Tuesday, October 4, 2011

We are only as great...

...as those we surround ourselves with.

Today we were told, in a closed after-school meeting, that our admin to our principal was moving to another school. We all assumed that since the principal hadn't put boxes of tissues on all the tables that we weren't in for bad news. But it was bad news. Really, really bad news.

See, our school isn't just a community. We're family.

It didn't happen by chance, either. There's some good chemistry, for sure, but our family was forged by tragedies that bound us together in grief that no one else shared as intimately as we shared with each other. In the course of three years we lost a student to cancer, battled breast and colon cancer with two co-workers, grieved the loss of a teenage daughter from an accident, journeyed through infertility and were later devastated by the loss of the miracle baby three weeks from delivery.

Instead of mourning alone, we pulled together. There is strength in numbers, and it was all we could do to hold together so that we could weather the storms. But we did weather them, and while I would take back every single tragedy in a heartbeat, I can only admire the love and support that was born out of them.

So losing a co-worker isn't something we take lightly. Not a dry eye in the house, and no tissues on the tables.

We are really only ever as great as those we surround ourselves with. Maureen is one of the reasons we can achieve what we do with our children.

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