This is part two of my interview with Rachel, about her journey to leaving her career to become a small business owner.
How did you get into this career?
I was teaching Latin to first-through-eighth graders. I have a Master’s in Classics, and I wanted to be a Latin teacher, and I taught Latin for a year. I finished one year of teaching, and I came back to the same school, and I basically had a nervous breakdown, and I just couldn’t take the stress and the overwhelm anymore. They were just piling and piling more and more tasks and duties on me as a second-year teacher. I was the main Middle School Academy leader and I was overwhelmed. I kind of had a nervous breakdown and went in and talked to my Principal and said, “I can’t do this job anymore.” I went and saw my doctor because I was suicidal and she wrote me a note saying, “I think Rachel should just work part-time,” and I took it to my principal and said, “look, you can fire me, but I can’t keep doing what I’ve been doing.” He agreed, and so I worked part-time, and right at that same moment – actually, the day that I was having my nervous breakdown I didn’t go to work. I called in sick, and I was hanging out with a good friend of mine and she said she was going to a yoga class that afternoon. I never, ever had any time to do anything for myself because I was working full-time and I was a single-parent, [but[ I could actually go to this yoga class, so I went, and it literally changed my life.
