For almost a decade, I stood in front of classrooms telling kids to be brave.

I told them to raise their hands even when they weren’t sure they had the right answer. I told them it was okay to make mistakes. I told them to speak up when something didn’t feel right. I told them that asking for help wasn’t a weakness and that sometimes doing the right thing meant doing the hard thing.

I said those things so often that I never really stopped to think about how much I believed them.

Until I had to live them myself.

Because it turns out, telling a child to be brave is a whole lot easier than being brave when you’re the one who has something to lose.

There comes a point when you have to listen to yourself.

For a long time, I thought that if I was unhappy, overwhelmed, or frustrated, the answer was to try harder.

Be more patient. Work harder. Give it another year. Find a better way to handle things. Maybe things would get better.

I think a lot of us do this. We convince ourselves that we’re just going through a hard season and that if we can make it to the next week, the next month, or the next school year, everything will somehow fall back into place.

But sometimes you eventually have to admit that the problem isn’t that you aren’t trying hard enough.

Sometimes the situation itself isn’t right anymore.

Leaving teaching was not an easy decision for me. Teaching was a huge part of my identity. It was something I had worked incredibly hard for, and I cared deeply about the people I taught.

Walking away didn’t erase any of that.

But I also reached a point where I had to decide whether I was going to keep quietly accepting things that didn’t sit right with me or whether I was finally going to stand up for myself.

And that was scary. Not because I didn’t know what I believed. Because I did.

I was scared of what might happen when I actually said it out loud.

Standing up for yourself is scary when you’re used to taking care of everyone else.

Teachers are natural caretakers. We’re used to solving problems, smoothing things over, advocating for our students, and making sure everyone else is okay.

But sometimes we forget that we’re allowed to advocate for ourselves, too.

There were moments when I had to make a choice: stay quiet because speaking up would be harder, or say something because I knew it was the right thing to do.

I chose to speak. I chose to document what was happening. I chose to ask questions. I chose to stand up for myself.

And I don’t regret that.

Not because it was easy. It wasn’t. Not because I knew exactly how everything would turn out. I didn’t.

But because I have two little girls watching me.

Emersyn and Lyla are going to grow up and face situations where something doesn’t feel right. They’re going to have people tell them they’re being too sensitive, too loud, too difficult, or that they should just keep their heads down.

And I don’t want to teach them that bravery means being quiet enough to keep everyone else comfortable.

I want them to know that they can be kind and still have boundaries. They can be respectful and still disagree. They can be scared and still speak. And if they see their mom stand up for herself when something is wrong, maybe they’ll understand that they can do the same.

That, to me, is worth being uncomfortable.

I didn’t just leave. I started figuring out who I am outside of being a teacher.

This has probably been one of the strangest parts of this whole transition.

When you’ve spent years being known as something, it’s weird to suddenly ask yourself, Okay…who am I now?

I knew how to be a teacher. I knew how to walk into a classroom and figure things out. I knew how to plan lessons, manage chaos, encourage kids, solve problems, and somehow make it through the day when everything went completely off the rails.

But what happens when you take that title away?

You have to start discovering the rest of yourself. And that’s what I’m doing.

I’m trying things I never would have imagined myself doing a few years ago.

I recently started working at Orangetheory Fitness. And honestly, I love that I’m doing it. Not because it has anything to do with the career path I thought I was supposed to have, but because it was something new. It was a chance to step into an environment where I wasn’t the expert. I wasn’t walking in with nine years of experience and knowing exactly what to do. I was just trying something different. And there is something incredibly humbling, and exciting, about being a beginner again.

I think we forget how important that feeling is. We expect kids to be willing to try new things all the time, while adults are terrified of looking inexperienced. But maybe being a beginner is exactly what we need sometimes.

And then there’s law school.

This one still makes me laugh a little when I say it out loud.

Me.

Law school.

After nearly a decade of teaching.

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Because even though I’m leaving the classroom, I’m not leaving behind the part of me that wants to advocate for people. That’s still there. Maybe even more than ever.

Teaching taught me how important it is to speak up when something isn’t right. It taught me how complicated systems can be. It taught me how easily people can feel overwhelmed when they’re trying to navigate those systems on their own.

So applying to law school doesn’t feel like I’m abandoning everything I’ve done. It feels like I’m taking something I’ve always cared about and trying to find a new way to use it.

I don’t know exactly where that road will lead. And that’s okay. I’m learning that I don’t need to know the entire path before I take the next step.

Maybe that’s what being brave actually is.

I used to think brave people were confident. They knew what they were doing. They had a plan. They weren’t afraid.

Now I think that’s probably one of the biggest misconceptions we teach ourselves. 

Bravery doesn’t always feel brave. Sometimes it feels like uncertainty. Sometimes it feels like crying in your car and wondering if you made the right decision. Sometimes it feels like applying to law school when you have no idea what your life will look like three years from now. Sometimes it looks like starting a completely different job just because you want to try something new. Sometimes it means saying, “This isn’t okay,” even when you know there may be consequences for saying it. Sometimes it means starting over.

And sometimes it means letting go of the version of yourself you thought you were supposed to be.

I’m still figuring all of that out. I don’t have some magical five-year plan that suddenly appeared the moment I left teaching. I have questions. I have ideas. I have things I want to try. I have things I’m terrified won’t work. And I have a lot of excitement about what might.

But I also have two daughters who are watching. And that changes the way I think about all of this. 

I want Emersyn and Lyla to see that their mom didn’t stay somewhere simply because leaving was scary. I want them to see that when something is wrong, you can speak up. When you don’t know the answer, you can learn. When you fail, you can try again. When your life takes an unexpected turn, you can figure it out. And when someone tells you that you can’t do something?

You don’t necessarily have to believe them.

I spent years telling kids they could do hard things.

Now I’m trying to believe it about myself. Maybe that’s the funny thing about teaching. You spend so much time giving lessons to other people that sometimes you don’t realize you’re learning the same lessons alongside them.

I taught kids to be curious, now I’m trying new things.

I taught kids to ask questions, now I’m asking more of my own.

I taught kids to advocate for themselves, now I’m learning to advocate for myself.

I taught kids that mistakes don’t define them, now I’m learning that my past doesn’t have to define me either.

And I taught kids that being brave doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid. It means you do the thing anyway.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m doing the thing anyway.

I don’t know exactly where this next chapter is going to take me. Maybe law school will change everything. Maybe Orangetheory will lead me somewhere I never expected. Maybe this website will become something bigger than I ever imagined. Maybe I’ll try ten more things before I figure out which ones are actually meant for me.

I don’t know.

But for the first time in a long time, I’m not as afraid of not knowing. Because I’m finally realizing that I don’t have to have the whole thing figured out. I just have to be willing to take the next step. And maybe that’s the best lesson I could ever teach my daughters. Not that their mom always knew what to do. Not that she was never scared. Not that she always got it right.

But that when life asked her to be brave…

she was.

And maybe, after all those years of teaching kids to be brave, that’s the lesson I was meant to learn for myself.

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Stay Curious & Teach Boldly,

Jade