I just climbed out of a salt water bath to write this blog.  I want to be sure I get my thoughts, about this most important subject of being in a learning community, down before I lose them.

I am not feeling well today.  I have a sinus infection.  My daughter is also very sick with bronchitis, poison ivy, and a horrible case of pink eye.

I write this, not to induce pity, but to help you understand my bath tub ponderings, and my overflowing, heartfelt gratitude, for the learning community that I am now a part of.

In the past few years, taking care of my terminally ill mother, I have had to grow up.  Faced with loosing my second parent to cancer, and living 2,000 miles from my closest relative, I have learned a lot about self reliance, and the value of true friendship.

When I ventured to Texas, I had a hard time, finding like minded folks, especially in regard to my views on education.  I have learned in my 15 years here, that you can find community in the most unlikely places, virtually, for example.

When I flew to Vancouver in August, for a SelfDesign weekend workshop, I was astounded at how peaceful the families in attendance, with children ranging from infants to teens, were.  There were no parents barking at their children.  The teens were playing with the toddlers.  I saw one parent head off a child, from another family, who was running towards a river on the property where we were staying.  It was an experience of true community.

While in the tub, just a minute ago, I realized how very important this is for me.  My son’s birthday was the day before Thanksgiving.  He has 3 grandparents now, and not one of them called to wish him a happy birthday, on his actual birthday.  However, he received one video recording, and several cards, from what I now realize is our SelfDesign Family.

This week, my family doesn’t even know that my daughter and I are under the weather.  From our SelfDesign Family,  a coworker and mom, asked Sadie’s symptoms, and sent me a page of suggested homeopathic remedies.  One dad, while on a conference call, went to ask a mom who was visiting his house, and his wife, how to help bronchitis.  After I did what they suggested, my daughter slept through the night, for the first time in days.  

I am flying home to see my family of birth at Christmas, and am so grateful to have the opportunity to share this holiday with them.  However, in being a mom and having had to emotionally grow up, I realize that I get to choose my daily life family, and that for me is wholly SelfDesign.

This learning community, is about so much more.  It is about support, nurturing, sharing, inclusivity.

The man in charge of our business operations wrote something this week, that it takes a learning community, to raise a child.  I believe he is correct.

For me, this learning community has become my family, where I receive support in my daily life, on good days, and bad.  I couldn’t SelfDesign, without them.

I love my family of birth.  I have come home to SelfDesign, my family of choice.

Ariel Miller
who is a SelfDesigner, a SelfDesign mom,
and works with SelfDesign in the capacity
of building relationships and alliances

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When I look back on the 38 years I have spent on this lovely planet, there are a few events I can identify, that wound up being a major crossroads for me.  This is where, the fabric of my life wove together in such a way, I could see a picture emerge that I had not seen before.

That is certainly the case, in regards to the Vancouver trip I took in August, to attend a SelfDesign seminar. I arrived in British Columbia a women that has been on a life long quest to find meaningful education in my own life, provide it to my children, and the children of the world.  I left a SelfDesigner.  

I knew this shift in consciousness would have a huge impact on my life.  I completely underestimated the effect it would have on my family.

When my husband and children picked me up from the airport, I told them on the car ride home about my weekend.  I was explaining how one of the many highlights for me, was when Brent Cameron taught a room full of adults how to spell, more or less perfectly, in less than 10 minutes.

I have been in conversation with Brent for a year, before this conference.    I knew that he was wonderful enough for me to fly a few thousand miles to meet him, but when he told me about this demonstration, I must admit I entered the room with a “Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it,” attitude.

Brent taught us that most people who are poor spellers, have trouble because they are still trying to “sound it out.”  This is something commonly taught in elementary education.  However, as Brent explained it, spelling is a visual process, and when you get this, it is easy to spell any word backwards OR forwards.

In that moment, I was liberated from a story I had created about myself, that wasn’t true.  I grew up thinking I am terrible at languages, because I am a visual learner.  My sister, the auditory wonder, was the language guru in our house.  She now speaks four languages, and one of our favorite pasttimes as children, was for me to give her words out of the dictionary, and she would say them backwards.  I have yet to find a word, that she can’t phonetically work out in her mind, and say backwards.

I had a nerve wracking bus ride back to the Seattle airport from Vancouver, that picked me up late enough, I was in serious danger of missing my flight home.  To keep my mind busy from wanting to throttle the bus driver, who seemed to be in no hurry at all, I passed the time by practicing Brent’s spelling philosophy.  I found that I too, when picturing the words visually in my mind, and breaking them into segments of a few letters at time, could easily spell forwards and backwards.

What I realized on that trip is that Brent understands who children are, as neurological beings.  When I explained this to my family, in our minivan on the way home from the airport, my eleven year old son, looked at me shaking his head in wonder, and asked, “Mom, who is this Brent Cameron guy?”

