For this new Growing Up Unschooling episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika were joined by 26-year-old Halie Barrick, who has always been unschooled. Halie shared about her experiences growing up, her journey through college and grad school, the business she created with her mom, and her advice to newer unschooling parents. She also reflected on the connections between what interested her as a child and what she’s passionate about today. It was a beautiful conversation with so many deep insights. We hope that you enjoy listening to Halie’s thoughts as much as we did!
Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.
QUESTIONS FOR HALIE
Can you share with us a bit about you and your family?
What were some of your interests growing up and how did you pursue them?
You decided to pursue a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. Can you tell us about that experience?
You have started a business called Growing Edge Equine*imity. What made you decide to start a business? Can you tell us about your vision for it?
As a grown unschooler, what piece of advice would you like to share with unschooling parents who are just starting out on this journey?
THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE
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Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
ANNA: Hello everyone, I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully, and today I’m joined by my co-hosts Erika Ellis and Pam Laricchia, as well as our special guest today, Halie Barrick. Hello to you all.
Pam and I have known Halie since she was quite small. She grew up and was involved in a group that started online, but then began meeting in person a couple times a year, and that went on for many years. We all have a lot of really fond memories of it. And honestly, it’s a testament to the kind of lifelong friendships and connections that can be made through online communities. It’s how Pam and I met, and some years later how Erika and I met, online first too. And all that grew from those early years is one of the reasons we started the Living Joyfully Network, so please check that out in the show notes, or go to livingjoyfully.ca and click on the network to join us.
But we are so excited to reconnect and see what Halie’s been up to, and so Pam, do you want to get us started today?
PAM: Absolutely, absolutely. Hi, Halie, and it is so lovely to see you again. I was hoping, could you share a little bit about you and your family, just to introduce everyone else?
HALIE: Sure, so I’m Halie. It’s great to see Pam and Anna again and meet Erika. So, I am 26 now. I’ve always been a radical unschooler, never set foot in a classroom a day in my life. My mom and I traveled a lot when I was younger, lots of cross-country road trips to visit friends and family. We’d have wonderful, rich, deep discussions on those road trips and cover so many topics. It was so much fun learning about people and visiting local bookstores and shops on our travels.
When I was seven, we moved to Vermont, my mom and I, to be closer to my grandparents. So, I’ve mostly grown up in northern Vermont, although I lived in North Carolina and Utah when I was little. My grandparents have been super supportive of unschooling. They were a little skeptical at first, but we took them to the Live and Learn conference in 2005, and they got to hear from grown unschoolers, and that really helped them understand what this whole crazy thing was.
I’ve just been super close with my mom and my grandparents and living in the woods in northern Vermont, tucked into a little family cabin in the woods. We have the same driveway as my grandparents. And I’ve got horses and miniature donkeys on the property, so it’s just been a lot of fun getting to follow my interests and grow up in nature.
ANNA: I love that.
ERIKA: That’s beautiful. So, I’m curious, what were your interests when you were growing up, and how did you end up pursuing them?
HALIE: Well, two of the biggest passions I’ve had that have lasted the longest have been reading and horses. When I was young, I had a huge collection of toy horses, a very particular brand that was very realistic. That was important to me. And my cousin and I would spend hours and hours, months on end, with these imaginative, in-depth games. All those toy horses had personalities and magic powers and complex relationships, and we processed a lot of world issues through our games.
And then when, I guess let me back up, when I was five, we lived in Utah, and my parents and I audited a college course on horsemanship. And so we would go, I have been in a classroom. In my first college course, I was five. We learned about horse breeds, and then we would go for weekly riding lessons. And while we were in Utah, we ended up with a few horses. And we didn’t really know what we were doing, but we had a lot of fun.
And then when my mom and I moved to Vermont, we were able to bring Garnet, my older horse, she’s my older horse now. Just one of our horses from Utah came with us. And the year that I was nine, we, together, my mom and I spent the full year driving an hour to our mentor’s barn and learning natural horsemanship.
In Utah, we learned traditional horsemanship, which is very power over, dominance, control-based. And that didn’t sit right with us. So, when we moved here and started learning natural horsemanship, it was a whole new paradigm.
It was basically the difference between traditional parenting and education and unschooling and peaceful parenting. My mom loved to see those parallels. And my mom’s master’s degree is in early childhood education, family mental health.
She’s done tons of research and always knew we were going to be unschooling. And so we would go together every day from like 10am to 7pm and help this lady with her barn chores and work with her horses. And she coached me in kind of unlearning the old paradigm and relearning natural horsemanship with my horse Garnet.
