I recognise that I have never really written about my life’s work on this blog—maybe because I was still having this idea of separating my work and my life—but it has become an inevitable and inseparable part of who I am and how I show up in the world. And so I feel the time has come to share.
A lot of people have asked me what I am doing in India. Understandably, most of them think I’m here for yoga. And when I say I’m here for a teacher training, the correlation is still with yoga. But this time, that’s not the case. As much as I would love to take another yoga training with a teacher whose class in Bali last year inspired me to come back to India in the first place, that’s not my purpose this time. I am here as a Montessori teacher. Montessori, being my life’s work.
I have dedicated an entire separate website to it. But I believe most of the people I know have either never looked at it, or don’t understand what they are seeing. And so, I want to convey my passion separately. Here. For you.
Ten years ago I went to the Source Farm in Jamaica and had a vision of what my life looked like in another timeline. I had a strong feeling of … I don’t even what to call it to be honest. But it felt like a vision of what’s possible. It overcame me completely. It changed the way I felt in the world and the way I showed up in my relations with others, or lack thereof. That was my first spiritual experience like that. But it wasn’t my last.
The next time I had a strong premonition like this was when I first stepped into a Montessori classroom.
I tell this story all the time when I’m interviewing for positions that I usually get and never take (I’m a serial interviewer at this point because I just don’t know where I want to be). But I’ll tell it again one more time to you. When I stepped into that classroom, I was hit with a vision and an overwhelming sensation that I knew what I was meant to spend the rest of my life doing. So immediate and so overwhelming was the feeling that I went back to work the next day at the magazine company where I was writing and put in my 2 weeks notice.
That was at the end of February. By March I was an assistant in a lower elementary classroom, pay cut and all. By June, I was in training. And a lot of things had to happen in my personal life in order for this to be possible: including getting into a car accident in my brother’s brand new Subaru STI. That settlement money would become the funding for the first half of my training. The second half would come from working in China. China, by the way, also paid for my yoga teacher training, LASIK eye surgery, and my move to Thailand. And Thailand paid for my Master’s Degree. No loans were taken out for any of these.
I’ve made some wise financial decisions, in the form of investments in myself, contrary to what some may think.
Looking back on all the things, it’s so easy to see the clear path that unfolded with each choice I made—how each decision led directly to something greater.
From starting to volunteer with Treehuggers Organic Farms after stumbling upon a farmer’s market outside of whole foods, which became the backdrop of my life over the next almost 3 years, to taking a trip to Jamaica and making an unusual stop at an eco village I’d just learned about. From learning about Montessori from someone who actually told me years later that she didn’t know what Montessori was and that she was called by some ancestors to tell me about it (true story), to meeting Brittany who worked at the front desk at my first school working as a lead teacher and Ms. Sara who shadowed a non-verbal ASD student and talking with them about where one can go for fair teacher wages, to reaching out to Shay to find out what life in China was like, to everything in between and everything that followed. Every single decision I made, small or not small, led me to exactly where I am right now.
Without Montessori, without the farm, without my death and rebirth in 2012-2013, I would not write to you today from a 6-12 Montessori Teacher Training course in Kolkata India. I would not have spent the last 9 years bringing transformative, revolutionary pedagogy to the world, playing my part in cultivating future adults who will change the world for the better—Sending out a group of children each year who are not only deeply rooted in themselves as humans but are also deeply rooted in their responsibilities as conscious contributors to the world.
I would not be this “I”.
I shudder to imagine my life if I’d have stayed under those fluorescent lights of the offices of Retail Environments magazine—if I wouldn’t have seen as much of the world as I have, or have had half the experiences I’ve had.
But I’d rather it be imagined than real any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Montessori, via the farm/my diet/China/Yoga/Thailand/Vipassana, changed my life completely. And through it, I get to also change the lives of countless others.
How lucky am I?
