Watching the Unschooling Pieces Crumble - Part 1 of Dealings With a Guru

I love “radical unschooling”. I am not attached to who started the term or to other people’s definition of it. It is simply two words from our English language that quickly sum up how I live my extremely complicated life. Because I love radical unschooling so much, I longed to be better at it, to skip all the seemingly difficult times a family will go through in their attempt to deschool everything they have been taught and led to believe about the human condition. In my quest to be a better unschooling mother, I admit that I have followed what some people refer to as a “guru” and, at times, I have even put aside my own intuition, in order to follow those who could lead me to develop some form of “awesome mom” status. We all get caught up in our own process of becoming something or someone and this is a small piece of my story.

We all see the world through our own filter. This means that ten people can watch the same car accident and interpret it ten different ways. Because of this, I have decided to present my story with Dayna and only mine, as much as possible. The events that transpired in Texas, at the end of May, involved multiple families. Most of those affected and their family members are completely open regarding the parts they played and the sharing of their stories, but it is still not my place to offer up their personal details. They are all invited to share their chapters as they see fit and I will support any of their wishes, whether it is to stay silent or to lay it all out on the table. I will do my best to fill in the blanks, but if you feel holes are left, it is only because I could not share those personal details of others. I would also like to say that the purpose of me sharing my story is in no way a plea for you to believe me. I have no need to convince anyone that you should feel the same way. It is only to help shield those from the very monster they may see as their savior. Please take what you need from my reflections and decide for yourself what level of protection you may or may not need to defend yourself from a sociopath.

In my research in to the sociopathic mind, I have learned that we are surrounded by them and, man, are they good at hiding. You can literally live with one for years and never know the person they really are inside. You can make excuses and explain away, the pieces that do not add up. For me, things felt very off, but I (we) was led to believe that the strangeness I felt was due to the abused life that our sociopath was enduring. Why would I not believe someone who claims they were and are still being raped, beaten, verbally abused, and generally forced to live a horrific existence? Wow, she is an even more amazing person than I realized. She can put up this peaceful front and still have the ability to help other families, while her own family is falling apart in the background. What an astonishing and breathtaking person, to be able to hide her own horrors, to then turn around to offer assistance to those families wishing to live their lives in harmony.

So, Dayna Martin, radical unschooling guru.

I first have to admit that I lied about one thing. I told Dayna that I would not take the events from May and present them in a public forum. I had every intention of keeping that promise at the time, but let me add the other words that were contained in that plea to her. What I said was, “I will not take the things that have happened this week and make them public like other people have. I simply want you to get back home, so you can heal and figure out how to live your life authentically. At this point, I would like to put everything behind us and get back on track with supporting unschooling families and forget it all happened”. I decided to let that promise go the moment she walked away from my house and lied about me (us) before the car even pulled away. I will start the story, not from the beginning, beginning, but from the start of her second visit to our home in May. My husband picked Dayna up at the airport on the evening of May 22^nd. She flew in to DFW to offer her wonderful unnanny services. For those who have not heard of the unnanny, Dayna is the unnanny. She comes in to people’s homes and works with their family, for a few days, to support the parents in their desire to unschool and live peacefully with their children. I thought it was a great service because I fully believe that unschooling will change the world. Something you need to know about me is that, normally, I have to explain all the intricate details of a story, to give others the chance to really understand an event, all the way down to the emotions. I am going to do something different here and not explain the back meaning of every sentence, but instead simply give the cold hard facts of the downfall of the Martin and Green friendship, again, as much as possible………..

