Waking up: The shift from one point of view to the another

My Facebook set of friends is one of the more diverse bunch of people I've run across online. That's because suddenly my past and present have collided in conversation in ways that would never happen if we limited our relationships to in-person contact. So what's happened is that my high school friends, who knew me mostly as a short, a-political, theater student without much of a religious agenda, are interacting with my college friends who knew me as this zealot who shared the Four Spiritual Laws with anyone stuck in a bank line with me. My missionary and Vineyard friends are interacting with my liberal theological graduate school buddies. My homeschool momma friends are talking to my business networking friends here in Cincy. And of course, my Obama campaign colleagues are talking to my rightwing radio pals from bygone years.

And like me, many of my friends have gone through significant shifts (either a deepening of loyalty to their original commitments, or a radical reassessment which led to a new, changed point of view).

I respect all of you (even when we disagree). I wouldn't keep you around on my FB if I didn't! In fact, I have kicked a few off my list when they've crossed that invisible line called "Coerce Julie back to what is good for her and tell her she is going to hell if she doesn't listen."

So here's the thing. For years (over 20), I adopted a point of view both politically and theologically that was rooted in a set of assumptions (these assumptions were handed to me with care and conviction, and they were based on the core doctrines of evangelicalism at the time). I remember once saying to Don Carson (some of you will remember him), the head of our Campus Crusade chapter at UCLA, "Why are you telling me that predestination as a theological tenet has to be believed in order to be a Christian? I haven't even had time to think about it yet." I had the same reaction to inerrancy (Is this really necessary to be a Christian? Can I think about it a bit?), to the doctrines of heaven and hell. I still remember saying at my first Bible Study at Kappa Kappa Gamma that I didn't like the idea of hell, after all, that would mean all my Jewish friends from high school and step relatives were going there... and I couldn't quite *get* that. I mean, it was one thing to believe in heaven and hell when you grew up in La Canada or Pasadena, where everyone you knew was Protestant. But what happened when you had to include people you loved, A LOT, in that number?

I found myself suddenly in conflict: to belong meant to adopt (uncritically, really) the values and doctrines that enabled me to remain a part of the community (this new, great group of people who were so much fun to be with), or I could reject those tenets and not be in the group, not have the love, worship, prayer, moral values, and community Christianity offered. So adopt I did (and worked to learn the apologetics for these tenets) and from then on, made it my chief aim in life to save those I loved and those I hadn't yet met from hell.

But time has a way of tugging at the tangled threads. The intellectual conflicts, the theological discrepancies, the arguments online with people I genuinely grew to love about splitting hair differences... how did these show the compassion of Jesus or the relevance of spirituality in a globalized world of diverse expressions of reality? It hurt to think Christians couldn't even agree on very basic ideas and would be cruel and critical of each other arguing over what amount to technicalities, many times.

The rightwing vision of politics has also walked in lockstep with the evangelical vision. Since we grew up knowing we couldn't criticize theology (who could ask if Jesus really rose from the dead with a physical body or if the Bible has mistakes, and stay in an evangelical church?), we are also equally beholden to rightwing politics as naturally right, clear. If someone speaks with conviction, we tend to adopt that point of view as long as it leads us back to reinforcing those original tenets we were told to adopt (our membership in the community is at stake if we challenge those tenets - ask me how I know this).

To inhabit someone else's point of view, to give it weight, to care about its interior logic is not one of the values of evangelicalism. We are taught to convert people to our point of view and to understand theirs only enough to change their minds. We spend countless hours reinforcing our own beliefs in community contexts, privately, listening to sermons and tapes, reading books, listening to music. We adopt these views as our own, but from within the safe protected context of like-minded people (and we elevate those with more education as leaders as a way to tell us that we are thinking critically, to help us navigate the pesky incongruity or penetrating question of someone from the outside). We suppress our own questions. We avoid The Jesus Seminar or Richard Dawkins, because they are dangerous.

This is not to say that there aren't brilliant men and women on the right or in the conservative evangelical movement who have dug deep and have spent time drawing conclusions that they feel are both intellectually sound and honest. There are. I've read them, met some of them. What I reject today is that so many people have adopted their thinking second-hand. (To be fair: on both left and right, though I am less versed in how this happens on the left - what I have seen is much more arguing over nuances on the left - a chief value of theirs is dissent!)

