You will never age for me

There’s a moment in the film Shakespeare in Love that gets me every time. Viola must leave; Shakespeare can’t follow. They know their love has changed them, but their story is over. “You will never age for me, nor fade, nor die,” he tells her. It’s beautiful and devastating - a goodbye full of love and loss all at once.

There’s a quiet kind of heartbreak in my work. It isn’t loud or dramatic. It doesn’t look like the goodbyes we see in films. There are no rain-soaked train platforms or whispered promises. But it’s still there, every time a pupil reaches the point I’ve been working towards since their very first lesson.

The moment they no longer need me.

When a child arrives for their first session, there’s usually a flicker of nerves - a shy wave, or frustration hidden behind a brave smile. We start gently, with letters that wobble and sounds that come slowly, until confidence begins to take shape. I get to watch as they find their rhythm: the pencil sits comfortably, words stop feeling like strangers, and sentences start to flow. And then, one day, they don’t need the extra support anymore. They can read fluently. They can write with ease. They’re ready. And when my work is done, it’s like finishing a beautiful novel - satisfying, but you wish there were just one more chapter. 

I celebrate, of course. It means I’ve done my job. But there’s always a quiet sadness too - the kind you feel when you’ve shared something meaningful and now it’s time to let go. When our weekly calls stop, they walk into the next chapter braver, more capable, ready to discover stories on their own. 

Because this is what success looks like in my world: My job is to make myself redundant. It’s about believing in them, until they believe in themselves. And I hope they carry more than just the skills we built together - the confidence of that first full page they read alone, the resilience of every retry, the joy of discovering they’re capable of more than they imagined.

And yes, I’ll miss them. I’ll miss the updates about horse riding lessons, the holidays they were so excited to tell me about, the birthday presents they couldn’t wait to show. Still, I’ll let them go with pride. It’s what I want for them - the freedom to pick up any book, write without hesitation, and keep going without my help. But it’s also a goodbye - they don’t need me at the other side of the screen, cheering them on.

Yet every goodbye marks a child who now believes in their own ability to read and write. And when they do, when they move on to bigger books and richer stories - it means everything we worked for has come true. They’ve claimed their independence. And that’s the happiest ending I could hope for.

There’s no better ending - only the hope that the story we started together will keep unfolding, even when I’m no longer on the page.