What Teachers Can Learn from The Journey from Abandonment to Healing
Ms. Ruiz taught fourth grade, and her partner left the week before parent-teacher conferences. She still greeted every student by name at the door, still ran the same morning routine, but found herself staring blankly at spelling tests she'd normally grade in an hour. A student asked why she looked tired, and she said she hadn't slept well, which was true enough. At lunch, alone in her classroom, she let herself cry for ten minutes before wiping her face and prepping the afternoon lesson. She wasn't falling apart in front of anyone; she was learning that showing up for thirty kids and having nothing left for herself were two different things. Driving home that evening, she sat in the driveway a while before going inside.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
The pain is real, not a classroom management problem
When a partner leaves, the sharp grief that follows is a genuine response to a broken attachment bond, not evidence that you're less capable, less patient, or somehow unfit to lead a classroom. Teachers hold steady for a room full of kids all day, which can make any crack in composure feel like a professional failure rather than a normal human response. It isn't. This pain follows a real, well-documented pattern, and it eases with time, but hiding it entirely just makes acting normal harder to sustain through a full day of lessons, especially once the morning's early adrenaline wears off.
Hiding any visible emotion until it leaks out as irritability.
Before the first bell, take three slow breaths and name how you feel.
Getting through the acute weeks without your students absorbing it
The first weeks after being left often bring exhaustion, sleeplessness, and a shorter fuse, all of which are hard to hide in a classroom full of watchful kids. Self-soothing here is not a luxury or a distraction from the job; it is what keeps your patience available for students who depend on a steady adult each day. Small anchors work best given how little private time a day allows: a few slow breaths during planning, a short walk at recess, water instead of coffee. The goal isn't pretending nothing happened, just feeling it without it choosing how you speak to the class.
Skipping breaks to power through, leaving nothing in reserve.
Use five minutes of planning to step outside and breathe.
Rebuilding worth that isn't tied to being needed by a room full of kids
Anger often surfaces once the initial shock fades, and for a teacher it can get buried under the daily demand to stay patient for other people's children no matter what. Letting yourself feel that anger privately, in a journal or with a friend outside the school building, matters more than performing calm constantly in front of a class. Self-worth built entirely on being needed by students, or by a partner, is fragile in much the same way, since both depend on someone else's continued presence. Separating your value from how needed you feel in any role is the real, ongoing work.
Pouring all your energy into students to avoid the anger.
Write three things you value about yourself beyond your job.
Becoming steadier, and eventually open again
Genuine independence looks like a teacher whose classroom calm comes from a settled sense of self, not from proving competence to cover the hurt underneath. It doesn't mean becoming closed off or treating vulnerability as somehow unprofessional. It means a new connection, whenever it comes, gets chosen from wholeness rather than a need to fill what the breakup left behind.
There is tension between honoring how much this hurts and staying steady enough that thirty kids have a consistent day. Leaning fully into the grief can leave lesson plans unprepared; suppressing it completely can mean it surfaces later as snapping at a student who didn't deserve it. Holding both means small, protected moments to feel it honestly, a car cry before pickup, a text to a friend at lunch, while still keeping the classroom itself steady and predictable. The goal isn't invisible grief, just enough steadiness that students still get your best.
Name one thing, honestly
Where has this pain shown up in your classroom, unnamed? Who outside your classroom actually knows how you're doing? What would fifteen protected minutes a day look like?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Write three things you value about yourself beyond your job.