I gave him a quick explanation of how Brent is the head of SelfDesign, a cutting edge educational program in Canada, and thought that was the end of it.  Something I said, obviously made a huge impact on him.  The next day he came home from his beloved school, where he was highly vested in his teacher and friends, and said he wasn’t going back, because he wanted to SelfDesign.

I have looked back on this moment often, and wondered how it happened.  My son LOVED his school.  He would evangelize the self-directed, child centered philosophy, to anyone who would listen.  He was very popular and had a deeply connected social network.

How did he, in less than 24 hours, go from being a student in his school, to a SelfDesigner?  The only answer that my heart gives my over active mind, that makes any sense, is that he is so connected with me, that when I put my stake in the ground and surrendered to the fact that I AM a SelfDesigner, it was the most natural thing in the world, for him to become one too.

What would happen if each of us surrendered to our own process of unfolding as a life long learner and neurological being, that hungers for meaningful knowledge and wants to participate in our wonderful world?  If each of us placed our stake in the ground, and claimed that as adults it is not too late for us to learn what is meaningful to us, in a way that really works for our own unique learning styles?

I am sure that I have only scratched the surface of who Brent Cameron is, but will be taking my son with me this year to British Columbia, so he can answer this question for himself.  I am endlessly grateful that Brent has held the space for the past twenty five years, so that now anyone on the globe can be a SelfDesigner.  It is as if Brent gave me a treasure map, where I was able to uncover a new truth about myself.  The buried treasure that I found in the woods of Vancouver, is that I am actually great at language, and a wonderful speller, in my own unique way.

Ariel Miller 
SelfDesigner,
SelfDesign mom,
Enrollment Counselor & Educational Consultant

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Today would have been my father’s sixty sixth birthday.  My heart hurts, when I think of him, and how young he was when he died.

He was a very successful businessman, the top of his field, one of the very best in the world, in his niche.  Yet, before he died, he told me that when he recovered from his battle with cancer, he wanted to do something else, that his career was making him feel empty.  He was thinking about becoming a teacher.

What does it mean, when someone who is considered wealthy in every way, he had status, a loving family, a beautiful home, a company where his employees loved and respected him, isn’t fulfilled in his career?  I have to wonder if he was so good at doing something that wasn’t his life’s passion, what he could have created if his joie de vivre, had danced with his raison d’etre.

My father grew up very poor.  He told me once that people made fun of him, because of this.  One of his life goals was to become rich, which he accomplished.  Yet, I believe he died, knowing that this formula for success had not worked.  A dear friend told me he was at peace at the end of his life, in everything, but his business.

I carry a quote in my day timer, that I tore out of a magazine years ago, and look at everyday for inspiration.  While being interviewed, Bill Clinton said the following, “When I was governor, I read an astonishing study about ten people who’d grown up in impossible circumstances but all made successful lives.  One guy had been abandoned early and had four brothers in jail, yet he was a doctor.  He’d lived with his grandmother and sometimes slept under the steps of the apartment.  Near the entrance to the building, a guy who ran a newspaper stand there would talk to this child every afternoon.  He kept saying, ‘You can do anything; you’re a really smart kid.’  The study concluded that this boy and the other nine people had one thing in common: a caring adult who made the child feel like the most important person in the world.  When I met Hillary, she was working at the Yale Child Study Center, and I began learning through her work about child development issues.  It was the first time I got it:  I am where I am because somebody made me feel I could be anything.”

I wonder what would have happened if my father had had this as a child, a mentor who told him that could be anything he wanted.  How would his life have been different if he had moved towards a passion, rather than away from his childhood circumstances?  Perhaps he would have found a resolution, and peace in his career, before his death.

This, no doubt, is part of what drives me in my own commitment to change the world of education.  I am currently working with SelfDesign Global because I believe every child that is enrolled, has the relationship with their personal Learning Consultant, that President Clinton spoke of.

I consider my father’s story tragic, to have lived a life where he worked so hard, only to wonder at the end, if indeed he had been in the wrong career.  While I believe he gained comfort, knowing that he had provided well for his family, I know he would have traded all of the status, and wealth he had achieved, to live to see his first grandchild born.

Perhaps that is why, for me, a life lived in any other way than being 100% in your passion, is a life half lived, and why I have literally gone to another country, to find a child centered program for my kids.  They are being given the gift, of their education being one in which they are unconditionally valued.  My children are home learning with SelfDesign Global, a Canadian organization that has been pushing the boundaries in education, and winning awards, for the past 25 years.

I find it interesting that at the end of my dad’s life, his desire was to leave the business world, where he knew great success, and go into education.  I believe it was so he could offer to young people what Bill Clinton spoke of, a mentor who knows a person who is aligned with their passion, can be anything.  Would it have healed him, to give what he had never himself received?  I don’t know, but will allow it to heal me, in his stead.

Ariel Miller
SelfDesign Mom,
Enrollment Counselor & Educational Consultant

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