One of the focuses of Natural Life Magazine since we started it in 1976 has been self-reliance. By that, we mean having the attitude to make your own life decisions, to try new things and to teach yourself how to live a greener, more sustainable lifestyle. That is the focus of most of our articles. When my business partner and husband Rolf and I conceived of our business, we were helping our daughters learn at home – in a manner that was known in those days as “homeschooling” but is now more popularly and progressively called “unschooling” or, as I prefer, “life learning.” And the foundation of my own work ever since has been that how we educate our children and ourselves is crucial to our society’s future ability to solve our environmental, social and economic problems. An article in Natural Life’s November/December issue – Be Your Own Best Teacher by Patricia Zaballos – illustrates how this works. It shows how education – and, indeed, homeschooling – isn’t just about kids learning facts or young people getting degrees, but about gaining self-reliance and learning to think for ourselves, and about changing our attitudes towards ourselves and how we live our lives.