I’m Racquel G. Smith. People who love me call me Rac. The ones who really know me call me Rac-a-taq. I like to shake shit up! In really good ways!
I am a Jamaican-Canadian unschooling mother, artist (I own that ‘queasily’ still) and entrepreneur living with my family in Montreal mostly. I have several degrees and a couple decades of experience in my former profession, non-profit management. Then becoming a mother almost ten years ago catalyzed deep shifts in me and in my career focus: I started to viscerally appreciate that children– how we raise/facilitate/educate/hold space for each and every one of them, is arguably what matters most in shaping our collective future. PLUS! I also came to realize that working with children was the ‘work’ that came most naturally, joyfully and inspiredly for me.
Almost ten years ago when my children were babies, I brought them along with me as I deepened my yoga teacher training ( a long-running ‘side hobby’ by then) to become specialized and eventually taught mindfulness for children and teenagers at a range of schools throughout the Toronto District School Board before moving to Montreal with my family five years ago.
Over the years I’ve deepened and diversified my training and exploration of even more (thoroughly joyful!) ways of working with children and their families. One highlight has been my training with the Child and Nature Alliance of Canada. I’ve developed and offer families mindfulness, nature and music-based programs and events in Montreal (soon in Jamaica) with an explicit mission to, basically, “increase fun and shared good feelings.”
Honestly, this mission was also born out of personal necessity! They say “necessity is the mother of invention.” And motherhood has also been the mother of my “inventions.” Because my own gruelingly transformative experience, I am very motivated to make things easier for parents and kids in simple, creative and customized ways. In my work, I seek to create ways in which family members, together or separately, can easily add to their life’s routine more moments of soul-nourishing fun, quiet, connection-within-community, nourishing good feelings inside and sharing good feelings with others.
Life these days does not make deep sharing, connection and regular enjoyment easy for families with young children. It can be so s tricky to find time for yourself, all the others you want to enjoy, and tricky share connected moments with beloved living under the same roof
To me, the head-spinning pace of our lifetime is what makes urgent the mission to provide children– the ones with the actual, real, jeffing power to shape a future that it is much better or much worse than the present portends– with the spaces, communities, messages, resources and mentors that best support them in wanting and creating better, alternative futures. A more sustainable, more co-operative, collaborative, equitable, loving, trusting and joyful futurel. Where, more than today, the children-turned-adults, can truly know their power: To be and find peace, to work with difference, to be kind, concerned with how everyone is doing (systems-thinking), apply humility and compassionate curiosity to understanding other perspectives and points of view, value and actively love up and learn from, all kinds of people, maybe especially the ones that seem most different. Be less capable of war. Value human connection, laughing and dancing, relaxing and spending time together. Value evolving our individual inner resources and sharing our unique gifts and talents…
That’s really my vision! And when I hang out “goofing” with children, when I sing, when I dance, when I feel connected and grounded in community and in myself, I feel in my bones the call of a future as joyful as children.