Брене Браун: Daring Greatly

About two weeks later, we were both at home when the mail arrived. I ran to the door with great anticipation. I was scheduled to speak at a star-studded event, and I was dying to see the publicity poster. It seems weird now, but I was so excited at the idea of seeing my photo next to the pictures of the movie stars. I sat down on the couch with the poster, I unrolled it, and I started scanning like a madwoman. Just as I was doing this, Ellen walked in and said, “Cool! Is that your poster? Let me see!”

As she walked over to the couch, she could tell my mood had changed from anticipation to disappointment. “What’s wrong, Mom?”

I patted the couch and she sat down next to me. I held the poster open, and she traced the pictures with her finger. “I don’t see you. Where are you?”

I pointed to a line on the poster under the celebrity photos that said, “And others.”

Ellen leaned back against the sofa cushions, put her head on my shoulder, and said, “Oh, Mom, I think you’re the others. I’m sorry.”

I didn’t reply right away. I was feeling small both because there was no picture and for caring that there was no picture. Ellen leaned forward, looked at me, and said, “I know what that feels like. When I’m the other, I feel hurt and small and lonely. We all want to matter and belong.”

It turned out to be one of the best moments of my life. We may not always have a sense of belonging on the recess playground or at a big, fancy conference, but in that moment we knew that we belonged where it mattered the most—at home. Parenting perfection is not the goal. In fact, the best gifts—the best teaching moments—happen in those imperfect moments when we allow children to help us mind the gap.

Here’s a powerful story about cultivating shame resilience and minding the gap from Susan, a woman I interviewed a couple of years ago. Susan was busy talking to a group of mothers at her kids’ school while her kids were standing close by waiting for her to take them home. The mothers were discussing who would host the “Welcome Kinder Kids” party for the new students. They all hated the thought of doing it, but the one woman who volunteered to throw the party had “a filthy house.” After talking about this woman and her house for a few minutes, they agreed that letting her host the party would reflect poorly on them and the PTO.

When they finished their discussion, Susan loaded up the kids (a daughter in kinder, and two sons—one in first grade and another in third grade) and started home. Susan’s first-grade son randomly called out from the backseat, “I think you’re a great mom.” Susan smiled and said, “Well, thank you.” A few minutes after they walked in the house, the same child came up to her with big tears in his eyes. He looked at Susan and said, “Do you feel bad about yourself? Are you okay?”

Susan said she was completely taken by surprise. She knelt down and said, “No. Why? What’s wrong?”

Her son replied, “You always say that when people get together and talk bad about someone just because they are different, it means they might feel bad about themselves. You said that when we feel good about who we are, we don’t say mean things about other people.”

Susan immediately recognized the warm wash of shame. She knew that her son had overheard the conversation at the school.

This is the moment. The Wholehearted parenting moment. Can we tolerate the vulnerability long enough to be with it for a minute? Or do we need to discharge the shame and discomfort by redirecting our child or blaming them for “crossing a line?” Can we take this opportunity to acknowledge how wonderfully he’s practicing empathy? Can we make mistakes and make amends? If we want our kids to own and be honest about their experiences, can we own ours?

Susan looked at her son and said, “Thank you so much for checking on me and asking me how I feel. I feel okay, but I think I made a mistake. I need a little time to think about all of this. You’re right about one thing—I was saying hurtful things.”

After Susan pulled herself together, she sat down with her son and they talked. They discussed how easy it is to get caught up in a group situation where everyone is talking about someone. Susan was honest and admitted that she sometimes struggles with “what people think.” She said her son leaned into her and whispered, “Me too.” They promised to keep talking to each other about their experiences.

Engagement means investing time and energy. It means sitting down with our children and understanding their worlds, their interests, and their stories. Engaged parents can be found on both sides of all of the controversial parenting debates. They come from different values, traditions, and cultures. What they share in common is practicing the values. What they seem to share is a philosophy of “I’m not perfect and I’m not always right, but I’m here, open, paying attention, loving you, and fully engaged.”

There is no question that engagement requires sacrifice, but that’s what we signed up for when we decided to become parents. Most of us have so many competing demands on our time that it’s easy to think, I can’t sacrifice three hours to sit down and review my son’s Facebook page or sit with my daughter while she explains every detail of the fourth grade science fair scandal. I struggle with that too. But Jimmy Grace, a priest from our Episcopal church, recently gave a sermon about the nature of sacrifice and it totally shifted how I think about parenting. He explained that in its original Latin form, sacrifice means to make sacred or to make holy. I Wholeheartedly believe that when we are fully engaged in parenting, regardless of how imperfect, vulnerable, and messy it is, we are creating something sacred.

THE COURAGE TO BE VULNERABLE

Before writing this section, I spread my data all over my dining room table and asked myself this question: What do parents experience as the most vulnerable and bravest thing that they do in their efforts to raise Wholehearted children? I thought it would take days to figure it out, but as I looked over the field notes, the answer was obvious: letting their children struggle and experience adversity.

As I travel across the country there seems to be growing concern on the part of parents and teachers that children are not learning how to handle adversity or disappointment because we’re always rescuing and protecting them. What’s interesting is that more often than not, I hear this concern from the same parents who are chronically intervening, rescuing, and protecting. It’s not that our children can’t stand the vulnerability of handling their own situations, it’s that we can’t stand the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure, even when we know it’s the right thing to do.

I used to struggle with letting go and allowing my children to find their own way, but something that I learned in the research dramatically changed my perspective and I no longer see rescuing and intervening as unhelpful, I now think about it as dangerous. Don’t get me wrong—I still struggle and I still step in when I shouldn’t, but I now think twice before I let my discomfort dictate my behaviors. Here’s why: Hope is a function of struggle.If we want our children to develop high levels of hopefulness, we have to let them struggle. And let me tell you, next to love and belonging, I’m not sure I want anything more for my kids than a deep sense of hopefulness.

Experience with adversity, tenacity, and grit emerged in my research as an important quality of Wholeheartedness. I was so grateful to see it because it was one of the few qualities of Wholeheartedness that I had at the time (remember in the introduction—I was two for ten). When I went into the literature to search for a concept that had all of these elements, I found C. R. Snyder’s research on hope. I was shocked. First, I thought hope was a warm, fuzzy emotion—the feeling of possibility. Second, I was looking for something that I had thought of as being scrappy and nicknamed “Plan B”—these folks could turn to Plan B when Plan A fell apart.