This past August I moved into a huge, sunlit classroom with my name on the door. I started right in with CI. I had a fabulous mentor, a sweet, intelligent department head, great colleagues and supportive administration. In spite of all this, I went down again like a ton of bricks. I know that grief from the divorce was part of this, but there was also something more, especially since I had been through this before. I believe that, for me, there was a barrier that I had to cross. A spiritual and emotional barrier based in history and trauma and all kinds of beliefs about myself that I had never confronted in any other situation. I have read and heard anecdotally that this is a first-year-teacher phenomenon, and I am an extreme case. After struggling mightily for almost three months, I had to stop. The panic and anxiety were overwhelming.
Then some amazing things happened. I was given a medical leave. The principal sent me a personal note on a beautiful card and told me to take all the time that I needed, that I was important to the students and to the school. The HR director fixed it so that my unused sick days from last year (when I was a para!) applied to my current leave. The department head emailed to see if I needed groceries. A recently retired teacher and former department head stepped in as a long-term sub and was willing to do all the planning for as long as it took for me to recover.
The problem was, I didn’t know if I was going to recover. I couldn’t see past each excruciating morning. I had no idea that mental illness involved so much physical pain. The good thing was that I knew that I wanted to live, that I wanted to get to the other side. Whether I was going to teach or flip burgers, I love my life. Many people and practitioners asked me, do you have thoughts of hurting yourself? But that was not my path. With a magical combination of strong community, family support, good medical care (both allopathic and alternative), and a safe and peaceful home, I gradually made the trip back and learned some crazy and beautiful things along the way (that’s a whole other story). In mid-January, I went back to work to start the new semester. We have semester-long courses, so I was starting fresh.