I’ve had the great pleasure meeting “New-To-Homeschool” families in the past month. Don’t get me wrong, I meet new people all the time, but the latest batch have been people that some marketers call the Homeschool Refugees. Mostly because I am not creative enough to come up with my own categories for people, for today’s post I will use that term-homeschool refugees.  Loosely defined, these are families that are homeschooling out of desperate need. All the ones I’ve met recently were literally, or subtly coerced asked to remove their child from the school. I was a bit surprised this happened in a public school, private school, and even a co-op school.  (Yep, I was told about all three varieties in just the past month.) What a hidden blessing these families have had put on them!! Oh, you can imagine, many of them don’t see it as a blessing.  However, I know these parents and grandparents will hunker down, get to work, and do what needs to be done for the children involved.  Sure, they feel like they don’t have a clue what they are doing. Of course they will have doubts, frustrations, and worries.  But they have a great advantage our family didn’t have at the beginning of our homeschool journey. They have a tremendous amount of resources, support groups, magazines, conferences, online shopping, homeschool blogs, and a growing population of other homeschoolers. They will get to benefit from the pioneering work that was done in the past 20+ years. If there ever was a good time to be a refugee in the homeschool arena, I can’t imagine any better than now.  How lucky blessed am I that I get to hear their stories, inform them of support group meeting times, and even sell a book or two? The best part for me, was to give encouragement, support, and time to these families. On those occasions, I love LOVE my job. I don’t have a great skill for the business end of my work; but I do have a great love for meeting  people face to face, or voice to voice (on the phone), and talking to them about the wonderful opportunity they have to homeschool.