Where will your resolve come from? Love or Fear?

“Stop trying to ‘fix’ yourself; you’re not broken! 

You are perfectly imperfect and powerful beyond measure.” 

~Steve Maraboli

This time of year can find people seeking help to increase their confidence or decrease self-doubt, or doing anything else for their own personal growth. 

We make resolutions often based on one of the following statements:

“I need fixing,”
“There really is something wrong with me,” or
“If I loved myself enough I would/would not (fill in the blank).”

If you connect with what I’m saying, then I’m here to tell you that none of that is true! How do I know? Because I used to carry those same beliefs. 

So I ask you, why do you seek personal growth? Your answer will determine your outcome.

There are two motivators as to why people seek personal growth: love and fear.

When you look for personal growth from a place of love, your relationship with yourself changes. No matter how many mistakes or wrong turns you feel you have made, you are willing to use those as learning opportunities, not as a reason to judge, criticize, or blame yourself. You acknowledge that you are doing the best you can with whatever life throws at you. You are there for yourself with acceptance, understanding, and forgiveness. 

As a result, true growth happens.

When you approach self-help from a place of fear, you believe that you or your life is lacking in some way. You hang on to the hope that if you just get the right self-help book, or sign up for that life-changing workshop, retreat, or program, that uncomfortable feeling will go away and all will be well again.

If you hang on to this belief, that is not personal growth.

This is looking outside of yourself for happiness, self-acceptance, or inner peace, or to bring security, guarantees, or the love you desire.

It’s a temporary fix. It will continually leave you feeling unfilled and in a cycle of looking for the next best thing to fill you up, creating more fear within you because you are not getting the long-lasting results you want. 

Will your resolutions come from a place of love or a place of fear?

Know that nothing or no one can validate you, because you are already valid.

There is no “fixing” that needs to be done, nor are you “flawed” for seeking help and guidance. Being resolved just means that you are ready to experience yourself and your life in a new way, because what you’re doing is no longer working.

Be resolved.

Cheers.

When life takes a turn, you don't have to stop. RESOLVE.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

~Samuel Beckett

When we resolve to do something new, when we dare to take a risk, it rarely, if ever, works out as we imagine.

When unexpected challenges arise when things go “wrong,” and life takes a 'turn,' it’s tempting to tell ourselves that we’ve failed; that we should stick to what we know. That we should just play it safe and leave dream-following to those who have what it takes. That it will just be too hard to continue. That we were wrong to even have tried.

Don’t do it; don’t let the negative thoughts and self-doubt bring you down. Instead, consider the following questions to keep you focused on your resolve and going in the right direction.

What have you learned from the experience?

Consider this: If you had never tried, you would have never learned…. You fill in the blank. Perhaps that you were not ready. Maybe that you burn out too quickly because you go to hard. Was the setting all wrong for your resolve?

I’ve learned that taking a big risk isn’t always that risky after all. It can be far simpler that we make the idea. Have you found out that it wasn’t as exciting as you imagined? That it was really pretty mundane and boring? Very rarely do the calamities we imagine happening come true.

That’s a magnificent thing to have learned.

What have you achieved?

It can be all too tempting to focus on the things you haven’t done but try instead to focus on what you did manage to do.

Even doing something with consistency for a few days might have been monumental for you. You proved to yourself you could do it, even if it didn’t last.

Even your “failures” can be achievements, as when you know what doesn’t work for you, you’re one step closer to finding out what does. Evaluate your achievement periods, and implement the wins in your daily life - long term.

How have you changed?

Use the negative as a positive. Sometimes, a healthy dose of what you don’t want can help remind you of what you do want and where you want to go. Before you begin again, remember well how you feel RIGHT NOW. Even that small period that you were able to maintain your resolve changed you. And the following period of time changed you too.  Once you’ve taken the first step toward your resolve, there really is only one direction to go in. Keep your eye on the goal and use any step you take backward as a tool for moving forward.

Step back if needed.

Stop and consider where you want to go.

Go forward.

Believe that nothing can stop you - this time.

Cheers.

Post Election 2016: It's not just the Trumps and the Clintons that are dealing with the results.

If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

~Sun Tzu

While the drama and turmoil of this year’s Presidential election continue to persist around our country, as a Mother, I am only concerned with one smallish community.

They are my big, blended and diverse family who share genetics, history and most of all a passion for an opinion. I have watched this past year as the events of the 2016 election have twisted and turned our adult children, and us as well. And now, with the results in and the dust still far from settled, just like much of the country, our family represents the divided electorate.

While I am certain we are not unique, I do think we are distinct in the variety of stories we will bring together this holiday season.

My husband and I, one Republican and one Independent, are both rather conservative. While neither of our initial choices was on the ballot, we did not consider Hillary Clinton as an option. So much so that I cast a vote for Bernie Sanders in the Primary, still far from ready to vote for Donald J. Trump. It was not until our 3rd Trump sign (put up by my husband) was stolen from our yard, along with several America flags, that I turned the corner and decided to vote for Trump. I felt indignant and as though my right to voice my opinion was being minimalized. I believe many other voters like me may have finally decided to vote for Trump for these very feelings: Tired of being minimalized and the attempts to take away our voice.

Our children, on the other hand, were quite certain for a long time who they would support.

Several of them did so quite vociferously and made it the central theme of their lives. Our LGBTQ child attended rallies and posted passionately on social media. Our grandson’s mother went to work in another state for several weeks on behalf of the Trump campaign. Another one of our children left their family for several days before the election to do the same, but in the name of the Clinton campaign. Still another of our children is married into a family of a Police officer in a large city, and their fear for his life with the civil unrest toward officers made them reliable Trump supporters. One of our son's just decided to do a lot of praying, asking God to guide our country during this tumultuous time.  As a group of 14, we are split right down the middle.

