The idea that our life’s work often reveals itself in unexpected ways is something I’ve seen again and again in the stories people bring to life story writing. Guided autobiography helps writers pause and reflect—not just on what they do, but why they do it, what calls to them, and how their sense of purpose has evolved over time.

In my workshops, participants write about big themes, like career or calling, often surprised by the way their stories unfold. Sometimes the path we imagined isn’t the one that leads us to meaning. Sometimes, the work we thought we wanted turns out to be a stepping stone to the work we were truly meant to do.

The story that follows is a beautiful example of this. My student begins with a dream of being a writer in Los Angeles—a dream filled with lights, cameras, and the promise of storytelling. But what she discovers instead is a calling rooted in connection, presence, and witnessing the children who are often left on the edges, unseen or unheard.

Through her journey from a TV set to a third-grade classroom, she shows us that life’s work isn’t just about ambition or success. It’s about empathy and showing up for those who need us most. Her story reminds me why I believe life story writing matters: it gives us the chance to see how the stories we tell about our work can shift, deepen, and ultimately lead us home.

Read on to hear her story.

Half Pint Was A Bitch

I have always found the ones on the edges. The kids who sat alone on the swings, half-heartedly dragging their feet through the dirt. The ones who lingered near a group but never quite stepped in. The ones who were always watching, gauging, calculating whether they belonged. I gravitated toward them.

As a kid, I sat with them at lunch. As a teenager, I found them again—this time in a preschool where I worked after school. I had never seen kids so young already marked as different. The adults spoke in hushed voices about the ones with autism, the ones who needed extra support, the ones who weren’t quite like the others. They spoke as if the children weren’t listening. But I knew they were. They always were.I understood them—not because I had the same challenges, but because I knew what it was to feel out of step with the world.

But I wasn’t going to be a teacher.I was going to be a writer.

I left for Los Angeles, chasing the dream I had carried since childhood. I imagined my name scrolling across the screen, my words spoken by actors, my stories shaping the world. I landed internships at NBC News and on the set of In Living Color, stepping into the hum of newsrooms and backlots and scripts. Then one day, they sent me to The Love Connection.

For years, I had watched from the other side of the screen, imagining it as decadent, romantic, beautiful—a world where fate brought two people together under glowing lights, where love was declared in front of an enthusiastic audience. But now I was seeing it from this side.

The "set" was a row of flimsy fold-up chairs, scuffed and squeaking under shifting weight. The glowing buttons that supposedly determined the fate of love were held together with duct tape. Audience members screamed numbers—"Three! Three! Three!"—shouting in unison to ensure the contestant picked the right match. The whole thing felt less like magic and more like a low-budget carnival trick. And I sat there, stomach hollowing, realizing what I had known all along but never let myself admit. None of it was real. 

And then, there was Half Pint. Melissa Gilbert—Laura Ingalls Wilder, from Little house on the prairie or  L H on the P as it was known in my house, the girl who made me believe in a world that was warm and good and real—came in for an interview, and I was the one helping her get set up. I couldn’t wait to meet my idol, thinking of the clever way I could tell her how I was her biggest fan, while still sounding cool and professional. And then she barely looked at me. She was Dismissive. Rushed. Cold and downright rude to me and everyone around her.  A person who had once been my symbol of kindness and warmth and belonging now moving through the world with an air of impatience, superiority and disinterest. I was heartbroken to admit it but Half pint was a bitch. 

And I knew, in that moment, that I couldn’t stay here. I was chasing a profession built on convincing people of dreams, realities and characters that weren’t real. LA was not for me. 

I went home.

L.A. left a bad taste in my mouth.  I thought I wanted to write stories, but I realized I wanted real stories, not the kind that involved producers whispering into earpieces and telling people when to laugh. So, I enrolled in graduate school in Portland and walked into a third-grade classroom as a student teacher, where my real education began. There were two kids in that class—Angelica and Cesar—who couldn’t read. The only two who couldn’t. I kept waiting for someone to say something. Hey, did you notice these two kids can’t read? Hey, should we do something about that? But no one did, not even my mentor teacher. It was as if it was expected. Maybe if no one acknowledged it, it wouldn’t actually be true. But I noticed. I sat with them, day after day, watching their fingers trace the words, watching their foreheads crease in concentration, watching their confidence hinge on the next syllable. And then, one day, it started to happen.

Their backs straightened. Their chests expanded.  they started to crack the code of language. They weren’t broken. They just hadn’t been taught, listened to, understood.  And then, just as suddenly as she had entered my world, Angelica was gone. One morning, her seat was empty. Her books sat neatly in her cubby, her name still taped to the side of her desk. I looked at the teacher. At the kids. At the seat. Nobody said a word. At lunch, I asked my mentor teacher, “Where is she?” She shrugged. “She moved.” Like she had never been there. Like it didn’t matter.

“But her stuff,” I said, feeling ridiculous, like I was the only person who seemed to believe that a child should not just disappear from a classroom like a misplaced library book. “Leave it,” my mentor said. “She’s gone.” But I couldn’t leave it.

I found the address. I drove to her house against the advice of my mentor, it was a bad neighborhood afterall. Her grandmother opened the door and looked at me the way people do when a stranger is standing on their porch holding their child’s things. Shocked. Confused. Suspicious. A little scared. “Can I help you?,” she said. It wasn’t just surprise. It was disbelief. When she realized who I was and what I was doing there. Like she had never considered the possibility that a teacher would show up. I stepped inside. I handed over her things  I sat on their worn couch and stayed for a little while and Angela sat right by my side. That was the moment I realized: kids need witnesses. Not just teachers. Witnesses. People who say, I see you. I’m here. You matter. It happened again later that year. Daniel invited me to his birthday party. It wasn’t a typical thing to do but when he told me I was the only “kid” invited, I figured i should show up. I was surprised to see that it was At a bar. I walked in and found Daniel at one end of a long table, alone except for me. At the other end sat his parents—bikers, tattoos and leather and heavy hands, surrounded by their friends. Daniel had no cousins there. No neighbors. No classmates. So, I sat next to him. I ate with him.  I watched him look up at me every so often, checking to see if I was real, if I was actually there, if I was going to stay.

I later took a job teaching Spanish reading at a Title 1 elementary school where my classroom was a portable trailer in the parking lot outside the school,l—because that’s where they put those kids. Away from the others. Teachers warned me not to teach in Spanish. It’s not what’s best. We don’t do that here.But that was what I was hired to do.

I taught them to read in their language, and then I taught them to read in English, and then I taught them to read their own world in a way no one had ever let them before. I took them to the movies because so many of them had never been. I wrote grants to take them on field trips, so they could see something—anything—beyond the four walls of their apartment complexes. And I knew, deep in my bones, that this was the work I was meant to do. But I also knew it wasn’t enough. Because for every kid I reached, there were dozens more slipping through the cracks. I needed to lead to be an advocate for kids. So I worked. I fought an studied to be  a principal something I had never envisioned and in an unlikely twist of fate I became the principal of that same school in Tualatin—the one where I had once been warned not to teach in Spanish

I thought I wanted to write stories.

But really, I wanted to rewrite the endings.

And I did.