New Beginnings Stem from Treasured Roots

I cannot believe it’s been a year since I checked in here on the blog. In the same breath, of COURSE I understand why I haven’t been writing here with any regularity! Life has been careening at lightspeed since the onset of the pandemic, 2 whole YEARS ago, and we are STILL just hanging on tightly while being whisked around tight corners, up and down steep hills and in and out of dark tunnels and blindingly bright spaces all, sometimes, in the span of just one week. This is the only part of it all that I absolutely do consider to be the “new norm”, as nothing at all else is, well, normal!

Today I sit at my desk in Sonoma, sending out emails containing guidance and new health protocols and precautions we will all take in face of the post-spring-break surge in cases. Sigh.

While I am so grateful and inspired by our happy, healthy, and successful return to campus this school year, I am still haunted by the lingering pandemic and how out-of-ultimate control I actually am in this crazy world! This is not a comfortable place for me. I suspect most mothers, eldest siblings, heads of households, and business owners probably share this discomfort with me when faced with things we cannot control. It can be really hard and even scary. But, I have also learned this year that the messy, seemingly out-of-control wind tunnel I find myself being sucked into at times, can actually sometimes spit me right out in a wonderful place that isn’t all that scary or foreign after all! Let me explain…

LPJ nestled into its current Marin location at Red Hill Church in San Anselmo in 2014. We started with Mommy & Me and after-school classes and camps and, after many hardworking months, triumphantly acquired our license to open our precious preschool. Since then, we enjoyed a period of blissful growth and were blessed by warm and wonderful families and staff that truly believed in our nurturing and fun language immersion mission. In 2020, things all changed. While we were abruptly being closed down due to an emerging pandemic, our property and place of solace was also changing hands. Our familiar church would merge with a new church and the property would ultimately change hands. While nothing was really supposed to change all that much for the preschool, inevitably, things did. Plans were made to renovate the building and campus (a necessary but inconvenient truth), taxes went up by 2000% (YIKES!), and we were still bobbing and weaving our way through the financial and logistical obstacles stemming from COVID and having been closed for a whole year. Things were hard. Hard to navigate and plain hard to swallow! It seemed everything was just really aimed to topple all we had so lovingly worked hard for over the course of the last decade. But, that wreckless wind was simultaneously unearthing some old roots that would soon lead to a new and healthy branch of LPJ.

While I reluctantly found myself in search of a new home for our LPJ Marin preschool, I was in contact with an old friend and colleague with whom I’d received my ECE and admin credential alongside. She too was a preschool director now and was experiencing some of the same pandemic challenges that I was. Through our supportive conversations, we were able to make a plan to partner up in the new year. She had extra space to fill, which was just what I needed! And it wasn’t just any space, it was the very location where we had spent so many months together as students and as teachers-in-training at the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary and its lab preschool. This was also the place where I met Ms. Christi, our present Administrative Director, as she was my then professor and the director of that preschool that gave me my first experiences as a professional early childhood educator. This sense of camaraderie and familiarity was such a warm and welcoming sensation. It felt like going HOME. This spcial location on top of one of the most pictureque hilltops in maybe all the world, where so many of my formative teaching moments and relationships were born, would become our safe landing place after a stormy year of uncertainty.

Flash forward to today, and while I am still begrudgingly sending out COVID protocols, I am also updating our website and arranging tours with current and new families who will fill our future Mill Valley classrooms! I could have never imagined that in those moments that I felt so lost and beaten down, that the Universe (in my case, God) was allthewhile planning to draw me back to some of my strongholding and treasured roots.

This spring season, a vibrant new branch of LPJ is sprouting up in a beautiful place and I couldn’t be more grateful or awestruck. If you too are a bossy, control-clinging soul like me who finds herself in an uncomfortable and wayward place, I encourage you to keep following your True North. Don’t give up. Have faith that even the messiest of circumstances can lead to an unexpected and lovely renaissance!