#112 From maths teacher to a life without school, with Ruth Rinaldi in Cumbria, UK

Oh, fascinating.

Gosh, there's so much there, Ruth.

The first thing that occurs to me is it's sort of easier, isn't it, when we are already in the place of questioning of what we're doing? Because I had a similar experience and that kind of like, OK, none of this seems to be working, not for me and not for you.

And that kind of helps, doesn't it? Although it does feel like everything's falling down at that time.

Yeah, it was a big process.

It was a big process.

It felt like my life in one way crumbled, but it was a weird thing where I could constantly see the light.

It wasn't like it was crumbling and I was like, I don't, I hit rock bottom or I didn't know what to do.

But it was like dissolving identity.

It was huge.

Yeah.

There was other things going on in our lives at the time which probably didn't help.

But it's like, definitely, I vividly remember going through a process of letting go of the identity of being a teacher.

After having dedicated a lot of years to really being the best teacher I could be, I really cared about it.

I was so passionate and I worked so hard thinking that was going to be my life.

I was going to like throw everything into it.

So letting go of that was really hard.

Letting go of the vision of what I thought our life was going to look like, what our children's lives was going to look like.

Even though I could see that there was something better out the other side, you do have to let go of things.

And for me, community is so important.

I'm a very, very social extroverted person.

I get all my energy from being around other people.

And I really, I just knew that I was going to get a community from our local primary school.

Right.

Yeah, a big part of that and having to find community elsewhere.