Choosing to Home Educate Healed us Both

For us mums it can be hard to realise that what our child maybe going through mentally and emotionally could be our fault.

Or sometimes we know it, but we just don't know what to do about it. So we keep the thoughts to ourselves and operate out of guilt and feeling ashamed, which can lead to lots of stress internal stress in the end, believe me I know.

For me it was when my daughter Hayley was refusing to go to school, and when she was at home she was either glued to an ipad or screaming at me. No cuddles, no talking just anger.

Little did I know then that the emotional trauma I had experienced during pregnancy had affected mine and Hayley's attachment to one another, which is why she didn’t want to leave me just in case I disappeared. Which is what happened when her beautiful granny Janet left us for heaven when she was just 4.

It was a combination of a faulty mother daughter attachment which can happen when you have pregnancy or birth trauma (like I did), and grief that lead to a mental and emotional breakdown situation for Hayley. The way I look at it her little brain went into survival mode and maths and English just wasn’t necessary to keep her alive, and as for socialisation (which is what everyone who asks you when you say you home educating) well when your in survival mode the worst place you can be is amongst others who could be judging you, or planning to make you feel a whole lot worse because lets face it kids can be savage. Which leaves you feel a whole lot worse.

Self harming at 6 was not something I ever imagined possible but it happened to us, and as her mum I took the responsibility and did what I knew in my heart I needed to do. Take her out of school and rebuild our relationship, which at the time I had no idea how to even start.

It soon became clear though that in order to change the tense atmosphere in our home I also needed to take the lead and to heal alongside Hayley. This meant reassessing what we did with our time and finances to be able to make home educating work, because no matter what, I knew in my heart I could not send her back to school.

6 years later, I am grateful I made the changes to make it work. Our relationship is better than ever, she feels like she can trust me more now, she knows that even in public I can hold myself together to help her calm down, and she talks to me about her worries, which to me is the most important thing especially as she goes into her teens. She is also confident enough now to leave me, and go to groups at one point I thought this may never happen because I didn’t leave her many times in the first 3 years, I always had to loiter somewhere.

All in all its worked out but it was a bumpy ride, with many tears, and I really wish I knew what I know now which is.

• Mental and emotional health can be healed

• Our brain can be "fixed" or changed to enable a happy healthy productive life

• Time is not linear, its the way we think about time thats the problem, we have got stuck in a 9-5 rut

• When we follow our hearts the finances and resources we need, to do the right thing come along. we just need a different perspective and a desire to learn

Since becoming a Neuro coach which happened in my pursuit of wanting to be the best mum possible (I took it to the extreme a £20,000 qualification later), I discovered that it was how I thought about things which were causing me the most stress, and in turn this affected Hayley because she is a very sensitive child, given to someone who was a very sensitive child as well. .

However I had become hard and angry in the life school of hard knocks!

Well not anymore, just yesterday I was told by someone who has only known me a short while that I have a lovely vibe about me, I am peaceful and lovely to be around. I do marvel at these comments and also celebrate because thats exactly how I want to be at home, as well as around others. I dont like being Jekyll and Hyde or pretending to be someone I am not in public.

All in all I've become the women I needed when I became a mum and now I get to help other-mums get to where they want to go.

“Helping women find joy, peace and freedom by resetting their lives mind body and soul.”

Is this something you need?

Take a look at my Pdf of “101 reasons women are stressed” to see if you can relate to some of the thoughts I was having which were causing more trouble than I realised.

With joy

leanne

Why Farmers daughters are just as important as farmers sons.

What happens when God chooses a girl to be the oldest child in a farming family.

Long has it been known that many farming families in the western world hope for a son to come along to take on and run the family business. If that son happens to be the oldest and they want to stay and farm, then I guess it makes it a much easier decision.

 Unless that is you’re the eldest child in a farming family and you’re a girl. Which is where I have found myself, I am the 5th generation on our family farm, I was also the first to be born in that generation. LUCKY ME! I say this like this because I can’t help thinking that I have been chosen to be right here right now, because I have enough fire in my belly and vision in my mind to keep fighting for the change that so needs to come. Not just in my family either I know many daughters of farmers who are the eldest, and who find themselves in somewhat of a tough position because we aren’t really sure where we fit.

 And the title farmers daughter, just seems to make the burden all the heavier. We seem to want to protect and change and see breakthrough not just in ourselves but in our families. Yet many times we are left feeling like failures, like unless we can lift a 25kg bag of feed or rugby tackle a sheep to the ground then we just never feel quite good enough.

