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A Guide to Creating A Family Mission Statement
Everyone knows successful businesses only thrive when there is a clear-cut mission, a reason for existing.
Rock bottom is a school. I pray everyone finds their way there.
Six years ago in the beginning of the summer, when my kids and I sat on the floor eating Chinese takeout in a single room we had just moved into, I took out my leather journal, a keepsake from an earlier time, and wrote down our family’s mission statement. Everyone knows successful businesses only thrive when there is a clear-cut mission, a reason for existing. Dedication and commitment to that mission day after day, year after year, a reminder of the values it stands on, is what keeps one grounded in the difficult places.
We were homeless. My twins had just turned 10, and while I had started a new beginning as an administrator at a university, I had just ended a relationship in a bitter fight, where sharp and sour words were thrown within earshot of the children. We had moved out the night of the fight and into a hotel, then an Airbnb, then another Airbnb before a landlord friend of mine offered a cheap room in a 3-bedroom apartment where the twins and I could lay our heads until I figured out our next move.
I had no blueprint for navigating such a time. I came up empty handed when grappling through my past for examples…
