Growing though a pandemic
Lockdown was coming. The news was thick with it, and rumors were rife that soon there would be an announcement. Our workshop bookings had all been canceled in anticipation, and at the last few events, many people hadn’t attended due to the fear of catching Covid. It was hard to believe this was really happening. I had been considering taking the workshops online, but this was all so new to me. I hadn’t done anything like this before. I had been working from my daughter’s old laptop and didn’t even know how to use Zoom. I spent some time practicing and familiarizing myself with how it worked. I set up a Zoom account and registered for a subscription. On our social media, I advertised an online Trauma-Informed Parenting Workshop. I shared it in any groups that would allow it. People started to sign up, and we had a good number. Still, I was nervous. This remote, online thing felt weird.
The family was all home. My youngest had come back from Uni after a frantic phone call from us, telling her to get back before anything happened. My eldest’s college had already closed in preparation for what was about to come, and both girls were hanging around the house. Steven was the only one still going out to work. I didn’t have an office, and we had only recently moved into our home—it was a real fixer-upper with no great spot to Zoom from. The best option was to do the workshop over two mornings at 10 a.m. and hope the girls would stay in their rooms until 12 p.m., as requested, allowing me to Zoom from the living room. People continued to sign up. Every time I practiced delivering on Zoom, I messed it up and forgot what I was saying. How was I going to manage this?
The day before the workshop, Boris Johnson came onto our screens as we all huddled around the TV in anticipation and told us to “Stay at Home.” It was so unreal. We knew it was coming, but it felt like we were in an apocalyptic movie. Messages started coming in from people saying they wouldn’t make it to the workshop due to getting things in order for lockdown. It was to be expected. The world was spinning into fear and panic.
On the day of the workshop, four people turned up. There were five, but one couldn’t get their connection to work—two adoptive parents, a foster carer, and a nursery teacher. It was a small group, but they were all lovely. Both mornings, they sat on Zoom with me while I delivered the workshop online for the first time. Once the session started and I got into the flow, it was fine. I forgot about my nerves. It seemed to go okay. We had lots of discussions and chat, which was lovely. I organized another date, and this time it booked up even more. Many teachers signed on as they were all now sitting at home. Over 20 attended this time, and the feedback was brilliant. My phone and email were blowing up with messages from attendees telling me how much they had gotten from it. This was so exciting! But I had to come up with a better plan.
The family was hanging around in their bedrooms, waiting to get into the kitchen. They had been great about not disturbing me, but hogging the main living space in the house all morning wasn’t going to last. My youngest was horrified by what I was doing. She could see me on social media sharing posts about TIP workshops. At 19, this was mortifying. “Mum, please don’t go live on Facebook, and do not go onto TikTok,” she begged. “You’ll get slaughtered.” I assured her I had no plans to go live online.
As the lockdown passed, I offered one workshop a month. I found a small acceptance corner in my bedroom to zoom from, with boxes piled up on the bed to hold the laptop. We offered a workshop for birth parents, as I had seen the difference in my own child with this approach, and the feedback was amazing. People were messaging, telling me about the difference they were seeing. I shared it on many of the forums I followed for parents with autistic or ADHD children, and on forums for carers and adopters. Some groups deleted my posts; others didn’t. I messaged and emailed organizations supporting families, telling them what we were doing. The workshops grew bigger and bigger. Sometimes too big—it could be a bit overwhelming at times. We started charging for tickets, but when parents messaged me, saying they really wanted to attend but couldn’t afford it this month, it broke my heart. The information was too important. People needed it.
All these forums were full of posts about families in crisis, managing huge behaviors that were only escalating due to the stress and fear in the world. The decision was made to offer the workshops for free. At this point, all it was costing me was the monthly Zoom fee. I was sitting at home doing nothing anyway. If this could help people, I had to do it.
We were invited to deliver a workshop for Adoption Scotland by a lovely man called Kevin. SWIS Foster Care also asked us to deliver an online session. A few familiar faces were there from those early in-person workshops, like Sharon, who had hung back and encouraged me to keep up the work and offered to help if I ever needed advice on being a charity. Kevin and Sharon would years later become a big part of the TIP board. The workshops grew larger each month. Twenty or thirty would sign up, and around 10 to 15 would attend. The Facebook group was growing, and people were asking questions and interacting with the content. We created another private group for those who had attended the workshop as a safe place to support each other. People joined, but there wasn’t much interaction yet.
TIP committee meetings continued via Zoom. A friend of ours, Stuart, had kindly offered to become a trustee. His wife, Julie, was already on the board. However, the more we learned, the more we realized that having married couples on a charity board wasn’t really appropriate. So, Julie and Steven stepped off the board. Stuart became TIP’s Chairperson, Pamela the Secretary, and Barbara the Treasurer. Steven was gutted to step down, as he was my biggest supporter. He was always coming up with great ideas behind the scenes and was my sounding board. It felt unfair that he couldn’t be part of it, but if I hoped to eventually secure funding and become an employee of TIP, he couldn’t be on the board due to a conflict of interest. It was all so new to us, learning as we went.
I joined some networking groups to promote the charity and became a member of BNI. They were offering a free spot in each group to a charity. Steven was already a member and had been for many years through his work, so I was familiar with how it worked. I loved it. I met so many people and built some solid connections. Barbara, a lawyer, went on to become a trustee. Adrian, a mental health nurse and life coach who worked in a charity, offered to mentor me and taught me so much about running a charity. Vera a photographer who gave her time to photograph our workshop. A magazine editor did an interview on our work. A copy writer offered to help with the website. Many times, the members rallied together and took part in charity walks to raise money for TIP. The support and camaraderie I found there were much needed, especially since remote working can be such a lonely role.
By the time lockdown eased, TIP was reaching further than ever. Offering the workshops online had expanded our reach, with people attending and joining the groups from far and wide—not just the UK, but also from America, Australia, India, and Germany. I hadn’t expected this. The Corra Foundation had given out funding during the lockdown to charities—£2,000—our first ever funding. We started applying for small community grants to offer six online workshops for different local areas. Some councils were more open to it than others. In Stirling, West Dunbartonshire, North Lanarkshire, and East Dunbartonshire, our applications had been successful. We also received a small grant from the Bellahouston Bequest Fund to cover six workshops across Glasgow.
When the world kicked back into gear, I didn’t return to the part-time swimming teaching job I had been working in. I was still cutting hair on Saturdays for my long-standing clients, but the rest of the week I was now working for TIP for a meager part-time wage, while putting in long full-time hours. But I was delighted—I loved it. We were even beginning to deliver some in-person workshops again.
The reach was growing, the need was growing, and The Facebook group was growing rapidly. What had started as a simple advert for our work had evolved beyond anything we could have imagined. Thousands of people were joining, and the membership count rose by the day. I decided to turn it into a closed group, hoping it would make things easier to manage.
read more-Choose Love in moments of tension