Nearly every job interview I have ever had, the interviewer has asked me to tell them my greatest strength and greatest weakness. I am not sure I ever gave an honest answer. I mean, who does? We try our hardest to give a strength we think would impress the interviewer, then we give a weakness that is really a strength, and we try our hardest to seem humble. You know, something like, “I am really organized, so it is hard for me to leave a job undone or a mess. I often give too much to my career and sacrifice my personal time to get the job done.” I mean, come on, how can anyone really give a weakness and expect to get the job? But what if your strength IS actually a weakness? I have begun to see my strong will and “get-er-done” attitude as a crippling attribute that can leave me exhausted and completely empty. Why is that, you ask? Because the strong become the ones everyone turns to in hard times and chaos, but what happens when the strong break under the pressure? The scariest look to receive is from a family member who sees you breaking, and the fear in their eyes as they ask themselves, if you can’t handle it, how will they?
Growing up, I learned quickly to hide the hurt. I learned to pull myself up by my bootstraps (yes, it can be done), to wipe my eyes and deal. Three big brothers didn’t exactly lead to a girl in flowy dresses and a straight tiara. I was more of the torn jeans and a Bryan Adams t-shirt under my flannel, with a baseball cap on my head and an attitude in my walk kinda gal. The words by Miranda Lambert ring truer in my ears than most.
“Hide your crazy and start acting like a lady, cause I raised you better. Gotta keep it together even when you fall apart”
Miranda Lambert ‘Four the Record’
I learned early to stuff the emotions too big to handle deep down and not let the fear of it all show. The world could be falling down around you, but girl, you better have those lips on just right! I was always proud of being the strong one in the group; it was easy to hide the nerves and insecurities when everyone around you depended on you to get through it. It gets easier with time to hit hard times head-on and do it with a smile, shrug your shoulders, and just deal. I spent many years taking on the challenge of turning chaos into manageable hardship, only to find it isn’t really all that manageable. When deciding on adoption, I never doubted for a moment that I would handle the craziness that would come with the cuteness. I heard over and over from all our friends and family, “If anyone can do this, it’s you.” It became a repeated phrase each time we hit a new type of chaos, every time I reached out to say I wasn’t sure I could get through it.
She ran away again, stayed gone all night this time ” you’re strong enough to get through this”
She pulled a knife on her brother and is threating to kill us all “if anyone can get through this its you”
I’m doubting everything and everyone around me. “Girl, I know you got this”
At some point there has to be recognition that there is a wall that can be hit and not climbed by even the strongest. When that happens, what do you do? Well, you do what you’ve always done, you pull yourself up by the bootstrap, brush yourself off and then have a long conversation with yourself on how to continue on, but only after you have allowed yourself to break.
You see, only when one breaks can one be put back together. When you break, there is no choice but to be put back together (well, not a choice I want or can acknowledge). When you break, those around you have to step in; it forces them to, and forces you to allow it. There is a key question in job interviews that I think goes right over the heads of those who have the inherent need to do it all and do it all well: “Do you work better in a group or alone?” Again, who says “alone”? Even when knowing you would do it faster and better if you just did it yourself, that’s not what the employer wants to hear, even when they know you’re being hired because there is a need for someone who can do it alone without fail. It’s a catch-22. Better together, easier alone, never admit the latter.
That is the reason strength can be a weakness. You don’t learn to lean on people in hard times, you learn to lead them through it. You aren’t use to asking if another sees a better path forward, you’re focused on controlling the path you’re on. Employers ask if you work well with others for a reason, there are warnings for two person lifts for a reason, sports have teams not just one athlete for a reason. We need others to help so we don’t get hurt or burnt out or lost in the chaos and make it to the finish line. When you control, take it all on, and plow through, you remove lessons that both you and the ones you are trying to help need to be able to learn. When you don’t allow help, how will they learn to do so? They can’t and those who knew how have become too frozen from your control or compliant and lazy to do so. Just take a look around you, we have become a society that sits back and watches people struggle while we shrug our shoulders and say “Meh, they can handle it. It’s not my place to step in”.
I hit my wall four years ago. I finally broke under all the “strength” of holding it together. In my breaking, my husband, son, some family, and close friends were able to step up and surround me with the true strength I so desperately needed: love, comfort, rest. They helped me through letting go—letting go of the future I fought for and would never see, letting go of the expectations that hard work would surely pay off, letting go of dreams that were never mine to dream. Our oldest daughter turned 18 and turned to a life we had tried desperately to guard her from; our other two children had to live separately, so we had to buy a second home. All of this was smack-dab in the thick of COVID. I had too many paths of chaos, and none of them could be managed without my breaking and being put back together. I didn’t break overnight; I broke slowly and painfully as each hit came at me. I didn’t get put back together overnight; I had to sit through each piece of me being picked up off the floor and then had to wait for the glue to dry before the next piece could be found and placed. I still haven’t found all the pieces of who I once was; the cracks are still raw, the glue still not completely dry. Today, exactly 14 years to the day of finalizing the adoption of my beautiful blue-eyed girl, I am planning a trip to sit in court and fight for her beautiful little brown-eyed girl to be kept from her so she has a chance and a future her mother was robbed of. She chose the life I put all my strength into fighting off, and in my weakness, I blamed myself for not having enough strength to save her. But I now realize it takes more strength to let go and allow her to make her own path, find her own way out of the pit, or allow her to bury herself in that pit. We all have to choose, take the lessons taught, and do with them what we will.