Wednesday, May 22^nd:

I am making fajitas when my hubby and Dayna arrive at home at around 8pm. We sit around, have drinks (drinking for Dayna means shots and shots of Vodka), and talk about plans, she says that she would like to make us some raw food this week to show her appreciation for us letting her stay in our RV while she is in town. We chose Monday to work on raw food stuff and decide to go to the store the next day. Originally, Dayna was to fly in on Wednesday and work with the unnanny family Thursday, but she explained to me that they shorted her a day of pay, so she would spend Thursday hanging with us, as well. She gifted me a book that night and added that I would need to hide it from Joe because he would get very upset if he knew she gave it to me. Know that in the past, not a day has gone by when we have not received a message or phone call (sometimes up to 10 calls a day) that reflected the dire and abusive situation she was in at home. She was scared for her life and didn’t know how to approach her plan to leave her husband. None of these stories were anything new, they were each simply another fact to add to the list of the ways that she was treated horribly, by everyone in her life.

Thursday, May 23^rd:

Thursday came and my husband was on conference calls with work and he was having a pretty frustrating day. After hearing him talk about work, Dayna told him to suck it up, realize that he is the breadwinner of the family, that he has responsibilities, and that he needs to get over it. I told her I didn’t think that was very motivating and she ignored me. Dayna and I decided to head to the store, to purchase what she needed for her raw food dishes that we would make on Monday. On the way to the store, she asked me how I deal with that negative bullshit in my house everyday and suggested that we go out and have drinks first. We did that and she continued to tell me about her abusive home life and how she wishes she could be a part of our family. She told us on several occasions that her main wish is to have a happy life like we do and that she would love to be able to be authentic in her own life. We went to the store and at checkout I paid for the $400 bill. She attempted an offer to pay, but how would I accept that? She was very clear about the fact that Joe controls every dime that she spends and that he would be pissed if any amount of money came out of the account. We got home and she proceeded to take $35 worth of cashews and soak them in water. I said wait, we aren’t making this stuff for 5 days and she said it was ok, she would keep them in the fridge. I don’t know enough about raw food, so I let it go. The Vodka was flowing, shot after shot, we had dinner and planned to go to bed early because we had to get up in the morning to take her to the farm for her first day with the unnanny family. When we attempted to go to bed, Dayna got upset and said she didn’t want to sleep alone because she was scared and that we were mean for making her. She claimed that she has never slept alone and she begged one of us to stay with her. We said no and she began crying hysterically, claimed that we hate her, and she headed to the RV. We went to bed.

Friday, May 24^th:

Dayna came in to our bedroom at 6am and apologized for getting upset and she said that she was glad we made her sleep alone and that it was really good for her. She listed off all of the people she contacted throughout the night. She even showed us pictures of all the people so we could see how good looking they were. Anyway, she contacted these people to come save her, but in the end, she decided to just stay put. She will not pack her stuff without assistance, so we helped her pack up for the RV trip. Meanwhile, as with any other day, she visits the bathroom every little bit (every 15-30 minutes) to touch up her face and hair. My husband began to wonder if she was going in to do drugs, due to her continued manic behavior. We packed up the RV and headed to the farm to meet the unnanny family. We arrived before noon, said our hellos, and went forward with our day. I would be staying in the RV to work on school stuff and she would work her magic with kids. Dayna came back to the RV every 15-30 minutes, would do a shot of vodka and then drink some OJ. She blamed the kids for pushing her over the edge and she said she had to kill her hangover, so this continued all day long. She consumed at least a fifth of vodka that day and kept escaping to the RV to get away from the needy children. She went for a walk with 2 of the kids in the evening and proceeded to get lost for over two hours. When she made it back she was very shaken, drank some more, and got upset that I was not worried about her. When it was time to go to bed, she began complaining, yelling, and crying heavily, saying that she was being forced to sleep alone again and that she is only here for 8 days, so we need to give her whatever she wants. She claimed we were treating her unfairly. This was the night where everything changed. I went from feeling sorry for her to watching her morph in to a sociopath in front of my eyes. I was awake all night, fearing the person that was laying down just twenty feet from me. I have seen psycho in my nursing career and she was it.

