Fixing the Chronic Problem Solver

[Music]

[Applause]

i work in

social environmental impact which means

i spend a lot of my day thinking about

some big

hairy problems think climate change or

social injustice and i didn’t get into

this work by accident i have been

addicted to problem solving for most of

my life

some people like my mom my

husband my boss my sister

my kids most of my friends and

probably my dog might say i’m a chronic

problem solver a fixer and

it’s not just the big stuff i like small

problems too

if you hand me a necklace chain with a

knot in it you are not

getting it back until it’s undone you

know when one of your

drawstrings disappears yeah i’m your gal

i’ll check your hair for lice i will

help you get your keys out of your

locked car

i’m the first one to tell you if you’ve

got a little bit of spinach

right there and i might even try to get

it out for you

as a kid i like to tell people what to

do

i actually still really like to tell

people what to do

i feel like i’m helping offering free

advice

though it’s not always seen that way

at 16 i told my parents that they were

clearly not happily married and they

should get a divorce

problem solution

now this fixation of mine can be a gift

i have helped so many friends through a

marital challenge or

a job change or even a fashion crisis

but there are also those times when my

determination to solve

a problem becomes the problem itself

most recently this has been with my

daughter who just graduated from high

school

yeah she is among the thousands of teens

around the world who graduated from high

school during

covid19 these kids lost their prom

the end of their high school sports

career their

senior week their senior trip and the

moment that marks

13 years of hard work high school

graduation

now the thing about my daughter is she

is no stranger to disappointment

for two years running in fifth and sixth

grade when playing

volleyball and soccer her teams never

won a single game

not one i kept wanting a win

and she kept playing and having fun it

was like the

pizza parties and snack time were the

highlights not the scoring

for all eight years of doing musical

theater

hoping one time to get the leading role

it never happened i felt the loss every

time and

she persevered she showed resilience

seemed unflappable

i felt deflated one time

she came bounding in the house so

excited announcing

i got the crow in the wizard of oz oh

finally your breakthrough roll you are

the scarecrow in the wizard of oz that’s

amazing

she looked confused no mom i’m one of

three crows in scene two i had to bite

my tongue from asking

what crows in scene two instead

i just responded that’s great you are

going to be so good

and honestly she was so good

and then the letdowns got more personal

eighth grade and freshman year her

friend groups changed a lot

her longtime friends were no longer her

friends and her new friends came

and went now this may sound familiar to

you

adolescents kids are cruel and friends

groups change in high school

a lot of kids go through a rough patch

they make

movies about the mean girls in high

school like

the one called mean girls but

she cried a lot in those years and it

scared me

at one point she said she felt depressed

so i

sent her to therapy she started

eating lunch in the bathroom a few times

a week and would call me

crying i listened i

ached for her i tried to make her feel

better

i bought her little gifts a set of bee

happy cards in a

gratitude journal convinced that those

things would turn it around

but they didn’t her bad days

became my bad days too and then

sophomore year junior year things got

worse

and then a lot worse fast

she started cutting class and stopped

doing her school work

she was lying and sneaking out and

lashing out

things were spiraling downhill so fast

and i was just trying to keep it from

hitting bottom

the day we learned that she had cut

herself

with a razor blade for the first time

i took a leave of absence from work

i was now in full-time rescue mode

as she became addicted to vaping was

getting drunk and started smoking weed

every single day to dull her pain

i called doctors i took her in for a

mental health assessment i kept trying

to

fix it fix her until i couldn’t anymore

was december of her junior year and we

dropped her off at a wilderness therapy

program

that’s where struggling kids go to live

off the grid for a number of weeks and

do some deep

transformative work it wasn’t until

after she was gone that i was told that

my problem-solving ways were

probably part of the problem i was told

that

maybe i was a rescuer and that i hadn’t

given her

a chance to learn valuable coping skills

when she was younger

learning to struggle and suffer is part

of growing up they explained

as things had gotten harder for her i

tried

harder to make it better to make it stop

hurting so much

even in her early years when she was

dealing with loss so well

i may have overcompensated i learned

words like

enmeshed that i may have been overly

involved

and emotionally attached to her

experiences i was told to practice

detachment now those were

a lot of new words and a lot of new

information to digest

i had invested so much in being a good

