October Has Been a Teacher—Lessons From the Fall
I’ve said this on repeat to myself more than once this month:
This October has been a teacher and a healer.
As a teacher by education and experience, and as a mother by vocation, I’ve long believed that we are our children’s first and lasting teachers. I’ve had the privilege of guiding two of mine through their education at home these last several years. That “formal” chapter will come to an end in May when my youngest graduates and prepares to launch toward her next home away from home.
My heart aches a bit as I begin gathering the textbooks and teacher manuals that have carried us through these past several years of homeschooling the girls. There have been moments when it didn’t go as I had hoped—lessons that unraveled, days when learning looked more like perseverance than progress. I grieve that a little—yet even in the imperfect, I can see how much love and life have been poured into this season of teaching and being taught, side by side.
This season is slowly coming to an end.
Like a Psalm, there is both lament and praise—grief for what is passing and gratitude for what has been. The tears come easily when I think of the lessons that went unfinished, the books left open, the laughter that filled our kitchen-turned-classroom, and the quiet grace that carried us through days heavy with more than academics. We were handed unexpected challenges—tests that reached far beyond Physics and Algebraic equations.
There were times when others quietly wondered/questioned why I would continue to homeschool in the middle of such hardship—amid illness, grief, and the constant unpredictability of our days. But the heart of the matter was never just academics. The deeper lessons—the ones taught by time, suffering, and experience—would have been lost in a more traditional setting. Home became both classroom and sanctuary, a place where learning was interwoven with healing. I do not regret the decision to stay the course. It was exactly what my children needed, and what my own heart needed, too.
“Education is a matter of the heart.”
St. John Bosco
There’s a holy rhythm to it all—the teaching, the learning, the letting go. The Lord has been present in every chapter, even the ones that felt incomplete. And as this season turns, I’m learning, once again, that endings and beginnings often arrive hand in hand.
Much of this month, I’ve spent sorting through the chapters of our lives. It’s struck me how the last decade has been filled with medical trials and seasons of deep endurance: my oldest daughter’s hearing loss and two cochlear implant surgeries, my third child’s broken jaw and lengthy recovery, my son’s and my youngest daughter’s broken bones, my father’s illness and death, my mother’s declining health, and, hardest of all, my husband’s brain cancer, stroke, and eventual passing and then the loss of a life-long pet.
In the midst of it all, closets filled, boxes overflowed, and corners of life went untouched—left behind as we tended to the more urgent work of survival. Now, as I sort through those layers of “undone” life, I can feel both the weight and the grace of it. Healing rarely arrives in big renovations; it comes through quiet, unseen repair—one cleared shelf, one tended heart at a time.
There have been moments this month when it all felt too heavy, when I thought I might crumble under the magnitude of it. But not facing it would only stifle the healing. And so, I’ve pressed in—through the shame, the guilt, the imagined judgment of those who will never understand this kind of disarray. The enemy loves to whisper lies in those places. Devil, get behind me.
Looking back over the past 10 years, it makes perfect sense that life felt discombobulated and disorganized. Walk a mile in the shoes of anyone who has faced just one of those life-altering or tragic events, and you’d understand.
Recently, in conversation with someone we just met, we shared a little of our story—the why behind the rust and the rebuilding. It’s not just the grief of losing my husband and partner; it’s the ache of losing my mom too, of not being able to see her for almost a year because of pandemic restrictions. And the ache of all of the losses and little time to grieve one from the next as we kept going.
Before that, I saw her multiple times a week—sometimes just for a quick visit, other times bringing her to our home for a full day. Jon and I hoped to make space for her to live with us someday, but life didn’t allow it. Still, she was deeply loved, and I know she knew it. Jon and my son often drove her back to her apartment at the end of those visits—small, ordinary acts that revealed big hearts. Once Jon was diagnosed and after she left us, he often reflected on life. He would say how much he loved doing that for her. He was grateful for the timeShe had been a nurse, even a hospice nurse, and he a Physician Assistant—their medical banter always filled me with quiet joy.
Oh, the memories October has stirred in me. Oh, the things it has kindled in me.
The memories of what was, the ache of what could have been, and the wonder of what will be are all teachers. So is clinging to gratitude for the life I’m still creating with these scattered pieces.
Maybe you’re doing that too—gathering what remains, sorting through pieces of your own story, learning to see grace in the places still being rebuilt. If so, take heart. You are not behind; you are becoming.
I’m learning that life can still stretch wide with beauty, even as it grows around the gaping holes of loss I still carry. That’s the healing part. Learning that gratitude and grief can coexist.
Life is far too short; we must live the best we can and give all we can, especially while using our creative gifts. I believe those gifts are sacred invitations—ways God asks us to reflect His beauty in the world, even through the cracks of what’s been broken. They’re not meant to be hidden away—they’re how we love, how we heal, how we leave traces of light behind for others to find when their days grow dim.
It’s feels like a small grace that I joined The Well-Read Mom book club halfway through last year. The theme then was Father, and I learned much, only magnifying what I already know about what it means to be a beloved daughter in relation to the father figure.
I was thrilled when I learned this year’s theme was The Teacher. It feels especially fitting for this teacher at heart in this season.
This month’s book, Persuasion by Jane Austen, holds such quiet wisdom. In the companion guide, it’s noted — and I’ve found it true in life as well — that Austen’s characters often grow through time, suffering, and experience, which become their greatest teachers.
Our sufferings, our experiences, our time—they are the best teachers.
heather lebano
That feels true for me, too. October has offered me time, stirred memories of suffering, and drawn meaning from experience. Quite honestly, my life has done this, too. It was noted in the companion that not all characters (in the book, notice this) notice this in life. I am grateful for the lessons I have learned in challenging moments in life, including this month. In facing the weight of it all, I’ve found a strange freedom—like releasing burdens into God’s hands and watching Him rebuild the hollowed and hallowed spaces within me.
I keep thinking about the liminal spaces I wrote about earlier this month and in the past. Those in-between places where life feels suspended, but unseen healing begins. They are the quiet thresholds where grace keeps working while I’m still in motion, gently stitching together what was once torn. October has revealed many of them. Let’s call it lessons from the fall.
As the autumn sun settles lower in the sky and the leaves drift softly across the yard, I’m not rushing to gather them. I’m learning to linger—to slowly embrace all that this season offers in its quiet invitation to let go.
“Blessed are those who hope in the Lord.
He is like trees planted near running water,
That yields fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.”—Psalm 1
In time, I will gather what’s needed, just as I’ve been sorting and placing memories into their rightful spaces. They no longer feel like baggage, but like the beginnings of something being rebuilt—pieces forming slowly into what’s still becoming.
I lamented with my son this past week for his heartache in certain moments and for wishing I could have been more attentive to a particular situation he had to experience in the midst of losing his dad. Forgive me, son. Forgive me, Father. Help me forgive myself.
His response touched me deeply. He said, “These experiences, the sorrow, the time—they were all part of my journey to get where I am. Where we are. I can see God’s hand in all of it.”
And in that moment, I could too. God was in the details, in the teaching, in the noticing, in the becoming.
Perhaps this is what it means to live in that holy tension—half agony, half hope—trusting that God is present in both.
Our sufferings, our experiences, our time—they are the best teachers.
October…she has been the best of all of them.
A teacher. A healer.
A reminder that God continues to meet me in every fallen leaf and mended place.
May we trust that the same God who teaches through time, suffering, and experience is also gently rebuilding what’s still becoming within us.
May your October be a teacher and a healer. too
“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
L.M. Montgomery