Saturday, May 25^th:

Saturday was a new day because we would be detaching from Dayna for a few hours. To work with the family, she would be staying at the farm with them for the day and then driving back home to work on transitioning between homes and the long car rides, with the kids. We all sat and had breakfast around 11am. Dayna sat there starring in to space while the unnanny parents were trying to ask questions about unschooling. Dayna would not really answer any questions. Kevin and I tried to help them the best we could, but later she told unnanny mom that the kids would not stop crawling all over her and that we just took over and did her job, so of course, we were just trying to be her. We got the RV packed up, went to say goodbye to the family, and Dayna comes in to the house to say she is too sick to stay with the family, so she will be leaving with us. Um, ok. At this point, Dayna has been suction cupped to my family for days and I was hoping for a few hours. She makes arrangements with the unnanny family and tells them she will make up for it by coming and staying with them Monday night. This way she can work with the kids regarding bedtimes and allow mom to get some rest. This means she will no longer be making the raw food on Monday that we just bought all the stuff for. I remind her of that and she says she can totally make it all tonight. Wait! How is she going to make raw food tonight when she is too sick to do her job with the unnanny family? On the way home, Dayna begins to talk about leaving her husband and his abusive ways and wanting to come live with us. We really want to help, but then she tells me something that doesn’t make sense. At least it doesn’t make sense coming from an unschooling mother. She says that she is going to fly home, pack up the kids, tell them they are going on vacation, and then they can all move here. What? I told her that she can’t just pack up her kids and lie to them about what is happening. She says that she has no choice because if she tells them what is happening, they may decide to stay at home. So, we get home, I go to work on school stuff and come out a few hours later to find her pouring all the cashews in to my new vitamix, slamming the tamper in, spewing wet cashews all over the kitchen, and telling me that she is almost done and we can go to the movies. Wait! I thought she was sick? She leaves the vitamix full of cashews (for days) and talks hubby and I in to going to the movies. We felt REALLY weird and tried to stay home to rest, but finally decided to go since she was felling better. We are in the car and Dayna begins to cry about how we are supposed to go to a renaissance faire the next day and she was afraid that people would see us and think that something was going on between us. What? She started to get really psycho about how she would want to give us a hug and she would have to hold back. I only mention this because it is important later. We calm her down by saying we all hug and hold hands and we promise we won’t take pictures so Joe doesn’t get the wrong idea. Several times during her few days with us, Joe has called and when she got off the phone she would cry about how mean he is and how he is pissed that he knows something is going on here. What? So, we go to the movies and things go ok. She seems to have calmed down and after a bit of complaining that she has to sleep alone, she asks my youngest if she wants to go swimming at midnight. She then disappears to the RV and ignores her promise to my daughter. I need to make reference to the fact that several times, during her stay, she brought up the idea to us that when Joe is on the sailboat trip with my husband in a few weeks, that maybe he could find a way to knock Joe off the boat or hit him over the head. We took these as another way for her to work out her feelings for her abusive life. We now know that she references getting rid of people on a regular basis. Actually, she ended up telling Joe that he could not go on the trip with my husband because we “fucked her over” and she didn’t feel he would be safe.

Sunday, May 26^th:

Today is her scheduled day off. We had planned to go to the renaissance faire with the other unschooling friends in the area and began getting ready for the day. There was a video chat session that happened with Joe before we left. Joe told her to not wear the slutty clothes she had on and that she needed to change. This solidified our belief that Joe is abusive and she has a pretty tough life that we need to help her get away from. We go to the ren faire and meet up with 12 other friends that were all there to witness the day’s events. Things were good for a few hours as we were shopping, drinking, and eating. Sitting at the bar, Dayna waves around a credit card that she claims has a 15K credit limit, so she is going to get that round of drinks. She then says that we could all just disappear and buy some land with the credit card and live the good life. We walk around some more when my oldest daughter asked me if she could buy a dress and she showed me the one she wanted, which was $260. I said there is no way that I can spend that much on a dress right now. She understands, but shows Dayna the dress. Before I know it, Dayna is telling my daughter that she will buy the dress for her as a gift. I said there is no way that I can let her do that since she can’t spend any money without Joe getting upset with her. She insisted, my daughter was happy, and I let it go. The only thing is that she attempted to use the 15K credit card and it was declined, so she used her bank card. I later found out that when she used her bank card, she caused an overdraft in her account at home. Joe asked her about the purchase and Dayna told him that we refused to buy the dress, so she felt obligated to let my daughter borrow the money for it so that my daughter would feel pretty and like someone actually cared about her. What? Back at the bar, a friend is standing next to Dayna and Dayna starts kissing her. Well, this is new. We walk a little further and Dayna goes up to a stranger, starts talking to him, and then starts making out with him, in front of all 15 of us. This is where the breakdown from Saturday evening comes in to play. Why would she make such a big deal out of something as silly as holding hands or hugging anyone from our unschooling community if she is just fine with now making out with 2 different people in an hour? She was confronted and she says that she was feeling lonely and needed the attention and then says she actually did it because she could see the pain in his eyes and she wanted to offer some love. What? Within the hour, Dayna comes back to me to explain that she just went to the bathroom and made out with my friend, but she did it because she was really thinking about me. She then goes to tell my husband that she was asked to “be” with them and that she is ok with doing a threesome with the couple because they are our friends and she knows it would make us happy. Wow! When my husband inquired about the guy she made out with, Dayna said that if we really cared about her then we would tell her not to flirt with other people. So, this is starting to make sense. At this time, she magically decided she was sick and needed to go to first aid. She was taken and then seemed fine after some attention. We now know that when her husband seems abusive, it is because she has led him to believe this is what she wants him to do to prove his love. She tells him to let her have it if she is drinking, wearing something slutty, or if she is flirting. We end the day with our friends by going out to eat. Dayna is sitting between my husband and my friend’s husband, at the end of the table. She is taking her knife and stabbing it in to the table, manages to order and down 3 double vodka drinks, and is trying to get each of the guys to hold her hand and continues to grope them when they refuse to touch her. On the way home she is in the backseat with my youngest and her friend. Dayna begins pulling up pictures of penises on the ipad and they all giggle the entire way. We get home, Dayna comes in to my bedroom, grabs my ipad, rips the cover off of it and starts slamming and poking it. I told her to stop treating my ipad like that. She said she will do whatever she wants because she doesn’t like ipad covers. I take it from her and lay it on my bed. I turn around and she has left the room with my ipad. I find her in my backyard, with the cover ripped off again and she has thrown my ipad in to our firepit. I tell her that it is ridiculous that I even have to say it, but she is no longer allowed to touch my electronics. I tell my husband and he goes to the RV to see what is going on. I was not in the RV, so I cannot repeat what came out of her mouth, but we both felt that we were all in danger at that point, because of what she was saying to my husband. To make sure we were all safe, my husband had to stay in the RV with her to ensure she would not try to enter the house. I still sleep with a knife next to my bed 6 weeks later.

Monday, May 27^th:

My husband came in to the house early and told me about the psychotic things she had done and said. We both knew that we wanted her as far away from us as possible, but we would attempt to keep the peace until she was to fly home on Thursday. She was to be spending the night with the unnanny family anyway, so we would not have to worry about her for the evening. My husband went to check on her at 10am to see if she was ready. She told him the she is tired and isn’t feeling good enough to go do the unnanny stuff. He said, hell no, you will not be doing this to that family again and that she needed to get ready so he could take her over there. We find out later that she has called Joe to tell him that she has a urinary tract infection and that we are refusing to take her to the doctor. What? I then go in to the RV to check for myself, what is going on. Dayna tells me she is too sad to leave and that she will go do her job tomorrow. I said no, I will not tolerate her pulling this on that family again. I came in and sent a text to the unnanny mom that was expecting Dayna this morning. I said I was on my way over to talk to her and it was not good news. I told the unnanny family everything that had happened that week. Of course, at this point, we were all hoping this was a onetime deal, where Dayna was having a breakdown due to her abusive life and she had drank so much that all of this was simply the alcohol talking. We discuss the possibility of Dayna staying with the unnanny family, in hopes that she would sober up and snap out of whatever this was that was happening. I presented the idea to Dayna, she said no, and I said she did not have a choice, that she could go to their home and stay or she needed to find another place to go to because she was not welcome at our home any longer. During that morning, she claimed that she had also called other people in the area to see if they could come pick her up. We found out later that she said none of what she claimed and she was calling people to tell them that she was sick and we would not help her. I got her to finally agree to the idea of staying with the other family. This is when I told her that I would not be telling anyone about this and that I just wanted her to go home and get help. She would not pack her stuff, so we did it for her and walked her out to the car where the unnanny mom was waiting. Once in the car, the lies began flying. I do know that she said she was sick and we would not take care of her and that she repeated many times that she just doesn’t understand why we are mad at her. I have been told the story of what occurred once she was at the unnanny house, but I will allow them to tell their story when they are ready to put it on paper. I can tell you that Dayna never got sober, she treated the family like they were her personal advice counselors, and she continued to promise the kids things that she never intended on following through with. It was not until she was gone that we went and looked in to exactly how much vodka was gone. She had been with us for 4 full days, at this point, much of which was spent away from out home, but she managed to empty 3 large bottles of vodka, she left unidentified pills laying all over the RV, and we learned that she took even more vodka with her to the unnanny home. The madness did not end there. For the rest of the evening, Dayna kept begging to call us or to talk to us or to come back to our home. We said no, period.

Tuesday, May 28^th:

We had an unschooler pool day scheduled at my house that day. The plan was to allow Dayna to get some rest and sober up and hopefully she would come over with the unnanny family to just hang out and get back to normal. Dayna refused to come, so the unnanny family came without her. I made my way through the day and received a call from someone asking me what is going on because she is claiming she is sick and she is mentioning suicide. I told this person the entire chain of events and she offered to take Dayna in if she needed someplace to go. Upon the unnanny family returning to their home, Dayna was still in bed and refusing to get up to attend a barrel race she had promised to attend. At this point, Dayna was told to pack her things and that she would be going to some else’s home for the rest of her stay. She was then driven by a friend to the place she would be staying. On the way there, Dayna made references to still not understanding why we were mad at her and then telling my friend that she is in love with me and she guessed that my husband just came along with the package. Going along with this, she apparently also told the unnanny mom that she was afraid she was gay because she loved me so much. News to me.

During the following days, while still in town, she called my husband to let him know that she was feeling better, that she didn’t know what she was thinking by trying to help a family with crazy children and who need a trauma counselor, and that she was really just so sick while here that she was not in her right mind. While Dayna was here, she clearly told me to take care of the Whole Life Unschooling group. She said she never wanted to have the group and that her husband only started it so he could be a guru like her. I was told to delete things that were non RU related and to demand that members understand that conversations remain RU. This is what I did. I thought I was helping her. She then told her husband that I am the cause of all of the issues in the group and that I needed to be stopped. She then went in to the group and told everyone that we were fighting too much and she just wanted peace. I am letting any of you know this that are still wondering what happened in WLU the first week of June. She had us do her dirty work, so she could look like the pretty princess that fights for peace. This is her mo. We are all employees in the Dayna show and she will use you and climb over you to look like the hero. The most disturbing part is what she does to the kids. She leads children to believe that she is the only one on this earth that really understands them and she will do anything to save them from their terrible lives with their families. I have experienced this very thing on several occasions, but the most telling sign was her messages to the oldest in the unnanny family, after she was back at home. Dayna continued to lead her to believe that she was the only person who could possibly understand her position. From what I have gathered, this is not a onetime occurrence. Dayna befriends children, turns them away from their family, and breeds them to see her as a god. During these conversations, she also makes sure that they know Joe is very abusive and that if they ever send her a message that he might see it and beat her up.