 I will say here, I have been blessed with the family I have been placed in, in such as they have never stopped me doing what I wanted to do, and in being like that I tried to find as many ways as possible to never come home and farm through my teens. I would work on other farmers, but working on ours was a nightmare and I didn’t want anything to do with it, unless I was being guilted into go out and check the sheep at lambing or something.

That is until my grandad died rather suddenly changing everything that we were doing and how we were to move forward. Time stopped for a while as we got over the shock, but I found myself so dissatisfied with everything, any job I did or aspirations to be a paramedic seem to just not fill the void that was somehow hidden deep inside of me.

 After being told for most of my teenage life to not come home farming, “there is no money in it you work long hours for not a lot”, and of course I used to think “I am not coming home to work here, the atmosphere was always to heated, there was far too much arguing, and if I am honest, I did not want to work alongside my dad I wanted more freedom”.  

 I went self-employed and came home aged 19 and I am still here, however things have changed rather drastically since those days of turning over hundreds of sheep to do their feet, back in the days when I thought I was physically invincible, it turns out that the female body requires a bit more care and attention than I was giving it, a lot more rest and sleep than I gave it, because I was always working or playing hard. And at 25 when I was expecting our daughter Hayley I injured myself to such a degree that 11 years on I am still undoing the damage. I wrote about some of this journey in my book “Farming Broke Me, But I Keep Fighting”  

You see now looking back, I had a deep-seated belief that in order to make it in the farming world I needed to be strong, masculine and indestructible, I used to boast about it in the pub how strong I was, and prove my point if anyone was to over step the mark and piss me off. I was a bit of a fighter back then which makes sense to me now, but I was never intended to be a physical fighter. I was designed to be a spiritual fighter. A warrior prayer princess in Gods end time army to bring about change, not some butch maid with an attitude problem and enough anger to sink the Titanic.

 I was designed to get a fire in my belly and keep going with it, and that is probably why I am writing this today. You see the feelings of inadequacy I felt where because there was a long-term spiritual battle playing out in my family, and for whatever reason I have been placed right here and now to be able to see what’s happened and do something about it. You may be one of those maids too.

 God had a different plan for us because through my own physical brokenness, mother hood and a desire that things needed to change, I have been able to work out how we could work smarter rather than harder on our farm, protecting our health and more importantly healing broken relationships. Through what I have thought more than once was one of the darkest points in my life just after becoming a mum, when I couldn’t walk unaided, when I was trying to look after a baby, but my mental and emotional state was a mess.

I realised that if I wasn’t going to be able to help my mum and dad as I had before, then I was going to need to use this beautiful brain that I had been given to work out a plan.

And guess what…

 It has been my very feminine naturally nurturing self which has enabled us to literally turn things around on our farm with a focus on our personal health and especially our relationships with each other first. We no longer put the farm first (we do look after our animals to the highest degree, don’t read me wrong here), however instead of making every decision be about the farm and what is best for the farm business, we make the decisions based on what is best for us, and how will it affect our time, our energy our health and essentially our relationships in the long run.

 By flipping the focus to be around the family, not the farm this has opened up multiple opportunities for us to make changes. It is also a big blessing that I seem to have been given a multi-functional entrepreneurial brain ( self diagnosed ADHD) which enables me to think outside of the box, which we seem to have been backed into.

 For example, I have a vision that in my life time I will see our same 210 acres, 83ha double if not triple production because we are focusing on our soil health and the most importantly how we can grow plants without artificial fertiliser. I like to learn about soil and ways we can improve things.

 I have also been fortunate enough to be part of a company that makes healthy beauty products which contain no harsh chemicals as many products do.

It is through being an Ambassador with Tropic Skin Care that its opened my eyes up to body burden and our chemical load, and how our bodies are becoming increasingly toxic with medications we take, the things we put on it, and of course what we eat. It was this knowledge that got me thinking, why are we treating our animals with so many medicines that they may not even need? and how do we change that in the long term? (it’s still a working progress). This thought alone has saved us thousands of pounds over the last 10 years, as we work to create a farming environment that is healthy not sick.

The other important part that being part of Tropic or rather Susie Ma its CEO shared with us, was about carbon off setting and how knowledge of this, has helped us to create an altogether more sustainable environment that works for our farm, set here on the Devon and Cornwall Border.  More about that to come in another blog no doubt.

 You see in a twist of Godly wisdom through a situation that was out of my control and has changed my life for the better in so many ways, by losing my physical health I have been able to sit back and think more about how I was going to make things easier, for my parents, but ultimately for me and my husband in the future as well. Bringing about changes that so desperately were needed to free us from the mill stones around our necks, from the spiritual warfare as well as what is happening in the physical with the land grab and the government seemingly wanting us our, that it created an atmosphere which was of survival and lack rather, than thriving and abundance.

