How did I get here? How have my life experiences shaped me and got me to this point? Not all experiences are good, but what can we learn from them? You cannot always choose what happens to you, but you can learn to choose how you react to life.

Happy Birthday to Me

Monday 27th February was my birthday and I spent it with my parents for the first time in nineteen years. There were gifts, cards, a celebratory lunch, cake, Prosecco, and the opportunity for my mother to serenade me face to face with the heartfelt rendition of “‘Happy Birthday to You” that only someone who actually gave birth to you can do. We do do birthdays in our family, none of this “it’s just another day” malarkey, and I love it! It also heralded the arrival of my last year in my fifties – the big 6 – 0 next. 

Time to Reflect

I quite enjoy the countdown to a new decade and have no problem at all with getting older. I see it as a time to reflect on where I am and think about where I want to go. I’ve never accepted the term “middle-aged” as I see it as so value loaded, but barring a miracle, I have to accept that I am now well and truly past middle-age. And that is not a problem. In fact, in many ways it is good to know there is more time behind you than in front of you as it makes you value that time more and live it in a way that has more meaning. 

I don’t remember anything profound about being twenty nine other than being a single parent of a one-year-old daughter and a newly qualified maths teacher. Having started my PGCE at Durham University when my daughter was only six months old, I was living at home with my very supportive parents. I think I felt that last year of my twenties was a more daunting ageing prospect than this current countdown. Despite the challenges of full-time work with a small child, I really enjoyed the teaching and wanted to make a good life for myself and my daughter. 

Fast forward ten years and I had made significant progress in my teaching, now in my second role as a head of mathematics, and also a member of the Senior Management Team. I have always wanted to do the best I could in all aspects of life, starting at school with academic achievement, and I took this into my teaching career. Taking on extra responsibilities in school helped me progress, and I have always enjoyed new challenges. I saw the opportunity for a new challenge one Friday in the staffroom whilst looking at the job pages of TES – “Advisory Teacher for Numeracy” in Qatar. I wasn’t quite sure where Qatar was but it sounded exciting.

You Never Know What’s Round the Corner – Life’s experiences hit me full on!

I got the job in Qatar and absolutely loved the professional and personal experience there. We were a relatively small group of professionals with similar levels of experience, the project was exciting and high-profile, and we received some very effective training input before we started. The project was extended for a second year and I was more than happy to stay. I felt my career was moving forwards and I loved the expat lifestyle, so when the project came to an end after the second year, I secured a job as Head of Maths at The British School in Cairo. After working as an outside agent in other schools, I was actually looking forward to being back in a classroom role and leading my own department.

I did get to Cairo, but not straight from Qatar. My final year of my forties was spent in Egypt, based in Alexandria where I was working on another teacher development project, this time with primary English rather than maths. Since leaving Qatar in 2006, my path had been most certainly the hardest one I had ever walked in my life. It was a path that I genuinely thought at times I would not be able to continue. This was due to the trauma and grief that comes with losing a child. My daughter died following a tragic accident whilst in Qatar and I did what I had to do to survive.

I tried to return to a head of department role at a school in the UK that was in special measures. This was around four months after her death and I lasted a total of six days before I broke down completely and had to seek medical help. Despite my pain, I had made a good impression in my short time at the school, and they had no idea of the grief I was carrying. I will always be grateful for their understanding of the situation. I had basically tried to put a plaster on a gunshot wound and I needed time to really start the healing process.

Acceptance 

My journey after that is a long and interesting one that is for another platform. I do find myself now, thirty years on from the point at which I started this piece, and seventeen years from the tragedy that changed my life, in a position of acceptance, strength and peace. My career certainly did not follow its initial planned trajectory, and I feel a new one starting. After a few years surviving and retraining to teach TEFL, I found myself back in a similar role based in Abu Dhabi, with the same company, as in Qatar. I continued to work on various projects linked with teacher professional development. I returned to the classroom in an international setting more than once, and I have just made the decision to work independently combining my educational experience with my new found appreciation of mental health.

How does this all tie in with age? My career certainly has not progressed in a linear manner, indeed, I found myself in my mid-fifties with a Masters in Education, seemingly taking steps backwards with regard to a career in education. But they weren’t steps backwards, I learnt and experienced new things, both personally and professionally, and learning anything means forward movement. Age does bring a paradoxical mix of tolerance and intolerance. I view things through the lens of greater life experience and whilst this allows me look from a broader perspective, it also means I am less likely to waste my precious remaining time in a situation I know to be at odds with my needs and beliefs.

Over the last seventeen years, I have worked hard on moving forward and this work, along with the support of a loving family and friends, has paid off. I feel stronger now than I have ever felt, and much happier with me and who I am. As my fifth (edit: whoops! That should be sixth) decade comes to a close over the next 12 months, I will continue to explore new avenues and further develop practices that enrich my life, both mentally and physically. My aim is to use new modalities to help empower others on their personal and professional journeys. Investing in yourself is something more people should do, and investing in people is something more organisations should do.

Please get in touch if you would like to explore how I can help you or your organisation.