Garnet had to unlearn those old power dynamics that she was fighting against and relearn this new relationship built on communication and trust and partnership. So, that was my deep dive into horse training, which then has continued my whole life. Off and on with that particular mentor, then bringing Garnet home, getting my mom a horse, then I got miniature donkeys for my 12th birthday. So that passion bled into what I’m doing now and wove through my time at college as well.
The other passion that I’ve always had is reading and how it’s connected to fantasy books and therefore medieval history for me. My parents read to me when I was little, my grandfather would read to me for hours on end every night. And it was an interesting conversation about unschooling at that point with my grandparents because I didn’t learn to read independently until I was 11.
And they kept getting very nervous and trying to push me and would say, just read the first page. Okay, well, just read the first sentence. Okay, just read the first word. And my mom would have to talk to them and say, back off, trust the process. If you pressure her, it’s just gonna cause more resistance. Just make it fun. Take the pressure off.
I have very fond memories of my grandfather reading to me. And then I got to the point where when he was at work, I wanted to know what happened in the story. So I started teaching myself how to read. And he had read me the Harry Potter series twice. And so that ended up being the first series that I picked up on my own. And I’d say in the first book, I was actually reading maybe 20% of it. But I knew the story. And by the last book, I was reading probably 90% of it.
ANNA: I love that. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it, Pam?
PAM: That was very familiar, because I was reading the series. And as the books came out, we would have a big to do and I’d read and everything. But yes, I couldn’t read all day, which was what Lissy would have loved. And so we picked up the audiobook versions. So she started reading along with the audiobook as well. And that was it, one day, she just came down and said, Hey, I’m reading. I read the first three chapters or whatever, whatever. So, that was a very familiar introduction.
And that’s the difference between thinking about learning to read as an end goal, like I need to learn to read or my granddaughter needs to learn to read. And then picking easier readers or whatever to try and help that process along versus when an interest and a need, like your interest and the interest in the Harry Potter books, both of them came together to where it just felt like a time where you wanted to dive in, into it, right?
Because sometimes our brains just aren’t ready for it. I feel like when your mom was easing them into, just trust the process, just let things unfold. That doesn’t mean sitting back and doing nothing. Reading the books to people getting the books, finding the books that are super fun and interesting for them.
Because you don’t have to be behind in anything. Just because the act of reading is not a skill that someone’s picked up yet. There’s so many other ways to get at that, the stories and information, all those pieces. So yeah, that’s super cool, Halie.
ERIKA: I just love the threads, the through lines when you grow up and you can look back and say, hey, this is something I’ve always been interested in. Playing with the toy horses when I was super little. And then that is a through line through your life. And with all that, it just feels like all this space and all this support for you to really dive as deeply as you wanted into your interests. I just love that story.
ANNA: Just make it fun, just share that love of reading, share the love of whatever the thing is we have with our kids. And then it’s so beautiful.
HALIE: My grandmother, once I learned to read, she was like, well, when are you going to stop reading and go outside again? Because all you want to do is read.
ANNA: That’s how it works a lot, isn’t it!?
HALIE: I’ve always gone all in with whatever I’m doing for a long time. And the love of reading then translated to a love of medieval history and getting really interested in Renaissance fairs and archery and sword fighting.
And then I connected that with my love of horses. And I taught myself mounted archery so I can be shooting the bow and arrow while riding my horse.
ANNA: I love seeing how the threads weave together, but over the course of a decade.
PAM: That space. Yeah, yeah. I’m just gonna leap off that for a second, Halie, just for people listening to get an idea of just how these things flow. We’re going to a Ren Faire this weekend. My son is working at it. He’s doing the jousting and the fighting. He’s a stunt actor. So, that piece is super cool. His interest in stunt acting started way back as a kid. He was always a rough and tumbley kind of person and then started with karate. So, that just wove over the years.
And then Lissy’s interest in Harry Potter. Then she got into reading fan fiction. Then there was a fan fiction writer who would use music quotes at the beginning of their chapters, which got her interested in music. She was also interested in photography at the time. And then eventually photography and music have woven together.
Now she mostly photographs musicians. I love hearing the stories about all the interests and how they weave together. It’s not like you were interested in horses, so you have to be interested in horses forever. I would look at how it all weaves together and weaves through various interests, right? It’s like interest just almost seems like such a small word.
ANNA: But it’s that space and time, right? It’s that space to pursue and find the weaving. I think when we think about a curriculum or if we’re trying to do something for our child’s learning, it’s so limiting, right? Because it’s this one very linear path and you can see through Halie, your story and all of our stories that we’ve talked about so many times, it’s never linear. It’s just all of these different bits weaving together and the web that we create. So yeah, I just, I love hearing about those threads and I think we’ve got more coming. So, I’m excited for what’s next.
