoa, amaranth)

Add  4 cups of cold water to a sauce pan and then pour your blended cereals to the pot, stir to disolve all clumps and then (VERY IMPORTANT) turn on the flame on med-low, stir for another 3 minutes while the water warms, and then be available to stir often to avoid burned settiment.

The cereal will be ready in about 20 to 25 min.  You can have it as a sweet porrige with honey, berries, raisings,  wheat germ, flax seed meel, for that extra energy boost or as a savory breakfast, i like to add salt, finely chopped ginger (add while cooking), scallions and cilantro.

When you have a few more minutes to spare, make larger batches and store in a  sealed container.  There is your ten dollar savings

Oat Milk

From Left over oatmeal:

I mainly just gage if i have about a cup of oatmeal, I just fill up my blender with cold water.  Some times less if I want a creamier consistency.

For Flavor I like to add vanilla extract, cinamon powder, honey or sugar.

From soaked oats:

Soak over night 1/2 cup of oats on a glass gar o pot with 3 cups of water, bring the same amount of water to a boil, pour onto oats and let soak 20 minutes.  If you are using quick oats it would be much faster.

Resources:

Most valuable book to our family:   Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford, check your local library, they should have it save $30 dollars or if you can support the author.

I will return and talk about Atole as it diserves its very own entry.

Changing Waters

2003 Ink pen and felts

This refects my early beginings.  It was during my first pregnancy that I began to really trust the creative muse, after years of doodles in my school and work journals, a supportive push by my partner got me going.   I began with a series of belly portraits  cards dedicated to inspiring female friends whose love encouraged me to love more.  While deeply mourning the death of my mother when I was three months pregnant, it was drawing that really connected me deeper with my first daughter.  Through the pregnant self-protraits depicting  a serene, harmonious , life giving and blessed self I could better focus on the joy of creation and accept that in a most unexplainable way the love between my mother and I was transforming into a child within me.

Season Quilting

Though this was my idea (not fitting well with my unschooling values) Ceiba has taken her own little spin to this year long project, she is the designer, part seamstress, and bilingual writer of our Four Seasons Quilt. We began in winter and here is part of the process.

The most exiting part of this project has been spending time in nature and the elements to get a Feel for the season, lots of observation, reflection on our daily experiences.  We also spent a lot of time reading books about snow, this one is one of my favorites.  It helped Ceiba see the amazing world of nature close up, and we learned some cool facts, lots of information in the book for adults, but the images and captions are phenomenal.  She particularly liked counting hexagon snow crystals and was amazed at their perfection.  We learned  lots about hexagons and symmetry, how snow is formed, what temperature and weather factors affect the shape and design and lots more. It was fantastic.

One of the most amazing days we had this winter was going outside on a very cold day after rain, and seeing a thin ice sheet on salal berry leaves, we figured out that we could peel the thin ice sheet and find a perfect print of the leaf on the ice, which made an suculent crunchy cold snack.  We spend almost an hour  carefully peeling off “Salal Leaf Ice Chips”.

Next: Spring! First day today!