I closed my locker door, ending the last day of 5th grade before winter break. I attended a 2-story, brick middle school in the southern suburbs of Chicagoland. The lockers were tall, extending from the floor to more than a foot above my head. Across the hall, in the 2nd-floor stairwell, were large windows overlooking the street that elevated us to eye-level with the nearby forest preserve.

I wouldn't be coming back after the break, though.

I wouldn't return to my friends or teachers or my You Can't Do That On Television locker.

With my bag stuffed with everything it could fit, I glanced down the hallway, bustling with children, and said goodbye. I loved school.

My parents were having a house built 40 minutes away in an up-and-coming small town with no stoplights.

This was a hard-work dream come true for them, as they had started as high school grads from poorer families — married at 21 and lived in a mobile home until my brother and I came along. This new house was much closer to my dad's work, and his commute would be cut in half with a significant reduction of the "27 stop lights" he traveled twice a day, he'd said.

The sadness of leaving friends conflicted with the buzzing excitement of moving into a brand-new house, which was bittersweet. We'd have a larger yard now with deer wandering in and plenty of room to hike in the woods behind our house.

There was a lot to be grateful for.

New, but not yet forward

We moved over winter break, and I'd start the January semester a week late in the new school. Unlike my old school, 5th grade was in the elementary building with cubbies and Kindergartners.

I was coming from the independence of passing periods and lockers to now walking single-file in the hallway again, my belongings on a hook, and my name taped to the desk on a pencil-shaped piece of paper.

My new teacher read Farmer's Almanac at his desk while we did worksheets (he was a real farmer who owned an actual farm). I'd never heard of Farmer's Almanac before.

My teacher was also my bus driver and basketball coach; his wife was a teacher, too, just down the hallway. Living in a small town meant the same people did a lot of things within the community, I guess.

While I didn't fit in, my new teacher was kind and tried to include me by employing participation methods like calling on me without my hand raised and asking what I thought about the things we were learning.

The dichotomy of the time before

I kept in touch with Miss B, the 5th-grade teacher I'd left behind. She knew I was nervous about attending a new school and was known for being nurturing, kind, and supportive of all her students.

It was different, I would tell her.

The first time I witnessed a student misbehaving in my new teacher's class, it seemed like a small thing – someone had taken a pencil that wasn't hers. A boy cried, swearing she'd stolen it. She said she didn't, and that it was actually hers. The bickering continued.

Our teacher calmly asked the girl to join him in the hallway vestibule, the area sandwiched between the outside and inside glass doors. The kids in the class went ghost-white and dead silent.

I'd seen kids taken into the hall before, but their extreme reactions seemed curious.

Suddenly, I jumped at my desk as the yelling began. Our teacher's deep voice boomed from the hallway, muffled by layers of doors.

It went on for a few minutes, and panic swirled inside me.

The student returned to the room, tear-stained and distraught, and handed over the pencil while the rest of the class was pin-drop quiet. Our teacher came in a moment after, red-faced, still trembling from adrenaline.

I stopped breathing.

Letters "home" and Miss B

I cried what seemed like every night for months to my mom that I didn't want to go back to school, that I wanted to go "home."

My mom patiently comforted me, "We are home; this is our home now." My dad was heartbroken because he'd worked hard to give us that amazing house and fresh opportunities, and I was still struggling.

In addition to being new, I had buck teeth and a single eyebrow across my forehead with more than a hint of a mustache. Making new friends was not going well. I was getting migraines and coming home sick from school almost once a week.

I felt the kids at home had known the real me, and I had known them. They knew my heart and my humor. And I had been someone they could lean on and confide in. We were just ourselves with each other.

I couldn't find a way to show these new kids who I was, and in fact, I didn’t even know myself anymore

My efforts to make friends came out (insert: 90s childhood dialect) sorta dorky or hella weird. A few key players teased me quite a bit, and it wasn't getting better as the school year went on.

On top of that, my grandpa had been sick since our move, and he finally passed away at the end of my first semester there. I was gutted over it. Being at a school I hated was terrible, but losing my grandfather the first week of summer was an excessive blow.

To feel connected to people I knew, I wrote letters "home" a lot -- to my neighborhood friends and my whole class, which Miss B pleasantly read aloud.

Lots of letters came back at first — my "boyfriend" sent a green crystal heart charm wrapped in notebook paper, and some other friends sent stickers and folded notes.

When things were most challenging, though, I wrote to Miss B directly.

Thankfully, she wrote back.

Lifelong Lessons from Miss B

Her letters hold wisdom 30 years later and for all. I read and reread her words in my darkest moments; They got me through hard times back then and still impact me today.

Sometimes, there is no changing your circumstances, and Miss B knew that the only way out was through.

Her letters saved me from going too deep into depression. (I was depressed for sure, struggling with anxiety, and now I know panic, as well).

Her words reminded me that someone far away believed I had the power to change how I looked at things and that it would make all the difference. She knew what I needed to hear and had faith that I was capable of understanding these philosophically mature lessons.

Excerpts from Miss B's Letters — June 1992 - August 1995

On Loss

It's hard to lose someone you love, but if you pray for them and think about them, they will be alive in your memories and in your heart, and that's a pretty good place to be.