PAM: Now, a little bit earlier, you mentioned college and you did decide to pursue a bachelor’s and master’s degree. So I was hoping you could share about that experience as well.
HALIE: Sure. So, I wanted to go to college because I wanted to get a master’s degree because I wanted letters after my name. And part of that was that my parents both have higher degrees. They didn’t push it. But I also felt like I wanted to prove to the world that unschooling worked, which is maybe not the best way to go into that.
But I did not want to go to a traditional college. I was very against that. It did not feel aligned with how I learn or what I wanted to do at all. And so I was really thinking about it for a couple of years. And my mom knew of Goddard College, which happened to be an hour and a half from us. And they were like unschooling for college.
They were entirely self-directed, self-designed, low residency. So we would go for a week at the start of the semester, work with our small advising group, like four to eight students of all different ages and interests, with an advisor. And through that process, create our study plan.
There were no tests and no grades. It was all about communicating with your advisor, writing things, getting really detailed feedback. And then you would write a self-evaluation and your advisor would write a narrative evaluation at the end of the semester.
So we went to Goddard for an open house the same day that we went to a college fair, and it was a very stark difference. And I immediately knew I was home when I got to Goddard. The people were lovely, very social justice oriented. My cousin, who was living with us at the time, she and I went to Goddard together. And it was a nice kind of buffer. We could support each other as we expanded out a little bit more into the world.
So, Goddard was really special. I got my four-year undergraduate degree there, graduated in the fall of 2022. I took a year off and then I went back with the plan to get a two-year master’s program.
And I was a year in when Goddard closed, which was super, super sad. I think largely it was for financial reasons. They had a partnership with Prescott College out in Arizona that helped take Goddard students and continue their path and help them graduate. So, I completed my master’s a year ago. And yeah, it was really special. I think we need more schools like Goddard.
I started my first semester with something that I was comfortable with, which was horsemanship. And then I moved away from that for the middle semesters and explored everything from creative writing to astrophysics. And then the way Goddard worked was they wanted you to explore lots of different things for the first three years and then hone in on a big senior study project that would be like your major.
And so I came back around to partnership-based horse training, horse psychology, and I ended up getting a young horse, Chantilly Lace. She was only 14 months old, a little Arabian filly, and she was my senior study. Training her for that first year and doing a lot of research and journaling and writing about horsemanship in general, and particularly natural horsemanship.
So, that was my undergraduate senior study. And then part of that senior study, I was learning about equine-assisted psychotherapy. And a big part of our conversations, between me and my mom, growing up have been psychology and sociology and trauma-informed care and social emotional learning.
And so, I was researching equine-assisted psychotherapy and I decided I didn’t want to be a therapist, but I did speak that language and I did see the value in working with horses to develop interpersonal skills. So, I went back for my master’s with this focus of can I start a business to support people through activities with the horses? And that was my master’s program.
So my master’s was also self-designed equine-assisted learning and business design.
ANNA: Nice. So cool. I think it is really interesting. I didn’t know that Goddard had closed. I was familiar with it before, but I didn’t know that it was closed. So that is sad.
But I love how you were able to take all these different pieces and that they really encouraged that and then weave it together to find this path that felt good in that moment. I love that.
And so that kind of leads into my question, which I’m super excited about, because I also am very into horses and have been since I was little and natural horsemanship and all the things involved with just that beautiful relationship and how it translates so beautifully to humans as well.
And so you have started a business called Growing Edge Equine-imity. I’m curious, what made you want to start that business? Can you tell us a little bit about your vision for it? Just a little bit about how that it sounded like that really started in your master’s program, thinking, OK, I want this business. And so what that looked like, where you are now, and what your hopes are for it.
HALIE: Yeah. It’s been a year since I technically started the business and it’s feeling like a really exciting point in time. Things are beginning to come together. So, Growing Edge Equine-imity. I guess I’ll start with the name.
I wanted it to be Growing Edge because it’s about personal development and finding your growth edge, having a growth mindset. And I wanted “growing” to show it’s a process. It continues. And my mom, I’ve got to give her credit for the equine-imity part of combining equine and equanimity. She thought she was very clever with that. I love it.
So it’s an equine-assisted personal and professional development business. And the goal is to empower parents and educators in understanding self-directed education and shifting adult youth relationships from power over to power with. And I think a lot of that is about reflecting on how us as adults were raised and what kind of cultural conditioning we’ve received and unpacking that and really thinking about what are our values and what are our hopes for our children. What kinds of baggage do we need to unpack, what conversations do we need to have, and what skills to develop so that we can show up and support the children in the way that we want to.
