Thank you for the green wall my back pressed against when I was new, just starting to feel brave enough to share. Back then I looked across the room at a butterfly mama and her daughter. I wrote during my planning periods and left Wednesday staff meetings exhausted but grateful to come to where kindness lived. 

Thank you for all your little rooms: Earth, Water, Star, Tree, and Fire, where I gathered countless times to process story, circles, bills, and soul cards.

For the summer camps and kids’ classes, women’s circles, Girl Scouts, Stepping Stones writers, meeting spaces, and the many times I sat with you alone to catch my breath. 

Thank you for the little mouse in the trashcan and the chocolate wrappers her and her friends left behind, the laughter I hear when I’m alone, the bathroom my family needed when we didn’t have water last spring, the grounds where writing and play and treasures are found, deer bones and all. 

Dear Schoolhouse, thank you for the respite, the quiet space, the friendships, the sisters, the time. Thank you for keeping us too warm and too cold and just right all at the same time. For train sounds and rattling windows, for finding Beth and Dan, for letting Beth and then us create a space that is healing and important and hard to put into words.

You have saved many and held us well. Thank you, Dear Schoolhouse. 

~ KGS