Today I stood alone in the pharmacy lab for the last time. The air held that familiar calm, but today it felt heavier, like even the room knew something had ended. Behind me on the wall was a poster from 2015. I was 18 years old in that photo, just beginning my career in pharmacy and education. Eager, sharp, and ready to prove myself, I said yes to every opportunity I could find. Now, a decade later, I’ve just taught my final class. With it comes the end of a chapter that shaped me in more ways than I can count. This moment isn’t just about walking away from a job. It’s about closing the door on a part of my identity that once defined me, so I can fully step into the person I’m becoming. This post is a reflection on that transition, the courage it takes to honor what’s next, and the quiet fire that has always fueled me: the love of learning and teaching.

Pharmacy came into my life when I needed structure. At 18, I was building myself from the ground up. I stacked credentials and worked nearly every hour I could find, holding down four jobs at a time, completing diplomas, and pushing myself through school. I chased success like it was survival, and maybe it was. But within the grind, what kept me going was the classroom. I found magic in guiding students, in explaining complex ideas, in watching them light up with understanding. I never just wanted to do the work, I wanted to understand it deeply and then share that knowledge with others. Teaching lit something in me that even the most interesting prescriptions and cases couldn’t. The classroom made me feel alive. I watched curiosity bloom and resilience spark in students who reminded me so much of myself. That passion, the hunger to understand and the desire to share, has always been my true throughline.

Letting go of this career, then, is not about rejecting pharmacy. It’s about listening more deeply to who I’ve become. Over the last few years, something in me has been changing, softening, expanding. The girl who once lived for metrics and schedules now dreams in forests, essential oils, meditation, mindfulness, and energy work. I find joy not just in accuracy, but in alignment. I’ve become more than a pharmacy technician or a professor. I’ve become a bridge between science and spirit, structure and intuition, learning and healing. That path led me to Reiki, to Hīrā, to coaching, to a new understanding of what it means to be of service. Saying goodbye to pharmacy doesn’t mean I’ve stopped teaching. It means I’m choosing to teach in a language more fluent to my true passion and soul.

And still, the risk is real. The grief is real. Walking away from a license I worked so hard to earn, knowing I can’t teach in that same classroom without it, feels like a kind of death. But I also know that I didn’t come this far to stop transforming now. From 18 to 28, I have lived multiple lifetimes within a single decade. And standing in that lab today, facing my past self, I realized something: I am no longer teaching from a curriculum, I am teaching from lived experience. I am no longer learning to earn, I am learning to expand. And that, too, is a form of mastery.

So here I am, standing at the threshold of something sacred and undefined. I don’t know exactly where this road leads, but I know this transition is necessary. Everything I have ever done has been leading me here. The teacher in me hasn’t gone anywhere, she’s just walking into a new kind of classroom, one shaped by intuition, presence, and purpose. And I trust that something wild, healing, and wise is waiting on the other side. After all, there is no reward without risk. And this next version of me is already on her way.