Working as a Homeschool Mom
Part 2: Finding Your Center
“Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me” (John 15:4).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited for education in the virtues (CCC 2223).
Homeschooling parents have the benefit of additional time and space to provide this primary education — but we have to stay close to Christ to do so. Every mom I spoke with for this article, as well as my previous article on homeschooling as a working mom, said her faith is central to her work and family life.
All for the Lord
“I really try to just do everything for God,” says Ginny Kochis of Quirky Catholic Kids. “Whatever it is that He’s calling me to do, that’s where I go. Not always immediately — sometimes it takes a while to get there, and He has to drag me, kicking and screaming. But in the end, His will is what matters. Not mine.”
“If I were to illustrate my life as a series of concentric circles, Christ would be the center, then my marriage, family, and lastly my business,” says Shannon Wendt of ChewsLife. If there [is] something wrong with an inner circle, everything outside of that circle will suffer.”
Wendt and her family pray the Rosary each night, go to Mass and adoration together, and celebrate the liturgical seasons. At ChewsLife, she and her team pray with and for each other and create “products and content that flow out of our personal conversations with the Lord and leveraging our talents to help others draw into that same conversational relationship.” Similarly, Megan Kreft, PA-C, says that her children “are also involved in [my mission at MyCatholicDoctor] in a beautiful way, as they regularly pray for [my] patients and their families.”
Luisa Gomez, owner of Loving Threads, says that her faith is one of the main reasons she homeschools. “I wanted more than a diluted or compartmentalized faith; I wanted something fully lived as a family. Our Catholic faith is woven into our daily life, guiding how we learn, work, and live.” Her business also reflects her Catholicism, as everything she makes is related to the faith.
“It’s everything,” Emily Brown of Fiat Life Coaching and Homeschool Better Together says of her faith. “If God doesn’t call me to something, then I have no business doing it.”
Relying on God
Brown adds, “I believe homeschooling and business are both calls from God. If you’re being called to one or both, go for it! He will provide the way to fulfill those good desires when you give Him your yes first.”
Sonia Trujillo, a financial planner, says that her biggest struggle with homeschooling and entrepreneurship has been “balancing the intensity of my ambition with limited hours.” The solution, she’s found, is “relying on God’s grace … to recognize the prompting of the Holy Spirit in my life and to understand when my desires do not come from God.” Her morning routine includes a daily Examen, Scripture reading, and journaling. When she is able to finish her routine, she has more peace during the day. “And on the hard days, I rely on God completely to carry me through it — because I know I could never do this work on my own without Him beside me.”
Relying on God also means taking everything to prayer. Jenny Bales says that she makes every decision through prayer, usually in Adoration, where she asks “the Lord to guide [her] decisions and actions relating to homeschooling and [her business] Heart of a Mother.”
Wendt says she and her husband had always felt a strong pull to homeschool, but they relied on prayer to confirm that decision when it came time to start formally educating their oldest. She says discovering a first-class relic of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton mixed in with some “junk jewelry” was their sign from the Lord to homeschool. “Each new season of our family, we bring it to discernment again. The Lord is always moving and guiding, and the beauty of homeschool is that the Lord is the Teacher, and He makes the plans every new year, every new season!”
Similarly, Michele Miller, who works a 7 a.m.-to-4 p.m. job in finance from home, started homeschooling in 2020 because of the pandemic but continued because of discernment: “When [my company] sent us home in 2020 and kept delaying our return to the office, I told my husband that if they did make us return I would give notice. I was already committed, and we’d figure something out. I guess the Lord wanted me to do both, because six years later, I’m still working full time at home and homeschooling.”
The Role of Community
Several of the moms I spoke with cite co-ops or hybrid schools as being crucial to their homeschool. (Part of the popularity of homeschool co-ops in this group of moms is due to the fact that I talked with a couple of moms from the co-op my family is part of!)
For Megan Kreft and Lisa Higgins, both part-time physician assistants, being part of a Catholic Schoolhouse co-op has not only helped provide additional academic support but has also given them what Kreft describes as “a community of peers and families who share and actively live out the same faith.” Higgins notes that Catholic Schoolhouse’s science and art classes mean she has taught less and less of those subjects at home over the years. It has also provided her family with “an automatic support group of amazing families as we journey this chapter of our lives together.”
Miller says her family tried a few non-denominational Christian co-ops before finding a Catholic co-op. “This was a huge blessing for the kids and [me]. Being around others of the faith just strengthens us.”
Other moms note that co-ops and hybrid schools provide their children with extracurricular activities and enrichment, such as music and art classes, physical education, or theater.
Remembering Your Identity
For me, the hardest part of juggling work and homeschooling has been an identity shift. And I’m not alone. “Rather than fully separating [the roles of business owner and homeschool mom], I try to embrace the fluidity of them and move between them with grace and flexibility,” says Gomez.
Similarly, Bales says that she doesn’t have a hard time switching her mindset from mom/teacher to entrepreneur and back, because “I am all of those things at the same time.” She says her biggest advice to working homeschool moms is “not to see these as separate parts of who you are but to include your children as much as possible in learning about what you do and even helping, when possible.” Bales adds that if her children know about her business, then they know when she’s on her phone or computer, she’s working, not just playing.
For Kochis, navigating the challenges of switching from “mom mode” to “entrepreneur mode” contributed to her and her husband’s decision to put their children back in school. While there were several reasons, one of them was “I wanted to be [her middle child’s] mom, and we spent most of the time battling over school work. In hindsight, I see that it wasn’t a good fit for her in general. But I think as it goes with all things kids-related, you have to take it every child, every year.”
For instance, she originally discerned homeschooling in 2013 because, at the time, it was a good fit for the needs of her oldest child, who was diagnosed as autistic, level one. “My daughter needed a flexible schooling environment that gave her license to explore topics of interest while allowing her socialization on her own terms,” Kochis explains. However, when she finished middle school, her daughter decided she wanted to attend the Catholic high school where Kochis’ husband works. Through this continuous discernment, Kochis has balanced her roles as mom and entrepreneur while giving her children what they need during each season of life.
“So often the world has told me that my career was more important,” Higgins says. Now, however, she doesn’t struggle anymore with the mindset switch from mother to professional and back. “Every time I go to work, I come back home more grateful for my family. Working at a hospital with sick people really helps you put life into perspective!”
For me, the solution has been not to shift my identity at all, though; it’s been to remember what my identity has always been. I’m not primarily the co-president of Catholic Women in Business or even a wife or mother. I’m primarily a daughter of God. That identity was true before I was married or had children. It was true before I decided to homeschool. And it will be true when my children are grown.
Author’s Note: Thank you to Catholic Heritage Curricula for connecting me with two of the moms featured in this article!
If you are working and homeschooling, join me in my new Facebook group, Catholic Working Homeschool Moms. We are all learning from and encouraging each other!
Taryn DeLong, co-president of Catholic Women in Business, co-wrote Holy Ambition: Thriving as a Catholic Woman at Work and at Home (Ave Maria Press) to help women hear and follow God’s unique calling for their life. Following her own calling, she currently spends much of her time caring for and homeschooling her two daughters.
Taryn studied psychology and education at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC. Before becoming a mother, she worked in university advancement and then B2B editing.
Since Taryn was a child, she’s called the Raleigh area home, and she and her husband are now raising their family in a small Raleigh suburb. In addition to supporting Catholic women, she's passionate about inclusion of people with disabilities in life, work, and (most importantly) the Church. She also enjoys reading and playing the piano.
Connect with Taryn on Instagram, Facebook (and her Facebook group for Catholic working homeschool moms), LinkedIn, her blog, and Substack.
