Okay, at first glance I may appear pretty "mainstream"—I'm an American female, wife, mother of two, dog-owner, living a middle-class lifestyle in suburbia. But once you get to know me, there is very little that is 'typical' about me.

I'm not the kind of person who does things to be different intentionally. It just seems that because of life events and choices I've made, I have managed to end up outside of the 'mainstream'. As life goes on, however, I am naturally finding myself surrounded by others who have chosen some of the same life paths, so I don't feel as out-of-the-norm as I have in the past.

Allow me to explain. I was adopted within my family (my biological mother's sister adopted me) and I am half "white"/half Mexican. As the fairest of skin of my relatives (including those who are half and half themselves), I am never recognized as being from a Hispanic background, not even by Hispanics themselves (that's a whole blog entry in itself I will write someday, LOL).

I was raised in a single-parent home during the 70's (definitely not "normal" back then), attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA), Lon Morris College and finally Webster University as a theatre major.  I met my one and only boyfriend (a total rebel-geek) during my first year of college at age 18, and then married him at 23.

When I embarked on my professional theatre career, I did not go the typical route of waiting for a talent agency to "discover" me. Instead, I took the bold step of creating my own production company, Val-Arts, where I produced and directed a critically acclaimed theatre production.

Soon afterwards, I left the world of waitressing and temp agencies to begin a life of entrepreneurship by co-founding the arts-in-education improvisational comedy troupe, Kidprov.

After ten successful years of performing and traveling around the U.S. with Kidprov, my husband and I decided it was time to start a family. As talk of what type of family life we wanted, conversations about faith and religion began. I was raised southern Baptist, and my grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher. My husband was on the complete opposite side of the fence (agnostic). After investigating for several months, we both became members of the Bahá'í Faith (B'what???).

Now it was time to focus on the birth. Did I choose your typical birth experience? C'mon, surely you are getting the picture by now! We attended Bradley natural childbirth classes, had two beautiful sons naturally (one in a home-birth center, the other at our home), and became attachment parents (and all that entails). After the birth of my first son, I became a Bradley instructor myself for four years. 

A few years went by and I wrote and co-founded the Virtue Of the Week (VOW) program.  Not satisfied with the educational choices available to my children, it was around that time that I "fell" into homeschooling. In 2006, I started Homeschoolers East, the only inclusive and diverse-accepting home school co-op east of Dallas.

Since then, we have become an organic/natural-eating family and I became a version of vegetarian (I eat eggs, dairy and fish...I'm sure there is a name for it).

There are few things, it seems, that I do that are typical or mainstream. I stand by the fact that each and every choice that I have had power over has been decided through independent investigation and not for the sake of being different or to rebel. I am a firm believer in the right to investigate and decide for oneself and don't think that my choices are the best or should be the choices of others. So if you don't agree or resonate with a view or topic on my blog, I invite you to truly investigate it and decide how you feel about it for yourself.

Not only have I discovered that many times if "everyone is doing it" it is usually NOT in one's best interest, but that if there is a group or belief that seems to be "swimming upstream" there may be something to it. I have found it to be absolutely freeing and eye-opening to get out of one's comfort zone and I hope you will try it too!

Remember, most of the ideas we have found to be true or have adopted today were presented by individuals who, at the time, were thought to be, well, nuts! Not only do these nuts (ok, people with different ideas) do the work for some of us who are less adventurous by exploring the "limits", but, after you chip away at their ideas, you find they are truly on to something and have something to offer.

I hope you will enjoy this blog as I continue to investigate, learn, seek truth and explore all that life has to offer. And I will be sure to let you know when I end up doing something really "mainstream" and "normal".

Peace!

Valarie