Deeply Human People

I’ve heard people use the phrase, “The body keeps the score” in a variety of ways, but it seems to hold meaning for me lately.

This weekend I had a dream that I was relaxing in a pool with a friend. This pool overlooked a beautiful ocean, and as we floated in the pool and enjoyed the view, men in black helmets started to pop up from below the ocean’s surface…hundreds of them, and they began swimming vigorously toward the shore. Toward US.

We flew out of the pool, and I went running at full speed to go find my cat (in my dream, my cat was outside), scooped him up, and hurried to my high rise apartment (these details are not my real life, haha) where I locked the door and ran to the windows to see if I could see what was going on outside.

When I woke up, I entered my dream into AI for interpretation because it was so vivid, and I found myself curious. Here is part of what came out of that:

“One interesting aspect is that your dream doesn’t end with confrontation. It ends with observation—you’re safe inside, looking out the window. That could suggest your mind is working through uncertainty rather than predicting an outcome. Rather than saying “danger is coming,” it may reflect your brain asking, “How do I stay grounded and protect what I care about when something feels out of my control?”’

How do I stay grounded when things feel out of my control? Yes, that sounds like a question worth asking.

There have many unexpected and yet wonderful parts of this summer. There have also been really hard parts and navigating those hard parts has been, well, hard. It’s been a heavy summer, and while I’ve worked hard to stay grounded in positivity, joy, and play, my body is telling me that I’m not at my best.

I didn’t know that stress can cause people to get canker sores inside of their mouth. This paired with a chronic TMJ issue that I’ve developed and lingering fatigue and feelings of restlessness have me understanding what it means when “the body keeps the score.”

This isn’t a problem for anyone to solve. It’s something for me to be aware of and to manage. The only way out is through. I’ve got to figure out how to be OK and work through it. This past week, I saw a colleague who I adore and who I know cares about me too. When I got in my car at the end of the day and drove home from work, I had a sudden urge to ball my eyes out.

Do you know that feeling when you’ve stayed strong and held it together for a long time but then you see someone you love and who makes you feel safe, and suddenly, your walls come down and all of the emotions rush to the surface? It felt like that.

I had the honor and pleasure of writing on George Couros’s weekly “three things” newsletter this week. The heart of what I shared is that we really don’t need perfect people working in our schools. There are no perfect people. But we do need more deeply human people.

And I’m sharing today how stress is impacting me because struggle is part of the human experience.

But so is overcoming struggle. So, let’s figure out how to take care of ourselves while we take care of the work.