Essential Connections

This week I started my training. If I haven’t said before, I am now a Family Case Manager with the Department of Child Services. I have to complete 12 weeks of training. Half of the training is in the state capital. I have to travel 2.5 hrs away from home and stay in a hotel away from my DH and kids.

It wasn’t easy walking into that hotel room by myself. I haven’t been without my DH or kids in over 10 years. But the worst part of the week was one training exercise. It was called Essential Connections.

Essential Connections are the nine essential connections for a healthy satisfying life according to Daniel Wasson.

Those are:

1 Information: What do you need to know in order to live in our world?

2 A significant person: The most important person in your life.

3 A group: What groups do you belong to?

4 A meaningful role: What do you do that gives you a purpose in life?

5 Means of support: How are you financially supported?

6 A source of joy: What makes you happy?

7 A system of values: What do you have strong beliefs about?

8 Personal history: How do you preserve your history?

9 A place: What is/was a favorite place/safe place?

 

They handed me a slip of paper with these nine categories and each was cut in slips attached at one end. I knew where they were going with this exercise. So I asked for a box of Kleenex.

I can sit through educational films showing child abuse…but…it just hit too close to home.

Mine were as follows:

1 Information- we left that as is.

2 A Significant Person: DH

3 A Group of People: My Immediate family

4 Meaningful Role: Mother

5 Means of Support: DH’s income (for now)

6 A Source of Joy: Talking to my children

7 A System of Values: My faith in Jesus Christ

8 Personal History: My photo albums

9 A Place: My Grandmother’s house

One by one they began to take them away.

I started with information and ended with my faith in Jesus. I totally lost it by the end. I couldn’t help it. It brought reality hitting me full in the face. This is something each one of my adopted children have experienced. They have had all this taken away from them, along with each one of my foster children.

While most didn’t loose everything, least forever, they did loose it the moment they were being removed from their home.

This is what I want you to do…get a piece of paper and write down what is most important to you in each of these categories…then imagine that you have to give each one away. Start from the beginning and rip it off the page. Then go to the next…try and figure out which one you can do without. What can you give up?