It doesn’t have to be about unschooling per se, but since that’s my experience, I really wanted to start there combining my love of horses, my unschooling experience, and the fact that this psychology and sociology has been so interwoven into my life.
So, the business was really a way of pulling these threads together in a way that I could hopefully make a living while also supporting people and making a difference in the world in a way that’s really fun and meaningful to me and brings my personal passions together. So that was the goal of the business.
ANNA: Wow.
PAM: I love the way. I feel like. I was just going to say I love the way the threads all weave together, right? That, to me, that’s the beautiful piece, like Anna was talking about before, the space and time to really discover these various threads and then finding and exploring ways to weave them together so that it’s not like, okay, I have to choose one now and ignore the other things that I’m interested in, at least for a while I can pursue this one thing.
And it is really beautiful the way you’ve been able to find those pieces and then bring those into your masters. And through that lens, because you had said you were doing some business stuff too in your masters as well, right? So just weaving all those pieces together.
I love that so much.
ANNA: Yeah. I was just going to say it too, very similarly, but I feel like the best ideas and the ideas that change the world are that, right? It’s all the pieces, it’s bringing in these passion-driven pieces and these explorations.
I am super excited about what you’re putting out into the world. And I think so many people will be drawn to it because it really hits so many notes for people. And I think just your passion and love for it is also just going to continue to attract things.
I’m excited about your journey with that.
ERIKA: Yeah, it’s so beautiful. And I love contrasting that with, if you get that tunnel vision of, I’ve become an adult, I’ve got to just go get a job. I have to make money and kind of losing parts of yourself. Which I feel like a lot of people do in our culture. I just love the creativity and the intention and thoughtfulness that you’re putting into your path where it’s like, no, I can make a difference and I can continue to explore my passions and there’s value to this, all of these interests.
It’s so much more personal and it’s so connected, which I think then makes the work really land, for other people. So yeah, that’s so beautiful.
PAM: I was just going to add, I happened to be at an extended family picnic last weekend, a few days ago. And somebody, of course, has been asking what my kids were up to. And I explained what they were doing. And they looked at me and said, they’re just doing the stuff they like to do, but as adults. And I was just like, yeah, it doesn’t have to be just what you were saying, Erika. Now I need to get a job. Those don’t have to be separate things, right? We really can weave them together so beautifully.
ANNA: From the start, because I feel like the piece that I see in the work that I do with people is that in their 40s, they’re going, wait a minute. And they’re trying to re-tap into those feelings from when they were younger and had these driving passions and had these visions for what they wanted to be in the world and do in the world. But like you said, Erika, they just set it aside because, oh, okay, it has to look like this.
And so I do think this is one of the gifts of unschooling is that you really can have a head start on that, on really understanding yourself, self-awareness, just all of those pieces that you don’t have to unlearn later.
ERIKA: It feels like we have taken the interest seriously all along, not as this is a little side thing that if you have enough time, you can squeeze into your life. It’s like, no, if you’re able to really dive in and pursue your interests, then you’ll actually be able to use them in a meaningful way for your whole life. It just makes such a difference because people are so different.
There isn’t one right path to being an adult and working. And so, yeah, I just love that so much. And I know everyone loves hearing these conversations with grown unschoolers.
I know people will be excited to hear what you’ve learned along the way. So my question is, what piece of advice would you like to share with unschooling parents who are just starting out on the unschooling journey?
HALIE: That is a good question. How much time do we have? I mean, I think trust is the most important. I think trusting yourself and your own instincts and also trusting your children and that they also know what’s best for them.
I think with trusting your instincts, being able to separate what’s actually your instinct and what’s cultural conditioning and being able to figure out where the difference is and trust your instincts and critically analyze what the cultural messaging is. And then have real authentic conversations with your children so that you can ask them what they need and you can be partners and be on the same team.
I was thinking about this this morning and I have a little flow chart in my head. If you think about what’s your end goal, what’s your why? Why are you doing this? Why does it matter? Where do you want your children to be as young adults? And then backwards map it and think about what are the steps to get there.
In my mind, if the end goal is collaboration between you and your children in this journey of life, then what does that collaboration need? And I think it needs trust and communication. And trust, for me anyways, emotional trust means congruence.
So, your inner experience and your outer portrayal need to be aligned in a way that’s not dumping your emotions and needs on everybody around you, but being authentic and honest with what you’re feeling and who you are. And so part of getting to this point of healthy congruence, which is really what the horses help you with too, because horses live in the moment and are totally authentic and respond to that congruence. But to get there, you need this self-responsibility aspect and this self-compassion aspect of also doing what you need to support yourself and give yourself grace for when you’re not perfect, because no one’s ever perfect.
