Birthday Reflections: Restoration, Empowerment, Action

Today I am 31 years old.

Today I am 34 weeks pregnant.

Today I’ve been away from teaching for just over a year.

Today I am offering my services as a Feminist Wellness Facilitator.

What I want for my birthday is to tell you my story, my journey, and my intentions. If you resonate with this at all, I invite you to follow this page and be a part of my next stage, which I hope to be ours.

Backstory:

A poster that hung outside my classroom door in 2021.

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoke, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.

Audre Lorde

Relieving the events of being fired from teaching is painful for many reasons. I mean it when I tell you, I gave it my all.

For example, I needed to be at work at 7:15am according my contract, but I would arrive at 6:00am. To prove myself as a valuable asset to the school, I finished my masters degree and I coached volleyball, both of which took up my summers and evenings. Some nights I would not get home until 11:00pm to wake up at 5:00am. I joined multiple leadership committees, professional learning groups, and started a club. Plus, I created all of my own classroom content.

I did not think about what I was getting paid based on my contract hours. I did not think of my stress levels and anxiety as anything more than the norm for starting a new career. I thought of my responsibility to do the best job possible for my students, to prove to my bosses and to myself that I was a great teacher.

By all means, I was doing well. I was told this by administrators, evaluators, fellow teachers, and students. It seemed my hours of painstaking work was paying off. Therefore, I was completely blindsided at my 3rd year mid-year evaluation to hear the exact opposite of what I had heard for 2.5 years. That I was not on the right trajectory, somehow every element of my teaching practice needed work, and this was probably not the place for me.

For the next few weeks, I took my slim chances at staying at my job and I fought harder to be better, to prove myself. In the end, they had already made up their mind. I was going to be non-renewed. Why? Why? Why? It seems I’ll never know the truth or it would end up a law suit. I rattled my brain agonizingly for months and months. Regardless, the principal at the time then lied to me. He told me he could only help me get a job in the district, which I moved to the heart of based on the good reviews I got, if I resigned. The union advised me not to, but what did I know? What was I to do? I resigned and he did not help me get a job in the district, he blackballed me.

There are some careers that become your identity. Teaching is one of them. For years and years I told myself and everyone else that I was going to be a teacher, and I was a teacher. When the rug got ripped out from under me for no reason, my identity started to crumble. I needed help with figuring out my next steps, with healing from the trauma of being fired, the trauma of teaching, the shame of failing, the general anxiety I felt.

I started seeing an incredible therapist and I began to see that life could be so much better than this box I put myself in to be a teacher.

I share all this with you for 3 reasons. 1) It’s cathartic to explain since I still feel resentment and anger about my situation. I feel like I am still coming out from the other side. 2) If you’ve been fired, forced to switch careers, lied to by your boss, ostracized, you are not alone. 3) One of my core beliefs is that shame lives in shadows. While there is a part of me that feels shame in my career ending, I know I am not an anomaly. I hope the more I share my story and intentionally lead with vulnerability, others will be embolden to share theirs too and heal in the process.

Part 1: Restoration

What’s the greatest lesson a woman should learn? That since day one, she’s already had everything she needs within herself. It’s the world that convinced her she did not.

Rupi Kaur

I applied to other teaching jobs. I got far in interviews and did not feel disappointed when I was not offered the job. I felt validated knowing I had skills, talent, and was desirable. Not sealing the deal felt like a sign to me.

The reality is I believe public education in the United States to be a sexist, racist, Christian, manipulative institution. Some of my beliefs steam from my personal experiences, others are from my education. I wrote my masters thesis on how public education was in fact sexist, racist, and Christian yet was surprised when theory was actuality.

