A Teacher's Hug Gave a Struggling Sixth-Grader Comfort She Still Remembers Four Decades Later

More than 40 years after a painful day in sixth grade, Tanya Eby still thinks about the teacher who comforted her. Her story is part of the My Unsung Hero series from the Hidden Brain team, which highlights people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else.

Eby's trouble began when the girls she ate lunch and played with decided to cut her off. "The girls that I hung out with for lunch and played with had held a meeting and told me that I was no longer cool enough to hang out with them," she recalled. "They would be ignoring me, and I was no longer part of the group."

A few days later, Eby began crying during class. Her teacher, Mrs. Welch, took her into the teachers' lounge to ask what was wrong. Eby first explained what had happened with the girls, and then told her the rest.

Months earlier, she said, her mother and stepfather had decided that her older brother, whom she described as her anchor in life, should go live with their father. The move happened overnight. "So I woke up one morning and my brother was gone," Eby said. Not long afterward, her stepfather left as well.

Seen against those losses, the friends' rejection felt like one more instance of people she loved vanishing without warning. "It felt like everywhere I turned, people I loved disappeared," Eby said. "They stopped loving me and they didn't tell me why and I had no control over it."

As she cried and shared the whole story, Welch responded simply. "She just said, 'Oh, honey,'" Eby recalled. "She pulled me close to her and she hugged me. That's it. She hugged me and she let me cry." Eby said the embrace steadied her and made her feel she would be all right.

The school year ended, and Eby never saw Welch again. A few years later, she reconnected with her brother. Around 2002, when she started teaching writing to college students, she realized how much her teacher's gesture had stayed with her.

"It helped me have empathy for students and understand that there were likely many things they were working through," she said. She added that even when the cause of someone's pain is unclear or seems minor, such as friends breaking away, deeper troubles may be at play. "Just simply being seen, being listened to, is enough."

Eby said the moment influenced far more than that one day. "That one moment ... affected my whole life and I think it's had an effect on others' lives, too," she said. "Kindness isn't always just these big acts, but very tiny moments of connection that can change someone completely. So my deepest thanks to Mrs. Welch."

My Unsung Hero is also a podcast, with new episodes released every Tuesday. Listeners who want to share the story of their own unsung hero can record a voice memo on their phone and send it to the Hidden Brain team.