What Eighteen Years of Working Hard and Giving Everything Actually Taught Me

June 16, 2026

Three years ago today, my business became official, when I got my LLC.

One year after I walked away from eighteen years as an educator.

One year after I stopped teaching other people's children, stopped leading teachers in a way that felt misaligned, and stopped following someone else's idea about what success actually means.

One year after I decided that it was time to figure out what impact I actually wanted to create in this world.

I did not know then that three years later I would be sitting with a clearer sense of purpose than I have ever had.

I also did not know how many cycles I would have to move through before I found what I was actually looking for.

What Teaching Gave Me and What It Cost

I spent eighteen years teaching elementary students and coaching teachers across three continents: the US, Morocco, and Taiwan. I loved it. I was genuinely good at it. And for most of those years, I had no idea how much it was costing me.

The cost was not obvious at first. I did not see it coming until my body made it impossible to ignore. I was just always available, always prepared, always the one who stayed late, gave more, figured out what was needed before anyone asked.

My classroom was a gathering place for students, colleagues, and parents, and I was glad to be the person they came to.

What nobody taught me, in any professional development, in any coaching session, in any evaluation, was how to do this work without losing myself in it.

In July 2016, I moved to Morocco. I went there to teach, but Morocco taught me something I had not been looking for.

Time moved differently there. I could get my hair done at seven in the evening. A doctor came to my house when I was sick. I could walk to the ocean. And five times a day, in the middle of a city that was loud and alive and moving, everything paused for the call to prayer.

In many ways, things were simpler there. I did not have to worry about bills or junk mail. I walked out my door and had fresh fruit and vegetables available until late in the evening. Someone parked my car for me if I could not find a spot.

And I met educators who loved the art of teaching and who loved traveling and adventure. We came from different backgrounds, countries, and cultures and our conversations went beyond surface level. We spent a lot of time together at work, socializing after work, and traveling together. There was freedom to teach creatively and as a coach and learning support, I was in and out of classrooms learning different instructional practices.

I had never lived inside that kind of rhythm. Once your body learns what ease actually feels like, it does not forget.

Coming Home to a Place That No Longer Fit

In June 2021, I moved back to the US, back home, back into my former role as a reading specialist in the same district I had left five years prior.

That homecoming was actually a wake-up call. I felt like I was in a foreign country, confined by rigid systems, the high cost of living, and everyone around me wearing their busy like a badge of honor. It was all too familiar, but a version of myself I did not want to return to. I just had not fully comprehended that yet.

I started a new reading specialist position that fall, kids and teachers returning after eighteen months of home-learning, and entered a system that had spent months talking about the importance of well-being and then returned, completely, to business as usual.

Testing. Deadlines. Everyone rushing. Everyone talking about supporting the whole child while asking teachers to do more with less and figure out the rest on their own.

Every day I entered work, my body was bracing, tense and angry in a way it had not been before Morocco. I was sitting in my car meditating before entering the building, doing calming techniques in the bathroom, going to yoga, trying to maintain my meditation practice. I felt like I was living in another world. Like I was the only one who thought this was crazy and unsustainable. I could not un-feel what five years of a different rhythm had done to my nervous system.

In June 2022, I left an eighteen year career from a school where I had no real connection, and just stepped into the unknown. No recognition, no celebration, no honoring of the years I had spent serving others. I just turned in my laptop, drove to the beach, and began my journey into the unknown.

A Different Job, The Same Cycle

I thought leaving would feel different. I definitely felt a sense of relief and freedom, but then came the questions. People I knew, people I just met, all wanting to know what I was going to do. Some people's curiosity was quite invasive and unsupportive. I felt like I had to have answers to appease them so they would just let me be at peace and figure things out.

So I spent the summer at the beach, then left for two months of traveling, so I could figure out what was next on my own, without anyone else's thoughts.

Leaving teaching just gave my patterns a new place to show up. After six months exploring, learning, networking, and interviewing, I decided to enroll in a yoga teacher training program.

