That November night, when I found my brightest student curled up on the freezing floor of a parking garage, my heart shattered into a thousand pieces. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—and when he finally told me why he was there, I knew there was only one thing I could do. I’m 53 years old, and for more than 20 years, I’ve been teaching high school physics in Ohio. My life has been filled with other people’s children. I’ve watched thousands of students walk through my classroom doors. I’ve

I had heard plenty of horror stories about flying with a baby, but nothing—absolutely nothing—prepared me for the nightmare that unfolded when I boarded a flight from New York to Los Angeles with my 14-month-old son, Shawn. Let me tell you, this trip is burned into my memory forever. From the very second we stepped onto the plane, Shawn was crying. Not the soft kind of baby cry, but the ear-splitting wail that echoes through the narrow metal cabin and makes every passenger whip their head around to glare at

You ever get that tiny, nagging feeling that something isn’t right—but you push it away because the alternative is too painful to think about? That’s where I lived for two years. I’m 38, working 50, sometimes 60 hours a week just to keep our heads above water. My husband, Ben, 41, has been “between jobs” since 2023. Two years straight. At first I gave him grace. The market was rough. Layoffs happened. “It’s just temporary,” he’d tell me. “I’m applying every day.” I wanted to believe him so badly. But