What do I need to lead?

Dear EQuipped Leaders,

How are you?

What all are you feeling today?

I normally think about you during my weekly writing ritual time–work time that I protect and savor each week. However, this week after learning of the school shooting in Nashville, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.

What’s happening within you this week?

Within your students?

Within your classrooms, schools, homes?

For me, I was called to show up as an EQuipped leader in my home. My son is now just barely old enough to have hard conversations about what’s happening in the world. He has active shooter drills at his preschool, so I know he’s going to hear about this shooting at school even if I chose not to talk about it with him at home. This already happened with the Uvalde school shooting. His school addressed it with him, and I hadn’t even told him it happened. It felt icky to me. Like I’d sent him out into the world ill EQuipped because I was too uncomfortable to face reality. It didn’t feel right in my body. I knew I didn’t want to show up the same way this time.

So I had to face my feelings and get support and encouragement from adults who are better EQuipped than me. I needed to learn from adults who are sturdier than me, so I could show up sturdier for my son. I had two people who were my EQ intervention this week:

First, I had an honest conversation with a friend about how we both felt about the shooting. This allowed me to process my own feelings and start to confront my tendency to run away from hard events like this. Pretend it isn’t happening. Not talk about it in hopes it will just go away. I still sometimes hold the false belief that if I don’t put events and feelings into words, they won’t hurt my kids. But I know from experience that kids soak up feelings like a sponge, and without leadership and language from parents, they are left alone to figure out what to do with all those messy feelings by themselves. I don’t want to burden my son that way. I want to show up as an EQuipped adult for him and that starts with me feeling my own feelings and confronting my ineffective coping mechanisms.

Second, I got a resource from a parenting community newsletter I read each week: Good Inside: Parenting with Dr. Becky. Dr. Becky often offers short parenting scripts to use with kids to help talk about emotions, and this week she offered a free script for how to talk about scary news events. I found it so empowering and gave me the nudge and support I needed to be the parent I wanted to be this week. I shared it with my husband to make sure he supported me in having this conversation with our son. He told me he trusted me, and I initiated the conversation with my son after dinner. It felt like I was able to show up as an EQuipped adult for my child at a new level because I got the support I needed.

I feel proud of how I showed up for my son, not perfectly but as the parent I want to be. I didn’t run away. I stayed and faced what was happening. Found my own sturdiness amidst my own fears and feelings, and offered that sturdiness to my son. I couldn’t have done this without support. Support for me. Support for my parenting.

I don’t know how to support and show up for you. I don’t know what you need to lead this week, but I thought just sharing my experience of trying to feel my own feelings and lead in my own world might be helpful. Might help you feel what your own values are for talking about hard things with the kids in your care.

Whatever you are feeling this week: sad, numb, hurt, enraged, scared, ambivalent, ______. It’s all okay.

What do you need? Maybe like me, you tend to bypass your own needs and jump to the needs of those depending on you. But stuff like this is too hard to face without your own nourishment. How can you get the support you need to be the EQuipped leader, principal, teacher, parent you want to be?

If this speaks to you, and you can offer encouragement and experience for our EQuipped community, please share your wisdom in the comments.

If you know what you need: a classroom script, a forum of educators, a short video from the perspective of a psychologist, please share that need with me. I would love to show up for you.

Thank you for showing up here with me this week. Thank you for taking the time to be better EQuipped even during really hard times. I’m grateful for you.

Better EQuipped Together,

Elizabeth