005 || Why I Kept Homeschooling When Life Fell Apart

When life gets really hard, the advice is almost always the same: take a break. And sometimes that’s the right call. But in two of the hardest seasons of her life — one involving a devastating family crisis and one involving a brand new baby — Sarah discovered that stopping was actually harder than continuing. And it had everything to do with the rhythms she had already built.

This episode is different from the others. No tips, no frameworks — just two honest, personal stories about what systems actually look like when life falls apart. And why building them before the hard times come is one of the most important things you can do for your family.

If you know a homeschool mom in a hard season right now, send her this one.

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Transcript

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Today's episode is going to be a little bit different than the episodes I've done in the past. I'm going to be telling you two very personal stories from my life. And I want to share about both of these stories because they are both times when life was really hard for me. One time it was hard for amazing reasons, and one it was hard for devastating reasons. In both of these situations, I got the advice to take a break from homeschooling and to worry about it later. And while that is not bad advice, it's great advice for many in many situations. But I tried that in both of these situations, and it actually was not the best solution for me or for my family. And I'm going to share why continuing homeschool was so much easier for me and my family than to take a break and what that has to do with systems and rhythms. Glue. It's messy, it's sticky, it gets everywhere. But without it, nothing holds. Homeschool life can feel messy too. We have the loud days, the mental overload, so many moving parts. But we don't need is more curriculum or more pressure to do it all. We need something that holds. Simple systems, steady rhythms, the kind of structure that makes homeschooling easier instead of heavier. Hi, I'm Sarah, a homeschool mom of four, and this is the Homeschool Glue Podcast. Each week we have an honest conversation about real homeschool life and the simple systems that help overwhelmed homeschool moms clear the mental clutter, build rhythms that actually stick, and create the peaceful lives we are all craving. If you're tired of carrying everything and getting nowhere, you are in the right place. Grab that load of laundry and let's get started. Welcome back to the Homeschool Glue Podcast. Today's episode is different. Like I said, it's different than the last few I've done. We've been very practical in those, talking about types of overwhelm, uh avoiding the Sunday rebuild, how to assign subjects to days, what the hidden curriculum is and our homeschool, and all of the above. So if you haven't listened to those, definitely go back. They're very useful. Today I'm gonna shift a little bit and it's more about uh this episode's gonna be more about why all of these things are important in a real life example, two real life examples. So today I'm gonna be sharing two stories from my own life because I think they're going to give you something that a tips episode, while great, um, is those are great, but this is actually showing why this is all important. So I'm gonna talk about why I kept homeschooling when life fell apart, both for good reasons and for really sad reasons. So this is not to be an episode where I'm like, look how strong I am, because that's actually not at all what I'm talking about. Uh, this has nothing to do with me and everything to do with systems and rhythms and why they're so important. Because honestly, in both of these examples, strength had nothing to do with it. Um, actually, one of the examples, I had like no strength left. So that's why most people were like, just take a break from homeschooling. But it actually was a lot harder to take a break than it was to continue homeschooling. So I kept homeschooling because stopping was harder than continuing. And I just want to explain what I mean by that because I think it may it may change something for you and have you look at systems and rhythms a little bit differently. Because I have had people in the past say, you know, you have every second plan and you know, you have no wiggle room, which is absolutely not true. I create systems and rhythms that create lots of wiggle room and actually relieve stress and open up space in my life. Um, but they also really help when life gets tough. So the very first story I'm gonna talk about, I have alluded to a little bit in a different episode, and that is my dad's accident. So I'm just gonna give you the story in case you didn't know the story. I have talked about it pretty pretty publicly in the past, but um, January 17th, 2023 is one of those days in my life that I remember very vividly. There's very few actual dates where I you could tell me the date, and I would remember anything about that day. You know, they all kind of blend together. But that day is one of those where I don't remember most of the day, but I remember sitting down to watch uh this was before Wicked, you know, was a movie, and I loved Wicked. Uh, I've seen it three times and uh not the movie, the play, um, the musical, not on Broadway, but in Minnesota uh in the Twin Cities. I've seen it three times, uh actually once in Chicago. But anyway, I digress. So I wanted to give that experience to my kids, but they were little, and so we were just watching uh different, like a compilation of different people who have