The best bit is we the farming family are at the forefront, we have better relationships, we have more time to do meaningful things we want to do like, spend more time as a family, home educate our kids, host farm tours, and all the other wonderful ideas we shall implement as time goes by no doubt.

 We are more mindful of our time and particularly this year where my physical health has taken a turn and I am able to do even less for a season than before you can read more about that on my Facebook page, now more than ever I am so grateful we have had the chance to create a work smarter not harder environment that our kids can be brought up in.

 So when God made a farmers daughter and chose her to be the eldest it wasn’t to upset the balance and potentially the sons, in fact it is so we can bring our femineity to the kitchen table that we can say I want a different way of life for my child/children particularly if they are girls, rather than them thinking they always have something to prove and working all hours they can to prove it.

 That nagging thing us girls do works well because when I know in my heart that something needs to change so that we can make all our farming lives easier, I wont give up I will keep nagging and nagging, gaining all the evidence I can find to prove that making certain changes is going to improve our quality of life in the long run. In my case it’s my poor dad that gets my “preaches” he calls it. I call it our steps towards freedom.

 I was born to be a fighter to bring about change in our farming family, for such a time as this. I was born to start speaking out and sharing with the farming world the importance of the feminine touch in the business decisions, not just in keeping a home, doing the book keeping and making dinner for all and sundry. And of course, you don’t have to be the oldest daughter that’s just where I am placed right now.

 Women can bring equal ideas and solutions to the farming family table, so it is high time we stopped seeing such a patriarchal industry and started teaming up bringing both the masculine and feminine gifts to the table to bring about true change for ours and our children’s futures.

 It is never too late, and it’s not impossible even if you think you are living with a family from hell.

 If you want to chat today because something has resonated here click this link to book a zoom call.

Written with joy

Leanne Barriball 

Quick links

Book “Farming Broke Me But I Keep Fighting”

Facebook Page The Devonshire Shepherdess

Shop Tropic

UK Farmers- Our Focus Needs to Change

“We need to feed the nation”

Do we? The last time I checked we aren’t in World War 2 anymore and the government seem hell bent on buying in most of our food from all over the place, so maybe we should let them get on with it. So why are we still stuck with this old mindset of “we need to feed the nation” because this mindset causes pressure, it causes arguments, late nights, and multiple injuries even death within the farming community because we are always under pressure to “feed the nation” that right now does not want to be fed by us.

Then what about inheritance tax (IHT), I read this morning in a farming magazine that many farmers see no future hope in creating profitable businesses now because of IHT. Well I wasn’t part of this study because to me farming the way we are starting to farm, does look really hopeful. And if we make the plans now, and the government still want us to pay IHT when that day comes, if we haven’t worked out how to dodge the bullet, like many mulit millionaires seem to be able to, then so be it. We will have to work out a way to pay it, or make a plan now.

But I am not going to start believing that there is no future for our farming family, because ultimately thats what “they” want us to believe so we give up and sell up, we stop encouraging our kids to come home farming, and we roll over and let the government win.

Well thats not happening on my watch, on our farm! and it shouldn't be happening on yours either.

Right now is the time for all of us UK farmers, to get our heads out of the sand and start thinking about what needs to change, so that we can be reinstated to have the power we have always had as land owners.

A simple mindset change we have made as a farming family who has inherited our land off the back of hard grafting family members (who were alive in the war) is what is actually best for us? What do we need to do to make sure our family is taken care of first, our relationships with one another as well as our physical needs of course. Finances, food and homes.

This has taken us on a path I don’t think any of us thought possible once upon a time, but we are starting to see the fruits of our labours, even if its just that we can speak to each other without falling out every 5 minutes. You reap what you sow!

In my mind the government may not want us, but the pubic do more than we think, but main stream media doesn’t report that. I discovered whilst doing our farm tours for families many more people want to know where there food comes from, how it is grown, and even the end processes and these are our people, our potential customers. The ones who will have somewhere to go when the food supply chain gets to a point where you just don’t know what is in your food anymore.

What would happen then if we all changed the mindset to “we want to feed the community around us that want what we have to offer?”

Firstly it takes the pressure off doesn’t it? instead of feeding everyone, lets feed ourselves and then families around us like it used to be.

Let’s let the government get on with their plans to try and destroy the industry for their ill gotten gains, whilst we take things back into our own hands, and literally wash our hands of them. So then when the shit hits the proverbial fan which it could do in my life time, we can be the ones they come crying to with their tail between their legs, because they have an over crowded island and they no longer know how to feed everyone.

I will be the first to have a smug smile on my face because as land owners we have some serious power and its time we learnt that and started using it.

Blog Post Title Four

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.