For the last… since I can remember… Valentine’s Day has been my favorite holiday. Red and pink, check, yup, love those colors, chocolate, massive check there too! L O V E. The most effective tool for healing and the greatest resource our world has to offer.
As much as I love, love, I don’t think any one has ever deemed me a romantic. Love has always stretched further than that– as it should right? Our ability to love doesn’t begin with romance. I mean, it does technically speaking, in most cases, but when we, as babies, are learning to love, it’s through family. I am fortunate to have a mother who was so determined to love her children, none of life’s adversity could stop us from feeling just that. I honestly think because my mom has loved me so much, I have always loved myself… even when others told me I wasn’t enough and I didn’t matter. Love can make it to the top of mountains.
I had every intent on actually writing about fashion this post. I’ve spent about 6 hours researching and looking at reviews and making sure items were in stock… but to me fashion is only visual– it’s an eye pleasing aesthetic… and I think that is why I love it so much. It calms my brain, as weird as it sounds… and I love clothes. I think I have to thank my mom for that one, too.
Love.
One of the first things I do when I get to my classroom is check my e-mail. The 2nd installment of my public records request had finally arrived on Friday (over 365 days late…) and it contained the investigation findings from the “sexual harassment” complaint that was filed against me. 54 pages and only 3 pages contained anything having to do with that “complaint”… the other 51 pages were screen shots of my blog and an additional 2 pages of narratives from blacked out names on how I was paranoid and believed there was some conspiracy happening within the school district. 46 pages of screen shots from my blog and instagram. Not a single person in Bellevue School District ever personally raised any concerns to me, personally, about my blog. Why would they though? It was all true and is still all true and the truth doesn’t mind being challenged… but a lie… a lie can’t face a rebuttal. A lie is afraid of the truth. They chose to sit behind closed doors– nameless and loveless, and slander, harass, and traumatize me.
But here I am, 3 years later, after losing my original blog domain (theteacherdresscode.com) while I was institutionalized because somehow my auto-renew was magically turned off, with my maiden name, living back in my hometown, teaching again, newly engaged, happy, and continuing to speak truth. LOVE.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
A large majority of people in power within Bellevue School District think money is the most important resource that exists. They throw money at problems and called it fixed. They withhold money, resources, as punishment and call it lack of funding. They use their position of authority and social power to ignite fear within their community while they knowingly inflict trauma on the teachers, students, and families that they are paid to serve… just to avoid the accountability that walks alongside the truth… and then they call it conspiracy.
Money can not drive out darkness; money, when believed to hold power, is what drives in darkness.
Money is a social construct– just as the association between money and power is. Sure, it costs money to buy advanced systems of technology to destroy evidence of wrongdoings to cover up the abuse of children, you definitely need money to be able to do that… and it probably feels safe to hide behind that same mountain of cash because unethical people in leadership positions are connected through status… and you all know they know how the system works.
To the leaders who hurt me,
What you don’t know is how the system of love works… or at least you haven’t made the connection yet… and maybe you did at one point, but you allowed yourself to be consumed by the darkness… So, I’ll help you all out. Think of the way money and power make you feel. Now, substitute out “money and power” and add in “the safety and well-being of the people I serve.”
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?” – Martin Luther King Jr.
I believe loving yourself is equally as important as loving others. Hate is learned behavior. Disliking, even hating, parts of ourselves is a learned behavior… it was learned when someone we trusted told us we weren’t enough and needed to be something other than who we are. They made us feel like we weren’t good enough and needed to change. Those people that did or have tried to do that to us, had it done to them. Cycles don’t justify anyones behavior, cycles only help us understand that at one point in our story, right before that hurt occurred, it was truly never about us.
Think of those moments where someone made you feel like you weren’t enough. It really was always and only about them– it was never about you. However, if you learned that’s how to treat others, because that’s how you learned and that’s how you were treated… If you find yourself repeating those same cycles, stop and ask yourself, how did it make you feel? If it made you feel like crap, change it. It’s time we break the cycle of darkness that has been placed upon us by society.
We all play a role… and I know deep down every one reading this knows what I’m talking about. Those moments— those defining moments of not being enough. Don’t let the darkness of others become your darkness… and if it has, own it, and find a way to grow lighter… metaphorically speaking.
It’s time all the darkness comes out of the shadows… and for us to accept the dark stories of others, we have to understand our own.
So, the Teacher’s Guide to Valentine’s Day 2022? Choose to LOVE all the parts of you society has asked you change… that society has asked you to stripe away over the course of your life. Choose to LOVE... even if you aren’t quite sure how– do we ever truly know how to do anything? I never do. I learn as I go. We don’t have to be prepared, we only have to choose. We always have a choice in how we treat others… even when we are being traumatized, even when we’re hurting, and even once we’re healed.
with kindness | ashley
P.S– Happy 93rd Birthday to Martin Luther King JR. May you continue to inspire our world through your unwavering capacity to love people… just as they are… with the belief, that through love, any one can find the light.
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