AxSpA Has Made Me a Calmer Person
I used to be an extremely busy, anxious, workaholic. I was a high school Drama teacher & head of my school’s Music and Drama departments. I would beam when people would say things to me like, “you thrive on anxiety” and “I could never multitask like you do,” and I felt this was a big part of the value I added to the world. In a single day I could transform my most disruptive audience members of ninth graders into a ship-shape stage crew, lead my seniors in physical theatre workshops, hold student conferences, zip up to the board office for meetings, come back and put on a student-lead show or event that had been months in the making, network with colleagues and parents, and make it home just before midnight only to get up at 5:30am the next day to do it all again. Oh, and did I mention I was pregnant?
More than a story behind the teacher burnout crisis, this is a story about how AxSpA transformed me from someone who was always on the go to someone who enjoys moving slow.
Throughout my very busy and mostly exciting but extremely stressful career as a high school arts teacher, I was no stranger to illness, fatigue, and flares, and I took pride in my ability to manage them without sacrificing too much productivity.
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