ENOUGH IS ENOUGH/The Ghost Does Not Ache

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH/The Ghost Does Not Ache 

- When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are...

I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much. I write it down and Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free. One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away. - The House on Mango Street  

Last week I read these words out loud to my students knowing I was moving out of teaching English after 22 years. My voice shook and tears filled my eyes. 

Metaphorically? 

Teaching English is my Mango Street. My career is Mango Street. It has been a bittersweet ride that even you all don’t know half of the half of what I have endured. And now the beginning of the end is here.

Today I said goodbye to teaching English in the regular classroom for life, and 365 days from now I’ll be at the finish line if I so choose. And right now I want out a year from today. Why? 

I am very very tired.

And the hurt. 

The wounds I was healing from were re-ripped open again in ways no one should ever have to go through. But I did. Oh, how I did. 

Year 22 is over, and thankfully so. It has been the most exhausting and difficult year of my personal and professional life. Most days this semester I was barely keeping myself alive. I had people I hadn’t heard from in years checking in on me daily without me asking. I maintain my dogs and my mom kept me alive. And so did the depression I went through in my mid 30s that taught me some coping skills. 

Because what people put me through so far in 2025 and didn’t have to? 

They DID NOT HAVE TO.

I didn’t want to be alive because of THEM.  

At all. 

But then a small whirlwind of a week, several literal miracles came along—as if one of you out there demanded and screamed into the void for me: 

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. 

And in those moments I saw a smile returning and felt like maybe, just maybe, I could breathe again.  

The tears lessened but then didn’t, the depression subsided some, even though the knife kept cutting deeper and deeper, I saw a light that didn’t look like hope, but it looked like something with less pain. It was the ONLY path in the woods, not the road not taken. 

So with an incredible leap of faith that even I could not have dreamed up or imagined, and thanks to many angels including my college basketball coach and former boss Stephanie Heman, I will be finishing my Missouri teaching career as a full time science teacher and part time college English teacher—which I have been doing already for 14 years. 

Bonus? I’ll be bringing my National Geographic fellowship alive with a service project TBA in this new position. I can’t wait to see where this new path leads for my new students and community.

Friends—There is still an ache. There are nightmares who will haunt me till the day I die from this year. There is a sadness that will take months, maybe years to leave. 

But when I write, share with you or for no one, the ghost, the ache subsides. 

And when I remember my Mango Street, which walking away from is still very raw…

‘I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away.’

Today is that day. 

And my heart is full.