Georga Hackworth

Mother of seven…homeschooler…writer…poet

I never know what to put in a biography because I never know what people want to know about me, and a true biography would fill up a book in itself and read not only like a soap opera but like half a dozen Jerry Springer transcripts. I wouldn’t say that my life was all that exciting, but it defiantly wasn’t run of the mill normal.

I was born in Anchorage, Alaska and raised mostly in Ohio. This used to get me in trouble in school along with the spelling of my name. I actually had teachers tell me that I was spelling my name wrong and that nobody was born in Alaska. Through the first several years of elementary school every new school year my mother had to go up to the school and present my birth certificate to prove that I wasn’t making stuff up, like I was often accused of.

My father was in the Army and served in Viet Nam. He was stationed in Alaska at the time of my birth. I am only the second generation of the family to be born in the United States, which accounts for the alternate German spelling of my name. I used to hate that it wasn’t spelled “properly” but over the years I have come to realize it is another thing that makes me unique.

Originally my plan was to go into animal psychology but life took a different turn. I attended a junior college to knock out a few years of pre-med while getting the needed education to become a certified veterinary technician, specializing in animal nutrition. An article I wrote on chinchilla nutrition was picked up, translated and published in Russian. During this time I married my husband, a Gulf War Navy veteran and became pregnant with our first child. School was put on the back burner due to a high risk pregnancy.

As our family grew so did my outlook on life and perspective on many things. I became concerned with the state of public education, especially special education. My children slowly were diagnosed with a variety of health issues and disabilities. Autism. Life threatening food allergies. Celiac Sprue. Graves Disease. Asthma. It was a lot to deal with and navigating the medical system was no easy feat.

I had made my decision to homeschool long before we learned of our second child’s autism. I was horribly disappointed in the school system where we lived and decided that the education of my children was too important to trust to a system that was so broken. When the disabilities came around it strengthened my resolve to educate them at home where they could learn at their own pace and not be penalized academically because of learning disabilities. That was one of the best decisions I made.

Over the years I have written and published homeschool curriculum and helped new homeschoolers get started on their journey. I have helped educate people on food allergies and autism. I have tried to help bring awareness to invisible disabilities since society has a hard time understanding what they can not see.

Writing has played a big part in the activism that I do. The internet is a great resource for the prorogation of information and awareness. In fact, if it wasn’t for the internet I would still be writing on paper, filling up binders and spiral notebooks, only to throw it away because of not knowing what to do with it. Blogging changed that for me. It made it easy for me to share what I wrote as well as all those random things that go on in my head that make the people around me roll their eyes or ask what drugs I am on. I have learned that there are people out there who enjoy my unique perspective, my random odd ideas and whatever else I come up with. This has encouraged me greatly to venture further into writing enough to start self publishing stuff and submitting my works to contests.

You can read more about me at 18 Questions as well as learn about some other writers.