I am not brave

just a disclaimer...but my opinions are strong and may be offensive to some so read at your own risk...

  "Your so brave!"  I have heard that statement a lot in the last almost 10 years. The first time i heard it was when i wanted to get married at 18. Though i think some people really meant the words "crazy,stupid,and young, " and not "brave" The same thing when we got pregnant with our first chick <3 But i don't think i was ever stupid or crazy or even brave.  When i met Mr.Wylie when we were young :) i told him right away that i wanted " to have 8-12 kids, be a stay at home mom, and home school those kids, if you are not interested in any of these things don't even ask me out" We got married about 15 months later :) Yes i was young, but i was not stupid, and i was not brave. I was scared. I knew that if i started to date this boy and i fell in love with him and he wanted different things then i did, or if he was not looking to get married then i would be setting myself up for failure and heart break. I knew i wanted to get married and have a family, and i knew the goals i had for myself for that family. So we spent a lot time talking about those things that were important to both of us when it came to family life. What the roll of the father is and the roll of the mother. We spent way more time talking about our future together then the wedding itself, we knew what was important, our future, not the present.
  When i got pregnant with my first chick people told me i was brave because i was planning on a natural childbirth. No epidural for me! But it wasn't because i was brave, but because the idea of a giant needle in my spine scared the poo out of me!! I am so glad that i was scared because i believe that an epidural would have stolen a wonderful first birth from me( no it wasn't perfect, but i think for a first time it was pretty great! ) I have heard how brave i am for not having an epidural with any of the 4 chicks, especially the 2 middles whose births were helped along by pitocin. Again, it wasn't because i was brave...the pain was crazy, but my fear of that needle was WAY scarier then the pain i was in. And with my 4th chick i would not say that at any point was was ever in any pain what so ever.

 People started telling me i was brave for homeschooling. I have always found that kind of a strange thing to say. Really? They think I'm brave? Why? Because i keep my kids home with me? Because i think i am capable of teaching my children?  I don't know. See what i really want to say to people is " Really? you think I am brave? i think YOU are brave for sending your kids to school! You are brave for letting that little child go away from you all day with no control over what they are being taught. You are brave for letting a stranger teach your child. You are brave for letting your child be in a class with 20-34 other children who you don't know and you have NO idea what THEY are teaching your child. I'm not the brave one, You are." but i don't think that would be polite to say to someone. It would probably hurt their feelings and offend them..and maybe it should. The thought of public school is offensive to me. Its offensive to me that by not putting my children in a school that i am brave. I'm not brave. Again. I am afraid. I am afraid of what they would learn at school and who would be teaching them things. I'm afraid of what my children would learn about sex, love, science, history. I'm mostly afraid of their innocence being stolen from them. I am afraid of the attitudes they would pick up, the language, the ideas. Let me tell you about my chicks. I have 4 of the most wonderful little chicks.ever. And I'm not the only one who thinks that. I get told that all the time. By total strangers, by people who don't like chicks, by people who don't like their own chicks, by people who i think have great chicks themselves, and by just about anyone who spends any time with them. I believe whole hearted that they are so wonderful because they have not been ruined by school. My oldest chick, the mama chick, she blows me away. She is 8. when i was 8 i learned HORRIBLE things about sex, i learned horrible attitudes, i just learned all the wrong things. 3rd grade was as my mother likes to call it, the year of enlightenment. Thank heaven i had MY mother who stepped in and corrected the things i had learned on the play ground. mama chick is learning about love, TRUE love. Not sex. I am in NO rush to teach her about sex.  Sex is not important right now. She needs to know about LOVE. Now of course there is no greater love then that of God the father. Mama chick is learning about love from her daddy and me. And i know she is learning the right things because of a conversation we had this summer. She has had a friend since she was 4 years old. He has been a big part of her life for 4 years. This summer she came to me in the laundry room and very seriously said to me" Mommy, i need to tell you something. I love my friend very much. he is my boyfriend. and i love him." I could not help but smile, but i held myself together and asked her to please tell me what it meant that she loved him " it means that i care about him very much and he is my best friend and he will always be my friend." that sounds like love to me. she went on to tell me i didn't need to worry about them kissing because they talked about it and they were gonna wait till they were a lot older <3 i never made a big deal out of this. Ever. But this is love. This is what love is. This is what i want her to learn and to remember as she gets older. I don't want her learning about "love" on the playground at school. i am afraid that if i let her go to school this would all be gone. This is the same thing i worry for my other children as well. School is not just about learning to read, do math, and write your name. There is so much else that they learn that i am afraid for them to learn. Homeschooling to me is safe. I am protecting their childhoods. I am protecting their hearts, their souls and their minds. So you can call me "brave" if you want, and i will smile and say "thanks" but to me I am not the brave one.

  A new thing i am hearing i am brave for is for having a home birth. Why does this make me brave? I don't think it makes me brave at all. i have had 4 babies in 4 different hospitals in 3 different countries... :) my 4th birth is the only one i feel that i had the birth i wanted. Where no one took my power. No one made decisions for me. Where i was allowed to  truly birth my child. My first 3 were not that way. Now, a lot of that is because i didn't know any better. I wasn't as well educated about birth or my rights. But, i have been horrified at the treatment of women during birth to the point that i would never give birth in a hospital ever again, as long as there was no real emergency. because to me, birth in a hospital is SCARY and to choose that kind of birth makes people Brave. Birth in a hospital is ( to me ) out of your control from the minute you walk into the hospital. It is no longer your birth. it is your Dr.s birth, and his nurses. They give you a gown to wear over your naked body, the hook you up to all sorts of machines, they tell you what you can and cant do, no eating, no drinking, only ice chips. They push you to do what THEY want you to do. How they want you to birth, how they want you to labor. If you try to hard to go against what they have planned for you, they threaten you. forceps, c-sections, having to monitor the baby away from you, blah blah blah. But if you lay on your back and spread your legs and let them do what they want to do things will go fine for you. You may end up cut, with foreign objects forced into your most private of areas, but hey, that's not scary..oh wait..if that was a sexual encounter wouldn't that be rape??? hmmm....seems to me that things are a bit out of control in the OB world( Now i would like to say that i know some WONDERFUL ob nurses and drs who do NOT treat their patients this way..but..i believe they are true stars and exceptions..not the normal ) So to me. having a baby in a hospital is way my scary then having my baby at home, with the help of a midwife who will be there to support me in the birth that I want to have.  I want to thank my sister who allowed me to be at her birth, i truly believe if i hadn't been able to witness her birth that i probably wouldn't feel this way as strongly. I watched her dr threaten her, i watched her nurse threaten her, i watched her dr and her nurses discuss things to do to her without ever asking her if it was okay. I came away from that birth with a whole new view of things. Now don't get me wrong. It was AMAZING to watch the new baby being born! My sister did an AMAZING job! It is not my sister that i had a problem with..it was the hospital ( just in case you have read this far down and want to know, the hospital she had her baby at was White County Medical Center and her dr was Kyle City, i would never let that man anywhere me. Ever. Ever. Ever. And i would NEVER give birth at that hospital. Ever. They have some of the MOST backwards, barbaric practices i have EVER seen. )

 So people can call me brave all they want. But i promise you, im not the brave one.