Sandra McDowell, the founder, and voice behind leadership Academy caught my attention in her recent post about how comfortable leaders are (or aren’t) with silence. As a recovering corporate professional, I immediately related. As a parent, an adoptive mom of two men in their twenties, I related. The idea that leaders with a Coach approach are more successful today than those with a Command or Compliant approach is painfully obvious. It also parallels the role of a parent with adult children. In Sandra’s post, presented below, insert the word parent before leader or leadership and you will see the parallels too. When our kids are young they need varying degrees of control, direction, and acceptable choice. As they leave High School and launch their independence, they need a Coach and a Raving Fan. A parent’s ability to handle silence, power, and really listen has a direct correlation to the success of their kid’s launch.
Love is in the air. Women have no doubt chosen special cards for the people they love, especially their spouse. They have planned a special meal or dessert and are thinking about candles and other things to make dinner memorable for their spouse and family.
At what time in your life have you felt safe enough to make a mistake, loved enough to take a risk, valued enough to be authentic, and accepted enough to just go for it? Think about it. It is an important question.
Heated family discussions can go so wrong so fast. Has that ever happened to you? You walk into the conversation with every intention to learn about someone’s day or to engage them in conversation and you walk out of it shaking your head in disbelief and asking how someone could think that or say that to you. It happens to everyone and has for all time. The tricky part, especially in family dynamics, is separating fact from opinion … usually their fact and your opinion. And stopping yourself from assigning meaning or a motive to what was said or done. Here is an example from a recent conversation with a client.
This blog is for adoption parents –
Raising our adopted kids is a love story for sure, along with it come mountain top highs and deep valley lows. The milestones for raising biological kids and adopted kids are the same. However, each stage in an adoption life comes with that extra layer of complexity.
Choosing the energy we put into the world is more than a Jedi mind trick. I have loved the Star Wars Saga since the very beginning, and I don’t think I have missed a single one. In each segment the Jedi are skilled at adjusting the mind set and actions of others in order to gain passage or reduce conflict.
A friend who was adopted as an infant referred to himself as having been unexpected, unplanned, an ‘accident child’. An accident? My immediate response was to see it in a different way. The way we think about our past sets the path for how we see our self and our future. For him, or for you and me, to have been born there were. . .
Most of us have a basic drive to discover who we are and where we come from. This drive is at the core of the much-acclaimed PBS TV series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. Mr. Gates and his team trace the family roots of celebrities and often answer long-held questions and curiosities about family members or the branches of their family tree. I am always intrigued as I watch the show. My 8th Great Grandfather on my father’s side can be traced back to the late 1600s in Ireland. Wow … I imagine how life was different then. There is something comforting about knowing at least some of the many details and stories in your heritage, your family tree.
Living a beautiful adoption life starts with the need to feel safe, loved, valued, and accepted. The fourth building block is acceptance, to know you are trusted, welcomed, and that you belong. You fit.
Acceptance is different from feeling safe, loved, or valued. It has a place of its own, especially for adoptive parents and their adopted kids. The tougher the journey into adoption, the harder it can be for kids to believe that they are accepted, needed, have a place to be.
Living a beautiful adoption life starts with the search to be safe, loved, valued, and accepted. We can’t move into who we really are until this foundation is set. So, when a client told me that his parents “love him for what he can do but have no clue about who he is” I was immediately taken back to a time when my youngest son was new to our family.
I don’t proclaim expertise in romantic love, sorry to disappoint if you are looking for advice or answers there. (Smile intended) I am, however, an expert in giving and receiving love in the ways I am hardwired to do it. There is no one better. You have that same superpower. So, why do we often feel disconnected from the love we want and need, especially with family members? The day in and day out feeling of true, deep love and acceptance. We feel liked. We even feel part of it all. We may also feel a missing connection. And life goes on.
Years ago a friend gave me a blue, shrill, military whistle and asked me to carry it. I was an avid runner and liked running the trails in the National Park near my house. I usually ran by myself and he was concerned about my safety. A whistle isn’t a weapon. It wouldn’t make me safe. It would, however, signal S.O.S to others in hearing distance. It would bring help. I carried it for a while and it eventually found its way to the keychain with keys for my car, house, office, and the like.
It may sound strange but I remember clearly the very first moment it hit me that I was ‘Mom”.
As an adoptive mom, I missed the 9 months of bonding that pregnancy brings. I had 2 years of paperwork, pictures, and videos from the orphanage, preparation, and home studies … longing without the satisfaction of hearing that heartbeat, seeing that sonogram, or feeling the movement of our precious child. Anticipation was great. Emotions on a roller coaster.
What if it were possible to feel safe, really safe, in all aspects and in all relationships that matter in life? What if …
Everyone wants to feel safe, loved, valued, and accepted. Doesn't matter your age, socioeconomic status, career choice, or family situation. We all thrive from this place. The more I talk with adoptees and adoptive families the more I recognize the need for intentional awareness to ensure safety in its full spectrum. It all starts with safety.
