Saying 'It's for the kids' kept me stuck
Kept saying that sentence for three years straight. Every time someone asked why I was still teaching with no planning period, 40 IEPs, and a para who quit in November. Every time I worked through lunch or stayed until 6pm because there was no other time to call parents or finish paperwork.
'It's for the kids.'
That phrase is how they get you. It's how admin justifies cutting support staff. It's how parents justify sending emails at 9pm expecting a response by morning. It's how the system runs on your unpaid labor and calls it a calling.
I didn't realize I was stuck until I ended up in urgent care with chest pain in January. The doctor asked what my job was like and I started listing things (no bathroom breaks during the day, covering two classrooms when we had no sub, being told to 'just differentiate' for 12 different reading levels with zero resources) and she looked at me and said 'that's not sustainable.'
It sounds obvious now but I'd never heard anyone say it out loud like that.
I started actually looking at what the job required versus what I was getting paid and supported to do. I took one of those career assessment things called coached and realized I'd been defining myself by a job that was actively breaking me.
The turning point was reframing the guilt. If a job requires you to sacrifice your health to do it correctly, that's not a calling. That's just a bad job with good marketing.
I'm not saying everyone should quit. I'm saying stop letting 'for the kids' override the fact that you can't pee for six hours or that you're developing stress rashes or that you haven't had a real weekend in months.