Five Books on a Former Teacher's Healing Journey

Within the American education system, many teachers aren’t encouraged when they share they’re ready to pivot to another career. Teachers are warned of the harsh cubicle world where the soul drains from you into the graying and fluorescent lights, where colleagues would sooner stab you in the back and steal your ideas than support you. A kind of survival-resentment is cultivated among those who remain, a crab mentality that insists, if they’re toughing it out, others must too. Teachers who leave education are often seen as quitters, selfish for leaving the kids, putting more work on others’ plates.

We aren’t gratefully wished well on our new journeys. We lose friendships we thought were strong, the teachers’ lounge silencing when we walk in. A brave few will reach out on other channels, asking how to escape too. But most find it’s often better to tell no one of our plans until the move has been made, to slowly pack up some belongings each week and disappear as if overnight.

Even when we find a new job, many of us don't mentally leave the classroom for a while. The narrative of the sacrificing teacher weighs on many of us, especially when society applauds the teacher who's teaching from a hospital bed instead of resting. We've been conditioned to self-sacrifice for the noble profession, to keep few personal boundaries for the sake of the kids. The moment we decide it's time for us to put ourselves first feels like foreign ground. Imposter syndrome is loud.

Recognizing and unlearning all we've internalized, healing, takes time. I've spent the last eight months in a different career, absolutely loving it but also learning I am rather clumsy at this gentle art of self-compassion. Here are some books I've found helpful on my journey. They came to me in random ways for random reasons, but a thread of self-care and compassion runs through them for me as I hope they will for you.

Burnout: the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski, PhD. & Amelia Nagoski, DM

The Nagoski sisters share in easy-to-understand terms how the body holds stress, how the stress and stressor are different, and how to close something called the Stress Cycle, moving your body through emotions rather than getting stuck in them. Before reading this book, I had always believed I could think my way out of stress. The stressor is gone. I'm fine now. When in actuality, my body still carried the stress—multiple layers of stress in fact—because I wasn't moving myself through the stress cycles as they came. Refreshingly, the writers also acknowledge all that works against us in a world that profits off of our stress.

For me, one of the most revolutionary ideas within their work is that we don't have to wait until the stressor is gone to heal or work through that stress. So regardless of where you are in your journey, I recommend you get this book right now. Or at least listen to this podcast.

The Body is Not an Apology: the Power of Radical Self-love by Sonya Renee Taylor*

Teacher rhythm is relentless. You don't stop until the last bell rings, and even then maybe you have an after-school club, tutoring, a community event, etc. Moving from that pace to the pace of the corporate world felt a lot like going from running exhausting marathons daily to taking walks with random sprints every now and then. I'm pushed, but never to the breaking point. One of my first months working I reached out to a colleague to ask her if she needed any help with a task since I had some free time and she said, "Mandy, you don't have to fill every hour of the day anymore. It's the nature of this job for there to be time you can simply rest."

Rest meant stopping, and stopping in a body that, up until now, I had been too busy to acknowledge, a body that's been pushed to the brink every semester, a body that's been getting out less since the pandemic and now with a new remote job...

Taylor's work invited me to examine the thoughts I hold toward my body, pointing out that "Our tendency to divorce our brains from our bodies is one of the sneaky ways in which body shame thrives." What else had I been doing assuming I can think my way out of stress? Or keep too busy to acknowledge I need to slow down?

How different my life has become in accepting my neurodivergence and, instead of fighting against it, embracing sensory diets, something I rarely was able to do in the classroom. I can't say I've truly internalized all the concepts Taylor presents. As with most important work, it will take time. But this book has given me a lovely framework to make peace with not understanding, with difference, and with my own body. I've also started taking more naps.

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing?by Daniel Pink

Taylor's work highlighted for me the best thing I can do is tune into my internal rhythm and give myself permission to do things differently. Pink's book breaks down what that might look like by examining the natural rhythms people tend to have. For the most part, the population is more productive creatively in the morning and are better at doing the data/minutia kind of stuff in the afternoon after (at least a mental) siesta. But then there's about 30% of the population who have the opposite rhythm, with their more creatively productive time being in the late afternoon or evening.

Recognizing the valid difference between my husband's work schedule (an afternoon/late-night creative) and my work schedule (morning creative) has harmonized our small, home office.

Get Good with Money by Tiffany Aliche, the Budgetnista*

A former teacher turned financial advisor extraordinaire, Tiffany Aliche cohosts a podcast called Brown Ambition, leads webinars and courses, and now has a book. Truthfully, I picked up her book because I knew nothing about having a 401k (Texas teachers pay into a state retirement plan) or social security (yup, my district didn't pay into that either). Teaching left little room to do the research and figure out financial moves. Having more mental bandwidth for such things, I ended up binge-reading it.

Her financial advice is down-to-earth, but hearing her path from one career to the next and how she practiced self-compassion for her financial mistakes has been encouraging to say the least. I also make more confident financial moves now. Wins all around.

Time Smart: How to Reclaim your Time & Live a Happier Life by Ashley Willans

Speaking of money moves, Time Smart asks if you value time or money more and posits that making intentional financial choices that save your time (getting the groceries delivered, taking a ride-share instead of driving your own commute, etc.) will actually create more happiness as if you've been given a raise. I ran into her book via this TedEd video, which summarizes it pretty well.

As a penny-pinching teacher, this concept was hard to wrap my head around. I've spent so much time going out of my way to save money that I don't even really recognize when I do it anymore. As a month-long experiment for my happiness and self-care, I found at least one way in which I could spend more money and give myself more time, meal planning. My husband and I are now enrolled in HelloFresh.*

And I wish we'd done this years ago. My husband has ADHD so the six simple steps for each meal works well for him. And when it's his turn to cook—which happens so much more often now—he feels confident picking a meal kit. It's delicious, and we've saved time meal planning, grocery shopping, and even saved money because we don't order nearly as much takeout.

I'm also attempting to take more of my leave. As a teacher, I saved the days up. It's hard to stomach a dock in pay because of a medical emergency. Now, I have a supportive work culture with managers who want me to take off when I'm sick, remind me to go on vacation. My husband and I enjoyed our 12th wedding anniversary this year at a secluded winery in the middle of nowhere Texas. Normally, we're too burned out to celebrate since it's right at the end of the school year. Not this year.

Community

While these books have helped me in solitary ways, by far the most healing influences on my still-progressing journey have been community members: LinkedIn groups of former (and hope-to-be former) teachers, colleagues who are former teacher, a husband who's a former teacher. I say "former," but we never stop being a teacher. We just make the world our classroom, teach each other how to move forward. The I do, we do, you do at its finest.

There's a knowing among us, a common understanding of what it took to get here and what it takes to continue. We witnesses each other unraveling all that no longer serves us. We do our best to support each other, holding space in each phase of the pivot: the initial fear, the tentative exploring, the daring leap.

I'm in the "I made it. Now what?" phase.

With a grateful heart, I'm learning the answer is, truly, "Anything I want." May you find the same.

*This is a referral link, which means I benefit if you sign up using it.