Losing My Identity

 It's been over two months since my last blog.  I've written many in my head, but that's where they've stayed.  I've been writing this one for a while now, but it's been hard to actually type it out.  I'm not sure why.  I love to write, to share, to possibly relate to others who might benefit from reading my words.  But, this one has been much harder to write. probably because writing it makes it seem much more real.

After 23 years, because of my continuing health issues from Long Covid, I submitted my letter of resignation from my job, my career; honestly, the biggest part of my identity.  Teaching is who I was. Regardless of how insecure I have felt my entire life, worried about what people thought of me, my looks, my weight, my clothes, if I was GOOD ENOUGH, I was absolutely, 100 percent confident in being a teacher.  As soon as I had a classroom full of kids looking up at me, I was in teacher mode.  Any thoughts of my appearance or weight or clothes or hair were gone, didn't even cross my mind.  I was in my element.  I was who I was meant to be.  I WAS good enough.

Not a day goes by that I don't still think about teaching.  I will see something on TV, hear something on the radio, read something in the news, and I'm immediately thinking, "I want to share that with my kids." My brain goes into "auto-teacher", and I'm planning out how to implement it into the next day's lesson.  Then I remember...I don't have a "lesson" for the next day because I'm not going to be there with them the next day. Or the day after that...or the day after that.  

I'm not sure what the future holds.  Right now my full-time "job" is focusing on my health and doing my best to advocate for myself while dealing with an illness that most doctors know no more about than I do.  I've definitely done much more research than some.  Covid and its after-effects have changed my life in a devastating way.  But I keep reminding myself that everything happens for a reason, and that, though it may take a while to discover what that reason is, I just have to TRUST THE PROCESS.