played the make, you know, the cast strung together on YouTube so that you can watch the whole thing. And it was like super poor quality. But we were watching that, my kids and I. My husband was working late, and my three daughters at the time and I were sitting down watching that, and it was six o'clock, and I got a frantic call from my mom that really changed our lives. Um, she said my dad was in the hospital, we didn't know a lot, and that we needed to go immediately. So I packed up my kids, uh, brought them to the emergency room. We had no idea if he was alive or not. Uh, we knew nothing, and I'm it's hard to relive, but um, it was a very traumatic few weeks at the beginning, very traumatic few months and years, but uh those first few weeks were incredibly traumatic. He was um unconscious for weeks and they could not get him to wake up for quite a while. He had fallen off of a roof on a concrete, had a very significant traumatic brain injury. He had broke all of his ribs on one side, he was intubated. It was horrific uh to see somebody in that state. And um when you don't even know if they can understand what you're saying to them, that he was completely unconscious. Anyway, at that time, the doctors were pretty sure he would probably never talk again based on where in his brain um he hit um and where the damage was. They thought he may never function normally ever again. He may need, you know, 24-7 care for the rest of his life. They really didn't know, but that's what they prepared us with. Um and the fact that he was not waking up was was not good. So that's where I found myself on that night. It was a Tuesday. I was watching kids before and after school. I was watching three extra kids a couple days a week, um, and I was still homeschooling and all of the things. So I was already very busy and caring a lot. And at that time, I was in a black cloud of sadness and where do we go from here? And I need to be here for my mom and come visit my dad, and I don't want her to go through this alone, and yet I'm still a mom, and you know, my kids were still very young at this time. My oldest, I think, was eight. Um, and so it was it was very hard. And so that Saturday after, like, they had a dance recital, like light it was we still had to kind of carry on, but yet it was very traumatic. And so I share this because this is something hard I've gone through. Um, he ended up being in the hospital for four months, which was miraculous. Um, not at all what they expected, they thought at least a year, and then maybe he'd go into long-term care. Uh, but he went home and um he's doing so well, you know, he's changed a lot, but he can function. He uh was able to get his driver's license back, and uh, which was very hard. I don't even know if I'd pass the test that he had to do, but uh, you know, miraculous, all glory to God. Uh, it's still hard to talk about, but I share this because it was very hard. And it was something where I had something not only logistically a lot added to my plate of trying to get to the hospital almost every day to be there for my mom and to, you know, help advocate for my dad, which that's a whole other podcast episode. I'll probably never record of just how atrocious that part was, but um, but it was a lot, just you know, logistically, but then you add in the emotional piece where I would go to bed and just feel like black, like a black cloud over me at all times and just devastated and having to grieve, losing someone who's still alive and all of these things. And so it was really hard. And um, immediately, of course, we took a break from homeschooling. I was not going to continue homeschooling when I was going through tragedy. My kids were going through tragedy. It was super traumatic driving with my kids and going to the ER and um all of it. Very traumatic on my kids. My my littlest um at that time was two, and she would reenact for the next year. She would reenact the phone call that I got from my mom and pretend to cry. Like she was reenacting this traumatic event through play as kids do, and it was just very hard on all of us. So I was not going to continue um homeschooling right away. And so I decided to just take a break. Everyone around me was like, just don't worry about it. It's gonna be okay. You'll get to it. Like your family's in crisis. It is okay to take a break. And my advice would be do take a break. If you need a break, take a break. This is not anti-break, and this is not look at me, I'm so much better because I didn't take a huge break when life was in crisis. That is not it at all. I was not strong. I only thing keeping me going were my kids, my love for my family and my dad, and God. Like those were the only things. There was no strength involved. Um, I was a mess. However, in the couple weeks that followed, my life was in shambles in a lot of ways. And in some ways, it seemed like it would have been easier to just keep, you know, just keep taking a break because I was trying to do all of this stuff and I was emotionally not okay. However, I still had my obligations. I still was watching kids and I was still at home with my kids for most of the day. And so by taking a break, it actually created a lot of chaos. We had all of these hours in the morning that were not planned anymore. And so, what do kids in tragedy and crisis do when they have open hours of time? They uh act out, they don't do well, especially my kids do so well with rhythm and routine and predictability. And when all of their life, like their grandpa, who we call Grampy, who they see multiple times a week, is no longer someone they see and they know he's in the hospital, but