On feeling empowered

I’m not sure exactly when it happens, it’s some time after the feeling of being validated, you wake up and you feel empowered. It’s the culmination of many things. You have the knowledge, you know what you know, and you know what you don’t know and, importantly, you now know how to find out.

You’ve done the time – the experience of going through the process of getting from despondent to validated, means you’ve got the badge, the book, the T-shirt, seen the film, been to the studio tour, and could answer questions on Mastermind if you were that way inclined.

And, last, and not by any means least, you’ve taken action. Rather than thinking about everything. You’ve been working at getting things sorted out, and it has worked.

Whether you’ve done it alone (incredible!) or with the help of a support team (sensible) you’ve arrived at that feeling where deep down inside you can’t help but feel empowered.

I feel confident. I feel empowered. I feel in control.

— SELENA GOMEZ

At the start of the journey, you may well have felt inadequate as a parent, and now you feel confident. Confident to advocate for your child’s needs. You know your child, you know what they need, and when you see it and hear it you can ‘feel’ that it is right. You are not a slightly neurotic parent who is mollycoddling their child, and being overprotective. You are a strong, informed, confident advocate, who will do whatever it takes to ensure your child’s needs are met.

Congratulations on your arrival. You are like a honed athlete, who after months of training, support, coaching, nutritional advice and all-around preparation, stands, calm and collected at the start of the race, impervious to those around them, set to run the race of their lives.

By the time we reached secondary transfer, I felt empowered. In the face of a primary school that didn’t support our choice of secondary school, and went out of its way to obstruct our chosen path, I remained in control, confident that the right result would prevail. That sense of inner confidence and capability kept me going through what would otherwise have been a harrowing experience. It was still stressful (when it comes to our children - what isn’t?) and yet I was able to keep going, taking purposeful action following the process that I knew would yield the right result.

Hang on in there, that feeling of empowerment is special.

Almost as special as seeing the return of your child’s smile.