#Unpacking brew some coffee how to#

Three days after returning from Ghana, I evacuated my family from the Sonoma County fires and was grateful to discover an ease in leadership with my parents that had never existed before. Primarily because Ghana was a very challenging location to travel through, but also because the consistency of daily practice and spending more time with my mother than I have since I was 18 provided a level of practice that allowed for long-term change.

#Unpacking brew some coffee how to#

While the trip to Ghana was by no means a magic cure-all, it pushed me to spend those 4 weeks practicing how to love, how to guide, and - especially that cursed third step - how to let go of the outcome.

Historically, I have been unable to let go of the outcome.

Invite them towards what you are wanting. I think of good leadership, whether with a family member, a romantic partner, or a business colleague, as having three principles: love, guide, and let go. There are times when it is not okay with me for my employees to be unhappy. I care enormously about the well being of my people, but sometimes I care beyond a healthy limit. When I look at my history as a leader of teams, I have a lot of strengths: I am compassionate. That was not the only relationship where this has been the case. My former partner and I were consistently care-taking for each other and unhappy if the other was displeased. When I look back at my very first romantic relationship back in college, I see threads of the same codependency I have with my mother. The experience of this trip got me reflecting on where else in my life I may have acted with codependence. My work was to show up calm, compassionate, loving, and clear - no matter what she was doing in a specific moment. At times throughout the trip, my mom was just as controlling as she has ever been. The change that I was hoping for, and at least partially achieved, was in and for myself. One of the hardest things to explain is the fact that I did not expect my mother to change as a result of my actions. This concept set a new precedent for our relationship. My intention for the trip was to show up loving and supportive of my mother, but refrain from letting her emotions affect my mood or trying to problem-solve for her. Some of it landed with my mother and some of it she denied, but regardless, speaking it aloud made a difference. I brought this up in conversation with the therapist. As a 33-year-old adult man, I remain timid and intimidated by her emotions, and my default is to try to “fix” them. When she is angry, I am afraid of the consequences. And then here I am, 3 generations later, realizing that I have been codependent with my mother. And, I suspect, other members of my family have echoed these codependent patterns, as well. My mother’s brother, my uncle, struggled with addiction, and died of associated complications. My mother’s father died of alcoholism, and while I did not know my grandparents well myself, I suspect that my grandmother was codependent with my grandfather. I think of co-dependence as me being unhappy with someone else’s condition, so much so, that I feel the need to change someone else in order to be happy myself. One of the things that I brought up in therapy is the history of co-dependence in my family. Just prior to going to Africa, I proposed that my mother and I go see a therapist together - a preparatory measure that might help shepard the trip to Ghana. But even that - while there is some truth to it - doesn’t give enough credence to my role in the relationship. When people have asked how our trip to Ghana went, I’ve been saying that I condensed 10 years of therapy into 3.5 weeks. How does the old joke go? “Why do your parents push your buttons? Because they installed them!”

She frequently drives me crazy, so traveling in close quarters for several weeks in a foreign country was a bold test for our relationship. The relationship between me and my mom is complicated. My mother trying out the traditional Kente looms in the Bon Wire weaving village, Ghana.