Sylvia Gertrude French

“Do your best. That's all anybody can expect of you. And you get to judge what your best is.”

And what I took away from my mom’s advice is to “just keep doing Me”

(Excerpt from an Interview with Pamela French, Policy Maker and Chief Empowerment Officer and Co-Founder of Authentic Relating Ottawa)

Ottawa, Canada

My mom was born and raised on a farm and was always involved in a farming community. She carved her own path and did things differently than her siblings. Her education background was in the field of Science. When she got married, she raised a family and continued with farming activities. She was managing a team and a business because we were a farming family. My mom is quite proud of the fact that all four of her children born and raised on a farm, grew up and went on to get undergraduate degrees and built extraordinary careers. She is really proud that she nurtured some solid humans and released them into the world.

Mom is such a model for relationships and leadership. When I was growing up, there was always lots of community groups and activities like breakfasts, social events depending on what season. For example, when strawberries are in season, there's a strawberry social. My mom was either leading these events part of the organizing team. There was a lot of coordinating and communicating in my household about these events, people coming over to organize them with my mom, lots of phone calls or meetings. I was inspired by the aliveness of being in communication with people, creating with community from watching my mom.

Just like mom, I'm also the youngest so I feel there's a special kinship there because of that. She is very competitive at playing cards and she almost always wins, which tells me she's got a very strategic mind and is very situationally aware. She and I have really cultivated a fun adult relationship with each other. For the last 12 years, we've been traveling together every winter and it's been so much fun to discover different parts of the world with her. We've identified Mexico as one of our favorites so we go there most often. It's those times when we are on a plane for 3 hours straight or 5 hours straight that we get to have conversations. Then when we're at our destination our conversations dive into the heart of what matters to both of us. Traveling with my mom has really allowed me to cultivate and discover who she is as a person and not just my mother. Since these travels, mom and I opened up a whole new line of communication. I can be totally honest and open with her and know I am not going to be judged.

One of the trips we’re on I was thinking that she was going to be so disappointed in me because I had just broken off an engagement. I was engaged to be married and being the youngest, everybody else had already gotten married. And I felt like I was a bit of a failure, that I hadn't figured out the whole married life thing yet. And I shared this with my mom, and she said to me, “the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence, and if it's not for you, it's not for you, don't worry about it.” I had spent quite a bit of time worrying that my mom would be disappointed because she wanted me to get married. After that conversation I really got that my mom’s commitment as that I was happy however or whatever that looked like for me. My mom is way more unconditionally loving than I ever gave her credit for.

One other thing I notice about my mom is when something was really important to me, my mom found a way to make it happen. I remember when I was interested in dancing, I would get up and dance when a commercial was on and try and mimic their moves. My mom found a way to put me in dance class even though that was an added expense that they didn't really have the money for. She found a way and really nurtured whatever I was passionate about. She was always really supportive.

I remember her saying this to me when I was a child, “Do your best. That's all anybody can expect of you. And you get to judge what your best is.” And what I took away from my mom is she just wanted me to “just keep doing Me”. As I look at my life today, I really have charted my own path. It’s different from my siblings and I do my best, show up as a leader and a contribution to people around me.  I'm a policymaker in the Canadian federal government, and I also lead a community here in Ottawa, Canada called Authentic Relating Ottawa. And what lights me up in life is watching people come alive in communication and connection with other human beings.

Talk about charting my own path, I was working with the United Nations and got offered a job in Afghanistan. It was for the 2005 democratic elections. I must have really shocked my parents then because I got offered that job and twelve days later, I was in Afghanistan. As you can imagine, nobody in our family had ever been in the military or gone to any war zones. It was marked as one of the least safe UN missions at the time. Later I discovered as we were cleaning up the house, my mom had printed every email that I ever sent when I was on that mission and saved it in a binder. In that moment I realized I was blessed with the best chearleader any child could have. I really saw how devoted my mom is to loving and supporting me, and all her children.

I’m someone unafraid to express myself, be what I want to be because my mom created the space for me to do that. I thought when I was little that I was going to be a lawyer because, like my mom, I was going to support people and fight for people's rights and cheer for the underdog. And instead of being a lawyer, I found another path that protects people’s rights by becoming a policymaker. I literally write the law and have drafted several pieces of legislation that are now in existence here in Canada. I'm responsible groundbreaking policy instruments that have been approved in the Canadian Federal Public Service.

And in my coaching practice, I’ve personally caused a lot of people to have power back, be lit up in their life as a result of me being bold and empowering to them. I've coached, led events to a few thousand people and that is my contribution to other humans. The confidence with which I show up to any conversation is definitely thanks to that foundation that I got from my childhood, the wonderful encouragement I got from my mom.

Thank you, Mom.