they can't go see him. And mom's obviously very emotional, and it's just they're going, you know, they're reliving those that day and the next few days, like they're going to have a hard time with that lack of predictability in their life. And so I found that taking a break was actually so much harder than if we had continued homeschooling, because with homeschooling, I had created rhythms and systems that made life easier. And so when I took those away, it actually made life a lot harder. The same is true with like meal planning and cleaning. Yes, I can let those go, and I did for a little bit, but then when you stop doing those routines, then the house is suddenly messy. And now I'm stressed out about my dad and not homeschooling and my house, and I still like I have to now figure out what to feed my kids because I didn't plan for it, and it adds so much extra stress than if you are able to just keep those systems going. That's why I love systems because when life is great, um, they just keep life great, you know, they don't add extra stress because they're just kind of running in the background, they relieve stress. And then when life gets really hard, if you're able to um keep those going, at least to some extent, or scale them back a little bit, but still implement them to some degree, they add structure and they add just this sense of like routine and like this is still my life, and I still have some control over my life, and I still have to eat and my house still gets dirty, and um, you know, my kids still are gonna be home and they're gonna be looking at me like, what do we do next? Or if they don't do that, then they're like fighting with each other, or they're getting emotional, or they're irritable. And so by continuing our routines and continuing to homeschool, it actually gave us some time to not focus on what was so hard. And I found that time to be such a gift of allowing my brain a break from all of the sadness and trying to figure out care for my dad and how to advocate him for him and all of those things. Because when I wasn't homeschooling, that was consuming me. And so when we were able to read living books together, when I was able to teach them, when we were able to focus on school, my brain was not able to focus on all of the hard times. And it was actually such a beautiful blessing to have that, um, have those moments with my kids that I wouldn't have had to have that um have those subjects to focus on that are beautiful, to be able to read the Bible with my kids and focus on, you know, the bigger picture was such a blessing to my family. So systems, you know, can get a bad rap. They can look like so much control, but they can actually make things so much easier and hold things in your life so that you're able to go and do the things that are weighing on you, but they've got you covered for these other things because you've already figured them out. Now you just have to implement them, which is a lot easier than having to reinvent the wheel all the time. So that's my story about my dad and how systems and rhythms really helped, and continuing homeschooling was so much easier because of those systems and rhythms. It didn't take me any time to plan our week because I already had a weekly rhythm. I literally just had to open the books and do it. And that was so much easier than not having anything to do for hours with my kids when we were going through crisis. On a much happier note, the other time that um I had planned to take a break, but ended up only taking like a week, maybe two. I don't even think it was two weeks off. I only think I only took one week off. And that was January 4th of last year, 2025. Our fourth baby was born, our little boy. And this story is very different, but it's a still a version of hard, and I'm very thankful that it was not a traumatic experience because um I have had hard births and hard postpartum periods and postpartum depression and that kind of stuff. And I know not every birth is uh, you know, uh happy and you know, joyful in all respects, but for me, for this one, it definitely was. And I had gone into that birth. Um, I have very hard pregnancies, I get very, very sick for a very long time, and it's incredibly hard to function and be a mom. But um the birth, you just never know. And I've had a mixed bag of experiences of healing being easier or harder, and just emotionally and physically of some were great and some not so much. And so I go into it, you know, uh optimistic but realistic. And so I had planned for the whole month of January to take the month off. So we really worked hard in December to homeschool as much as possible leading up to Christmas, and then I had planned to take all of January off of homeschool and adapted our schedule accordingly because you just never know. I didn't know how my kids would acclimate. I didn't know I have a very hard time adjusting to breastfeeding each time. It's very painful, and I don't need your advice. I I know why, and it's just painful and it gets easier over time. But I knew I would be in a lot of pain the first couple weeks, and you just never know how your baby's gonna be, if they're gonna be colicky, if they're gonna have a smooth birth, or maybe it might be rocky. You just never know, and I didn't know how healing would go for me. And so I planned to just make it easy on myself and to take the month off. So what I ended up doing though is having, you know, I had kind of a rough birth, but it ended up okay and I healed great. Breastfeeding was very painful, as it always is for me, but I've gone through it three other times. I knew, I knew the protocol, I knew