The Risk of Being Seen at Home
Starting a support circle while protecting the place I love most
After one year of posting here, one thing has become very clear: in the end, I’m just looking for some real face to face friendships. Friends with a shared lived experience. Friends who live in my community. People I can meet eye to eye, share a hug with, sit beside when things get rough.
But how do I do that and still stay somewhat anonymous in this part of myself I call “mad”? I’m keenly aware of the real danger of coming out fully in my local community. I know the risks: social, professional, and especially to the preschool, which is the heartbeat of my life’s work.
Yet the simple truth is this: having a space to put my whole story down and be witnessed has been profoundly healing. I’m grateful for the small circle of friends and family here, and for the equal number of unknown regular readers who keep showing up. This space has allowed me to speak freely, to explore, to experiment with language around my experiences. It’s given me a way to begin stitching together the threads of my story and feel good about it.
What surprised me most this past year is how the writing itself has worked on me. It has become its own teacher. The Mad Preschool Teacher persona gives me enough distance and playfulness to tell the truth. And in telling the truth, I’ve started becoming more fully myself. I can see now that MPT is just a stop on the journey. A temporary mask that lets me practice holding both my tenderness and my madness with humor, compassion, and clarity. I’ll keep writing from this voice while I still need it, but I can see now that this is just a stop along the way of becoming more fully ME.
And this writing has given me something else: the courage to share more. When I choose to let someone in on the “mad” side of my life, I can point them here. I don’t have to explain everything in a single breath. My words are already waiting for them, offering context and time. The time to work through their own assumptions and to understand how any of this could coexist with running a beloved preschool. This archive has helped me open up selectively, carefully, and with more trust.
But after my latest upheaval, I realized that a handful of online friendships, wonderful as they are, just isn’t enough. What I’m longing for is real, face to face community with people who understand the wild, tender territory I’ve lived through. Within the difficulties of this last experience I kept imagining this space, having a few friends I could call who’d be there for me with an understanding from their own lived experiences what I’m going through.
I want a circle where it’s safe to be completely real. A place where I can fall apart if I need to, and where others can too. A place to see and be seen as we each fumble with our own unique trauma and variations of these challenging experiences.
Honestly, this just feels like a sane response to the madness of the world at large and our collapsing systems. Breaking our isolation and offering mutual aid around a shared experience might be one of the few meaningful things any of us can do right now.
So I’m letting my two worlds—mad and preschool teacher— meet each other. I’m starting a small, peer-led mutual aid support group. Maybe even right in the preschool.
Here’s the risk I’m actually taking: I’m not going fully public. I’m not hanging flyers around town or posting on Facebook. I’m doing this quietly by reaching out to friends, trusted care providers, and a handful of people who already know me well. And even this is its own leap. Word travels. Communities talk. This is good gossip material! And some people still can’t hold both truths at once: that I run a sweet, thriving preschool and that I’ve lived through experiences many still misunderstand or fear.
I know the stigma. I know the assumptions. I’m protective of my livelihood, of the families who trust me, of the children whose world I get to help shape. That’s why I’m being cautious and intentional. I’m trying to honor my own need for connection without putting the school at risk.
But the calling is louder than the fear. At sixty, I feel a responsibility to support not just myself but others—especially younger people who are just beginning to understand their own similar experiences.
Recently, I heard about a young person who once came to my school who was away at college for the first time. They were forcibly hospitalized after an overwhelming moment and given the typical biomedical labels. And I thought: What if they and their family knew I was here? Not to fix anything. Not to impose my worldview. But simply to offer a model of what is possible. A friend who knows you and your essence with a bit of experience to bear. To say: there are many ways through this. And you are not broken. But mostly just to listen from a place of experience.
If I can be that steady, transparent adult for even one person, then maybe all the difficult parts of my path will have a place to belong.
So yes. I’m quietly building a small, in-person peer led mutual aid support circle. And if we’re trying to return to something essential and childlike in ourselves, then there’s probably no better place than the mad preschool teacher’s school to gather.
I’ve shared this with a few trusted care providers—some of whom had children at my school. And to my local friends who read these posts: if you know someone who might need a space like this, feel free to point them my way. Maybe send a message first.
It scares me, yes. I know I’m asking my community to hold a fuller picture of who I am. Not everyone can do that. Not everyone wants to. But I’m tired of hiding the parts of me that have shaped me the most, and tired of trying to heal relatively alone.
Maybe this is the path of the wounded healer. Or maybe it’s just the simplest wisdom children offer us every day:
Find your friends.
Decide what you’re going to play.
And play with your whole heart.
Much Love!
The Mad Preschool Teacher (He/Him)
So cool!!!!