classroom.wellness.essentials

I am so honored you are allowing time to stop for a moment and read this page.  I’m Jade.

Me, in Melbourne. Loving life!

And this is my little passion project, my hub of curiosity and readings and place for me to collect my thoughts, share my love of essential oils and perhaps, maybe, just maybe help someone else feel a little less alone.

I am a teacher and obsessed with balancing work and life.  The strong pull to achieve at work with the strange sensation of time running out in this role I cherish as a mother to two sons and one daughter.

My boys are non-neuro typical.  I’d never heard that term until their diagnosis (anxiety and ADHD) even as a teacher, but now it’s quite the buzzword and certainly, it helps me just to keep in mind when assisting them (I am their executive functioning personal assistant).

I also have anxiety. I know. Doesn’t everyone these days?  Well… I don’t think so.  I believe a lot of people say they do, but they confuse it with stress and overwhelm.  let me tell you anxiety is not the same.  It’s different for all who have it but for me anxiety feels like my blood rushing, particularly in my arms and a feeling of forgetting something, but I feel it in my chest, and it won’t go away till the storm has passed… and then it turns out there is nothing I’ve forgotten at all, it was just anxiety eating at my core.

I’ve always been an over-thinker but anxiety hit me in the last 10 years, set off by a trying time in my role as a stepmother.  It got worse with other pressures to the point where I needed to take medication.

I was okay with that because then I could breathe. One pill a day for about 3 years and I could exist without my arms being on fire and on the edge of tears.  In the last 7 months I have transitioned off medication, though I am a strong advocate for its benefits if required and I keep a script handy at all times.

My transition is down to four things:

1. A change of work conditions.  I hadn’t realized I was drowning until I could breathe again at work.
2. Food changes (I’ll explain that in time).
3. Semi-regular meditation (I say semi just to make myself feel better when I miss a day or two)
4. Essential oils (more explanation coming but know this, they didn’t cure me, I make no such claims, instead I believe they support my ongoing wellbeing.)

So, there you have it.  This blog/page will be about all of that … a little (okay probably a lot) on supporting non-neuro typical kids from a mothering point of view but also in the classroom, a little on teacher and student well-being to create best learning practices, and a whole lot of in between as I walk the tightrope, trying to balance it all and spread some knowledge along the way!