Keith was honored and privileged to be a part of a TEDx event at Northern Michigan University, sharing the story and the spirit of his GWB Perspective!
We hope you’ll enjoy (and share!)
#BeYourBigness
Happy Teacher Appreciation Day!!
Click link below to download-and-print a .pdf version you can share or hang in your classroom!
On Teacher Appreciation Day, we salute all of the teachers out there who give their time, their hearts, their emotional energy, their insight, wisdom and love to the children of the world.
Please feel free to share this with all the teachers you know and love….
Teachers – helping the world be Gooder by growing our children’s Bigness!!!!
Thank you!!!
~GWB~
A Green Heart Adventure Story – The New American Dream?
“The American Dream” can feel like a trap. The mortgage, car payment and school schedule drumbeating its way toward the standardized tests to churn out college-ready kids on their way to ‘the workforce’. Illusory ‘work-life-balance’. Running kids from soccer to gymnastics to theater. Overtired parents. Competing agendas. “Success” can feel like a cruel joke. Family time a rare occasion. Relationships and togetherness challenged. The ironic, busy isolation of the modern condition setting up the next generation of depression, anxiety and restless consumerism. Since early in my professional career I’ve felt this way frequently, and believed deeply there must be another way.
Sitting down this week with a family of six – pioneers of a modern frontier – I feel a sense of excitement and wonder at their story. Over coffee in the cockpit of their 45-foot sailboat, our children play together below deck and we chat about their next adventure. They’re about to set sail on The Great Loop – a six-thousand-mile journey along waterways that wind through the Great Lakes, central US, the southern and eastern coastal waters, the northeastern seaboard and portions of eastern Canada. This isn’t “a vacation” or a year “off” from life; it’s the way they’ve chosen to live their lives together. For the past four years, they’ve traveled the United States together in an RV. Now they’re taking it to the sea.
It was through Dustin – a colleague of mine at a large multinational corporation – that I first learned of ‘roadschooling’. It’s a growing trend and community of families who are dropping the norm of “The American Dream” and hitting the road together for a life of adventure, togetherness and learning-by-living. Following a hands-on, practical and immersive approach to learning, roadschooling practices a life of learning centered around experience. The road is the classroom. The journey is the curriculum. Boundaries dissolve while the family – and the community – learns and grows together. I wonder if it isn’t the leading edge of a societal evolution. A better way. A new and improved “American Dream”.
Dustin explains that they started out on these adventures four years ago with a simple set of rules; 1 – have fun, 2 – learn something, 3 – try something new. It’s an approach to life that seems to have served this smiling, relaxed, obviously close-knit family well. Their four-year-old daughter with wild blond hair and outstanding negotiation skills she picked up in some North Dakota flea market seems already wise beyond her years. She’s only ever known this nomadic life. Their ten-year-old daughter with a quiet but confident presence is already becoming a capable sailor after the summer’s hands-on learning on Lake Michigan’s sparkling, salt-less seas. The boys – eight and eleven – play piano, read, play video games, fish off the fore-deck and inhabit their ship as though they’ve been seafaring all their lives. It’s clear they’re honoring their first rule, and as the family ‘learns by doing’ everything about sailing there will be no shortage of the other two rules along the way.
As I bombard Dustin and Jill with questions about their chosen path, I become more deeply convinced there’s something important going on here. Observations of the differences between what has become accepted as ‘traditional’ in American life and what this family is experiencing call out a sharp contrast. Children truly engaged in learning. Practical life skills and capability. Community and accountability. No ‘bullying’ problem. Disparate political, religious and lifestyle beliefs co-existing peacefully. People outside. Children playing together and living life in wandering-but-connected ‘neighborhoods’. Time. Time spent together immersed in life as a family and community. Less absorption in devices. Less connectivity. More connection.
Living in close quarters as a family of six has its challenges. It demands minimalism. I recall arriving for a week-long work function with my backpack and rollerbag and to meet Dustin – his entire week’s wardrobe and gear in a single small computer bag. Another contrast between our realities. Living the wandering lifestyle and finding ways to provide everyone their own space in the confines of an RV or a boat also comes with its frustrations and difficulties. But then, the same can be said of my own family of six in a four-bedroom home in the suburbs. Here on the Greenheart though, (That’s the proud name of their new home on the water) there’s no lawn to mow, no garage to keep rearranging, no basement burgeoning with unused ‘stuff’.
Not to over-glamorize their chosen life, there are responsibilities and difficulties aplenty. Sometimes Dustin must travel for work, so they plan their route and movements carefully. It can be stressful trying to manage a corporate job while living a non-traditional life, with concerns over the impressions and assumptions that may be drawn at work. Then there are the mechanical talents required to service an RV or large marine diesel engine, the constant chores of maintenance attendant to a road or live-aboard life, the logistical quandaries of obtaining food and sundries without so much as a bicycle for land transportation. For Jill as a mother-and-head-teacher there are the rigors of parenting, running a household, planning and overseeing curriculum, rallying children to keep them out of Dad’s hair during work hours and orchestrating a family life in less space than many of us sleep in. It’s not a life that one might reasonably refer to as ‘easy’ but one that clearly radiates with goodness.
