Life, the last year.

When I was little, all I wanted to be when I grew up was a teacher and a mom.

As a little girl, I played school in my basement for hours on end, where I had a fully set up classroom complete with borders and bulletin boards and stickers and worksheets that I salvaged from my elementary teachers on the last day of school. It was no surprise to anyone who knew me that I graduated college with a degree in Elementary Education and went on to teach for the next 13 years.

As a little girl, I loved playing with dolls. I idolized being a mom, and there weren't many places I went without one of my dolls in tow. I remember one time my brother and I went to our local park just down the street, me with my doll in a stroller when I tried to convince total strangers that the doll was in fact a real baby. Ha! I began babysitting at quite a young age, and most of my spare time in my adolescent years was filled up with babysitting kids in my neighborhood. People who know me will not be surprised to hear that in college, many of my friends in fact called me "mom" as I was the one they went to for things like help with making meals, ironing their clothes, helping them with schoolwork, or knocking on my dorm room door at all hours of the night for a shoulder to cry on.

My two worlds collided during my 9th year of teaching, when in fact, I did become a mom. It was one of the happiest times in my life as a new mom, yet one of the loneliest years of teaching I had ever had. I returned to work after 5 months of staying home with our twins, which was, to under-exaggerate, hard.  I felt trapped at work, while all I wanted to do was be home with my littles. Since I was pumping that year, any down time I had at school, including my lunch break, was spent locked in my classroom by myself, hooked up to a breast pump, where I would stare out the window and just cry, wondering how I would get through. I would compare myself to other working moms who seemed to "do it all" with such grace, and end up feeling even worse. And, just when I'd start to think I had pulled myself together for another school year, I ended up in the ER on the first week of school, not just once, but 2 years in a row--later learning that I was experiencing anxiety attacks and had to begin a daily regimen of taking anti-anxiety medication.

The boys (6 months old) visiting me in my classroom at school.

Over the years, I created a classroom environment that I was proud of!

The boys (2.5 years old) visiting me in my classroom at school.

I have always been a perfectionist, and I felt that I was never able to do both jobs-being a mom AND being a teacher the best that I could or wanted to. When I focused on one, the other would slip. As the school years went by, and my own children grew older, I found myself tuning in to traits of students in my class that other teachers often missed. I found myself caring less about test scores, grade books, and curriculum maps and more about how my students were feeling. I wanted to help them, not just with reading, but with life. While I would joyfully see 90% of my students succeeding, it was the 10% who struggled that would cause me the most concern. Some of my students would go home each day to awful situations that would keep me up at night, wondering how I could make an impact on their lives for the better, only to return to school the next day to have to tell them that they didn't achieve a high enough test score and then watch while their world seemed to crumble a bit more, right before my eyes.

I couldn't do it any more.

My classroom all cleared out, the day I left, with eyes filled with tears and overwhelming emotion.

This week marks a year since I have stepped away from teaching. A year that I have had the opportunity to focus on being a mom. It has been surprisingly...ordinary. Our days feel a bit like a scene out of the old movie "Groundhog Day," a somewhat repetitive time loop where motherhood and home ownership unite. My kids wake up each day to me being home, I do a lot of making meals and loading and unloading the dishwasher, they have gotten to attend preschool, play in the back yard, go along with me on errands, visit parks, have dance parties in our bedroom, be bored on occasion, and, well-- just be kids. The teacher in me still tries to plan lessons for the day, practicing letters or cutting paper or doing sensory activities, and sometimes they happen and sometimes they don't.

And every once in awhile, my days are filled with real "work" which has now taken the shape of being a birth doula to a few special mommas each month. It has been a leap of faith to venture down this path and leave behind everything I know from a "real" job as a teacher. Doula work is fulfilling in ways I cannot even put into words. To help someone on one of the most transformative days in their life is an honor I do not take lightly.

Sometimes my life doesn't feel real. I sometimes feel like I am living in a dream. For the first time in a very long time, I feel like the best version of myself, yet when people ask me what I do for a living, I awkwardly pause as I don't really know how to answer the question. My whole life I worked towards being a teacher.  And now, I'm just a mom. Just a mom. How does a mom convey her true "lessons" that she tries to teach everyday? The lessons of kindness, strength, courage, and most importantly love?

My boys (5 years old) and I, at home.

I am not perfect. I can guarantee you, it is not all nature walks and snuggles over here. The tantrums are as real as the dark circles under my eyes. I have not gone to the bathroom uninterrupted in I-can't -tell-you-how-many-months. There have been some quite ugly days and moments I am certainly not proud of. Days that I go to bed and I wonder if even I have shown kindness, strength or courage. I still have so much to learn. Is it possible that I am no longer the teacher, but the one being taught? Even I am surprised that my paths in life have led me here, to my most important work of all; being a mom.