Tricia Wilson began her motherhood journey over thirty-five years ago. Amidst the ups and downs of parenting three biological sons and two adopted daughters, she overhauled both her parenting and faith perspective and practice. She has now found what she was looking for: grace and peace as a mom, wife, friend, and human being. In 2021, she became the Mimi to 3 precious souls in the span of 17 days. And one more time in 2023. She is a Circle of Security Parenting facilitator, advocate, reparative donor, and author and lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
I am married to Mark and together we parent five children, three who came to us through birth and two who came by adoption. In the realm of faith, I consider myself an always recovering Christian legalist in active pursuit of living into more grace for myself and others. Parenting has changed me more than any other thing in life. This is a place for me to chronicle and share my story and journey as a parent, adoptive mom, grandmom, and person of faith trying to make sense of it all.
For over 36 years – well over half of my life – I’ve been actively parenting children. Our first three children, all amazing boys, came to us through birth. Our next two, beautiful girls, came by adoption. Though there are definitely things I would have done differently and mistakes were made (!), for the most part, our parenting journey with the boys rolled along with the mostly typical bumps in the road. I somewhat brazenly and naively felt fairly prepared, adequate and up to the task of adopting.
I was comfortable with and familiar with a “traditional parenting” model that I heard much about in Christian circles. This paradigm mostly demanded respect and obedience, with an emphasis on control, and left little room for emotional expression. This was my comfort zone. I had confidence in the parenting toolbox in my possession as it seemed adequate for the task. Those who taught and espoused this method made sense to me, for the most part. I spent some years reading such authors until one day I read a book called “Grace Based Parenting” and there was something deep in my soul that resonated with that text. On completion of that particular book, I resolved to take a hiatus from reading about parenting. I needed to experience and impart more grace to myself and others.
This was the beginning of a crack in my parenting paradigm. But things were rolling along in reasonable fashion, so there was no impetus for real change. Enter our daughters. They came to us, via living in an orphanage, at the ages of 18 and 22 months. Though our adoption agency had responsibly educated us and challenged us to see that parenting children who have experienced early relational trauma requires different skills, we still weren’t so sure about that. Love is enough is a very common misconception for adoptive parents – well, that and the parenting skills I already possessed.
Critical crossroads – I very clearly remember the moment. There had been a big rage and tantrum that had gone on for hours. I had pulled out all of the tools in my parenting toolbox, and things were escalating. It was as if God Almighty whispered, or probably screamed, into my ear, “you can change yourself and your parenting or you can dig in, cling to your old ways and in the process destroy two children – this is your choice”. That was holy ground.
My early days of writing a blog in this space led to the writing of Adopting Grace: A Parenting Journey from Fear to Freedom. It is a love letter to my children, myself, my husband, and to God. It chronicles over ten years of my journey in the pursuit of new, different, and more life giving tools to fill up the toolbox. I continue to write on occasion. I love using this space to share my love and enthusiasm for Circle of Security Parenting. Thank you for joining me here. All are welcome.