LYDIA HIGGINS
AUTHOR • EDUCATOR • ADVOCATE
MUST LOVE APPLES
A Teacher’s Journey
Sometimes the children we set out to teach become the ones who teach us.
ABOUT MUST LOVE APPLES
Must Love Apples: A Teacher's Journey is a memoir of motherhood, survival, second chances, and the unexpected road to the classroom.
Through poverty, loss, homelessness, heartbreak, and the beautiful chaos of raising a family, Lydia Higgins discovered that becoming an educator wasn't simply a career choice - it was the culmination of a lifetime spent learning alongside children.
At its heart, Must Love Apples is a story about the people who teach us when we think we're supposed to be teaching them - and how even the hardest chapters can lead us exactly where we're meant to be.
COMING NEXT
ROTTEN AT THE CORE
Failures at the Foundation of Child Care
If Must Love Apples is the story of how I became an educator, Rotten at the Core is the story of what I found when I got there.
Part investigation, part testimony, and part call to action, Rotten at the Core: Failures at the Foundation of Child Care looks beyond the classroom walls to the children, educators, and systems carrying the weight of an early childhood care system stretched far beyond its limits.
Built from lived experience, the stories of children and educators, and a growing body of research, Rotten at the Core asks a harder question: What happens when the people entrusted with building a child's foundation are working within a foundation that is already crumbling?
ABOUT LYDIA
Mother first. Educator by calling. Advocate by necessity.
Lydia Higgins is an early childhood educator, author, advocate, and mother whose path to the classroom was anything but traditional.Her work is rooted in the belief that the people closest to the children - their families and educators - hold some of the most important knowledge about what children need to thrive. Her own journey through motherhood, poverty, loss, community leadership, higher education, and the early childhood classroom has shaped an approach that bridges lived experience with professional practice.Lydia has served children and families as an educator and in community leadership roles, including Head Start Policy Council, Great Start Collaborative and The Delta County Parent Coalition, and the CAP Services Board of Directors. She is currently continuing her education in Wisconsin.Her writing began with Must Love Apples: A Teacher's Journey, a memoir about the winding road that brought her to the classroom, and continues with Rotten at the Core, an examination of the systems responsible for supporting children and the people who care for them.Whether she's teaching toddlers, writing, advocating, or raising her own family, Lydia's work begins with the same conviction: children deserve strong foundations - and the adults building them deserve support, too.
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© 2026 Lydia Higgins · Author · Educator · Advocate