Self-Compassion for Educators: The Blog Post That Was Late (And Why That's Okay)

The last post in this series was supposed to go out Thursday morning.

It didn't go out until Saturday night.

If you follow along here regularly, you might have noticed. Or you might not have. Either way, I want to tell you why, because I think the reason matters more than the deadline ever did.

A Week I Didn't Plan For

This has been one of those weeks.

Not a dramatic one. Not a crisis. Just a full one, the kind that arrives quietly and asks more of you than you expected to give.

It's been school holidays, which on its own is enough to fill every spare hour. I've also been fighting an awful cold and flu bug, the kind that makes even ordinary tasks feel twice as hard. And in the middle of all of it, I've been doing what most of us do without ever really clocking it as work: simply trying to keep up with being a mum to a very busy six-year-old.

And then Friday came.

Friday was three years since my dad died.

I don't say that for sympathy. I say it because it's true, and because pretending it wasn't sitting underneath everything else this week would be dishonest, and honesty is the whole point of this blog.

Three years.

Long enough, I thought, that I would feel it coming. That I would see the date approaching and brace myself accordingly.

But this year, it snuck up on me completely.

I didn't consciously clock it. I just knew something felt off. I was snippy. I was snappy. I was short-tempered and overly emotional in ways that didn't quite add up, not until Wednesday night, when I was doom-scrolling and a memory popped up on my Facebook.

Three years ago, on that exact day, I had changed my profile picture to one of me and my dad.

I changed it because three years ago, I drove from Kongorong, South Australia, to the Sydney Adventist Hospital, hoping I would reach him before he passed.

Dad was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer five days before I had Addy, back in April 2020. He went through chemo, surgery, radiation, and everything in between, before going into remission. Then in February 2023, it came back. Not just back. It was through him, everywhere, and he underwent further treatment, though if I'm honest, I couldn't tell you exactly what that treatment was. Somewhere in the middle of it, he developed pneumonia.

He passed less than a week later, in July 2023.

So when it came down to a choice between finishing this post on schedule or giving myself space for what Friday actually was, I chose myself.

That choice, more than anything else, is what self-compassion for educators actually looks like in practice.

Choosing Yourself Is Not the Same as Letting Yourself Down

I want to sit with that sentence for a moment, because I know how easily it can be read the wrong way.

Choosing myself did not mean I stopped caring about this work. It did not mean the series stopped mattering to me, or that you stopped mattering to me.

It meant I finally practised the thing I have spent this entire series writing about.

Wellbeing First, the very first pillar of this framework, reminded us that we cannot keep pouring into others if our own well is running dry. I wrote those words months ago. I believed them then. But belief and practice are two very different things, and this week asked me to actually live what I had only written.

And Lift Each Other Up, the pillar we just finished exploring together, taught us that lifting someone up rarely looks grand. It looks like showing up, quietly and consistently, for the people who need it.

What I hadn't fully considered, until this week, is that sometimes the person who needs you to show up quietly and consistently is yourself.

Self-Compassion for Educators Is Also a Form of Lifting Yourself Up

We talk a lot, in this profession, about supporting others. Checking in on colleagues. Noticing when someone has gone quiet. Following up, showing up, meeting people where they are.

We are far less practised at doing any of that for ourselves.

I could have pushed through this week. I could have sat down on Wednesday night, right after that memory surfaced, or forced myself through it Thursday morning regardless, and made this post happen on schedule anyway, because a deadline is a deadline and I don't like letting things slide.

But what would that have actually proven?

That I could perform consistency even when it cost me something I couldn't afford to lose.

Instead, I gave myself the same thing Di once gave me. I met myself where I was. Not where I wished I was. Not where a content calendar said I should be. Exactly where I was, on a day that deserved to be exactly what it was.

That is grace. That is self-compassion for educators, not as a slogan on a poster, but as something lived out in the middle of an ordinary, difficult week.

And grace, it turns out, is also a way of lifting yourself up.

A Small Shift in How I See “Late”

I used to see a missed deadline as a failure of discipline.

I am starting to see it differently now.

Sometimes a late blog post is not evidence that something has gone wrong. Sometimes it is evidence that something has gone right. That you noticed what you needed. That you asked for it. That you gave it to yourself, even when it was inconvenient, even when it meant disappointing a schedule nobody but you was really watching.

That post ended up two days later than planned.

I am not sorry for that.

I am, if anything, a little proud of it. Because it means the framework I have spent four posts writing about is not just something I teach. It is something I am still learning to live, one imperfect week at a time.

Reflection Question

Where in your own life could you offer yourself the same grace you would offer someone else without a second thought?

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

💙 Rachel Smith

The Educators Well

Wellbeing First • Empower Through Learning • Lead With Purpose • Lift Each Other Up