In late September 2024, Hurricane Helene came through our area. We had 15 trees fall. Some of them fell in domino fashion.
One super tall, wide tree fell on five innocent other trees and blocked the road below us.
People couldn’t get to the main road for days. Power lines also came down with our property’s trees. We felt responsible.
Calling the appropriate authorities we waited and wondered how long it would take. With no internet and electricity, we relied upon texts from people outside of our area to describe the true scope of the storm’s fury.
After repeated bits of information, we knew it would be a long time before help came to cut the large tree blocking the road. Two days later and with the help of a neighbor’s friend with a chainsaw, the road was cleared. Whew!
Sounds like it was pretty tough, huh? Once internet and electricity restored, we would learn our tree blocking one road was tiny compared the widespread issues that transversed much of Western North Carolina. I often tell parents, “Perspective is everything,” and in this case, perspective was definitely everything.
About two weeks after the storm, we walked through our favorite nature path with our dogs.
What do you see in these photos? The fallen trees or the ones still remaining vertical? Yes, some trees were noticeably down during our walk. BUT, most of the trees were still upright. Perspective is everything!
When something happens in your parenting life that isn’t comfortable, do you only see the problem or do you see all the opportunities surrounding the problem?
Is your first response panic? Do you feel threatened? Overwhelmed? Does the problem seem like all the trees fell on top of you?
Managing a challenging teaching career as a single mom, I had issues, too. Because feeling overwhelmed is awful, I decided to train myself into an empowering mindset shifting anything that would come my way into an opportunity. This meant I had to accept that anything meant anything…even the worst case scenario.
And, you know what happened?
Once I made the decision, my parenting life was filled with much, much less fear. Eventually, my parenting life was more peaceful than fearful and worrisome. And, then, it became empowering nearly all the time.
It was so freeing.
I had trained myself to see all the trees that survived the storm instead of the trees that fell. I understood that whatever was happening was for my and my child’s benefits. We teamed together and found the opportunities in everything. We co-created a wonderful parent-child relationship that many envied. Our obvious unity mystified peers and parents alike.
Aren’t teens and parents supposed to be annoying to each other? Aren’t the middle school years supposed to be miserable?
In my Multi-Dimensional Parenting Program, I bundled all the goodness I learned and experienced as a parent so that I can share it with parents so that beginning today, they, too, can have less fear and a tremendous amount of empowerment on a daily basis.