I have a new future in sight, dreams that are mine to dream, and expectations of finding myself all over again with a little hard work and help from the love of my life…and so I write.
I mean how much can one mom take before it is just time for the straight jacket? I paid my dues, you teachers had a nice vacation, its time to come back and give us all a break.
I know that this year is going to be great for them both. They are in a great school and have bright futures there and I have days free from the constant questions of “What are we doing today?” “I am so bored, why can’t we go somewhere fun?” and so on and so forth. I am free of the job that they seem to think is mine that consists of entertaining them constantly. Soon they will beg me to just sleep in and stay home doing nothing, and I will be their hero when I am able to grant them a Saturday free day. Their eyes will light up with excitement at the yummy hot grilled ham and cheese sandwiches I will make them for lunch and my heart will be filled with pride as I listen to them tell each other I am the best cook around. The house will be filled with the aroma of fresh-baked cookies once again because I will have the time to put into baking instead of putting out fires between their younger siblings and them. I love school! Teachers are my favorite people. I give mad props to those moms that home school, y’all are crazy patient or plan crazy, I haven’t decided yet.
, we were asked what we would do when it got harder than we thought it would be, how would we react to a child that has serious behavior problems. Would we change our mind and ask that she be removed from our home? That question hit me hard. I sat and thought about all the mothers I knew that had been given bio children that are a bit hard, those that have had to stay up night after night due to a handicap their child had been born with or had been given after life dealt them an unfair accident that led to an altered life. I knew not one of those mothers would ever walk their children back into the hospital they had them at and say they changed their minds and then walk out the door leaving them behind. I thought of my own son and knew I could never turn my back on him if he had something happen to him and needed extra love and care. I felt it at that moment, the love in my heart for our daughter I hadn’t met yet but knew I loved already. Much like when the doctor confirmed that I was pregnant with my son I felt a mothers love for her when the case worker said “we know you are her mom and dad”. She is mine, and once we figured out what it was that was causing her behaviors (trauma) we were able to make a plan and care for her the way she needed to be cared for. Much like bio-parents, we chose to have more children after her, only we adopted ours.
We are a family. I do it everyday just like any other mom. I get up, get myself ready for the day, and take every crazy moment one at a time. I love my kids because they are my kids. Yes, they can be hard to like at times but they are never hard to love. Just like any mother who loves her child that once grew in her womb no matter the behaviors or the sacrifice that she has to make, I love my children that grew in my heart. I am their REAL mom, they are my REAL babies and that will never change. So, How do I do it? Just like you do. How do I stay sane? With a lot of prayer and a little wine! Why did I adopt more? Why haven’t you adopted one? They are my heart and soul, my goal in life is to help them heal and find joy, and so I write………………
I have a reason to spread love, well actually I have four reasons. I cannot choose to spread more hurt and anger and then expect my children to be happy healed adults. We are a small tribe in this vast world of hurting people. We are part of the few who have said yes to the hope offered by Christ and I pray that we each will be able to see the hurting and try to show them love. I pray that my little hurt people will no longer hurt people. I will continue to encourage them to choose the change that will bring healing, I will continue to choose to forgive those that hurt them so badly in their past lives and I will choose to forgive those that will hurt them in their future lives. That is all each of us can do. Desire change. Spread love. Pray for a world all our children can grow up safety in. I cannot control their hurt, I can only choose to not hurt back when they strike out at me, and so I write……….
The pictures all show happy little smiles. There are always words of encouragement that she so polite and sweet or how nervous she looks all the time. I get complimented on how much she has grown and how good of a job I have done. I know that all this is true, she is a sweet girl. She knows how to be polite and most of the time she means it. However; there are most nights that she tries to see if she can hurt me or make me look bad in the eyes of my husband. I can deal with it most of the time. Roll my eyes and smirk “Oh, ok. Yes that sounds just like me.”
I had to teach my church family boundaries that are uncommon to the fabric of their being and it has created a safe place for other adoptive families to go to. I researched and found a therapist who would be a good fit for our family after being with one that only encouraged the behaviors of our children. I was open and honest with our caseworkers. There were days that I would answer the door in my PJ’s and just say “Today I do not like her and I am not going to hide that from you, how I look is how I feel and it is a direct result of her raging for the last three days straight!” I thank God that I had caseworkers who truly cared about me and were there to make sure my kids made it in our home. Not everyone on this journey has had that same support. Lastly, I have had to teach my children’s teachers how to be what they need, and those teachers hold a special place in my heart.
The teacher that she told she would kill, that teacher that didn’t shrink to the challenge, that teacher that shed tears because she cared so much, that teacher that spent a day off to drive across the state to watch her adoption finalized, that teacher who fought for her to get the education she needed. I will forever be grateful to that teacher.
soshewritesweb 