World Teachers' Day: The People Who Saw Something in Me Before I Did

A commitment to show up and write my truth | Day 279 of 365

Today is World Teachers' Day, and my mind went straight to two people.

The first is Mrs. Myers, my high school English teacher. Somewhere between the assigned reading and the red ink, she saw strength in me, and leadership, and a creative streak I had no idea what to do with. I was a teenager. Mostly I saw homework.

The second is my college writing professor, who read something I'd written and told me I had a voice. Then he told me to protect it and grow it. I think about him now, on Day 279 of writing in public every day, and I wonder if he'd be surprised. Probably not. A good teacher can spot the start of something long before the student knows anything has started.

Maybe you had someone like that. A teacher who treated your question as if it deserved a real answer, or who said one sentence in a hallway that still shows up decades later, right when you need it. Teachers rarely get to see where their words end up.

The Teachers Who Changed My Life Looked Past the Grade

Mrs. Myers taught me English, but what I carried out of her classroom was a picture of myself I hadn't earned yet, or so I believed. She handed it to me anyway and trusted me to grow into it.

My professor never tried to make me sound like someone else. He heard something in my writing that I couldn't hear, and he asked me to make it more fully mine. I've leaned on that more than he could possibly know. Writing my truth every day means leaving some thoughts a little rough around the edges. I've written about business and motherhood and grief, about crying in the bathroom and the drip coffee maker I'm stuck with while my Nespresso machines wait in storage. Some days I felt wise. Some days I had no idea what I was doing.

If he could read this, I'd tell him I kept going. It took me a while, but I did.

Some Teachers Show You What You Refuse to Become

Not every teacher made me feel seen.

I still remember dreading one particular grade because the teacher was moody and vindictive and, plainly, cruel. Children know when an adult has the power to humiliate them. They feel it long before they have words for it.

I won't tie a bow around that and call it character building. Some things leave a mark we'd have been better off without. But she did show me exactly what I never wanted to be, and she showed me how far an adult's words can sink into a child. Mrs. Myers showed me the opposite, how the right words can help a young person recognize herself.

If you can still name the teacher who embarrassed you or wrote you off, you aren't being sensitive. It stuck because it mattered. And if you can name the one who noticed you on a day you felt invisible, that stuck too.

Here's what I've come to understand as a grown woman: we're allowed to choose which of those voices keeps teaching us. The old criticism doesn't get a permanent seat just because it got there first. I get to decide who's still in the room.

Teachers Without Classrooms Show Up Too

I've been lucky to learn from coaches and mentors who changed my life for the better, and a few who did it with remarkable generosity. I have a best friend who checks on me and lifts me. I have a health coach, and people who said exactly the right thing at exactly the right time without knowing how badly I needed it.

During one hard stretch, I asked someone almost on a whim how they got through something like this. Their answer was simple. "I tell myself, this too shall pass." Nothing about my circumstances changed that day, but something in me loosened. I remembered that a season can feel endless without being permanent.

My businesses have taught me plenty, mostly by tossing me into the deep end. You make a decision, see what happens, adjust, and figure out the next piece as best you can. Just when I start feeling sure of myself, there's a new test I definitely didn't study for.

And then there's my daughter, who finds joy in ordinary moments without first checking whether the moment is impressive enough. She is simply there, completely, and when the moment changes she changes with it. I've learned more about being present from watching her than from any book I've read.

Hard Seasons Don't Always Come With a Lesson

This year has asked a lot of me. I'm meeting a version of myself I didn't know was coming, one who can walk into not knowing and stay on her feet. She has rebuilt before. She's learning that she can move toward what she wants before the proof shows up.

Still, I don't believe every painful thing has to be turned into a lesson. Some things are just hard, and we don't need to make them inspirational before we're allowed to say so. Grief especially owes us no lesson and no tidy ending.

With some seasons, though, there's a strange gift on the far side. After the hard stretch, you stop rushing past a quiet, ordinary morning, because you remember when quiet felt impossible. Sometimes the lesson comes much later. Sometimes the only lesson is that you got through it.

You May Be Someone's Teacher Right Now

More than once during this commitment I've wanted to quit. And then a message arrives from a woman telling me a post found her on the right day, or helped her feel understood. Most of the time I had no idea.

It makes me wonder how many of us have taught someone without ever being told. Maybe you listened when a friend expected judgment. Maybe someone on your team watched how you handled a mistake, or your child noticed that you apologized after losing your patience. You don't need a classroom for any of that. You only need to be yourself, honest and generous when you can manage it.

So today I'm grateful for Mrs. Myers, who saw strength in me, and for the professor who heard a voice worth building. I'm grateful for the coaches and mentors and friends who kept showing up, and for one joyful little girl who is teaching me still.

To everyone who believed in me before I did: thank you. I'm not who I am without you.

And if nobody has said it lately, you may already be that person for someone else.

About the Author | Day 279 of 365

I'm a soul-led coach, entrepreneur, mother, and recovering perfectionist, currently navigating healing, uncertainty, temporary chapters, motherhood, work, big transitions, grief, nervous system healing, overstimulation, emotional growth, and the ongoing lesson that life works a whole lot better when we stop trying to carry everything alone. Today that lesson looked like remembering the teachers who saw something in me before I could, and realizing our words may be shaping someone long after we've forgotten saying them.

Day 279 of 365. Still showing up. Still grateful. Still cultivating the voice someone heard in me years ago. 🐧