I had left the productivity treadmill and stepped directly onto the wellness one. A new to-do list. Yoga. Certifications. Business coaches. Breathwork trainings. Reiki. A hundred-hour meditation training. I was consuming everything that might help me figure out what I was supposed to be doing and how to do it right.

Within a year I was running between three studios, leading my own sessions and events, freelancing, and opening my calendar to anyone who asked. I was making eleven dollars an hour on some of my offerings once the drive time, setup, and admin were factored in. I was living out of a laundry basket, too tired to cook, and fitting in a social life in the cracks between building a business.

It looked like growth, but my body knew otherwise.

Going Inward

In January 2023, I started my yoga teacher training, which was the door into really understanding my body.

As I continued to follow my curiosity, I was being drawn to understand more about our subtle, energetic body, our nervous system, and the subconscious. The more I slowed down and learned to connect on this deeper level, the more connected I became to my own body and rhythm.

Slowly, over the following months, I started to notice that the consuming was a way of staying in motion, avoiding stepping further into a leadership role in the wellness space, and trusting that I knew enough. The real question was whether I was willing to stop acquiring, start listening, and take action before I had any certainty about where it would lead.

The yoga training went inward in a way my body had been asking for since Morocco. It was the beginning of understanding that the practices I had been collecting were not the work. They were the doorway. The work was underneath them in the patterns I had been running since long before I had language for them, in the beliefs I had inherited about what it meant to give enough, be enough, do enough.

That is when the method I now use with clients started to take shape. Not from learning more practices, more modalities, more mindset work, but through living the work, actually practicing what I teach. Through my lived experience and the experiences of the people I was working with and teaching in classes.

What Three Years Actually Built

On June 16th, 2023, I filed the paperwork for my LLC. But it has really been in these last eighteen months that I have been refining and being more intentional about my time, money, and energy.

What I have been building is not another productivity system or a new set of practices to add to an already full life. It is a way of helping women go inward, specifically, to the layer where their own patterns have been running, so they can be discerning about what they actually need rather than accumulating more in the hope that something sticks.

The women who come into my world have already done a lot of work. They have the vocabulary. They have the practices. Most of them know what the nervous system is and why working with it matters.

What they are missing is someone who can see the patterns they cannot see from the inside, and a process that works with their body, not just the mind, to actually shift them. They want someone to see them as they are without judgment. They want to show up, take off their mask, and be real with someone. They want to receive the same care and attention that they give to others, so they can take care of their wellbeing and create sustainable practices that work for them and their body.

That is the framework Path to Freedom was built on. Four months, one to one, moving through four phases: Release, Rewire, Reclaim, and Restore. It is personalized, not a to-do list or something to manage. It is a way of living, a process built around your specific patterns, your specific season, your specific version of the life you have been putting off living.

What These Three Years Taught Me

I spent a long time looking outside myself for the blueprint. The right method, the right mentor, the right certification that would finally make it make sense. What I understand now is that the answers were always in my body. I just needed someone outside my patterns to help me see them and help me find my own answers.

Had I trusted that sooner, I would have moved faster. I would have been more discerning about the support I sought. I would have spent less time consuming and more time listening.

But I do not regret the path. The path unfolds on its own timeline and I trust that now. Every cycle I moved through, every season I stepped out of, every moment my body told me something I was not ready to hear, is what has created the services I provide.

Three years ago today, I started something and I am only beginning to understand what it is. If you are somewhere in the middle of your own version of this, the treadmill that used to work, the life that no longer fits, the practices that help a little but never quite stick, I would love to talk.

You can learn more about Path to Freedom here or send me a message directly. The next conversation starts wherever you are.

Kim Brooks is a somatic practitioner and Reiki Master based in Maryland. After eighteen years teaching and coaching in elementary schools across three continents, she now works with women in service-oriented roles who are done collecting practices and ready to go inward to the layer where their patterns actually live, in their body.