The Work of a Year, The Work of a Lifetime
Reflecting and Moving Forward in my Montessori Practice
When I look back on this year, I see a decade.
My Godmother, Deb, who has been my dearest and longest friend in my Montessori journey, often says in response to the typical tumult of my life journey:
“My God, Frank! You live a month of life in a weekend!”
When something particularly tumultuous occurs, I’ve been known to earn “A year in a month” on my ever-waning belt!
But when I look back on this year, I see a decade.
And yet still so much is left to be done, it seems, and when I look at the belt, I wonder where I’ll manage to carve the progress of the coming years and all the work that demands to be done.
But, I am reminded of the wonderful truth that together, as one community, we have oh so many belts, and so many hands to help in this beautiful, challenging, and priceless work.
This year opened with an invitation from God to examine what I was going to do about some very serious issues facing me down. I found in the serenely-slow snowfall of a Kentucky January a feeling of togetherness in my community of friends and chosen family, confidence in my values, and a new sense of purpose to commit to myself. Like so many, I chose to embody these feelings in a vision board for the New Year.
Flipping through pages of Teen Vogue, I came across the queen of authenticity, community, self-expression, and arguably an incarnation of God herself: Dolly Parton.
She took a clear, definitive position in that vision board, and she sang a song clearly through it;
“Darlin’, it’s your time to shine. Enough is enough! So get ready, cuz you’ve got a lot to do!”
Before I knew it, the vision board was finished in front of me, a promise hemmed in lush textiles, florals, and foreshadowed authenticity.
I could never have imagined that, in so many ways, every detail of that vision board would come true over the year that has followed.
When I look back, it surely couldn’t have just been a year ago? More unbelievable than the proximity in time, though, is how fortunate I am to be positioned to work with a greater sense of purpose than ever before in the Montessori community.
I look back on the common threads of economic justice, workers’ rights, and commitment to the principle of Belonging that have uniquely threaded through my Montessori timeline and my heart. I look back on the struggles of so many fellow Montessorians I’ve known, who continue to serve the children in their communities despite profound personal, institutional, and macrocosmic harm done to them as they work.
Looking back on it all, and looking at where I stand now, I want to send a message to my younger heart, working on his vision board on that snowy January day:
“This moment is not always. You’ll come up from that place sooner than you think. You’ll see that all along the hills you’ve been struggling to climb have been a high foundation for justice. And when you get as high as those hills will take you…
…Build higher.”
That is the message I send back to myself in the fading year, and it’s the message I commit to carrying with me into my work in this new year, and for the years to come.
I am humbled to find myself in rooms I never expected to inhabit, alongside groundbreaking, fierce individuals whose lives and work have carved paths for me without my knowing it. I am humbled by the faith, support, allyship, and friendship I have gained in our community this year from these people. The encouragement, validation, and confidence I’ve been blessed with by so many are truly precious and ever-sustaining in ways I can never fully express.
This year, I am committed to doing what I can to alchemize that support into change, action, advocacy, and collaboration with our larger community in pursuit of economic justice for Montessorians, protection for our Queer learners, families, and educators, empowerment of Montessorians of the Global Majority, and the expansion of what it means to belong to our child-centered Movement. I am committed to holding space for the truth that this work is not solitary, and that it cannot bear fruit outside of community.
I would be honored if you would join me again, here on my Substack, to hold space together for all who are in need of justice, and to learn from one another as we walk together on this path of life, each of us a part of the universe, connected in one cosmic unity, as Dr. Montessori encouraged us to do.
In peace and power,
Frank
