The Circle That Knows My Name
After two weeks away from school, traveling and reconnecting with family, I returned feeling stretched and keenly aware of how much I wanted time to myself. These are the moments when old fears and familiar patterns tend to surface, when escape into solitude has long been my default. Sometimes that retreat is necessary. Sometimes it is just an old strategy for managing what feels too chaotic inside. In those moments, I can miss the deeper need underneath it all, the need for connection, community, and balance. My mental health experiences have taught me to pay attention here. Vulnerability opens doors, and when I ignore that, what I have lived through has a way of quietly reclaiming me.
In moments like these, my internal compass can start spinning. I become unsure of what I really need, who I really am. My heart can feel a million miles away.
Working so closely with young children requires a steady emotional availability. There is constant listening, noticing, and attuning, an ongoing orientation toward others that rarely pauses. I seldom feel the cost of that while I am in it. Compassion fatigue reveals itself only after I step away, when the structure and rhythm fall quiet. That is when it can suddenly feel as though I need far more time than I took, not just to rest, but to truly replenish. And when my internal compass is already spinning, it becomes harder to tell the difference between what is healing solitude and what is simply another form of retreat.
I have been deeply shaped by my mental health experiences. They transformed me and clarified my limits, my tenderness, and my intensity, along with what it takes for me to stay well. Those experiences do not disappear. They remain close, especially when I stop caring for myself properly. When I fail to recognize my own depletion early enough, the ground beneath me can begin to feel less stable.
I did not want to return to work. Part of me was certain I needed distance, quiet, fewer demands. Another part, the one that knows how easily I disappear from myself when I isolate too long, wondered if what I actually needed was to come back into relationship.
When the first morning arrived, I felt split. Part of me wanted to step back from a role that has asked so much of me for so long. Another part showed up because showing up has long been one of the ways I have stayed connected to rhythm, to relationship, and to a sense of purpose, especially during the years when everything else felt unstable.
Then the children started arriving.
I heard the first child in the parking area urging his parent to hurry so he could be the first one to see me. He came bounding in, beaming, speaking in a rush about everything that had happened while we were apart. Pure joy! As he shared, the others arrived, surrounding me, tugging at my legs, hugging me, each carrying something urgent and precious to offer. In that swirl of love and excitement, something in me that had been pulled inward began to turn back toward life.
Within moments, we were standing in a loose circle. Everyone had a turn. Everyone was listened to. Laughter moved easily among us. The community skills the children have been practicing all year, how to listen, how to speak, how to belong, were clearly visible. No one needed help saying goodbye to their parents. They simply settled back into the safety we have been building together.
The parents lingered, watching quietly, then slipped away with soft smiles, as if witnessing something both ordinary and rare.
Something in me shifted almost immediately. I felt it first in my body, a softening and an opening, before my mind could catch up. The day unfolded with an ease I could not have planned. The larger questions did not disappear, but they loosened their grip. They rested alongside the life I have built and no longer demanded answers, only a willingness to live inside them.
My experiences have taught me that I cannot care well, for myself and others, when I leave parts of myself behind. Presence matters more than endurance. When I push past my limits, I can lose the very ground I am trying to stand on. Compassion fatigue does not mean the well is empty. More often, it means I have forgotten how I am replenished.
And here it was again, remembrance. I am restored through relationship as much as through solitude. Through time with family. Through shared stories and shared laughter. Through a circle formed without instruction. I often imagine I need to retreat in order to stay well, and sometimes that is true. But I also need to belong. I need to be held in connection. Here, with these children, I have somehow created the very thing I need most.
They keep me alive to wonder. They draw me back into play. They return me to my own creative and tender self, again and again, just when I am in danger of drifting too far away.
Maybe this is what we all forget from time to time: that we do not find ourselves by pulling away from the world, but by standing inside a circle that knows our name. For now, this is my circle. In the laughter, the stories, and the ordinary miracle of being together, something in me keeps finding its way home.
Much Love!
The Mad Preschool Teacher ( He/Him)
I was so touched by this. The image and feeling of that circle of belonging. The sweetness of the exchange, both spoken and not. Whew. Got me. Thanks for sharing.