Making a Difference

Tonight I had some friends over to celebrate my 9 year remission anniversary. (That's one-fourth of my life that I've been a survivor.) Somehow I'm connecting it very strongly to the loss of my mentor, Michael this year and I spoke about him to my friends.

Throughout the night we talked about many things and it kept coming up again and again, the idea of people who had made a difference in our lives, often by a single interaction among many. I keep feeling like the work I want to do in healing the world will not happen through teaching. But maybe I've been wrong. Two of the friends there tonight are my friends because I taught their daughters and made a difference to them directly. I've sometimes been thinking I want to get out of the school environment because it is so intense, rushed and stressful in many ways, but maybe I'm needed there to help kids navigate it. Also, I care more about emotional landscape and survival than I do about teaching reading and writing. But maybe that's the very reason I need to continue.

I've just been published at the PLP network where I wrote about my childhood and compared it to contemporary suburban NJ childhoods. Maybe taking the question and knowledge I have of my ideal world, and taking it with me when I enter the world in front of me, can provide some small amount of respite or change or possibility to the children who enter the room to work with me each day. And maybe writing about this reflection can make a difference to others further away.

Maybe I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing and don't need to worry about it so much.