Thoughts From the Unschooling Underbelly

I'm putting my pen down and leaving the pages blank. This will be my last post on this short-lived blog.
Since my most popular post Unschoolers No More was shared here last September, a lot of personal growth has taken place. The personal evolution I'm currently experiencing is now prompting me to stop writing as an individual blogger.
I learned a lot from this experience after the almost 11 thousand hits my post generated and the hundreds of online discussions and heartfelt private messages it prompted.
I want to share with you some of the main knowledge I acquired from this short journey as an individual blogger. My hope is that in sharing my experience, we can embark on a joint quest that will strengthen the community of self-directed learners, unschoolers, homeschoolers and ancestral schoolers we are all a part of.
I want to begin by talking about how that post, in particular, was not only inspired by my personal journey but also by my experiences living in the unschooling underbelly. That portion of our subculture where people like me and those below me in the hierarchy experience the horrors of what our "community" has to offer. The section where parents are forced to choose between upholding their own humanity and that of their children or compromise it in order to belong and to secure a meager place in a community that is only interested in interacting with marginalized people under the terms of the dominant culture.
In that portion of the underbelly, I have seen and been one of the many marginalized people who become disposable, censored, silenced for sharing their experiences, standing up for our histories, perspectives, needs or wants. Many of us have been made to disappear for daring to request our children's physical, emotional and racial safety is respected by those around us, those individuals who are seen as unschooling and homeschooling authorities and even by the organizations that have power over the environment and the cultures we inhabit as self-directed learners.
In that underbelly, I have witnessed the colonization and gentrification of entire homeschooling communities under the excuse of fake diversity. Many of my friends and I have been tokenized and mined for knowledge, services, skills and even for the need to appear racially progressive.
Mistakenly, I set out to write a blog as an individual in an attempt to carve out a higher place for myself in the homeschooling hierarchy. You see, they say when in Rome one must do as the Romans do and I witnessed many "Romans" in this community carve out individualistic triangles of power for themselves as a way to survive and "thrive."
Those triangles of whyte lady sisterhood often offer “sisterhood and community” in our circles, packaged in a disingenuous way that, reeks of  "a slurry of cultural appropriation, spiritual bypassing, neoliberalism, multilevel marketing, and random woo punctuated by various signals of authority, virtue and performative vulnerability…" I noticed, in this misguided attempt to carve out my place in this our world, I was personally in danger of becoming a messianic leader as evidenced by the correspondence and attention I got with one single blog post.
The truth is however, I am not interested in being a Roman and doing as the Romans do in order to survive in this community. I will not follow the lead of my oppressors and put people below me to survive or gain power. I want my friends beside me and around me as equals instead.  
You see, I was not anticipating the personal journey I set out to share here... as misguided attempt to become visible in my own right, would be so attractive for the predatory ways of those who long for their own lost culture. I did not anticipate the danger of my culture being appropriated by the dominant culture. I underestimated the thirst for wisdom of whyte women in search of guidance and magic in cultures which are not their own.
I must clarify, I adored and immensely enjoyed the lovely and genuine interactions I got to have with the many women of color that contacted me. Some beautiful friendships are blossoming as a result.
I received countless of private messages by whyte mothers who don't feel at ease in Unschooling forums, asking how to apply my "Ancestral Schooling" principles to their lives. I would like to emphasize the word "MY." You see, I was incredibly naive in engaging in the "Romans" game of self-marketing and personal branding even if it was just for reputation and not economic profit. I did not realize the dangers of sharing my experience solely for personal brand creation. I neglectfully forgot in the current state of our culture it is actually impossible for many to "appreciate other cultures without claiming them", or trying them on for size even if it is not theirs. 
Writing this blog was putting me in danger of becoming a "new age pan Indian guide" in service of whyte women, who need to do their own healing work and come to terms with their own racial identity and standing in the racial hierarchy.
At a time where all our family is doing is getting our feet wet in the decolonizing waters and stumbling as any beginner does, I don't want to be anyone's Messiah. Not now, not ever. What I really want and need, is a community with which to share and exchange knowledge and experiences in equal terms and I need that community to be respected so whatever we share or jointly create does not get sucked into a capitalist hole.
I need equal information sharing, a free flow of ideas from other marginalized folks. I want shared wisdom in community because "The world doesn’t need new leaders the world needs new ideas. Ideas that tell me I don’t have to walk like that or talk like this; that me and you can be different; because listen to this and this is wisdom people die but ideas live forever." And all those women who wrote to me seeking my leadership and trying my personal solution on for size they need to understand their solution is within them, not in me or my culture. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in the importance of visibility of marginalized communities in our subculture. However, I no longer believe in individualistic visibility for the purpose of self-promotion which is what I was misguidedly doing and plan to stop.
So this is my last blog post before inviting others as my equals, to become a collective of writers in a group I hope to form in balanced equitable terms with the support of many. Who is in?!