Our Mental Health, Our Sovereignty: A Reflection in 4 Parts

There are renegade squash growing in the lot next to our house.
After months of being subjected to unhealthy yet normalized portions of systemic racism, discriminatory housing practices, and doses of humiliation by realtors and appraisers, we were finally deemed suitable to purchase a home in the hood. Alas, I love my house. I refer to it as my hood sanctuary.  While I adore it, I also hate what has historically happened to the street and my neighborhood, which also happens to consist of homes, businesses, and land overwhelmingly owned by suitable white people. We’ve asked our state-sanctioned port authority several times now to be considered to purchase the lot next door. The answer is always some version of no, as we’ve yet to be deemed suitable in their eyes.

Over the past four years, many remote workers quickly learned the psychological benefits of facing a window while busy at their desks, staring endlessly into their monitors populated by even smaller windows of people facing their own windows while in their remote boxes. Science tells us that viewing nature outside helps us feel relaxed and less restricted. 

I remember sitting at my desk on a Zoom call with "important" people who needed to hear "important" justifications about why DEI was so important. Meanwhile, from the window, I watched my son happily leave the confines of our home to get fresh air without a mask and walk to a small park at the end of our block.  As I watched him cross the lot, it slowly dawned on me just how much red he wore. The hat, the shirt, and the matching gym shoes slowly distorted my relaxing, unrestricted view, making it one of impending doom and terror.  I was hijacked by my own complex trauma and rendered useless in that "important" meeting that day with "important" people, and left early to retrieve my son from his leisurely walk outside.

This was yet another instance of me as a Black woman and mother simply needing a reprieve and a bit of grace to regulate my nervous system. Yet, many of us are not always able to articulate the embodied impact of trauma or convince others of the insidious nature of systemic racism.  

I’m amazed daily by the complexities we carry while trying to do a good job and be valuable employees.  We overly concern ourselves with demonstrating grace and courtesy to give our administrators and classroom observers the sense that we are practicing pure Montessori and have high fidelity, peaceful classrooms. We find minimalist virtual backgrounds that tell the world we’ve made it and somehow we can be unbothered by the realities outside our windows.

On this fourth and last week of National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, I reflect on how easily we outwardly espouse our capacity and commitments to teaching practice and pedagogy. Montessori organizations make many performative claims of their ability to prepare liberatory learning products and environments for its community while simultaneously being led by people who struggle to claim authority over their own mental health and personal lives.  

That squash plant that grows outside my window in the lot next door isn’t doing anything miraculous. After all, we learn in preschool what seeds need to grow. What makes it a renegade in my eyes is the unconventional way it makes itself known; its willfulness speaks to me, and a person didn’t purposely plant it, that's what makes me smile. Even amongst the countless obstacles of its environment, such as the toxic waste and broken glass that deplete the soil, the context needed for a life-giving harvest and climate resilience, it still has found a way to grow. 

Nature is still out here winning y’all, and it can happen right outside our windows and in our neighborhoods, whether rural, suburban, gated, or gang-affiliated.

My Montessori approach and practice are intentionally grounded in restoring mental health and well-being while unapologetically reclaiming the authority we have over our lives. As educators, we are committing to a very complex and political struggle each day. The aim of our profession is critical, and while at times it seems beyond the compass or scale, I’m asking myself how my commitment to sovereignty will save me. How it can soothe my psyche, and allow me to truly serve and get out of the way as our young people save humanity.     

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