If you haven't sat inside the point of view (letting it be "right" for awhile, looking for its logic, how it hangs together, how it creates a worldview that coheres and supports a vision of life and happiness for the one who holds it), you can't actually know if yours is true (or at least, "true enough" for your life). It's one reason I attend a black church. I was sick of secondhand reports about what black leaders are doing and saying or not doing and saying. I was sick of the myopia of white church that thinks reconciliation means having a sister church that is black, or getting more blacks to attend your white church. I wondered what the black community had to say about it. I wondered how they experienced America, and the church, and "truth" from their experiences.

I spent two years reading pro-choice literature, getting inside the mindset that saw being "pro-choice" as the higher morality (yes, they do feel that way!), as the obvious right belief system that is more compassionate and ethical than the alternative. I did this after we had been actively involved in Operation Rescue. I also wish pro-choice people would spend time understanding the radical commitment of those engaged in civil disobedience to stop abortion, too.

What's happened to me, then, is that I got tired of secondhand news, theology, sociological commentary. I stopped buying into the scripts I'd been handed and became unwilling to defend something just because it had always been "true" in the community I loved. If I had one piece of advice for those who can't quite grasp what it is that's happened to me, I'd say pick the thing you are most afraid of (the thing you most don't want to be true) and go read about it. Meet someone who holds that viewpoint and let that person influence you. Invite their ideas into your living room, care to understand the world from inside someone else's mind. If you do that for a little while, yes, you will change. But your compassion will also grow, and your insights will be yours, and your spirituality will deepen.

I'm also conscious of the fact that there is so much I can't possibly know well enough to make adequate judgments (how could I ever say if global warming is real or not? I'm not a scientist, have no training or tools to evaluate the arguments, can't come close to making a real case that isn't some watered down version of someone else's). So I hold my current "positions" with some guardedness, knowing that I'm a few arguments away from another shift. But I'm no longer afraid of getting it right or wrong. I love the process, and I feel privileged/relieved/blessed to have been able to leave behind the need to vilify "the other" in order to protect my point of view. (That doesn't mean I won't criticize the other, but I hope I do it knowing that I could again shift my point of view if the facts that I understand warrant it.)

Peace.

My well-being is MY responsibility

In a follow up to a discussion about well-being on Facebook, I wrote what well-being means to me:

I think of my well-being as knowing what it takes to feel rightside up with the world, where my thoughts, feelings and beliefs are accessible to me and I can express them without anxiety. It means ensuring that the space I live in is one that supports that self-expression. It means living a life where I'm not lying or hiding for self-protection. It means not depending on someone else to create that space for me, nor spending my energy trying to ensure that space for someone else.

Wanted to put it up here to remind myself when I forget, or when it seems more reasonable to just set it aside for the sake of everyone else.

I contend that we aren't really giving of ourselves when we set aside our well-being for someone else. We're protecting ourselves from pain (the painful realization that we aren't needed or don't match someone else's expectations or can't bring happiness or to cover our own feelings of dislocation and not belonging). We aren't protecting ourselves from mistreatment or abuse, either, since love never covers that multitude of sins. Only good fences and a fierce loyalty to your well-being can stop the force of control and anger aimed at you.

Truth is, you can only give if there's something in the tank to give away. If you go into debt to yourself, some day your soul will come to collect. "You can't cheat the dark gods." The price can be high, depending how deep the debt. You wouldn't go into debt to give to a charity, and so you shouldn't go into soul debt in order to love others.

If we safeguard our well-being, gently protecting it like you would your grandmother's nicest china dessert dish, you'll be able to give to others because your spirit will be in good shape, ready and able to be the platter from which love is served. I didn't know this, for my whole life. So I'm way in debt. I'm paying it off slowly now, looking at overdue bills and figuring out how to settle accounts with myself.

RIP Senator Kennedy

Someone posted the following excerpt from Bobby Kennedy's speech after MLK Jr. died. It seemed appropriate today.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black - considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible - you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization - black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand that compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of injustice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black...

We've had difficult times in the past. We will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

Ground Zero for Marriage Equality: Maine

It's been a long time coming... this post, this push, this passion.

