If there's one thing that being a parent has taught me, it's the importance of being an advocate for your kid. I don't mean that in the helicopter bubble-wrap sense of advocacy, but more in the realm of enabling your child and making sure that they understand (even when they "hate" you) that you've got their back. Certainly this isn't new information, because I saw it all of the time as a coach. That, and I got very "Papa Bear" when it came to looking out for "my" kids. This was probably multiplied by the unevenness with which girls athletics were given attention at the time. I have always been an advocate for groups of people who are not treated fairly or kindly.
Looking at this role of advocacy as an adult, I've understood for some time that my life has been largely absent of advocates. Years of therapy have put me mostly at peace with this, but sometimes I get reminders about it, and it makes me sad. The feelings are not along the lines of, "Why am I not valuable enough?" probably because I'm not transactional in my human interaction, and maybe because of autism. What I do feel is a sometimes overwhelming sense of disappointment. It's not usually healthy to compare your life to others, but when I see the typical kinds of advocacy that others have received, the disappointment runs high.
When I was in high school, our athletic director got me involved in a bunch of support roles for athletics, even though I could barely pick up a ball at the time. That saved my entire high school experience from being awful. I wish I could find a way to contact her and thank her. A guy who worked for the city cable TV office saw my interest in TV production and I credit him with wanting to go to college and start a career in the field. I didn't live with my dad, but he showed up to some of my school activities, and helped me sort out college.
Professionally, my first radio boss coached me into being a better "air personality," which, with the self-awareness I have now about myself at the time, had to be challenging. When I flipped to local government TV, I had no one looking out for me. Somehow folks were surprised when I moved on from that after three years. I had one boss in my transition to software that advocated for me, and I'm not even sure if the transition could have happened were it not for him. In the 20 years that followed, I haven't had any professional advocates that I've worked directly with.
In fact, I've had mostly the opposite. I had one boss that desperately wanted me to conform to his idea of technical leadership, which I found ineffective and slow, relative to my ability to deliver. Instead of leveraging my experience, he leaned on his own, which involved only one job ever. In another job, I had several leaders that insisted we take on a project that I insisted was unnecessary and high risk. They committed support for this, but turned on me when it didn't go well, much as I predicted. It wasn't until the last few years where I had a leader that genuinely advocated for me, but then he went to another job.
My greatest advocate ever is Diana. We disagree on things sometimes, but at the end of the day, she's my biggest cheerleader. (And to be fair, my closest romantic relationships have largely functioned this way as well.) Seeing her advocacy for me and everything and everyone that she cares about defines a model for how it should be. That probably makes the disappointment of not finding it elsewhere worse.
There is a positive outcome to this. It's made me realize how important it is that I look out for Simon and be his advocate. I feel like I often fall short of this, and have to do the "tough love" thing, but he's said things recently that imply he does in fact look up to me and, in the long run, we'll have a good relationship. I also feel like I'm more committed to the people who report to me, and it's vitally important that they feel respected, valued and appreciated. I probably don't remind them enough that I am thrilled with their outcomes.
Sometimes experiencing anti-patterns leads you to learn the right things.
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