I have numerous pages of proof to back up what I am saying and I did not plan to share anything yet, but this feels like an important one to share. It was a conversation between the oldest unnanny daughter (10 yo) and Dayna. This message is in reference to the daughter asking if Dayna was going to start being more honest now.

Dayna Martin. 5:33pm. June 1^st.

“I know that everyone is feeling I am a liar and worse, but I was *very* sick. The doctor said I was delusional when I got there from the infection. I was not like that the first time you met me. I may have been dishonest about some things to spare feelings or say things that were half-truths because of my need to feel comfortable in a difficult confusing situation. I am normally not like that. I had a complete and total breakdown. I would like to step back for a while. This is hard for me and my family needs my total focus. Please do not talk about this on here again. Joe reads my stuff.”

My husband and I both received apology letters from Dayna during the first week of June. Mine said blah blah blah, don’t tell anyone or write back and my husband’s said blah blah blah, don’t let your wife tell anyone anything and don’t write back.

Conclusion for now…………..

From what I understand, every word that came out of Dayna’s mouth was a lie, including everything she said to me. I have no idea what is real in her world and what is not. I can tell you that I have learned that Dayna went to the hospital before flying home, so she would have the paperwork to back up the excuse that she was sick the entire time she was here. At the hospital, she received IV antibiotics because of the story SHE gave them and they gave her IV Advil for the pain she claimed to have. In her weakened state, she flew home, let everyone know how deathly sick she was, and then went to get a tattoo just a few days later. You don’t go get a tattoo when you are sick. You just don’t. It seems that any time Dayna gets in to a sticky situation, she becomes sick and needs to be cared for. I have also become very knowledgeable about how she keeps all of her friends separated or at least busy when they are in the same room with each other. Looking back, there isn’t one person that she has said anything nice about. There is always an issue with every single person. The complaints come in the form of they just want to be me, they are jealous of me, or they are just a hater. She will tell people to their face that they are her best friend and then send a note to someone else complaining about how she can’t stand that person. She lies about everyone to everyone else. All of the things she writes have been copied from other people. She claims to be a raw foodie, but will not eat raw food in the presence of people. She pretends to love raw food to sell books and to promote her blog. Her favorite food is ribs, ribs, crackers, vodka, and ribs. The way she portrays treating her family is a lie. She is an unparent if I have ever met one. She uses people as puppets in her pretend world. Dayna is a sociopathic, narcissistic, manipulative, sick excuse for a human and she sure doesn’t know what love means.

The above paragraph is clearly my opinion. I do not ask for anyone to believe me. I am not here to convince anyone of anything. I will not hold it against anyone that needs to find out for themselves. I only ask that you watch your back. If you are that person that is told by Dayna that you are the only real friend or that she can only be honest with you or this other person is lying, I would step back right then and there and realize you are probably the 20^th person she has said that to in the last few days. My writing is not going to be perfect. Some things will probably not make sense and there will be lots and lots of holes in my story or a possible feeling of bias. If I had to assign a percentage to the content in this one explanation, it may cover about 5% of what actually happened during her visit to Texas in May. As I stated above, there are multiple people and multiple family members that witnessed much of what happened and it is absolutely not my place to tell their story. It is up to them to add their experiences. I can answer any further questions that involve me and I can give you my opinion, as well. I will not entertain arguments because I know what happened and it is not my job to fight with anyone and their own views on Dayna. I will not delete any comments unless they are completely ridiculous. This is what Dayna does. She deletes anything and everything that she wants to hide. Every message she has ever sent you has been deleted on her end to cover the possibility of a paper trail. We were aware of her deletion of posts from the beginning. She always asked for us to delete anything we had ever discussed because Joe always goes in to read her messages and he would get angry if he knew she was talking to other people. What I do not want is for you to go from one guru to another, searching for that voice that fits. Listen to yourself. You are strong. You can do it. Be a great unschooling family and just love your kids. Trust yourself.

Jen