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Episode 195: Hi, It’s Daphne. I’m Back.
I’m your host, Daphne Gomez. And yes — it’s really me.
I’ve been back leading Teacher Career Coach since mid-August 2025, about 16 months after I stepped away. I knew this episode was coming. I just kept putting it off because I knew it was going to be hard to get through.
So I used the time since coming back to write new content, do research, and reach out to CEOs and hiring managers I know. But before any of that, I wanted to record this.
If you’re newer here: hi. I’m the original founder of Teacher Career Coach. I left in May 2024 to take care of my family — and myself.
A quick trigger warning: This episode talks about birth injuries and children with serious medical conditions. If that’s hard for you right now, feel free to skip to around the 15-minute mark, where I talk about what’s changing with the business.
Where I’ve Been
In my departure announcement, I shared that my twin daughters were born extremely premature — at exactly 30 weeks. We spent 79 days in the NICU. That alone was traumatic in ways I still struggle to describe. We left our daughters behind every single day, not knowing when we’d bring them home.
When I left, things were still very uncertain. I kept the announcement vague, and most people were kind enough to respect that. The outpouring of support from this community — especially from parents who had their own NICU stories — meant more than I can say. Thank you.
Here’s what I’m ready to share now.
At 26 weeks pregnant, we found out one of our daughters had a serious heart defect and would need open heart surgery. A few weeks later, I was unexpectedly hospitalized and put on emergency bedrest in a high-risk prenatal ward until I delivered.
The birth was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I still have PTSD. Our doctors described it as one of the hardest deliveries of their careers.
Four days after she was born, our daughter — the one with the heart defect — was rushed by ambulance from the NICU to the children’s hospital. That’s when we found out she had suffered a spinal cord injury at birth. Her legs are permanently paralyzed.
For a long time, I couldn’t talk about any of this. I was in shock. I was in grief.
I want to be careful here. Sharing our story requires a delicate balance, because my daughter never signed up to be an ambassador for pediatric spinal cord injuries. That’s something I think about constantly as a parent and as a disability advocate. If you want to learn more about this community, I’d point you to the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation — it’s an incredible resource, especially since September is Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month.
What I was grieving — what I’m still working through — is the world that wasn’t built with her in mind. The barriers she’ll face. The fights we’ll have to fight. A society that places limitations on a child with limitless potential.
What I Was Already Carrying
I want to be honest: I was already burning out before any of this happened.
Under normal circumstances, the problems at Teacher Career Coach would have been, as Marie Forleo says, “figureoutable.” I had consultants, plans, a path forward. But then came the pregnancy complications, the NICU, the diagnosis. I had zero bandwidth left for anything else.
I tried to hold on for a couple of months. The smallest things would send me over the edge. I hit some of my lowest points.
So when I made the announcement to step away, I meant it. I wasn’t planning to come back. I couldn’t plan anything. Most days I wasn’t taking it a day at a time. I was taking it minute by minute.
A few days after I left, our daughter had open heart surgery. She hadn’t reached the size the doctors were hoping for, but it was time. I am so grateful to tell you: the surgery went well. Everything in regards to her heart continues to go well.
Coming Back to Myself
Part of me thought: just get back to work, don’t talk about this, just focus on everyone else. I decided not to do that.
Here’s why: I’m not the same person who left. My morals and values are the same.
But I’ve been through something that changed me in ways I’m still figuring out. I’m in a chapter filled with twists and unknowns, and like many of you, I’m a whole person with a whole life beyond my career.
I’ve grown to hate phrases like “everything happens for a reason.” They minimize the kinds of pain that don’t really heal, the kind that just becomes something you carry differently over time.
But I’ll say this: the last few months have genuinely been better with more happy days than hard ones. And a huge reason for that is that I’m raising two of the most ridiculously cute, silly, determined little girls in the world. They’re almost two, they hold hands, they hug each other (sometimes a little too hard), they’re obsessed with dogs and Ms. Rachel. They ask to hear La Bamba approximately one thousand times a day, and their dad plays it for them on guitar every single time they ask. I feel so lucky to be their mom.