Can you believe that? I am still shaking my head at how aligned we are with the country around us.

Somehow, after that fateful night that none of us (except my Data Scientist son) saw coming, we are all still family, and we love each other. I'm not going to kid you - Thanksgiving was hard. I was grateful when a few of the group didn't interact with each other directly. My husband and I went into the long weekend figuring we could take it. We see ourselves kind of like Cubs fans: We have lost so much we can handle it. But even we were not prepared for the fallout of dealing with shocked supporters of Hillary Clinton. We huddled, and realized there was really nothing we could say. They would just have to get through it.

There have been some hurtful things said. At times, as though those of us who voted for Trump were like the Ghost of Elections Past, watching in the background, unseen and quiet. But we will get through it. I like to believe it’s because we've encouraged our children to think for themselves, but still, have respect for the opinions of others. We know we are not the enemy and they are not ours. And we know ourselves. We can get through these battles and much more to come.

Yes, there is fear in some members of our family over what the future might bring. Very real concern. Fears that I want to take from them, but I also want them to grow through them.

I hope my husband and I can quell much of their fear with the ongoing assurance that no one will step on the rights of those around us... Especially those we call family.

Unless they go through us first. And our children have made us pretty tough to get through....

Cheers.

Can you accept this?

"Once you accept that your child will be different - not better or worse, 

just different - that's the first step." ~Unknown

I don’t have a child or grandchild with an intellectual or another kind of disability. 

But I learned soon after starting my position as a Line Therapist at one agency and a job coach for another organization that I shared something with the parents of my clients. You see, nearly nine years ago I lost my oldest son. 27-years-old and in the springtime of his life. He was taken suddenly in a freak accident while serving in the Army. His death spiraled me into a deep grief and pain, the likes of which I had never personally experienced. All my hopes and dreams for watching him as he advanced his life came crashing down around me. I would never see him achieve the high goals he had for his career. I would never see him get married to his fiance or hold his first child. It was all lost in a matter of moments in that field in Grafenwoehr Germany.

When I began to get to know the families of my clients, I could sense we had a connection. 

One day, while talking with a Mom, she began to cry as she described the hopes she had when her beautiful boy was born. How she thought he would perhaps play ball like his brother or learn to play the piano like her. But the day she received the diagnosis of Autism, she felt those dreams come crashing down around her as well. What did this mean for the future of her son?

I could sense a deep grief that she was carrying. The pain of the loss of what she had dreamed for her child.

So will you allow me, an outsider, to tell you about an important part of the healing process when facing such grief?  

You've no doubt heard of the stages of grief, and they are certainly real. Consider your diagnosis and how you may have walked through the steps: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Perhaps you've never seen the diagnosis you received as a loss, so this may be new to you. You may feel that you are fully in acceptance right now. After all, are you not doing all you can to deal with the fact that your child has Autism or another spectrum disorder? If that is not accepting the facts, then what is?

I too was convinced that I had fully accepted my son's death a few years back. But I was shown how wrong I was.

I sat in a counselor's office discussing my son's death and telling her how pleased I was with how I seemed to have come through it. She listened carefully, and then said something that knocked me for a bit of a loop. "As you talk about your son, I get a sense that you still don't quite believe he's not still out there in some way. It's like you expect him to come home. Like he's still here." Her opinion was that I could not certainly be in the phase of 'acceptance' if I did not accept that Seth was indeed dead. That whatever life he had lived up to the day he died was all that he was going to live. I could continue his memory and keep those memories alive, but there would be no new ones. It was then that I came to understand fully what true acceptance was.

So I ask you. Have you accepted the facts of your child's diagnosis?

I think we might believe that accepting a diagnosis means giving up and not seeing any hope for improvement. But in reality, it's much more subtle than that. The diagnosis your child received is not like getting diagnosed with Leukemia or another type of disease. Autism and Intellectual Disability are not an illness or even a condition. These are just different ways of a brain working from what we consider to be typical. Therefore, your acceptance of your child's way of thinking and living means you work to bring them into the world that may not understand them.

Because this diagnosis is not about getting cured, or even better.

Living with Autism and accepting its nuances is about adaptation and adjustment. This is what ABA (What is ABA?) provides your child. It is not a cure, and you may never see marked improvement in some areas of your child's ability. But you will see changes and adjustments as they are guided toward behaviors and responses that will help them to find their place in the world.


As Therapists and Disability Support Specialists, we are an integral part of that process. We accept and welcome the unique ways your child lives in their world. Still, we are not you - the most important and extraordinary people in their world. Your acceptance and support are what matters to your child.

You are not giving up when you accept.

You are simply freeing yourself, your family and your child to find the adaptive ways which will enhance their opportunities to the fullest. It's not expecting less - on the contrary - it's allowing more to be done with what we have before us. The hope of healing and recovery is not in this picture.
Perhaps we have shifted sharply from the days when children with Intellectual Disabilities would automatically end up in an institution. That was the exact definition of giving up. Letting society tell you what the 'best' solution would be.  The proportionate response says 'my kid is just exactly who they were built to be. We understand your fear, but we don't have to honor it." Trust me; I get what it's like to be treated as though you are cursed or carry some disease.

I have grown to accept that my son is never coming back.

And through that, I have found expansion in the ways I celebrate who he was and honor his memory. I have grown in the ways I can share how his loss changed my life, and I can finally allow myself to be truly happy again. And not feel guilty or delusional. I continue to work on carrying the weight that is the loss of a child. It is a daily purposeful effort, as is yours. Acceptance was the beginning of my ability to find my way back to life again. I hope it can be yours.