From Protect to Connect: Dacon's Story

The Irish have a saying: “Your story is my story is our story.” This is Dacon’s story, and to her I give a deep bow for all the inner traveling that she did. In what ways is Dacon’s story yours?

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Sometimes, the threshold crossing from protection to connection is a long and rough crossing. It requires inner traveling, inner work, letting go, and a profound commitment, a commitment to having a relationship work.

Sometimes, the commitment to making a relationship work is more important than being right. So often, we just can’t get over that long, long bridge because, well, we would rather be right!

(You could call it a very human addiction)

Dacon was in one of my recent courses. She is the HR Manager of one of the companies I work with. Highly talented.

When I first saw her in the class, I could tell she was deeply committed to being there. She was riveted, her eyes locked into mine. Every now and then, she looked away briefly, and I could tell she was thinking about something that was deeply meaningful to her. She was letting it in.

About two hours into the course, I give each participant an opportunity to share what they are up to in the course and what they want to break open for themselves or get out of the course. Each person stands in front of the room.  By then, the room is safe enough that people feel free to say what’s so for them authentically.  They feel known and gotten and that others there are also a safe space. It is a judgment-free zone, with all the participants having promised to take their Role/Accountability “hats” off.  So while the CEO, her boss, was in the course, there was not an HR Manager and a CEO, but two human beings out to develop themselves in their own lives.

When Dacon came to the front of the class to share with us what she was putting at stake in the course, she said something like, “I am so worried about my son and my relationship with my son. My life has been consumed with trying to connect with him, unsuccessfully, and I’ve lost my own connection with myself as well. Our relationship just doesn’t work and I don’t know what to do about it.”

“He has not been doing well in school. He has been diagnosed with ADHD, and sometimes he gets so resistant to his teachers, and he won’t listen to me, either.  He’s a senior now, and his own graduation from high school is supposed to be a couple of months from now. We don’t know if he’ll be able to graduate.  Sometimes he even misses his classes, and he won’t talk about it. He gets so resistant to me and everyone else.  I can’t find how to connect with him.”

She got more and more “real,” letting down any protective guards as she kept speaking. She could see the attention the participants were giving her, the love in their eyes.  I could see her on the verge of tears, and she began to cry.  Her heart was open; her very essence was on the line.  I could hear her love and care for her son and her concern about herself and her own spirit and life, as this unworkable relationship was dominating her own well-being.

My heart went out to her. I knew that I would be able to empower her. I had been down a similar road in my life, AND, Dacon had placed herself in a profound coaching conversation that promised breakthroughs in relationships as one of its purposes.

In the course, we explore different approaches to listening to other people in our lives so that their experience is known and appreciated. We also explore different approaches to listening to ourselves. As we normally don’t listen but listen to our own disempowering internal chatter instead, which Dacon had been doing when she was with her son, Erik, Dacon had lost both connections—the one with herself and the one with him.

Later in the course, I invited each participant to go to the front of the room to create the future of their own life for themselves, as I worked with each person individually.

Wearing khaki pants, a soft peach-colored shirt, blond hair, blue eyes, and a medium build, Dacon walks to the front of the room and goes to work. “When you get into conversation with him, what does he say?” I ask her.  “He doesn’t really speak to me very much,” she says.  “Do you know what it’s like for him –what his experience is -- inside of his own world?”  I asked. “No, I really haven’t done that,” she said. “I’m mainly scared of him and upset that he is so resistant to me. I want to give him advice, but he doesn’t want to listen.”

I invited this soft-spoken, teary-eyed, loving mother to let go of whatever advice she had for him and to get really, really, really curious about his world; I mean, not as a technique, but really.  To be OUT to discover what HIS universe, his world, the world of his fears, his concerns, his disappointments, his anxieties, was like, internally for him. To really listen without judgment. To listen appreciatively. After all, that would be the only way he would speak – if he felt safe. A deer in the forest leaps quickly away at the first sign of danger. In human interactions, others’ judgments speak loudly of danger, whether anything is said out loud or not.  People hear what is unsaid.  We can hear another judging us.

