Unlearn Something New.

Six years ago, my husband and I made a decision that terrified us and also felt deeply right.

We pulled our twins out of school.

They were 7 and I was just starting StereoType. Watching them begin to conform in a classroom environment seemed normal, but then COVID happened, forcing us all out of that “normal” and making us realize something. 

Their freedom had to go beyond the classroom.

It wasn't an easy decision. But we kept coming back to the same knowing: the structured system we were handing them to wasn't designed to keep children connected to themselves.

Having watched my twins naturally swap clothes and blur every line the world tried to draw between them, unlearning became the new eyes through which I looked at the world.

We weren't willing to watch them slowly trade their uniqueness for conformity. 

Instead, we chose the unconditional over the conventional.

So we began to unschool them instead. 

And in that process, unlearning became the new normal. Not because everything we learn is wrong but because everything we learn isn't always right.

While building StereoType, I unlearned the belief that conformity is safety. It isn't. It's what keeps you small.

I unlearned the assumption that fitting into a mold protects you, but what it actually does is slowly, and *quietly*, cost you yourself.

Unlearning is the pinnacle of StereoType because it reminds us that we can question anything. And we should. 

We spend so much of adulthood accumulating things: knowledge, titles, opinions, habits, all without ever stopping to ask which of those things we actually chose and which ones were handed to us before we knew we had a choice.

Unlearning is not about throwing everything away. It's about holding what you've been given up to the light and deciding for yourself what's worth keeping.

My twins are 13 now. Still homeschooled. Still entirely themselves. And I am still unlearning - as a founder, as a mother, as a person becoming more honest with herself every year.

Unlearning isn't comfortable. But on the other side of that discomfort is something worth protecting - yourself.

Have you had to unlearn something that didn't work for you any longer?