How ironic is it that the year my marriage is up for re-evaluation (aka, in crisis)—the "silver anniversary" year (25!), the year that many people schedule parties and exotic trips, the year everyone in your life tells you how great it is that you beat the statistics by being a long-term married person, the year that, for people who've lied or cheated or have secretly maimed their vows, feels a little less silvery and shiny while they receive praise for being such great spouses when they know they haven't been... ironically, it's THAT year that happens to be the one where I feel all passionate about protecting the right to marry in other states?

It was with heart-crushing force that I watched my Californians take away the right to marry from their homosexual fellow west coasters. And it's in Maine, now, where Proposition 1 will ask Mainers to take away the similar right to marry (a right already granted) on November 3.

While my faith in marriage is deeply shaken, and I would caution any couple (straight or gay) to be sure that the union they enter is one they can back up with kindness, nurturing, commitment and fidelity, I still believe in the right of two people to make that commitment (even willy-nilly!) to one another so that they receive not just "equal benefits/rights" in that lower-class version of relationship called "civil unions," but in the same swagger and self-confidence that saying, "My wife...this" and "My husband...that" brings every time any hetero couple member slings that lingo around with the oozingly privileged, society affirming, taken for granted attitude they tediously enjoy every single day.

I've always been "soft on gays" as my evangelical friends used to say. Couldn't help it. I loved my gay friends. I couldn't ever see why religion had any role in determining rights or privileges in a pluralistic society. Weirdly, the church is the only place gays can marry right now...

So this isn't a new position. What is new is how I've suddenly glimpsed in the last year what marriage is. It's a monolith! Our matrimonial culture is all about affirming the success of two parent families (no matter what is going on behind closed doors it seems) and giving the "poor you" look to anyone who extricates self from a tenaciously entangled "bad for you" relationship. So what happens is this. I hear someone say "My wife" or "My husband" and there is a weight to it. It has gravitas. So much so, people stay married just to be able to keep saying those words: to have the social approval, the familial back pats, the memories (to be sure), the shared history, all of it. But that doesn't mean that the union is anything holy! On the contrary. In some cases, abuse rains down on the head of one member, or the two parties suck (in the endlessly needling way couples do) the life, joy and passion the other has... and yet they still claim that "rubber stamped" validated status: married.

No wonder Bridget Jones and thousands of singletons like her mourn the feeling of aloneness. Marrieds are smug, even when unhappy!

Yet strangely, we have in America today, an entire category of people for whom union is their aim (just like heteros) and somehow marriage is "too holy" for them. Oh gosh, just typing that out made me gasp a little. Really. The institution itself is too "pristine" for gay sex. I mean, isn't that what the anti-gay marriage people are saying? God doesn't like the way you have sex so no way do we want to validate it with the official holiness of marriage. But yeah, heteros. Go ahead and punch, verbally mudsling, relentlessly control, withhold sex, nag until the life force is sucked clean from your solar plexis and call that union sacred.

I know I'm coming with my own jaded perspective on this. There are some happy marriages out there... somewhere. Some where honesty, caring, emotional protection, healthy boundaries and compatibility are the rule of love.

All I'm saying is: gay people can't be any worse at those things that we straight ones. Don't they deserve their chance at living up to those aspirations with as much recklessness as we heteros? Who are we to say that our right to marry is somehow cheapened by their desire to live in a similar condition? Don't we have enough problems in our own marriages to not need to also waste energy repressing the most natural of urges in our gay friends: the codification of a love commitment between two people who want to share a bed and grow old together?

If you're with me on this, please give to the cause in Maine. Winning this ballot measure builds the momentum for full equality in all fifty states. And as my daughters have told me, they WON'T marry until all 50 states grant that right to every citizen equally. They don't want to enjoy a privilege that is unfairly distributed.

Please give here to the matching fund: No on 1; Protect Marriage Equality in Maine

I already gave $50.00. I'd like to see this blog raise $500.00. Can we do it? Thanks so much.

#nn09

And it's a trending topic on Twitter too!

Netroots Nation 09 is in full swing here in PGH. Sunshine: ordered and delivered. Great start. Greetings to any and all new readers! I hope my chicken scratch on your scraps of paper and left wrists have led you to the right blog. I will, by 2010, have business cards. Promise, even if I have to handwrite them on notecards myself.

So far, lots of new people. Let's meet them.

