Meet Our Founder

Decolonization work is noticing when we are getting distracted by harmful, oppressive systems (capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, carceral systems) and  not   focusing on being in right relation with our people, our land and our bodies.

When I say “parenting” or “parents” it is inclusive of: bio, step, adoptive, surrogate parents; aunties and uncles; grandparents; older siblings and cousins; educators, coaches and community member who center the betterment of children in their life’s work.    

Decolonizing parenting is noticing how that repatterning impacts your relationship with the next generation.

Adrienne Hidalgo Esguerra is the eldest daughter of generation 1.5 immigrants from the Philippines, an educator, parenting practitioner and unschooling mama of 5 males (3 nephews and 2 bio kids). Raising her blended, systems-impacted,  immigrant  family in a multigenerational home on unceded Muwekma Ohlone land (San Francisco), she longed for parenting support that acknowledged their intersectional lived experience. 

Most parenting education sites and social media accounts she stumbled across on the internet during the pandemic felt like colonized spaces that centered narratives of white feminist, cis-het, able bodied, neuro-typical, middle class, in-tact nuclear families that shared tips and tricks to manage your child’s (mis)behavior. There were few spaces that centered Filipinx and BIPOC parents and caregivers who are healing their inner child and generational trauma through a decolonized lens. 

Divinely guided by ancestors, Raising Ancestors was birthed from that longing. Through workshops, talks, writings and curated spaces like Raising Liberated Kids Community, Adrienne helps down @ss folx build their parenting tribe and feel more like their authentic selves. 

Adrienne attended San Francisco State University (SFSU) and holds a B.A. in Liberal Studies, emphasis in Children and Family Studies; Multiple Subject Teaching Credential and Master’s Degree in Education. While at SFSU, she was a PEP Teacher (Pin@y Educational Partnerships) and became a lifelong student of ethnic studies. 

She attended public K-12th grade in San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). Her mother is a retired SFUSD Special Education paraprofessional and one of her sisters is a current SFUSD classroom teacher. 

Adrienne has spent the past 20+ years as an educator in public, private, non-profit, parochial and pediatric settings. In 2015 she started her clinical work with pediatric patients as a Child Life teacher in an SFUSD hospital school. In that sacred work it became clear that we are not only teaching and healing the patient, but their siblings and adult caregivers, too. Grief, loss and identity formation before, during and after major life changes led to a trauma informed, healing centered education practice. Parent connection revealed itself as the missing part of her pedagogy. Medicine came in many forms.

Working in a hospital during multiple pandemics of COVID, Black Lives Matter, the murder of George Floyd and rising AAPI violence and sentiments while homeschooling 3 kids in 3 different schools and raising a toddler while working from home felt like a tipping point. The urgent need to engage in social justice work was re-ignited. This time through an anti-racist parenting lens. 

In 2020 she began co-facilitating Asian American Justice Innovation Lab’s (AAJIL) first anti-racist parenting group. Her pedagogy sharpened as she responded to the Asian American parenting community’s strong desire to do the individual and collective liberation work while re-membering their roots and not feeling “Asian (or insert any other identity) enough” to pass down language or cultural traditions from their motherlands. 

In 2021 Afterschooling Better was born. The initial goal was to be a platform that supports conscious parents in those precious after school hours. At the time, Adrienne had centered her activism with her own children and growing parenting community around school hours- hence the urgency to “afterschool better.” The assumption was what happened at school happened at school and the parents’ primary locus of control was what happened in their homes after the bell rang and before the kids went to sleep just to wake the next morning and do it all over again. We had a limited amount of time with our kids so we needed to be hella intentional with our parenting. 

In 2022 when Adrienne and her family had to suddenly liberate themselves from their multigenerational home when it became clear that the intergenerational trauma they had hoped to bridge and heal became (and in reality, always was) an unsafe and abusive living environment, a new way of seeing and being took shape. That year, their family learned how to set and hold boundaries with a parent who was supposed to love and protect them. Being estranged from a parent/family member is not a collectivist cultural norm. It felt (and continues to feel) foreign and left us confused and riddled with guilt. 

After the exodus, our family’s sense of security and trust in value systems that were supposed to guide and protect us were rocked. Our ways of being and knowing were evolving into a higher form once again. 

Logistically, we had to move across town away from the schools the kids attended. Our afterschooling hours shortened and intensified with a longer commute and the window of doing it “better” grew smaller. 

The unforgiving schedule and demands of traditional schooling was already under scrutiny during the pandemic. Add another traumatic life changing event and our perceived need to mold our lives to accommodate yet another institution forced us to look into “alternative education.” At that time the concept of “unschooling” was unfamiliar to this very schooled family (did you read the Education section?!), but the intersection of parenting, liberation, decolonization and self directed learning felt like another missing piece to the puzzle. 

In late 2022, Afterschooling Better officially became Raising Ancestors, LLC. Still run by solopreneur Adrienne, she incorporated unschooling into her decolonized parenting practice both personally and professionally. 

In early 2023 Adrienne met Karema Akilah and the Geniī Community, an unschooling self directed learning space for kids and families to belong. Groundwork is being set to open our own in person UNschooling community in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

By late 2023 Adrienne has transitioned out of her clinical work in pediatrics and surrendered to her true calling and is now engaging in liberation work full time via community organizing in Raising Ancestors and reimagining how Raising Liberated Kids Community can best serve our people.