Keeping It Together

Breaking the myth of the perfect educator and discovering self-worth beyond the classroom As educators, we often hold ourselves to impossibly high standards. We believe we must be perfect role models - people who have it all together, who make all the right choices, who exemplify wholesome lives without complications or messy emotions. Divorce, then, feels like celestial punishment when it happens; it becomes a source of deep shame, making us feel unworthy of standing before our students. But let's pause for a moment. Read that expectation again. Doesn't it sound utterly ridiculous? We would never demand such perfection from our colleagues, our friends, or even our students. So why do we impose this unrealistic burden upon ourselves? The Moment Everything Changed Years ago, when my divorce was still fresh, I found myself in an ordinary moment that would teach me an extraordinary lesson. I was waiting with a 7 year-old student for her parents to arrive. As we chatted about holid...

It is most cringe when your child's school teachers still address you as Mrs X. When their voice echoes across the whole room during PTMs in front of everybody, when the name pops up in a school email... and it gets awkward having to tell them over and over again. It's not easy. Does anyone know that? You're an expat educator. You built a life in a foreign country. You got into a good school, got a job you love, got married to a good man, became a mother. That's it, right? You thought you checked all the boxes in life. Then suddenly, you weren't. You were a wife... and now you're not. Now you see it, now you don't. So... who are you now? Nobody told you that when your marriage falls apart, so does your sense of self. You feel embarrassingly like a teenager, needing to "discover your self-identity", all over again. You scour self-help books, do journaling exercises and make lists, rebuilding a person you thought you knew for decades. But here's ...