mom

whatever that means and i know

that i have no idea what i’m doing in

this job of motherhood

i’ve made mistakes but i’d read books

and listen to podcasts and saw experts

speak about raising self-reliant kids

i believed in the blessing of a skinned

knee and i wanted my kids to learn how

to deal with

failure and discomfort but i was

starting to realize that

i couldn’t deal with it i was the one

who couldn’t tolerate the discomfort of

her

emotions she came home

the summer before her senior year sober

stable self-aware with a tool kit of

coping skills at the ready

we agreed she couldn’t go back to her

same high school too many triggers

so she started at a brand new high

school for her senior year

where she knew no one that was rough

the difference now was that she could

cope in healthy ways with all that

disappointment

now me a recovering rescuer kept

jumping in and trying to problem solve

when i’d see her struggle but now she

could tell me hey mom

you don’t need to solve that for me we

were learning

together she was learning how to manage

her difficult feelings as they would

come up using her new coping skills

and i was learning how to manage mine

sometimes with the help of a therapist

and

sometimes with the help of wine

and then coronavirus said shelter in

place started the week she turned

18 so we cancelled her big birthday

party

she still had a great day and while

she’s

sad she never got a high school prom she

had fun doing

fake prom outside with her boyfriend i

was

watching she was coping so well through

such a difficult time

i might even say she was thriving she

was

sleeping more and playing guitar

exercising and face timing

you add all the binge watching and she

might say she was living her

best life me not

my best life i was dwelling on all that

she’d lost

as graduation day drew closer the fixer

in me started

freaking out see i had a vision of doing

an entire re-enactment of graduation

in our backyard just for her we would

have chairs

six feet apart for family and friends

she would walk across our

deck to receive her diploma from her dad

i would give a commencement speech that

would be

so touching that everybody would cry

and she’d give the valedictorian speech

of course and talk about

all that she learned we would be so

inspired

i was ready to do cardboard cutouts for

everyone that couldn’t be there in

person

i had picked out my dress i was excited

she was less so i pitched her on my

graduation plan and she listened and

said yeah mom

that’s okay i’ll probably just hang out

with friends but you could

make me a video a video

i was excited and then crushed

i wanted to save her from another

disappointment

to keep her from living through another

loss

but i couldn’t graduation

came and went we took family photos

picked up takeout and yeah watched that

video

i had made for her and then she went out

with friends

for the next few days she was sullen and

moody

it was hard she said to see all the

pictures on social media of her friends

from kindergarten

graduating from the high school that she

left just one year before

she was sad that she didn’t get to

graduate with them

that she didn’t get invited to any of

the parties that

her high school experience was so

different from so many

she felt left out i felt like

the only thing i could do was give her

space

now you may have figured this out

already but it took

me a while to realize that my graduation

plan

was not just about saving her from a

graduation

it was about trying to save her from a

lifetime of disappointments

the many traumas her therapist had

called them

that she learned to overcome while she

was away

the one she’d overcome without me

i know now that she has everything she

needs inside of her to take on life’s

disappointments as they come

i just need to get out of the way that

little girl who is so

excited to be the crow in the wizard of

oz

the one of three crows in scene two

she is the young woman before me now who

is so

excited to get on with her life to go to

college

study psychology and help struggling

teens

i made a decision then to stop rescuing

my daughter when she doesn’t need

rescuing

i need to trust that she’s going to

figure it out

this pandemic has been a reminder that

there is so little in life

that we can control and my daughter

taught me to stop trying to control the

things that i can’t

i’m a chronic problem solver and maybe

you are too

i’d like to think that i’m a more

enlightened one now

my call to all of us fixers is to stop

trying to control

and solve things that we think are

problems we gotta let go

don’t get me wrong if you have me a

necklace chain with a knot in it

i’m going to try and get it out i just

might not be able to

and i’m still going to give you

unsolicited ice you can take it or leave

it

and then second thought i don’t actually

want to check your hair for lice

what i do want is for all of us to see

the global shift that is occurring with

everything going on in our world right

now

my hope is that we see it as a time

to learn and grow within ourselves

looking inside versus only

outside for change let this shift be

not just global but personal

as well thank you for listening

[Music]