what works for me, and um, I knew within a couple weeks it would feel fine. And so uh our baby was and still is, knock on wood, a very chill, sweet little guy, like nothing ruffles him too much. And so he's been like that since the day he was born. And so actually, not homeschooling, once again, was a lot harder than homeschooling. And to set the scene a little bit, we live in Minnesota. January and February are very hard months for us because it is cold, it is snowy, and while my kids do get outside a lot, in the summer we're outside almost all day. And that's a lot of hours compared to the winter where they go out for maybe an hour and then they're in, or if it's like feels like 30 below, then they're just in. We just don't go out. And I had a brand new baby, I'm not going out with him. And so all that time spent indoors means we get on each other's nerves, and then you add in there's a new baby. And yes, my daughters were so excited, but that's still new. And obviously, my third daughter, who had been the baby of the family, now is no longer the baby of the family. So that created its own challenges. You know, every youngest often will go through a little season of um trying to kind of challenge that new role that they're in. And so we definitely were going through that. And I just found it once again really hard to not homeschool. All of a sudden we have all these hours, and I just want to cuddle with my baby, and my kids are irritating each other because we're stuck inside and it's gloomy, and it's we're just kind of sick of being in here with each other, and they'd fight over the baby who wants to hold the baby, and I was just managing all of this all the time, and I just kind of got sick of it. So after a week, I think it was a week, maybe two weeks, but I'm pretty sure it was a week, we decided to just homeschool again. Our baby, I could wear him. I had a little bassinet um in the kitchen that I would just pull over by the dining table where we sit for homeschool for the most part, and I would just lay him in there if I needed to set him down, and he would just sleep or just look around like they do, because they are brand new, they don't do a whole lot. And so, um, and then I'd just bring the Bobby pillow in and just nurse him right there at the table, and it was very easy. And once again, it really allowed us something to focus on, other than just being irritated with each other. And since we couldn't go outside, you know, had it been, you know, April or May when I had them, I may have taken the week the month off because we can go outside and it's beautiful. I love springtime in Minnesota. But uh it was the dead of winter, and so we just decided to get back into school, and it was so much better because we already had our rhythms in place. I just have to keep up with them. And since he was a very chill baby, that was actually much easier than not keeping up with them and having to figure it all out as I go. So, in both of these instances, one a very hard time in my life for sad reasons, and another a very could have been a hard time. And you know, obviously having a newborn is always hard, whether you get an easy quote. I don't want to call a baby easy, but a a baby who's pretty go with the flow versus not, um, it's still hard, you know, he's still waking up all the time, still adjusting, all of those things. But um, but that was a more happy, obviously a happy reason to have a hard time. And but in both of those situations, continuing to homeschool was so much easier than not continuing to homeschool and keeping up with our rhythms and systems was so much easier than not. So, what do these two very different stories have in common? In both cases, I assume that stepping away from our routines would give me relief. That's what people would say. Just take a break. And while that can definitely be true for you, I am not anti-break. Um, and I'm sure there will be times in my life where I will take a break. And I did take a break in both those instances for a while. Um, but in both those cases, you know, the opposite was true that did not give me relief long term. Um, maybe for a couple days. Obviously, I'm not gonna homeschool from the hospital or the day we come home from the hospital and we're getting to know the baby and everything. Um, and I did take a break with my dad while we adjusted and kind of acclimated to this what would become kind of a new normal for quite a while. Um, but then you know, the absence of the structure added stress instead. Of removing it. Because when you don't have a system, you have to carry everything in your head. You have to carry, okay, you know, I still have to eat and I still have to cook and I still have to uh maintain the house. And there are things you still have to do even when life is hard, which sucks, but that's just the way it is. Um, as an adult, as a mom, there's still things we have to do even when life is hard. So when the system is already installed, when Monday already knows what happens, and I know what happens on Tuesdays, and I know what I'm meal planning and I know what I'm doing each subject, I don't even have to think about it. It's actually so much easier to just maintain that than to go back to doing nothing and having to kind of rebuild it. You don't have to use that precious mental and emotional energy to recreate it. You just show up and you do it. That's the beauty of habits and systems and rhythms. Once you're into them, it's so much easier to just keep doing them. So all the energy that you would have spent on all the logistics can go towards what actually needs you. You don't have to spend all this time