Ode to the Ignorant

You say you know

A lifetime ago

(And smugly, too)

I thought I knew

A million dry runs in

Technicolor daydreams

Yet unprepared

Caught unaware

I hurtled from the track

In far-flung frenzy

Broken, groping

Faintly hoping

But, oh!

The dark

I emerged

Alive (not fully)

Whole (not really)

Shattered, scattered

Dead and buried in

The new normal

You issue demands

Always needier, ever greedier

And stare through the obvious

With reckless oblivion

Don’t tell me that you know—

You don’t.

Can’t?

Won’t.

Incompatible with Life: A story of hope

My Love-Hate Relationship with Teaching

I have a confession to make, one that seemingly meets the criteria of a mundane mid-life crisis: I love what I do, but I hate my job. I’m a kindergarten teacher by trade. I adore children—always have, always will—and have a natural affinity for the littlest learners. I enjoy watching their growth across a school year, the way they come in green and fresh as newly planted seeds at the start, and leave my classroom as saplings stretching toward the infinite sky of knowledge and understanding. I hate the metrics that are used to define my students’ performance (and my own). I loathe the over-reliance on a narrow band of assessment measures that ignores the intangibles of student growth and extinguishes the joy of learning. I resent seeing children reduced to numbers on a grid in the name of data-based decision-making. I cherish the time I spend with my students in the Zone of Proximal Development. I thrive on the everyday teachable moments that enable me to coach into my stud...

The Tortures of Tamoxifen, Part 2

Though my oncologist was not thrilled with me quitting tamoxifen, she did give me her blessing. “Take a break and see how you feel. Just promise me that you’ll consider starting up again.” I stopped taking the pills and within a few weeks noticed an improvement in my energy level. My hot flashes were less frequent, weight management a bit easier. Running, my favorite leisure activity, stopped feeling like a chore. I couldn’t quite ratchet my pace back up to pre-cancer levels, but I could finally hold my own with my running buddies again. I harbored a small hope that stopping the medicine would put me back into my previous ovaries-still-in-action hormonal state of being. Sadly, aside from one scant period right after I abandoned the drug, my body stayed stubbornly stuck in menopause. My symptoms weren’t nearly as bad as they’d been on tamoxifen, but they were still there, mocking me. I started to have doubts about my decision. The drumbeat of, “What if?” reverberated in my ...

The Curse of Expectation

I had a disappointment last week. I’d submitted my book to an indie writing contest and the winners were to be notified by Thursday. I didn’t get the notification. It’s not that I expected to win. Wait, scratch that. My disappointment indicates that indeed, on some level, I did expect some kind of recognition. Maybe I wasn’t expecting to take the grand prize, but I was hoping for at least an honorable mention. Acknowledging that was the first step in being able to let it go. Once I recognized my expectations as a cry for validation, I saw them clearly as a self-imposed burden of proof meant to silence the inner critic who keeps raising doubts about my writing talents. My disappointment wasn’t about the quality of my work—it was about my need to prove myself. What I am learning—slowly, painfully, and inevitably the hard way—is that disappointment is an inside job, rooted in my expectation of how the events in my life are supposed to turn out. I keep slapping my preconceived...

Incompatible with Life

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