I'm being warmly stalked by Joe. Met him underground, where you find all good lefties and socialists. He leapt from his car parked across from mine, introduced himself and then lugged my oversized suitcase up the ramp, into the elevator, over to the front desk. Now we run into each other every ten minutes, despite there being 2000 other people in attendance. It's "carma." Joe ate lunch with me and Aaron, a 29 year old from Vallejo who impressed me immediately when he crouched down to eye level to introduce himself to little me. I was, at the time, practically lying on the floor, basking in a square of tepid sunlight through a long window.

Aaron and I struck up the usual Netroots style conversation: we indicted evil corporations; we agreed to put women in power over men, the military and nations; and we determined that the reptilian brain is in full function on certain talk radio shows. Yeah, he's seriously charming. I wonder if he sings....

I spent the morning in two sessions: the 50 State Strategy for civil rights for the LGBT community and a women's caucus. In the first, we learned about the importance of winning in Maine in the fall. I plan to blog on this topic so will save it for post-conference. Great panel. Time to re-up post Prop 8. I'll give you lots of ways to give money and get involved.

The women's caucus was awesome. We sat in a kumbaya circle and exchanged personal information, which, per youzh in my case, included the disclosure of my less left past life. Had great discussion about women and healthcare reform, already upending the myriad myths that swirl over our heads on Facebook and through the airwaves, etc. Also talked about how to put more women into office. Much hugging, kissing, business card exchanging followed and it is here that I met the following wonderful women:

Cynthia Liu from momocrats.com (Orange County mom who was also in the LGBT mtg with such a great idea for strategy to win minds and hearts... more on that soon)

Stephanie Himel-Nelson is also a momocrats lawyer-mama I met.

Lauren Martin from wcfonline.org (young, passionate New Media Manager who invited me to blog with them)

Julie Daniels and Sam Bennett are also both with wcfonline.org (I'm now waving to all of you!!)

And then of course, Georgia Berner from whatifpost.com snagged me as I left and asked for my info but forgot to give me hers. I look fwd to talking with her again.

For now, that's it! I'll try to check in again. I like it here. Very rainbow-y and birkenstock-ish... and power politics! Great mix and energy.

Lunch: basic turkey sub and chips. Not so exciting as last night's meal. Of course, you have to follow me on twitter (@julieunplugged) to get the blow by blow on my fancy schmancy meals.

Tonight? Bill Clinton Keynotes! Then some party somewhere with something good to drink. More soon.

P.S. I love being here totally and completely alone. What a great way to do a conference!

In honor of John Hughes and Ferris Bueller's Day Off

I found this wonderful retelling of the whole movie tonight, written by an Aussie. What a refreshing perspective on life! Loved that movie. In our Brave Writer film discussion class, a whole slew of teens led by our intrepid Susanne Barrett, discussed this film in depth (of course, it happens to be her favorite film of all time—natch). Strange timing with Hughes' passing (RIP).

Ferris Bueller's Day Off Redux

Giving credit to Bill: It's the Diplomacy Stupid

In Release of Journalists, Both Clintons Had Roles

If there's one thing I love , it's good, culturally sensitive diplomacy. We've had too little of it for too long. Too many Americans still believe that talking big and never apologizing is the key to a successful relationship with Asia and the Middle East. As if! Have you not read James Clavell? Leon Uris? The Bible, for heaven's sake?

These cultures are governed by shame and saving face, not by unnuanced self-aggrandizement... and bigger-than-you guns.

And so when Bill Clinton, a man I didn't vote for or like or respect (you know, back when I looked just like a Dittohead), manages to get two of our reporters released from North "Send Nukes into the Sky" Korea, ya gotta give the man props... but even more, wonder how on earth he did it? (And let's just say right here - has there ever been a man more interested in having a legacy than Bill Clinton? I enjoyed his success this week for his ego's benefit, after the thrashing he's been through in his personal life during his presidency—all by his own complexity of failings, to be sure, but still. I'm all about humans fumbling their way toward better choices, growth and contributions that matter. I'd hope we'd all be!)

So anyway, back to what I was feeling, writing. Here's what the NYTimes had to say about how Bill may have pulled this off:

As president, Mr. Clinton had sent Mr. Kim a letter of condolence on the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, according to a former official. For Mr. Kim, the former official said, freeing the women was a “reciprocal humanitarian gesture.”