And then also the communication aspect of learning how to communicate with your teammates, if that’s your friends, your family, your children, and how to work through conflict. There are obviously tons of resources out there. We’ve particularly been drawn towards nonviolent communication with Marshall Rosenberg and Ross Green’s Collaborative and Proactive Solutions.
But the other concept I wanted to mention is the idea of rupture and repair in a relationship. You’re going to run into dings, and that’s an opportunity to literally practice resilience. Because if you can come back in a calm time and address those issues, your relationship grows stronger because of that. And again, there is no real perfection, which drives me crazy.
I’m a person who wants to know what’s perfect and then wants to meet that standard. The thing that I’ve had to realize is not only are we incapable of being perfect 100% of the time, but the definition of perfect is fluid between moment to moment and person to person. And so really it’s about showing up with full presence and having compassion for yourself and others and being willing to have real, authentic conversations and go back and address things when things feel sticky.
ERIKA: That’s awesome. I feel like you’ve talked about a lot of the things that we have recently been talking about too, just about paradigm shifts in parenting. And I think that is so huge about realizing we can’t be perfect. And that in fact, those moments where we are imperfect are the perfect time to then be building trust in our relationships. That just takes so much pressure off of me as a parent, but it also, it’s true.
I’ve seen it happen for us. And we can’t be perfect, but when we can repair, we’re all stronger. We all have this shared experience with each other that we can build on for the next time.
So I loved those answers, Halie.
ANNA: Oh my gosh. So, so much.
And I love that idea that perfect is fluid because I think all of us can get caught up in that, wanting to do the best job, the right thing, that piece. But it is, the people are different idea that we talk about a lot. It is different in every situation.
And those are the perfect opportunities to learn and grow and make that repair and deepen the relationship. And so I think it is helpful for parents to realize that this is not about doing X thing perfectly. It really is just about the presence.
And so I loved that, that kind of an opposite of perfect is letting it go to just being present, being present, that’s the work that we can do to show up for the people in our lives, to learn about ourselves, to learn about each other. And so, yeah, I just thought that was so beautiful. Thank you.
PAM: That presence is really how we can learn and navigate that moment. Like being truly present helps us see the next baby step of repair, right? It’s hard to have a rupture, then come up with this whole repair plan and then bring it back and do the thing, right? It really is a team effort, it’s in that presence and that trust. Their trust in us, to hear us as we come and approach a repair, but also our trust and our developing trust with experience just in the process itself.
Because for me, again, I’m another one who wants the right answer, just tell me what to do, tell me how to fix it, and I’ll do it. But time and again, through experience, just showing up and having those authentic conversations leads all of us into the way to execute in the right word, but for the repair to happen, right? And it’s not a one and done.
I can see so many people, I want to have this repair conversation and be done. And now we’re all back to normal, right? But that fluidity of perfection, that fluidity of life, it’s just showing up again and again and being present and being open and curious and trust.
And yeah, that was all beautiful.
ERIKA: I liked how you said that there’s resources for this too, though, because I feel like so many of us as parents, we did not grow up with this being modeled. What does validation look like? What does this kind of communication look like? But there are resources out there. So we can learn and just try things out with our family. So yeah, I loved that point as well.
ANNA: Yeah, for sure. Well, Halie, thank you so much for joining us. It was just such a treat.
And I just feel like we will definitely be staying in touch. I feel like we’ll see you again down the road because I think there’s just so much to what you’re doing and all that you’re putting out into the world. That’s so beautiful.
And I want to thank everybody for listening. And we hope that you enjoyed this conversation. It was just so great to catch up with Halie.
And I know, like Erika said, people really enjoy hearing from grown unschoolers. And sometimes we’re like, it’s not about a product or it’s not one path. Halie’s path is her own.
But I think it does show this weaving in of these different pieces, these threads and how it can look so different than what the traditional paths are. I do hope you’ll also check out Halie’s website, which is growingedgeequineimity.com. But we’ll also put it in the show notes so you can find it there.
And before we go, I want to invite everyone to join us at the Living Joyful Network. It’s a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents, a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas and explore what it might look like day to day in your family and ask questions and just see it in action too. Your first month is free so you can get a sense of whether the community is a good fit for you and we would love to see you there.
To learn more and to join us, just follow the link in the show notes or you can go to livingjoyfully.ca and choose Network in the menu. So thank you everyone again and take care. Thank you, Halie.
PAM: Thanks, Halie. So nice to see you.
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