Everyone Is Tested by Life

My Transformational Experience.

According to Warren G.Bennis & Robert J. Thomas 2002,

“Everyone is tested by life, but only a few extract strength and wisdom from their most trying experiences. They are the ones we call leaders.” p.39

They went further to describe “adaptive capacity” as

“An almost magical ability to transcend adversity, with all its attendant stresses, and to emerge stronger than before”.p.45

My transformational story can thus be said to be my personal process of transcending adversity and coming out not only stronger but a resilient leader in the making.

I grew up with tough parents who ensured we exhibited obedient traits of good children with promising future. My father on the other hand was military in his approach with his kids and ensured every erring activity was rewarded with strokes of the whip.

As a result of this punishment strategy, I grew up having a stern rapport with my father and having two younger siblings who could at times be naughty, I was quick to raise my hands also should they err and even in situations that call for slight reprimand, I was always quick to make use of the cane. After a while, it became a trend that every dis-satisfaction should be met with either a slap or the use of a whip to chastise so as to ensure non-repeat, or so I thought. This was not the case at the end of the day as the cycle continued until I got to that stage where I felt every correction should be done with a whip.

My mother never liked this attitude my father shared with his children as none of us was close to him. If my father noticed this, he never gave a sign. Let me add here that those severe beatings never corrected any erring habit of us but rather made us immune and non-responsive to his corrective whips.

One day, my father came home and discovered the kitchen in a dirty state. Immediately he saw the state of the room, got his belt and whipped my elder brother furiously for a while. It was during this fiasco my mother came into the house. I liked to believe that at that point, something snapped in my mother as she walked up to my father, forcefully took the cane from him and slapped him.

My mother, with her three children then, moved out of my father’s house a week later. One night, my mum woke us all and informed us she was not going back to our father. She spoke to us on the reason we felt our father was always beating us and what we thought she needs to do to ensure she never used the whip on us as we are well aware she was a woman and will need to work twice as hard to ensure we grow up not lacking a father figure. She then went on her knees and implored us to cooperate with her as she knows she cannot do it alone and she there and then apologized on behalf of our father was while weeping, pleaded