Did you read that? Try it one more time. A gesture of human caring for someone's father (family being everything in Asia), sending the appropriate human gesture, led to a reciprocal humanitarian release. Americans rarely get how powerful it is to show respect, to honor someone's set of values, to get outside our own western, gun-slinging point of view long enough to be genuinely diplomatic! Bill Clinton! Amazing. The guy has got some of it goin' on.

Now granted, we don't know what that release will cost us. Asians have much longer memories than Americans, and they don't do anything for nothing. We can be sure this "gesture" will go on a tally sheet somewhere. Still, for now, today, a decision Clinton made in office to show respect and care came back to serve America this week. That's a lesson we all ought to internalize.

Checking in... testing 1, 2, 3

Yep still works. Apparently they didn't pull the plug on this dormant thing so here I be, back in the saddle.

Life is crazy busy for me (Brave Writer high season) and kids are ever busy with friends, King's Island, church, and preparation for the fall school season. Caitrin woke up today and before even opening facebook, opened her math book. We started the review. Time to dust off the long division skills and get back to work.

Liam will go to the freshman school for two classes so we'll enroll him this week. He says adamantly, "No one can make me go." But I think I may win this one. :) Oh, I'm non-coercive on the whole. Anyone who knows me knows that. I mean: stay up until 5:00 a.m. playing Warcraft - dooode be my guest! But this time, his main reason for staying home and not schooling it?? Sleeping in! Ha! (Maybe that Warcraft all nighter-ing is starting to take its toll.) So I'm more like, "Uh, not this time, pal." If he wants to ski in January every Wednesday, he's got to rise with the dawn and garbage trucks for the whole year. That's the only way it will work. And that, my friends, is what we call holding your child over a ski barrel.

I head out to be with the crazy liberals who want to impose healthcare on recalcitrant birthers and Republicans next week: Netroots Nation in Pittsburgh. Seriously excited about this. I'm such a complete political novice. But I came to love that "little" (cough sputter) community of 200,000 last year during Campaign "No One Can Stop the Man Born in Kenya." We hung out and bled our veins for Obama and ahhhh. Now he's in office and all the ones who hated him then, hate him more now and they ask me things like, "What do you think now that Obama is ruining the country and everything is worse than ever and no one has jobs and he wants to make us have healthcare against our wills and he's not even American and he has to read all his jokes off a teleprompter?"

I'm kind of at a loss. I mean, for crying out loud in the night! I gave freaking George W. Bush EIGHT years! EIGHT that we'll never get back. I let Bush invade a sovereign nation, allow for the deregulation of energy (which led to the Enron crime of the century - the one crime that made me think the death penalty is not punishment enough for white collar criminals - and the subsequent bankrupting of California), violate our citizens' rights to privacy, support and condone torture, and send our country spiraling into out of control debt as well as bailing out banks! And I'm supposed to convert to being a "hater" of Obama, who's been in office, what, 7ish months because it's taking awhile to get the economy righted after the disaster Bush left behind?

Come on! I gotta give the man a little more time and love than that! You know I do!

Anyway.

Life is actually pretty okay these days despite the obvious sources of angst. Had a great time in CA. Feels good to be home in Cincy. Really good. Like, I'm Beyonce "crazy in love" with this city. I knew it when I got off the plane this time that Cincy really is home now. I heart Cincinnati.

Okay, let's hope this little freewheeling freewrite gets me back in the groove for blogging. I've missed you all.

California bound

Well, I had a great time at PodCampOhio 09 yesterday. Now I'm packing my suitcase to head out to CA for two weeks. My 30 year high school reunion is in a week and then I head to Catalina for some good time with my family. Between now and next weekend, I'm hanging out with three of my girlfriends (from three different periods of my life). Can't wait.

I'll have my computer with me so I'll try to update as I can. See you all soon!

Wasting time online = good business

Here's the question I get asked: How do you use social media to help your business grow?

Social media is so recent, who knows? On the other hand, an active online presence across all kinds of communication technologies is what enhances any online business. Being a person, not a business, is what it's all about these days. In other words, I think wasting a lot of time online as yourself is the key to helping your business grow devoted, repeat customers.

