Germination
2020 brought some difficult decisions that had nothing to do with a medical pandemic. After being a home educator for over 15 years, and deciding to put our kids in public schools, I was adrift. Most women would get a job. I went back to school. At the tender age of 46, I embarked on a Doctorate in Interdisciplinary Leadership (Ed.D.), with no clear path in mind, except to continue as far as I could. Now, if you’re still with me, good. You’ve either suspended judgement or want to see how the story “goes.” Either one is a good reason.
During an inquiry conversation about the program, the admission liaison said that a possible impediment in my ability to complete the doctorate was any lack of professional experience. To say I was an untraditional student, among professional “practioners” seeking greater levels of expertise, was an understatement. And an understatement was what I felt most of my way through the 4-year degree. My colleagues were wonderful and kind, encouraging and pleasant, and had a hard time connecting with me because I was so far out of the professional sphere, talking in discussion boards about how the material applied intrapersonally, in parenting, in spiritual and religious situations, and in volunteering.
During our first class, the professor asked what area of leadership I was most interested in, or topics I was interested in pursuing in my dissertation. I pitched an idea about how wounds can enhance and develop our leadership ability and practice, not simply through a negative paradigm of “getting over it,” but through a positive paradigm of “going through it.” She suggested a book called Wounded Leadership about how various emotional and psychological wounds incurred by top administrators in education strengthened their identity and purpose, while being brutally honest about their devastating effects. Reading it was like water gushing from a newly formed spring. While my doctoral journey took many twists and turns (much like my life at the time), I held onto this conceptual idea that eventually became the seed germination for a new theory of leadership known as Trauma Inspired Leadership. That is what will be presented, explored, and celebrated in this blog. Welcome.
