Weeks after I turned 50, my husband of 13 years asked for a divorce. It wasn't a huge surprise, but it definitely wasn't something I'd planned for. At the time, I hated my career as a retail manager and was already considering a change. The divorce just pushed that need to the forefront. I needed something more meaningful, more impactful, more joyful. I craved relationships of substance, and to work with young kids again.

So, I started a new career as an early childhood educator: my fourth career, depending on how you count what's a job versus a career. Starting over at 50 sucked. It was scary, hard, and exhausting. Everything you'd expect it to be. But it was also hopeful and rewarding, and it reminded me of skills I had that I'd forgotten: teaching, caring for others, inspiring, being silly, laughing. I'd lost touch with those in a bad marriage and a career that didn't fit.

Then Covid hit, and I faced a new challenge: how do I keep myself, my family, and my students safe while keeping my sanity? Every day brought a new cleaning, masking, or documentation policy at the school where I'd just started. The school, the CDC, and the government were all fumbling through it, and the guidance kept shifting, sometimes contradicting itself. I came home exhausted, scared, and unsure I could stay in the career I'd just started to feel competent.

Then I found Breathe for Change, an organization on a mission to change the world one teacher at a time. They taught me to care for myself physically, emotionally, and mentally so I could better care for my students. Slowly, I regained the confidence and hope I badly needed. My first 200-hour yoga teacher training left such an impression that I knew I needed to keep this in my life. I purchased a Breathe for Change membership with weekly affirmations, camaraderie with fellow graduates, and periodic workshops. I continued my education with them, earning a certificate for teaching yoga to young kids, and eventually a 300-hour training in chair and restorative yoga, among other things. It was hard to fit into a tight schedule and budget, but their guidance and encouragement is what kept me going.

Around the same time, I started my business, Learning the Calm. I adapted Breathe for Change's principles in yoga, mindfulness, and SEL for the young children and educators I worked with. Juggling it all was difficult, but it felt important and necessary.

I wasn't building a business around a set of techniques I'd studied. I was building it around what put me back together, and what helped me create a new and more satisfying life. Every breathing exercise, every mindfulness practice, every tool I now teach is something that worked for me and my students first. At 50, when my old life fell apart and I had to learn how to sit with hard feelings instead of running from them.

That's the difference between teaching something and having lived it. When I show an early childhood educator or preschooler how to take a breath before a big feeling takes over, I'm not reciting a curriculum. I'm passing along the exact thing that got me through the hardest times in my life, and that continues to support me today.