my spiral curriculum

spiral curriculum (noun): a teaching method involving revisiting key lessons over time in different contexts, for varying applications, and with additional nuance.

I may not be a teacher anymore, but the spiral curriculum is showing itself in my life still. In no particular order, here are some old lessons I’ve learned again over the last few weeks. 

Lesson #1: You will make mistakes. And you can recover from them. 

I very recently started hosting a PBS series. Hope Givers is an incredible project with a truly inspiring mission: to share authentic stories of overcoming hardship, to uplift people from diverse backgrounds and experiences, and to support mental wellness for teens. If you know me, you know that this project is exactly the kind of work I want to be doing. 

And I was horribly late on my first day of filming. 

I repeat, my first day.

I’m not talking if-you’re-not-early-you’re-late kind of late. I’m talking two-hours-late-because-I-misread-the-call-sheet-and-drove-to-Georgia-instead-of-South-Carolina late. 

As soon as I realized my mistake (over a hundred miles away from where I should have been), I was absolutely mortified. 

How did I screw up this badly? 

Anyway, it’s obviously not the first mistake I’ve ever made — or even the most embarrassing or costly, if I’m being honest. But it still felt distinctly bad to have to face my own blatant mistake, with nothing and no one to blame but myself. 

I had two hours before I’d be on set. A past me would have spent those two hours beating myself up, bad. Another past me would have spent those two hours in numb denial. 

But I’d seen this lesson before. 

So I owned up to my mistake to the people it affected. 

I called my sister to openly process how I was honestly feeling. 

I called my boyfriend to ask him to help me make sure I was prepared, despite my nerves and anxiety. 

I showed up on set, apologized again, and got to work, determined to do the best job I could from that point forward. 

And what do you know? The crew of Hope Givers may never let me live my first impression down, but they were also exceedingly kind, gracious, and gentle with me when it mattered — and I will never forget it.

Lesson #2: It’s okay to admit things are hard for you, even if it seems like they should be easy. 

This past week, in a rare event, my boyfriend went to see his family without me, and I stayed home. 

Now, I’m extraordinarily social. I love to slow down to spend time with the people I love. But when I’m alone, that impetus disappears. The very first day I dropped him off at the airport, I kicked into high gear. From the moment I woke up to the moment I fell asleep, I was working. I was insanely focused. 

I got so much done!

And I also forgot to eat food & drink water. (You know, the things that keep me alive.) 

I opened up to a dear friend about just how embarrassed I was that I, a seemingly perfectly capable person, couldn’t remember something so fundamental, just because my routine had changed. Was I literally a Tamagotchi someone else had to remember to feed to stay alive? 

She asked if I’d considered putting a reminder in my calendar to eat meals daily. In the moment, it felt so dumb for me to have to externally remind myself to do something other people could remember to do without even trying.

But a task that's easy for other people may not be easy for you.

And a solution’s not dumb if it works. 

Lesson #3: You don’t have to do hard things alone. 

My friend didn’t just help me come up with a system that could guide me back toward balance. She listened to me so I felt heard. She texted me the next day to ask if I’d eaten lunch. She talked me away from my laptop just long enough to put on some rice so I’d have it for dinner later. 

She saw me in a pit and sat in it with me until I could see the way out.  

As my life continues on its spiraling path, I am grateful to be able to add to my personal curriculum the nuance of a warm realization:

I become better every time I let myself learn something I thought I already knew. 

To humility, honesty, and hope, 

s