I invited her to let go of her expectations about him.  Did she have any? And of course, she did. I invited her to let us know what they all were.  She gave us a partial list.

All the other participants could identify.  We all have our lists of people in our lives with whom we hold expectations.  I could “feel” people nodding when I was talking to her and saw them writing things down in their own journals.

I said to her, “Creating, intentionally creating, appreciation – which means ‘to add value to’ can be an antidote to expectations. And all expectations are judgments, ‘shoulds’ we lay on each other. He should be this way; he should be that way. He should listen to me.  He should always go to school He should always do his homework.  He should be a good student.”

If you’ll notice, expectations are accompanied by their flip side: disappointment. So it takes something to let go of our expectations.

I said to her that her son probably felt judged…by everyone—his teachers, his principal, maybe even the other students, and her. The more she could appreciate him and listen to him appreciatively, the more chance she had of his opening up to her.

Not only that.  Her expectations about him had been constraining her! She said she felt no power around him, that she was out of touch with herself. She felt small around him, controlled by him.

She listened deeply.  I could tell she was letting it in. She was nodding. She let go of a whole lot of negative views, both about herself and him. As soon as she could give herself the grace to be herself, to “show up,” she said, she could give him that grace as well. We could all feel the sense of release.  A smile covered her face when she sat down.

Later that day, as people were leaving the course for the three-week interim, between day 3 and day 4, in which people put into practice the work we had done in the first three days to create a transformation in their life, she said to me “I’m going to try on everything you suggested.”

I was thrilled to have received a letter from her between sessions in which she acknowledged, “I was so consumed with trying to connect with him that I found that I lost myself in that search to connect.  The weight that was lifted off my heart during the first day we were there was incredible.  Since I’ve been at home, I’ve been working very diligently to reconnect with myself when I am with him and around him and working on growing a different kind of relationship.  It’s been a really great experience for me as I navigate this new awareness.”

The morning of Day 4, three weeks later, everyone shared.

When Dacon came to the front of the room and turned around to greet the class participants, the smile that covered her face and eyes communicated loudly before she even began to speak.

 She shared with us that--

1. Her son was blown away by her and her attention to him and he was so appreciative of her. 

2. He opened up to her

3. He began requesting her advice, partnering with her

4. He took her advice about action to take when he missed a day of school

5. She was joyful that she had created a relationship with her son since she didn’t feel like she had really had one from the time he was 3 years old. She also shared that she was committed to being intentional about her own happiness while deepening her relationship with her son.

I received another letter from her three weeks after the course was over:

“It’s quiet this morning, with the exception of the waterfall from the pool and the sweet sound of birds chirping.  I’ve thought about this program every day since we started in April.

It’s made a profound impact on my life.  I was able to give up the power my son had over me.  I needed to speak about it out loud to be able to let it go.  Your forum provided me with the opportunity to do this. Erik has one more week of school remaining and we are hopeful his efforts over the last few months have granted him the opportunity to complete High School and graduate.  We will know in a week.  I will definitely keep you posted.”

Two weeks ago, I spoke with Dacon. Erik graduated from high school in June.

Today, I asked Dacon permission to publish this.  In her letter back, not only did she give me permission.  She also said:

“My relationship with Erik continues to blossom.  It’s really been special.  I think he knows how proud I am that he was able to get himself through school.  He seems to be maturing and so do I. 😊

I’ve stepped back from managing his world, I just let him discover and grow.  I just show him my love now.”

“I just show him love now.”

I love that.

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An update

Please know, as I mentioned in my last post about including additional poetic material to the paid subscriber level in August, that I am now reviewing that for a possible beginning in the Fall. 

Also, please know this is the last chance, if you are interested, to inquire about or register for our next public offering of The Heart of Leadership (Register Here), our September offering of the course that Dacon was in when she made her breakthrough. Given my schedule and work commitments, which include writing my next book, (The Art of Sacred Listening), this will be my last public offering of The Heart of Leadership for at least a year.