It's 20 years now since I parted company with the Department of Education. That separation came under very difficult and stressful circumstances, which had been ongoing for some years. In the end, rather than resign, I had almost miraculously been medically retired, something that I thought was reserved only for those in the most dire health conditions. Still, my assessment, which was a series of interviews and diagnosis's by health professionals such as psychologists and doctors, deemed me no longer fit to go back into an Australian classroom.

This meant that I could draw on my super pension earlier than my usual retirement age - not a large sum of money but sufficient to keep my head above water. It also meant I could return to Japan for another couple of years, pay off my mortgage and do volunteer work when I returned. Much of the latter drew on skills that came out of my teaching experience over almost two decades, experiences that ran the gamut of wonderful to awful. Despite the way things ended, I have some very happy memories of those days.

Gratitude is one of the most important attitudes that we should daily practice. I am very grateful for how things turned out in the end, despite everything. Whenever the tendency to bemoan what should have happened or not happened arises, counting blessings instead is a sure way of developing better mental health.