As a child and youth that experienced necessary emergency removal followed by foster care, kinship care and group home placements, I also experienced a profound lack of positive human connections. Becoming a parent myself revealed many symptoms of the trauma from that lack of connection. 3
I was crushed between wanting the best for my children and being well below the poverty level. I only had the tools given to me as a result of an abusive childhood and that was all I could work with to make life happen for us. I didn’t understand my own behaviors and how the absence of positive connections harmed me and my family.
The ability to build connection, trust and validation is a marker of intelligence and emotional wellness in many creatures on this beautiful Earth. For us humans, social isolation is dangerously unhealthy. I spent many years living in unhealthy dynamics, without the insulation of loving relationships to protect me in tough situations. Since then, I’ve grappled with what it means to make connections through shared experiences, and how to express joy and kindness alongside others. Community is restorative.
Parenting is hard. Without the right skill sets, it’s very hard. So hard, in fact, that children are sometimes taken away to give parents a chance to do better. As much as it is in our capacity to aggressively separate families, we also have the capacity to find hope, see love and recognize the value of good outcomes for everyone in our community.
Children are removed from their homes on the basis of neglect more often than anything else. Such findings are often symptomatic of poverty and social disconnection. One way to deter removals is through financial or concrete supports. These supports are essential to help families stay together, but can be challenging to find without the right resources. Positive social connections make things like finding, and asking for, the help you need easier. This is exactly what I got, and more, from Parent Cafés hosted by the Chicago organization, Be Strong Families.
Be Strong Families’ Parent Cafés center protective factors as a critical part of its model. Protective factors inclined me to understand what I was living was indeed a result of lack and prolonged negligence by both biological and social systems. When I understood the reason, I was then able to consider the possibility of change, of restoration, of getting to the root of healing.
Parent Café conversations can bring parents, caregivers and community members closer together, building and strengthening positive connections and growing the opportunity for community restoration. Parent Cafés are parent-to-parent events, delivered by parents trained as café hosts for parents, both in-person and virtually. This is different from the typical approach where the caseworker is the expert and leader of the conversation. Cafés are carefully designed, structured discussions that use the principles of adult learning and family support.
I am a parent of six, some of whom are now adults. I used to parent poorly and the system saw me as neglectful. In reality, I was experiencing low-wage poverty, compounded by aging out of a group home setting that offered no social support. Lack of connection was how I navigated survival, and that made me feel very different from the general population. As a single mom, I felt there was no anchor for my family. Parenting unanchored is unstable, and it shows up in the parent-child relationship. Parent Cafés created a space that I could practice feeling heard, feeling safe and bring those new ways of being into my parenting.
Now, I parent more graciously and more intentionally. I am connected to my children and to my purpose. Cafés helped me see I wasn’t alone, as I listened and empathized with others who listened and empathized with me. I shared and learned how both struggle and success happen as a parent. I learned comfort in simple positive human connections. A family remains a family when their children are taken away, but the disconnect lasts, and can last to the next generation. Is there work for families to do? Often, the answer is yes.
Parenting is hard. And when a parent feels alone, it’s even harder. The work of connection and reconnection is possible and happening. Parents like myself are experiencing it in Parent Cafés where everyone is heard, is given an opportunity to share, and leaves with a meaningful takeaway: connection.
