My heart is brimming with peace, gratitude and joy, not unlike the feelings I experienced on Day 1 of this Soul Play Family 365 Experiment. Perhaps it is because the bullying, teasing and gossiping issue that prompted Charles and me to reassess our daughters’ school environment has finally reached satisfactory closure. We have been focusing on it intensely for three school-weeks, after the incident described in Charles’ Day 97 post initiated a chain of events that required prudent responses from Charles and me as each day revealed both deeper and broader aspects of the matter.

As with many significant and intense experiences in life, it will take Charles and me some time to process the new insights we’ve gained through our latest “adventure.” We will continue to share more of what we’ve learned via our blog posts as we regain our stamina. As for now, both of us feel as if we’ve completed an intensive and relentless learning course that was packed into a few weeks’ time. The pressure lifting off our backs is almost palpable.

What initially seemed like a long-distance race unexpectedly turned into a victory lap when Charles and I received an email from S and J’s Head of School yesterday, addressed to all parents of the student body, with the subject line “Cultivating a Culture of Kindness.” In the email, the Head of School underscored that teasing, name-calling, and inappropriate language were not acceptable at school, and he solicited parents’ support to “foster a culture of kindness rooted in empathy, acceptance, and understanding.”

This message was music to Charles’ and my ears because it spoke the language of our hearts, the very words we had used to advocate the co-creation of a culture of respect and understanding at S & J’s school for the entire school community of students, faculty, staff, and parents. We have been clear from the start that we were urging the school to examine this issue, not as a single, isolated case raised by one family, but as a school-wide issue to cultivate a socially and emotionally nurturing environment for all the students.

It is evident that the Head of School finally heard us. He conducted his own due diligence on this matter including several class meetings to provide students with an opportunity to be heard, as well as conferences with other parents to investigate whether this issue was of concern to them as well. We suspect that his viewing of the documentary “Finding Kind” and meeting with the filmmakers afterwards must have also helped him view this issue from a different, yet powerful, perspective.

It is immensely rewarding to see the school take this issue seriously at last, and to see the Head of School understanding that its depth and breadth does indeed touch everyone (not only the students, but also the faculty, staff and parents) in the school community. Moreover, it feels so satisfying to be heard. There were days when both Charles and I felt that no one in the school community heard our voice, or saw what we saw happening in our children’s school. However, we now feel that the truth has been uncovered and that what we saw happening at S and J’s school was real. There is a huge opportunity to nurture and strengthen the students’ emotional and social development. Whole-person education requires more than academic excellence, but also a well-adjusted social and emotional being.

After the drop-off, Charles and I ran into a couple of parents who talked to us about the students’ social and emotional challenges that they have observed at the school. We realized that there were many other parents who shared similar experiences, but for some reason haven’t spoken up to engage the school’s attention on this matter. We were gratified to learn that our voices not only prompted the Head of School to take necessary steps toward the social and emotional dimensions of the children’s education, but also opened the door for other parents to engage in dialogue and conversations to shed more light on what has been kept in the shadows.

A few weeks ago, Charles and I couldn’t have foreseen this outcome. We didn’t have an overall strategy or plan to convince the school that it must not tolerate bullying and mean behavior, and that it needed to cultivate a more respectful and compassionate environment. However, we were passionate about advocating for S and J, whose voices were not being heard only because they were children, and about creating a nurturing school environment for S and J to thrive in while cultivating their unique gifts as was promised by the school years ago when we enrolled them in Pre-Kindergarten.

We felt our passion as an inner fire, and it directed us to focus on what we wanted even though we didn’t know how to get what we wanted. To our amazement, magically and miraculously each best next step was revealed to us as the events unfolded. We paid exquisite attention to our senses, intuition, and instinct, while staying focused on what we wanted, in order to know what to do at each twist and turn that arose in front of us. Looking back, it is astonishing to see how the sequence of events in the past few weeks has unfolded perfectly.

On our walk today, we spotted a red-tailed hawk perched high on a tree. It was sitting there as if it were waiting for Charles and me to approach it closer. When we were right under the tree, and looked up at it, the hawk took off and circled around us low, and then rode the air currents to rise smoothly higher in altitude. Both of us were mesmerized by its graceful movement, feeling intuitively that it might be the same hawk we saw last week perched on a different tree in the same park. We sensed that the hawk showed up to congratulate us on a job well done - to celebrate with us that we reached honorable closure with S & J’s school - and to assure us that now the school will take the ball and run with it so Charles and I may ease the load we’ve been carrying to convince the school to do the right thing.

After we saw the hawk flying away, we saw a lone hummingbird sitting on a small tree by itself. I was delighted to see my friend! When I said, “Hi” to the bird, it jumped up and down, showing off its vibrating wings as if to tell me, “Now, it is time to dance and taste the sweetness of life! Lighten up and be joyful!”

Yes, my wise friends, hawk and hummingbird! You always remind me of visionary power and guardianship (hawk); and tireless joy and the nectar of life (hummingbird). I feel deep gratitude, boundless joy, and infinite peace lifting me up as I look forward to decompressing and relaxing during the girls’ mid-winter school vacation next week.