The Last Big Challenge
Before I could fully come back, there was one more thing on the horizon.
Our daughter was accepted into an inpatient therapy program specializing in pediatric spinal cord injuries. Because of how rare this is, we had to relocate — living at a hospital across the country, away from friends, family, and any sense of normal — for an entire month.
Our family was split: one parent in the hospital room, the other at the Ronald McDonald House with her twin sister. We couldn’t have full-time jobs. We barely saw each other for an hour each night.
During that month, I spent a lot of time thinking. About my family. About the future. About the state of the world, the budget cuts, the legislation, the vulnerable populations at risk. I doomscrolled. I worried.
But I also channeled some of that anger into action. I phone-banked to help people contact lawmakers about Medicaid. I volunteered with nonprofits, helping with marketing and operations strategy. My husband and I even started sketching out a small business idea for our local community.
And then, a few days before discharge, something unexpected happened.
One of the hospital staff members pulled me aside. She said she’d known who I was from day one — she and a colleague had recognized me — but they hadn’t said a word. They worked in the Child Life department. (Which, honestly, makes a lot of sense — former teachers everywhere.)
She said she thought I should know how much Teacher Career Coach had meant to her colleague. But she hadn’t said anything because she wanted me to just be a parent.
That hit me like a ton of bricks.
She was right. If I’d known someone recognized me, I would have been self-conscious about things that were completely irrelevant — my appearance, my composure. For a month I wore the same dirty clothes and slept on a hospital couch. There were days I couldn’t make small talk with anyone. I just wanted to make that month as normal as possible for my daughter.
And a former teacher — instinctively — knew to give me that space.
Why I Came Back
When we got home, the stars aligned and conversations started about me returning to lead Teacher Career Coach.
I kept thinking about the village that carried us through the hardest year of our lives. The NICU nurses. The social workers. The families at the Ronald McDonald House. The parents in the spinal cord injury community who spent hours on the phone with me just so I’d feel less alone. Business mentors who let me ramble through ideas. Strangers who showed up in exactly the right moments.
Your village isn’t always the people who know you best. It’s the people who show up when you need them most.
When I was doing all that soul-searching on a hospital couch at 2 AM, I thought about all the directions I could go. I was close to launching a whole new website to help nonprofits. And maybe someday I still will.
But the universe kept pulling me back here. And I think I finally understand why.
Teacher Career Coach is one of my favorite places on the internet. It’s big-hearted people helping other big-hearted people navigate something really hard. That community helped me when I needed it most. How could I not come back to it?
What’s Changing
A few things are different now, and I want to be upfront about them.
On the job market: I won’t sugarcoat it. As I’m recording this in September 2025, the market is hard. Funding cuts have hit nonprofits, Ed-Tech, and other sectors many of you are targeting. I don’t have all the answers yet. I’m heads-down in research, talking to CEOs and hiring managers, trying to get an honest picture.
What I know: there are still former teachers getting hired. This doesn’t mean put your plans on hold. But it does mean strategy matters more than ever — and for some of you, it may mean staying in the classroom longer than you’d like while you build toward a better moment.
My goal has always been to help you make the best decision for your specific situation. That hasn’t changed.
Please take the survey. I created a 2025 job market survey specifically for former teachers — not just to find out if you got a job, but how your years in the classroom translated to salary, whether your role feels sustainable long-term, and how AI is reshaping things. Your answers directly shape what I create. If you know other teachers or former teachers who’d be willing to share their experience, please pass it along.
One Last Thing
I couldn’t figure out where to put this in the episode, so I’m just putting it here: a resource that genuinely helped me during some of my darkest moments is called Special: Antidotes to the Obsessions That Come with a Child’s Disability. Fair warning — it has a lot of four-letter words. But if you or someone you love is going through something similar, it might be exactly what you need.
Thank you for being part of this community.
Thank you for letting me be a human. For letting me step away when I needed to. For welcoming me back.
I’m really glad to be here again.
Talk to you next week.
