The Three People You Meet on the First Day of School

There’s something unforgettable about the first day of school. Maybe it’s the way time felt suspended, as if the whole world was holding its breath while you balanced at the edge of something new. The air smelled faintly of crayons and floor polish, the kind of scent you never notice until it pulls you back years later. Your sneakers squeaked on the gleaming hallway tiles as you tried to act casual, even though your heart was racing. The bulletin boards were freshly decorated, stapled paper borders in bright colors a blank canvas waiting for stories to be pinned there.

And then there was the list. That paper taped to the classroom door, curling slightly at the edges, deciding far more than just where you would sit. It held the names of the people who would shape your days. Would you be beside someone kind, someone funny, someone who left you feeling invisible? The unknown of it all was electric. And even though you were small, you could feel it in your body, this day mattered. This was a beginning.

Do you remember the cast of characters who always seemed to appear? The one with the perfect new backpack, folders stacked neatly inside, who looked as if they had been preparing for months. The almost-friend, not quite familiar, not quite stranger, who slid into the seat beside you, steadying you without words. And the wild card...the one who laughed too loudly, blurted out something unexpected, cracked the tension wide open before anyone else dared to move.

These three show up again and again in our lives. Not just in classrooms, but in every place where we are starting over, where the ground feels unsteady, where we are asked to become someone new.

The One Who Prepares

The first is the One Who Prepares. You’ve seen her. Perfectly sharpened pencils. Matching binders. The right outfit, chosen days in advance. She’s been rehearsing the first impression, carrying herself like she has the answers, determined not to let the cracks show.

In The Healer’s Art, I talk about how we often try to armor ourselves with control. It looks like discipline and order, but underneath, it’s really a way of whispering to the universe: “Please don’t let me fall apart.” Maybe you’ve been that person, showing up with the right smile, the right words, hoping no one notices the chaos underneath. I have. More times than I’d like to admit.

The Over-Prepared One teaches us something important: preparation isn’t the enemy. But it isn’t the cure either. At its core, preparation is a prayer, a tender reaching: “Let me be enough for what’s coming.” And so I wonder, where in your life right now are you still sharpening pencils long after the bell has rung? Where are you trying to hold order, when maybe what you need is permission to set the armor down and let yourself be seen as you really are?

The Companion

The second is the Companion, the familiar stranger who becomes the steadying hand. You may not notice them at first. They slip in quietly, sitting beside you like it’s the most natural thing in the world. At the time, it feels ordinary. Only later do you realize they were the one who made the unbearable bearable, the one who carried a piece of your story so you didn’t have to hold it all alone.

Sometimes the Companion is an actual person. A friend who calls at just the right moment. A mentor who names something in you that you were too afraid to name yourself. Sometimes it’s an inner voice, the one that grows softer with time, finally learning to speak kindness instead of criticism.

In The Healer’s Art, I wrote about how healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s connection that carries us, even when we want to insist we can do it ourselves. Who has been that Companion for you? And how often have you allowed yourself to actually receive what they offered?

Maybe the deeper question is this: where in your life are you still trying to go it alone, when what you need most is to let someone sit beside you?

The Wild Card

And then, there’s the Wild Card. You know her too. The one who laughs too loud, blurts out the thing no one else dared to say, flips the rules upside down without even trying. In the classroom, she cracked the ice and reminded everyone that we were more than spelling lists and silence.

But the Wild Card grows up with us. In life, she shows up as the disruption we never saw coming. The diagnosis. The loss. The relationship that unraveled too soon. The unexpected change that turned your life sideways. She also shows up as the beauty you didn’t plan for, the surprise gift, the moment of grace that sneaks in through the cracks, the miracle disguised as chaos.

The Wild Card tears up the scripts we cling to, and in doing so, becomes the proof that our stories are not meant to stay linear. Healing, like life, is alive. Unpredictable. Often messy. But always holding possibility. And maybe that’s the hardest and holiest truth of all: your story won’t go the way you think it will. And that’s exactly where the miracle begins.

The Three Inside Us

When I think back on my own “first days” in school, in motherhood, in living with chronic illness, in rebuilding myself after a hard diagnosis, I see them all. The One Who Prepares, trying so hard to hold it together. The Companion, showing up quietly with love I didn’t know how to ask for. The Wild Card, breaking everything open when I wanted only control.

And the more I live, the more I believe: these three aren’t just people we meet. They are parts of us. The one who tries to control. The one who longs for connection. The one who cracks the story wide open. They walk with us, whether we invite them or not.

The real invitation is not to silence them, but to listen. To ask what each came to teach us. To let them remind us that even the disruptions are part of the healing.

Journal Reflection for You

Set aside a few quiet minutes with your journal. Breathe deeply, and then let these prompts open something in you:

• Where in your life are you still trying to prepare your way into safety? What does that version of you most need right now, rest, compassion, or permission to be imperfect?

• Who has quietly slipped into your story to carry a piece of it with you? How might you honor them, or let yourself receive more of what they offer?

• What disruption has entered your life recently, painful or surprising  and what might it be here to open, if you were willing to see it that way?

Don’t force the answers. Let them rise in their own time. Healing isn’t about performing worthiness; it’s about giving your story space to unfold.