When NO to One Things Means YES to Another

(This was written January 21, 2015.)

My life has gotten REALLY busy. That is part of why I haven’t blogged in a while. Another part is that, while I have plenty to say, I haven’t been able to get my head around HOW I want to say it. And I was waiting to tell some folks something in person before I shared it widely.

And that was the worst introduction I’ve ever written. So let’s just dive in, shall we?

I’m wrapping up my second year as Director of the MERIT program here in the Bay Area. It’s an amazing year-long professional development cohort situation for teachers, and I absolutely love it. As I wrap up my second year, I have decided to wrap up my being Director at all. We typically serve three years as Director, and that had been my plan all along. But then, life loves to throw us curve balls when we have the audacity plan that far ahead, doesn’t it?

Many people who know me personally know that this past year has been eventful, but not necessarily in the good way. Last May, we found out that our son’s learning challenges are caused by autism. Shortly after that, we discovered that my mother had stage 4 cancer. I traveled to the East Coast (or close) seven times between April and December. There was a Spring Break trip to Boston with my son, a conference in Atlanta, and three trips to see Mom (the final one being for her funeral). I also went to Pittsburgh in August for an EdTech thing. The last of the seven trips was to spend the holidays with my family in New Jersey. Because we all really needed it.

All those trips made my year INTENSE. My husband, as always, stepped up and did even MORE than he usually does with taking care of everything around the house and seeing to all our son’s needs during the five trips Cameron didn’t take with me. And this has meant a lot of new adjustments, given what we’ve learned this past year about how our son learns and functions. It made me start to look at things I could cut out of my professional life to make more time for my family’s needs.

When I was in Napa in October at a conference, I found out that the dates of CUE Rock Star Lake Tahoe would conflict with the MERIT Summer Institute in the summer of 2015. My son goes with me to Truckee for this event every year, and I wanted to continue that tradition. Applying to be part of that event’s faculty would mean I would have to step down from my MERIT Directorship. I realized that after the year we’ve had, I did not have the strength to tell my son that Truckee was off because I needed to work another year for MERIT. I had to make a choice.

I chose my son.

It’s not that the MERIT program has caused me to have to neglect him or anything. It’s just a big commitment, and I didn’t want to start feeling resentful. I also chose to stop teaching the grad school class I teach online for San Diego State. For a few years at least. I’ve thought about starting a Doctoral program in another year and a half or so. That’s on hold in my mind until we get a handle on the transition between elementary school and middle school for my son.

But I am the kind of person who doesn’t like to turn her back on a commitment. It’s always been hard for me to say NO. But with a full-time job that is busier than any I’ve had before, and my family’s needs changing as they have, I’ve learned that in order to say YES to my family, I need to say NO to the rest of the world sometimes.