My reality of the life and rhythm I had created in my small Waldorf early childhood business was changing due to the pandemic journey that we were all experiencing last year. My attendance was dwindling until I eventually closed my doors for three months. Without my daily rhythm, the good and purposeful work, a source of income with stability, and the little ones who brought a sense of wonder and joy each morning, I was left questioning where to begin and even how to find the will and courage to dream again. Life was shifting for everyone, some adapted with cheerfulness at having more time available for their own quests and explorations, while others withdrew and observed this unusual worldwide event. There is a richness of stories of how people adapted, shifted, accepted, transformed, denied, or hid under this quilt of life at these times. Each in our own particular and unique ways, we made choices of how to live.

I wondered how I could continue to find meaning and connections. How could I find hope in a garden without children? Somewhere along the way, I realized that I had a choice. I could go into despair or go more deeply. It would be a struggle, but I decided not to give up on my business, but to persevere. It was with the help of an encounter with a friend that I accepted the journey that I was on and met the challenge. That friend was Miss Mouse, and she lives at Little House. This was how I found hope in a time of anguish.

I began to...READ MORE

Dearest LifeWays Community,

Eleven years ago, on August 1^st, 2010, my youngest daughter, Taylor Hodgkin, and I opened our Northern California LifeWays program, BeeLoved Farm, with just 1 student. Today, we have over 60 children enrolled for Fall, 2021, with many waiting. Although our program is essentially the same as it was 11 years ago, we have seen a lot of changes in the families throughout the past decade and those changes were magnified at the onset of last year’s pandemic. “Nothing could have prepared us for what we witnessed in 2020.”

Like everyone else, our school closed on that fateful Friday the 13^th in March of 2020. I could not have predicted the fall-out that occurred and, admittedly, I was absolutely behind the curve with regard to the seriousness of the matter. As things began to unfold, I realized how desperate the families were for some sort of lifeline. The families wanted support. We refunded ALL tuitions, I delivered or mailed crafts to every home, sent post cards to each child, posted YouTube videos on how to bake bread and cook our Kindergarten snacks, performed puppet shows via YouTube, sent music files of seasonal circles, emailed stories, hosted parent-support Zoom calls, and several other “distant” deeds to support families. But this was not the kind of support these families needed. What I came to realize was that the best support we could provide the families in our community was to reopen our Center. So, in May of 2020, in the eye of the storm, we reopened our program with a caveat that it would be...READ MORE

We made it through a pandemic lockdown in March of 2020 and re-opened in the fall of 2020 with a group of 8 Lifeways families in our tenth year in San Rafael. With very strict Covid protocols, screening, hygiene, washable everything, and with the help of WECAN hub, a healthy community agreement was formed with our families. We opened our Garden School in September with the plan to be outdoors as much as possible. The parent handbook said, “Be prepared for closures due to Covid, wildfires, air quality alerts, or (electric utility) black outs”.

Despite all of this, we had an exceptionally joyful year with the children! Hand washing with peppermint castile soap and our good morning verse was a delight. We sang to each child this song each morning before their snack and everything became simple and more full as the year went on.

This was to remind us of our invisible connections as we entrusted our lives into safe keeping each day. After the long winter we began to feel that we had passed through uncharted territory, a kind of initiation, and we were still here, with joy in our hearts, to be with these children. They had experienced a year of being in a healthy community, carried by the Lifeways rhythms, our love and their play. Most of them were not concerned with the word corona. They lived in the present where childhood is alive and well, despite…READ MORE