For a long time after I left the field, I thought that teaching had broken me.

I felt powerless when I lost “the love of my life”–my career.

Despite all my skills and successes, I felt useless. Talentless.

My passion was gone.

But now that my passion is back — now that I found my purpose again through writing, blogging, and loving– the simple truth of career and life is so obvious that it makes me want to laugh out loud.

Nothing can break you.

You can only break yourself against it.

Teaching is an institution. Teaching doesn’t have feelings. It didn’t have it out for me, or hate me, or try to do anything to hurt me, Sarah. What hurt was trying to force myself into the profession. To not listen to my instincts and to not keep my heart open to different paths as they came along. What hurt was hurtling myself at that path for too long with no regard for the rest of my life.

Teaching isn’t a living, breathing thing.  Neither is traffic, or bad weather, or bad habits. These are just facts that we as humans can choose to accept and work around to the best of our ability, or break ourselves against in a struggle to control the world.

What are you breaking yourself against? Can you let it go?