The Next Chapter

Chapter 4: Keeping the Beat  Here I am, lifting my head out of the Mommy Fog to sniff around a bit before descending back down. I am now 3 months into being a mother of two, and no one could have ever prepared me for how impossible it sometimes feels. Not that I'm suggesting that people didn't try, but no amount of "horror stories" or warnings from other people can possibly live up to the reality. On the one hand, it still feels so new and foreign. On the other hand, the last three months have felt like three years. I have been desperately, yet patiently, trying to find my groove. It's painfully evident to everyone who has been around me lately that I have had...well...not much success.  (me, to everyone and everything in my life) When I'm teaching, I have some semblance of control. I have my classroom, and in that classroom, I have rules and procedures. I have expectations. I have an ever-rotating room full of teenagers who are (more or less) capable of under...

Chapter 3: Goodbyes Nine years.  Nearly a full decade.  And now, I say goodbye. Is it weird for me to say goodbye to and mourn the loss of a room? Maybe. But this place represents far more than just a room. For nine years, room 210 has been my second home. In those same years, I have lived in three different houses, but this classroom never left me. It has seen me at my best, and at my worst. I have laughed, yelled, cried, and celebrated here. It has seen hundreds of students come and go, each one making an impact on my life. I have spent nine years trying to build a safe space for all students. A place where everyone could feel welcome, loved, supported, and able to learn and grow. Clearing it all out and walking away from it was so much harder than I ever thought it would be.  Walking away from room 210 also comes along with walking away from HighMark Charter School. I have put nine years of blood, sweat, and tears into this school. I started during the school's second ...

Chapter 2: And Then There Were Four.  On April 15th, this little booger made his debut. It was a Friday, and I was apparently in labor all day long, I just didn't quite realize it. I was induced with Charlie and had an epidural, so I didn't really know how to identify whether what I was having were Braxton-hicks contraction or the real thing. By the time I got halfway home, I was genuinely concerned that I would have to pull over and call someone. I wasn't sure I wanted to go to the hospital yet, because I have known several people who got all the way there only to be told, "Yeah, you're not ready yet," and sent home. When I finally made it home, though, we took Charlie to my mom's and headed straight for the hospital, where I was five centimeters dilated. Which, the nurses happily informed me, "buys you a stay." After a difficult conversation with the doctor and amongst ourselves, we decided it was best to go the C-section route again. Not the i...

Chapter 1: Fear Here I am with my next post...literally weeks later. I told y'all I was bad at this whole blogging thing. Here's hoping I can pick up my groove with it and start writing a little more regularly.  In my last post, I talked about all of the things that led me to the decision to quit my job and become a stay-at-home mom. In a lot of ways, I am really excited about this new adventure, and it's a huge relief to know that I will no longer be spread so thin. In this post, though, I wanted to talk about the things that make this new chapter such a terrifying one; the anxieties and fears that come with taking this detour.  1. Change The simplest one, and yet, one of the strongest. Change is something that has always been a difficult thing for me. I don't know why, but it's one of the things I have been exploring in therapy. I just like things to stay the same, and find a huge comfort in that. New places, new people, new jobs, new vehicles, new experiences, a ...

The Next Chapter If you are a reader, you have probably had this experience before: you are reading a book, absolutely certain you know where the story is going. "Oh, I see what the author is doing. I can totally predict what's coming next." Then, the next thing you know, bam . You are smacked in the face with a completely unexpected plot twist that is exciting, confusing, and upsetting, all at the same time. You promised yourself you would go to bed after you finish this chapter, but now you can't help but start on the next chapter to see what happens next. I think we can all agree that life is a lot like that. For the last few years, my life has been one whiplash-inducing plot twist after another (probably a super relatable concept, given the fact that the world has been slowly erupting since about 2016). Now, I am standing here on the precipice of the most unexpected twist of them all. I am excited, uncertain, and absolutely terrified.  Never in my 33 years on this...