I've logged thousands and thousands of hours online since 1995, when I first dialed up to connect. I've written hundreds of thousands of words (maybe millions, but I lost count after ten). I've posted my heart, soul, thoughts, secrets (consequently, I have few), mistakes, regrets, questions, answers, help, insight, mistakenly-believed-to-be-insightful-at-the-time remarks, quips, jabs, passions, premature commitments, and the odd overstatement-passed-off-as-fact.

In that time, I've cultivated a vibrant online life that has resulted in more in-person meetings than most skeptics of the virtual world would guess (numerous retreats all over the country with online women friends, BBQs with out of state theological pals, meet ups for concerts, coffees and desserts, drop-ins from both a client and two friends moving from point A to point C and Cincinnati turned out to be point B). I've been invited to and spoken at a conference on the strength of a tweet (twitter). I've walked on a beach with a homeschooling mom and her kids when she heard I was in her neighborhood.

I've made local friends and networked myself into a social media community (recent!), I found fellow Obama campaigners through my online life, I discovered fantasy football and U2 fans and the important world of gay rights issues because I loved the movie "Brokeback Mountain." I've contributed to two books as a result of these passions: Get Up Off Your Knees (about U2) and Beyond Brokeback (about the movie's impact) based on posts I'd written. I wound up in a Scot McKnight book because I posted a lot to his blog. Currently I'm working on two projects: Divine Feminine Version of the Bible and a project called Wikiklesia that is focused on women in ministry. Online relationships made both of these happen.

I've made friends in foreign countries and have a strong following of homeschooling mothers in Australia and New Zealand (I will get there and use my business to pay for it, yes I will!).

When someone says to me that they don't have time for a virtual life, I think: I don't have time not to! My richest, most satisfying personal relationships hands-down have come through writing back and forth online. And even the less personal ones have been a rich source of insight, support, and challenge in ways I don't achieve in person. The power of the written word combined with the significance of self-selecting community has revolutionized relationships.

Still, my business is writing and this post is supposed to be about how social media adds value to business. And everything I said above falls into that category. I don't think there is anything you can do to get people to be interested in your business through a couple of tweets a day or a fan page on Facebook. Who cares? You have to start by being interested in other people. The only way to do that is to talk to them about what they care about. For hours. On end. Even when it has nothing to do with your business.

Brave Writer began because I wasted so much time talking to homeschoolers online. I got to know them, enjoyed them, asked them questions, shared my insights; we became friends. We talked about stupid stuff like favorite snack foods we hid from our children. But we also talked about best methods for tackling spelling.

I learned everything I needed to know about how to make a successful writing program by listening to moms tell me what frustrated them about writing and teaching it to their kids. I paid attention. Then I figured out how to meet that need. I ruminated, researched, tested, shared, gave away my ideas, helped moms with no compensation whatsoever. Slowly, I built a little credibility when my ideas worked.

I was lucky. I didn't have to earn money right away. But that first check for $25.00 told me everything I needed to know. I had no website, I had no business name. Yet my first online class in 2000 was full (25 families). And so was the next one, and every one after that for the first five years, even while I raised my prices to over $100.00 per family in that time. I started with my name, and I was known in homeschooling circles because I had spent so much time hanging out, chatting with homeschoolers.

I've hardly advertised (maybe 8 weeks of a banner ad once). Word of mouth, email lists, discussion forums, blogging, and now, the miracle of twitter have accounted for all my business. Simply being transparent, available, and frequently online has been the key to generating interest in Brave Writer. It helps that the mothers (and some fathers too!) I work with are incredibly generous with their ideas, support, issues and needs. We know each other. In some cases, I've worked with every student of a family with eight kids.

To me, the question isn't "How do I use social media to generate business?" but rather, "Who have I connected to today?" Jon used to say that I got paid to give compliments. There's some truth to that. We all need encouragement. If there is one thing I've learned online—most of us are looking for support and reinforcement in our primary commitments. Brave Writer exists to give moms the courage to follow through on their best intentions for writing and language arts, while nurturing their relationships with their kids. Brave Writer provides the resources and support to to get it done. I'm every homeschooling parent's biggest fan and cheerleader. I believe in my committed, devoted, amazing customer/parents. I enjoy them. I learn from them. I like hanging out with them.

To me, that's what it's all about.