On Struggling to Adapt

Sometimes, we all have to do things that we'd rather not or would like to have things the way they were before. When we have no control over a situation but continue to struggle against it, we focus our attention and energy on negativity and risk becoming a mope! It's much healthier to not let external happenings damage our spirit.

On Resisting Change

Were you here when I told the story of "The Angel's Wing"? Remember the seashell that did not struggle against the raging storm and waves and was not broken? The message is: Acceptance brings peace.

On Resilience

We are all where we are for a reason. We might not like or even know the reason, but we can learn and grow from every opportunity. I have a poster that says, "Bloom where you are planted." I think that's pretty good advice, and it IS possible!

On Personal Growth

Feed your spirit daily. It will thrive on acceptance, enthusiasm, curiosity, and prayer. It will grow with new challenges and opportunities. You will become the best, most beautiful person you were meant to be.

On Applying Ourselves

We can do whatever we set our minds to…. However, worry is useless, time-consuming, and energy-draining. [It is] better to spend your time and energy on positive steps toward achieving your goal.

On Achieving Goals

The author [of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey] suggests that we "begin with the end in mind." Use visualization, too. Picture what you want to achieve, then think of the steps necessary to bring you to that goal. Then start steppin' and keep putting one foot in front of the other.

On Never Giving Up

Setbacks will come in life. They may slow you down but don't ever let them stop you.

Miss B passed away in 2021, just four days shy of her 77th birthday. While we exchanged letters in the 90s, she had been battling cancer. I'm not sure if her death was related to that illness or not; I only know the world was a better place with her in it.

She told me that people often asked how she managed through that arduous year of cancer treatment.

I like to say, she wrote in a letter, it was like being the Energizer bunny – I kept going and going and going. One day at a time – Keeping busy helped a lot. I didn't have time to feel sorry for myself (another useless waste of time). Even though it was difficult (5 surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy), I still worked toward achieving the goals I set for myself.

It Wasn't All Bad

I wrote to Miss B when things had been going well, too – like when I won essay contests about the baseball strike and gun control or when I got the 1st place ribbon in the science fair for a pendulum demonstration. I was proud to show her I was thriving, especially after that first year.

The first glimmer of hope came on just a regular day, toward the end of 5th grade, when the weather was warming up. It was sunny, the school was stuffy, and we wore T-shirts again.

Something of a miracle had happened.

As usual, I walked into the weekly math lab, and the girl wearing her hair in a curly perm and pixie cut with round glasses and thick lenses called my name. Surprised to hear my name, I looked over, and she patted the empty seat beside her.

"I saved you a seat," she said, smiling.

I may have glanced behind me to be sure she was talking to me.

"Come on," she said.

That was the moment I had found new hope.

She and I became best friends. We watched the Bulls 6-peat together, danced to Mindy McCready in her room, and wrote notes all day long to each other. We were inseparable through braces and contacts and crushes until she moved to Texas during our first year of high school. That's how I remember it — she threw me a lifeline, and I grabbed on.

By the time 6th grade started, I was back at a school with lockers and passing periods again, and I'd found more people to love and be loved by.

It was nearly two years before I finally told my dad that moving there wasn't a bad thing after all.

That night was his first truly restful night of sleep since we’d moved.

Miss B's Legacy

While I was Miss B's student for only four months, I could see that she poured everything into being a teacher who truly knew her students, understood their individual lives, and looked for ways to connect with them separately. She and I bonded over a love of reading and writing. We compared notes about which worked better for our migraines: ice packs or heating pads.

She gave me the tightest hug the day I left – and I'll never forget it.

I hope her words in this story bring you the encouragement, insight, and enlightenment you need in your life and that you can see in her smile the warmth and love she used to radiate every day. She was truly a gift.

Final thoughts on displacement & depression

Mental and emotional health are uniquely tied together, requiring a level of security in one's ability to self-regulate, trust in what's to be, detach from outcomes we can't control, and take action on the ones we can. It isn't enough to have confidence in yourself or manage emotions well. There must be a fully-rounded security to own these things, claim, and be true to yourself.

Miss B decided to retire when she was cancer-free, living in remission. When the cancer came back, she was grateful she'd made the decision of her own choice and not because she had to or needed to. In May 1994, she was finishing radiation, and her summer and fall would be dedicated to chemotherapy. She was thrilled to be done with it all by Christmas. It struck me that in May, looking ahead down a long road, she was positively thinking about the holidays, while to me, they were way on the other side of a lot of pain and suffering. She was an anti-victim. And she shined that light on others.

Security in oneself took work for me (and it still does).

Miss B somehow learned how to harness her own, and her greatest gift was letting me borrow hers for a while, even when she was going through the fight of her life. I pray she's flying free and high, seeing everything there is to see in her soul's new chapter.

Storytelling explores topics to nurture growth, ignite joy, and promote acceptance. Each day is full of chances. Errors and double plays happen in the same inning, and just like in life, one moment doesn't make us bad, and the other moment doesn't make us good. We are the beautiful whole — learning, growing, trying, failing, and succeeding over and over again.

Bloom where you are planted

The power of letting go

Pause, don’t panic