In the two hours we spent together conversation flowed. Our children played and bonded, we discovered ‘small-world’ connections between our families and friends. We explored common themes in our recognition that life is for living – and the weighty limits this American life seems to impose on that living. It seemed evident to me that this unique family, their Great Loop adventure and the roadschooling movement are all part of an emerging “other way” that may hold a new promise for our society. As I tucked my little girls in that night and talked to them about what we’d seen and learned through our friends that day, I was grateful for the gift they’d given us; a first-hand experience with the beauty and the freedom of “The Possible”. Maybe that’s what the American Dream was supposed to be all along.
Follow their journeys on Facebook and Instagram @GreenHeartAdventure
~GWB~
A lesson in bravery
It feels like an American Tradition; the last day of school. School’s out for summer. Chaos mingles with excitement. Joy and glee beside sorrow and loss. It’s the beginning of a fun-filled season of vacations and freedom. It’s a sudden left hook realization that a number of deeply-felt relationships are abruptly at an end. It’s as if in an instant, a family is ripped away. So there is laughter. There are tears. There are hugs and there are cheers. And there’s always a talent show.
When my daughter excitedly informed me she wanted to sing the Star-Spangled Banner for the talent show, I felt my throat tighten. My inner gremlin piped up with instant judgement about what a terrible idea this was. It was fraught with peril. The dangers! The audacity! The potential for disaster! “Are you sure that’s what you want to do, sweetheart?”, I calmly asked with an elevated heart rate. “Yeah, Dad!!”. “Well, OK then! Awesome. Do IT!”, I encouraged. Then I spent the next couple of weeks encountering flashes of my own judgement, projection and fear. The Star-Spangled Banner? That’s a tough song. There will be so many people there. She hasn’t practiced. Will she remember the words? What if it goes horribly awry? I pushed down my fears. “Do you feel like you’re ready for the talent show, honey”? “Yeah, Dad!!”.
This morning was the talent show. My little girl was up first. That little baby I held in my arms just a short dream ago – now finishing fourth grade and becoming a young lady faster than I can comprehend. There she stood, on stage all by herself before a gymnasium full of people. Just her and a flag and a microphone. The music started and she began to sing. The inner gremlin piped up with judgments when first she struggled a little with the words. It tried to convince me disaster was imminent. But I watched as my little girl proved that gremlin wrong. She didn’t run off stage crying at her mistake. She didn’t let it phase her. She just picked up at the next words she knew and carried on with the music. A couple times her words got out of synch with the music. Again my terror welled up and my throat tightened and I feared for her. Again, she proved my fears unfounded. She just got back in synch with the words, and she sung on. She stood there beautifully, courageously, stepping into and owning her goal and her bigness. When she got done, the whole place applauded and the smile on her face moved me to tears.
Later in the day, I told her how proud I was of her. I told her that would have been really scary to me. She said it was. I told her I admired her courage and her commitment. She said “But I messed up”. I asked her what the last line of the song was. She said “The home of the brave”? And I said “That’s right. And what you did today was so brave. Sure, you messed up. But in life, we mess up. It takes bravery to keep going when we mess up. To stick with it, move on, and make something beautiful out of it regardless. You showed me how to be brave today and I’m so proud of you. I Love you”.
“I love you too, Dad”.
Today, my little girl gave me a lesson in bravery. So I wanted to share it with you.
#BeYourBigness
~KG~
Micah Gunderson – Skin, Ink, Art, Bigness!
We caught up with Micah Gunderson during a guest artist visit at Sacred Tattoo in Marquette, MI not long ago.
Creativity, art, the pursuit of a non-traditional passion are often places where we find Bigness at its best. Micah’s interest in art began as a kid, and has been with him ever since. Along his journey, he’s found that sticking to his dream, doing what he loves, pursuing his Bigness even in the face of resistance and fear has paid off in a career that’s been rewarding in many ways.
Micah recently opened his own private Tattoo Studio, Northern Tide Tattoo in Green Bay, WI. Check him out at http://www.northerntidetattoo.com
Thanks for sharing your #bigness, Micah!!
Special thanks to Dayna Lou Gordon for her assistance with the filming of this piece!!
~GWB~
Nheena Weyer Ittner – A Bigness Story
Spring is in the air!!! And as the new buds grow closer to bursting forth, we wanted to share a story of Bigness from Fall 2016 in Marquette, Michigan. This is the story of the Paint Baraga Avenue Festival – an annual event that brings the community together in celebration and creativity. Children and adults alike come out to create artworks in the street and to celebrate the Fall colors and their community spirit.
The event was started by Nheena Weyer Ittner – Director and Founder of the Upper Peninsula Children’s Museum. Nheena brought this fabulous resource to her community over 20 years ago, and it’s been bringing the community together in fun and special ways ever since. We caught up with her to share a little about her Bigness journey, and we’re honored to share it with you.
~GWB~
Learn more about the Upper Peninsula Children’s Museum at http://www.upchildrensmuseum.org/
Special thanks to Corey Kelley ( @thecarryonkid on Instagram ) for her Bigness behind the lens and the video editor for this piece!!