The patriarchy of public education is palpable and the treatment of teachers by the intuition itself feels dehumanizing. When I needed something I felt like I had to go to “Daddy” the principal and assistant principals. I believe teachers, whose profession was created to be on the level of doctors, engineers, and lawyers, are underpaid and undervalued because it was a profession designed for women. I think the fear teachers feel about job security, adequacy, and fighting an uphill battle is because of the patriarchal nature of the job where men are historically administrators and women are teachers. It’s a hierarchical structure, and in my experience teachers are not treated with the best practices of respect, creativity, and collaboration that we teach our students. It’s shocking because as a profession we know how people think, learn, and grow yet teachers do not get the same respect from our bosses we give to our students. I think leadership in education is so mismanaged and unjust because of a lack of diversity in terms of race, gender identity, sexuality, and religion. Every day I battled imposter syndrome and quite frankly, I am the embodiment of who was designed for the teaching profession. A white, cis, middle class woman. If I struggled to get through day to day it’s hard to imagine those with more intersectional identities who have to fight every day to simply do what’s best for young people. It’s hard to imagine the historically marginalized young students who are drowning in a system that refuses to protect them although they have all the means.

All that being stated, I spent my year out of education reflecting on the system and deciding on the new system with which to live my life. A system in which I do not have a boss since I have witnessed such atrocious leadership. A system in which I do not have a cap on how much money I can make since I had assigned myself to a life of a mediocre and devaluing pay scale. For example, my husband made as much money as I did working a job that required a high school diploma as I did with a masters degree on the pay scale. A system where I can work as hard as I want and reap the benefits. A system where I could be myself, not have to hide because of the community, or male gaze, or status quo.

Throughout my restoration process I learned more deeply about how capitalism and the patriarchy affected my way of thinking and understanding of my space in society. How it played a role in my teaching career, how it hinders women entrepreneurs, how it’s been a gatekeeper for medical & financial knowledge, and the list goes on. This is why I am so tied to intersectional feminism, because as I healed I felt how purposeful my wounds were, and how alleviating it is to know that these systems, which cause all this personal and collective pain, can be broken.

We are not alone and we can live in a better way.

Part 2: Empowerment

We’ve begun to raise hell and use our voices, but we need to start playing a different game. A game we can win. Even though the rules that apply to men don’t apply to us.

Rachel Rodgers, We Should All Be Millionaires

The next step in my process after realizing the cards were stacked against me was to learn about how to break free. I read countless books, most prominently Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer by Steven Kotler, Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch by Erin French, In the Flo: Unlock Your Hormonal Advantage and Revolutionize Your Life by Alisa Vitti, You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth, and best of all, We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman’s Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power by Rachel Rodgers.

All of these books taught me that I am the master of my fate, and some taught me that women have to think differently to thrive in a patriarchal society. Plus, they provided road maps of how to do so.

This year I also took an eCornell course on Women in Entrepreneurship, I became a certified personal trainer, group fitness instructor, and functional trainer, and I became pregnant.

I feel so much more free and open than I ever did as a teacher. I feel ready to own my finances, my goals, my body, and my life within the system that I create. I feel empowered and I want fellow feminists to feel the same. If you have that inclination too, trust it. There is more for you, and I have tools I want to share with you because after that feeling must come action.

Part 3: Action

Motivation is what gets you into the game; learning is what helps you continue to play; creativity is how you steer; and flow is how you turbo-boost the results beyond all rational standards and reasonable expectations.

Steven Kotler, The Art of Impossible

If you are with me so far, I want you to think…what does action mean to you? Being a feminist should inherently invoke political action. If you’re an entrepreneur, perhaps it’s business action. Being an athlete, maybe it’s physical action.

My action is a combination of it all. I want to lead patriarchal dismantlement by empowering feminists, those who identify as women, and marginalized people with the tools for massive success, personal wellness, connection, lifelong learning, advocacy, and growth.

My action is here and now, the Feminist Wellness Collective. On my 31st birthday, with a baby in my uterus, I offer this site, new community, and life’s work to you.

Thank you all who took the time to read my story and my vision. I look forward to cycling through restoration, empowerment, and action with you. Together, one step at a time, we can make the changes we want to see in our personal, professional, and community lives.