Labor Day weekend always has been a major holiday for me because I taught high school English for many years. The start of the new school year began after Labor Day, but educators were obligated to attend events prior to the weekend. Thus, getting away for one last summer fling wasn’t in the cards. One year I had to miss the first two days of school (with permission from my Supt.) because I flew out to California with my son who was beginning graduate school across the country. To say it was a turning point in our lives is an understatement. To say retirement from teaching was a turning point also is an understatement. Both events introduced new terrain, unchartered territory, and forced a pause from daily planning and chaos that new school year can create.

I remember coming to the Cape the last two weeks of August by myself while my husband stayed in NY to work. He’d drive up on the weekend and I attempted to enjoy and revel in the newness of retirement. How’d that go? Honestly, it was very difficult to relax. I attempted to read a novel not assigned to my students. I attempted to ride a bicycle after many years. I attempted to be mellow and introspective more than being very active and retrospective. I had great difficulty allowing myself to just be. I felt some levels of guilt that I should be doing something more productive than laying in the sun, sitting, or walking and biking around doing seemingly “nothing.” This unanticipated conundrum inspired me to write a blog about my experience, but I grew bored with that, also, once I figured out that I’d be okay.

We sometimes are very hard on ourselves when we confront substantial changes. I thought I’d float right through this life shift. After teaching for fifteen years, I was more than ready to put down my pen and say farewell to the profession I love. The last year of teaching and preparing eleventh graders for the Regents was the toughest yet. I foolishly thought I’d be unaffected by students’ apprehension, resistance, and flagrant shows of disrespect. After all, they needed me to help them pass the somewhat rigorous test. However, they appeared to be testing me. On one day after a surprise revolt in one class, I walked over to my colleague’s classroom and burst into tears. How dare they challenge me when I’m trying to help them succeed? I’d refused to give them the questions along with the reading comprehension sample because NYS had made the test even more rigorous. Students had to strengthen their inferencing skills which needed in a very close reading. In other words, the answers weren’t direct and easily available. Students had to think and evaluate the reading.

One female student began protesting and others joined in. My ability to otherwise manage classroom behavior fell apart. I spent my free time and hours after school calling parents to say that I could not guarantee their students would pass because their child refused to participate in the lesson. The next day, students entered the classroom without making eye contact. Surely, this experience and reactions were not what I’d have chosen, but they had made their bed, so to speak.

Of course, I was mature and wise enough to know what was really going on with their misdeeds. There is a myriad of reasons why students act out—hunger, fear, emotional distress, cognitive disabilities, and problems at home are a few. I remember I’d told myself that I was not going to care how they did on the test. After all, I’d be gone and wouldn’t need to worry about their successes or failures. I repeated that mantra to myself daily, but I just could not do it. I could not stop caring about them and their success. I can laugh now at how angry I was at myself for caring. How ridiculous that now sounds. Of course, during Regents week, several of the non-compliant students visited me to go over test criteria and works of literature they could write about. Obviously, I was happy they reached out and I was happy to help.

Sometimes I think of that time and how realizing and appreciating my psychic abilities may have helped during those tough times. I could have infused more empowerment and light psychically and perhaps it would have calmed down the conundrums. I could have psychically attempted to sooth their triggered alarmed minds and offered a peaceful balm. And, I surely could have calmed myself down and offered a lot of empathic self-love to myself. More wouldas-couldas-shouldas in life on which we can reflect.

Now that I can utilize my psychic understanding and insight, these former tensions could have been the calm knowing we experience when we receive messages of chaos or massive changes that may occur. Rather than feeling rudderless or shocked, we can prepare for the possibilities that may arise out of dysfunction, unhappy or sad endings, and some stark unexpected surprises. Trust that surprises still occur for psychics. We can’t and don’t know everything beforehand. But we can achieve helpful insight for the reasons behind mishaps which can then garner forgiveness and assistance in dealing with strife. I would have liked to look into my future to see what lay beyond the restlessness I felt that first Labor Day on Cape. I would have learned that new beginnings would be exciting and uneasy growth measures that would help me learn more about myself and my relationship with others. I’ve utilized psychics for many years but the insight I could have gained on my own would have been invaluable. Oh well. Better late than never! I encourage readers to practice psychic meditation to see how you may connect with spirit guides, angels, and ancestors who want to offer encouragement and protection. I’m very grateful to mine for being by my side and whispering their invaluable insight and cautionary messages into my ears.

Thank you for reading… and peace to you on this long holiday weekend and in the seasons ahead.