I am a high school Biology teacher at Maria Carrillo High School in Santa Rosa, and I have completed three full Courage to Teach series, which have been invaluable to me personally and professionally.
When I first started this adventure, I was teaching part-time. My son was in elementary school. I was running marathons, and was considering returning to work full-time. Since then, I am working full-time, teaching three different lab classes, and I am the science department chair. My career has grown and my responsibilities have grown in what feels like an exponential way.
Last year, my son had a terrible run of debilitating migraines, baseball injury after baseball injury, and he ultimately had to leave school and go on independent study. My husband was hospitalized with a very frightening high blood pressure event due to work stress, and had to spend much of the spring at home on disability. I was rear-ended and my car was totaled. I broke my back, and two of my vertebrae have slipped out of place. Cortisone shots will work for a time, and surgery is imminent. Meanwhile, I can’t run – can only swim or bike – and I hurt after standing up at work all day. I am adjusting to not being able to do everything I want to do, and trying to stay fit despite my injury.
I do realize the gravity of all that I just wrote! But I swear, the only way I have made it through any of it (let alone all of it) is that I have learned techniques from Courage to Teach. I read, I write, I breathe, I visualize, and I try to find the cosmic humor in all of it. It makes me look for the positive side and be more compassionate with others, knowing that I don’t know what challenges they are facing.
During my very first Courage & Renewal retreat, the facilitators posed the question “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” I had heard the question before, and perhaps I even considered my answer to it. But, after spending the weekend in much-needed retreat, I DREW the answer in my journal. (By the way, I have told myself for years that I am not artistic, that I can’t draw, that I just embarrass myself when I try. Also I swore off of journals the day mine was discovered and read. I was twelve, and I was embarrassed, horrified, and angry.)
But on that day, I drew a picture in my journal of my photographs displayed on the walls of a local restaurant. I drew notecards, and a few other ideas, and I showed that my photography is worth something. I wrote that people would love my art and want to buy it.
Fast forward to the present: My photos are on the walls of the local restaurant! My photos have generated a lot of interest, and I have sold several. I have also started a small business selling photo notecards. It’s happening because I had the courage to look within.
My first two Courage retreats were so positive, so meaningful and so fulfilling. This last one challenged me in ways that I didn’t foresee. It was a rough time in my life, and the topics seemed hand-picked to torment me. I was more publically negative than I am usually comfortable with. Even my art projects, which usually look like a happy first-grader created them, looked like an angry eighth-grader took her turn at the art table. But I found my way through, with love and humor, a great deal of work on my part, and a great deal of patience, I imagine, from the people with whom I shared the circle.
By the last retreat in the series, I felt that I had really experienced something significant, and I felt renewed and blessed to have had such an opportunity. Growth isn’t always pretty, and I proved it!
I have a lot of questions about my role, my profession, my life. Right now is a very significant transition time for my whole family: my son has just started to drive. He will soon be graduating high school and, presumably, going off to college; my husband and I are realizing that we can count the years until retirement, when previously it was too painful to count that high; I am looking toward having back surgery with a 3 to 9 month recovery period until I will be “normal”. I will need to pass the AP biology class to a younger teacher. I will then be working with reluctant learners, getting out of the spot light a little bit, and saying goodbye to all of those letters of recommendation that come with teaching the upper level classes.
In some ways I am choosing, and in other ways I am being forced, to do less than I have been doing, and I hope to do less with more heart and soul and meaning. Finally, I need to figure out where my photography will take me, and how exactly my photography and I will get there. I’m pretty sure my photography wants me to move to Maui, but the details of the move are pretty sketchy at present.
Before Courage to Teach, I loved summer. Just summer. I really didn’t appreciate the unique gifts of each season. Now I recognize, name and appreciate the seasons for who they are, and what they offer. I have also come to associate the change of the seasons with the promise of a retreat weekend: poetry, journaling, reflection, nature, photography, companionship, a slower pace, and great food. Also when I think of spending time at Santa Sabina, in the pillow room, with the beautiful view of the courtyard, in the quiet, I am immediately content. I can’t wait to find out what nature and spirit will reveal to me.
I look forward to another Courage to Teach retreat series to help me in this time of transition, growth and letting go.
The next Courage to Teach series at Santa Sabina Retreat Center in San Rafael, California, begins February 14-16, 2014. Get details. Also see more retreats for educators.
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