stressing about food and where what are you going to eat because you didn't meal plan. You just quick meal plan because you're used to that system. And then you have that energy and mental, you know, mental fortitude to focus on the thing that really needs you. And I want to be clear once more about something. I'm not saying you should never take breaks. Uh, sometimes they are very necessary. I have not gone through many different situations, and so I obviously cannot compare and will not compare. I don't think it's good to like be like whose suffering is worse. That's just toxic. But I know I'm gonna go through things in the future and I may take a break. Um, but I just want to give you permission that you don't have to take a break. Just because everybody else says to take a break with what you're going through, if that's more stressful to you, you're not crazy to continue doing it. If it's bringing you some relief to keep up with what you were doing before, then by all means do it. You don't have to uh and don't feel that you have to do one or the other. Do what works for you. But I think people uh look at keeping up with things, like keeping homeschooling when my dad's in the hospital, they might look at that and be like, Sarah, you need to slow down. But what they didn't realize was slowing down added so much stress to my life because it was creating chaos in my home. And now I'm thinking about my dad all the time. And homeschooling was such a blessing and a relief from all of that. And so you know your own life best, you know you best, you know your kids best. And you can try out different things and see what works for you when you go through these hard times. So, what do I want you to actually do with this? Why am I sharing these stories? I really don't want you to wait until the hard season comes in your life to start building these. That is not a good time to build systems. Uh, it's actually like the most stressful time. Um, but we all know that hard times are going to come. Do we want them to come? No, but they're going to. There's gonna be things that happen in our lives that are hard. And so when you're in crisis mode, when that call comes at 6 p.m., when the baby won't sleep, when everything feels like it's falling apart, that's not when you want to be building this, these systems. You want to have them already made when life is overall going okay, so that when those hard times come, you have something to lean on. You're not trying to carry everything on top of those hard times. So the practical takeaway from today's episode is to think about one area in your life or your homeschool that feels like it gets completely derailed every time something hard happens. Okay, so maybe that's meal planning, maybe that's cleaning, maybe that's your homeschool rhythm, whatever it is, that's where you need a system most. Not when you're in crisis, but right now, while things are hopefully relatively stable, if you're in a hard time, maybe wait until things kind of stable out. And that's when you can really work on creating a system that you can rely on even when life is hard, if you choose to. You don't have to build it at once. You can pick one thing, install one rhythm, one default, one plan that runs, whether you're at full capacity or running on empty. And keep with it, keep up with it, and then over time you can add more. Because the goal isn't a perfect homeschool, it's not a perfect home, it's not a perfect mom, it's not perfect kids. It's a homeschool that holds together even in hard seasons. And that's really what I want to teach you about and want and am committed to helping you with. So before I let you go, um, if today's episode resonated with you and you want to start building that foundation right now, I have something free that will help you and is a great place to start. I am calling it the starter glue print. It is a free PDF with the foundational systems I would put in place if I were starting from scratch. It includes a brain dump to clear out your head, a weekly rhythm template with an example from my life, and a few other tools that are designed to be the kind of thing that you can actually lean on when life gets hard. You can head to homeschoolglue.com slash start. The link is in the show notes and grab that guide. Um, and I just pray that it blesses you and your family and can give you a little place to start. I will see you next Tuesday. And if you know a homeschool mom who is in a hard season right now, I would really appreciate if you would send her this episode. Hopefully it will help her feel seen and not so alone and just give her some encouragement and some practical steps she could take, maybe once life is a little easier, or maybe she has some systems and she's putting them off because everybody else is saying she should take a break. And maybe this will be her little sign that she doesn't have to listen to that. She can do what works best for her and her kids and her family. So thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time. Happy homeschooling. I pray this episode blessed you and gave you something useful that will make homeschooling easier or more fulfilling. If this episode made you feel seen or gave you one thing to change this week, would you please share it and leave a review? That's how more homeschool moms who are struggling with overwhelm can find something that actually helps. You can always find me on Instagram at homeschoolglue where we talk simple systems, rich learning, and the real version of homeschool life. You don't need to do it all, you just need systems that stick. I'll see you next week. Happy homeschooling.