My brain woke me at 3am with a mental inventory of everything I needed to accomplish before students arrived. Despite taking my medication responsibly, despite doing everything I’m supposed to do for stability, my subconscious was apparently aware of my to-do list in ways my conscious mind preferred to ignore.

This is the paradox of September for educators with mood disorders: the start of the school year requires hypomania. There’s no other way to handle the intensity, preparation, and emotional labor of receiving 87 young humans into your care. Summer moves slowly, deliberately, like honey. September demands the rapid-fire energy of a manic episode, except you have to harness that energy without losing your stability. With schools that start before Labor Day like mine, this phenomenon starts in August, even earlier.

When Everything That Keeps You Stable Gets Disrupted

My carefully constructed morning routine—the one that’s kept me from sinking into depression and stilled me against mania—had to be completely overhauled. The sun rises too late now for my old sunrise-first schedule, so I’m at the gym by 5am, then chasing dawn at Yorktown Beach, then racing home to change and grab that crucial second cup of coffee.

My parttime caretaker gig helping Jack three mornings a week? That schedule needed adjusting, too. No more steady rhythm of consistent days. The reliable patterns that scaffold my mental health became casualties of the new school year’s demands.

Then Tony was home all last week, recovering from a bad fall at work. While I was grateful for his safety, it meant more work fell on my already stretched shoulders. Every accommodation I’d built for stability felt suddenly fragile, like a house of cards in a windstorm.

By Friday, after a week of preparing to receive students, I felt spread impossibly thin. Right after school, I attended my DBSA support group online and processed that feeling with others who understood.

Too Burnt Out for Sanctuary

Friday night should have been a date night. Cali was at a Color Guard pool party, leaving Tony and me with rare uninterrupted time together. He suggested our usual remedy: Fort Monroe for sea glass collecting.

I said no.

Not because I didn’t want to be with him in paradise, but because I was too burnt out to even access my sanctuary. The place that usually restores me felt like another task, another place I’d need to perform or produce something meaningful. Driving to Hampton and tuning my ukulele didn’t tempt me that night.

Sometimes self-care means recognizing when you’re too empty to pour from, even when the pitcher is your most beloved ritual.

The Fragility of Our Support Systems

This is what non-educators don’t understand about September, and what people without mood disorders don’t grasp about managing mental health: the systems that keep us functioning are more delicate than they appear. One disrupted sleep schedule, one changed routine, one additional stressor, and suddenly the careful balance we’ve constructed starts to wobble.

For those of us managing bipolar disorder, the challenge is even more complex. We need the energy to meet September’s demands, but we can’t let that energy spiral into actual mania. We need routine for stability, but September systematically dismantles every routine we’ve built. We need our sanctuaries most when we’re least able to access them.

I found myself caught in that terrible space between needing to be “on” for my students and feeling completely depleted before I’d even begun.

When the World Finally Stands Still

Sunday morning, I walked into church and heard the chorus of “Cornerstone” pouring out of the auditorium. That song has become the heart cry of my bipolar soul—”When darkness seems to hide His face, I rest on His unchanging grace.”

For a week, I’d been seeking sanctuary everywhere—in disrupted morning routines, in rearranged schedules, even in declining my beloved Fort Monroe. But sanctuary isn’t a place you go; it’s a presence you rest in.

Standing there, hearing those familiar words wash over me, I remembered what I’d discovered and had to write in my book: God is my anchor in the storm. When routine gets disrupted, when everything feels chaotic and out of control, when even sunrise feels like work—that’s when I’m most in need of His stability.

The Constant in All the Change

The sun rises reliably, yes, but at different times and from different angles as seasons shift. My routine changes with circumstances. My energy fluctuates with my brain chemistry. Even my sanctuary can feel out of reach when I’m running on empty.

However, there’s something that doesn’t shift with the seasons, doesn’t get disrupted by new schedules, doesn’t require me to be anything other than exactly who I am in this moment. That something is steady and sure, like the sunrise I’m always comparing Him to, but more reliable than even dawn itself.

September will always require a certain kind of energy from educators. Our brains will always respond to stress in predictable ways, medication or no medication. Our carefully constructed accommodations will always be more fragile than we’d like to admit.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the fragility of our human supports is meant to remind us where our real stability lies. When my morning routine falls apart, when I’m too tired for sea glass, when even my sanctuary feels too far away—that’s not failure. It’s an invitation to remember the difference between what sustains me temporarily and what anchors me eternally.

The hypomania September demands isn’t something I have to manufacture or manage alone. There’s grace for the 3am wake-ups, strength for the disrupted routines, and peace that passes understanding when everything else churns chaotically about me.

I suppose the best thing about having your supports stripped away is discovering which one was never actually dependent on your performance in the first place.

What routines or supports have you built that feel essential until they’re disrupted? Sometimes our greatest stability comes not from what we can control, but from learning to rest in what remains constant when everything else shifts.

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