Leadership Lessons from an Adoption: Navigating Scars

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the voyage has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership. 

Navigating Scars – The return flight from Addis to Austin may not be the longest flight in the world but it is close. Addis to DC is the first leg.  Wheels up at 10PM, which puts you at the airport at about 8PM.  Better eat before that, as there is no McDonalds at Bole Airport.  You land at Fiumicino at 3AM for fuel and then arrive at Dulles in DC the next morning, a short 17 hours in a metal tube.  Wind your way through immigration and customs to an empty airport and sit in the Admiral's Club for about an hour waiting for the next leg to Dallas followed by a short hop into Austin Texas.  All in, counting airport time, it is about 28 hours en-route.  Try that on your first ever plane ride.

The trip started with the girls’ first ride on an escalator, which was a doppelganger for a scene from The Lost Boys of Sudan.  It ended through the back door of our house with a welcome by the family Labradoodle, Copper and then all hell broke loose…let me fill in the gaps.  Children are scared of dogs in Ethiopia, in Addis alone there are an estimated 250,000 stray dogs and our youngest daughter has scars on her back that until a few weeks into her arrival at our house were a mystery.  Sense a slow motion train wreck?

When sweet Copper wiggled up to Tarikua, my daughter became terrified and climbed up me like a pacific islander scaling a palm tree.  This surprised us as we knew about the dog terrors and had spent time showing the girls pictures of our dog and watched both girls hug and kiss the picture.  What was going on?  I attributed it to nerves and kept trying to press Tarikua to be next to our dog so she could see Copper was no threat.  For some reason this was an accelerant to her terror and for 72 hours her feet did not touch the ground if Copper circled.

About three to four weeks into the girls’ American journey my older daughter Meskerem strung together enough English to tell us the story about Tarikua’s scars.  It seems that at some point a couple of years ago, the girls were playing and a wild dog crashed through the underbrush.  The kids ran, except Tarikua tripped and the dog attacked her.  She tucked into the Pillbug position defending against the mini Cujo.  The dagger in my heart?  The dog that attacked Tarikua was the same color as our dog Copper.  As Paul Harvey would say, “Now I knew the rest of story”

Cormac McCarthy wrote, “Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”  The moment I learned of the copper colored attack I understood a past.  As leaders we sometimes ask our folks to do something logical and doable but they do not move or they scamper up the palm tree to safety.  Before we write them off as incapable we should take the time to look for scars.  It may just be that we have to help them navigate their scars to get them to where they want to be.