Herb Greenberg and Patrick Sweeney wrote, Succeed on Your Own Terms, and they chose nineteen defining qualities that lead to success.

In the adoption of older children, I’d advise anyone to develop some, if not all of these traits.

They are perseverance, goal-oriented, self awareness, resilience, a willingness to take a risk, the ability to thrive under pressure, optimism, empathy, competitiveness, patience, persuasiveness, confidence, passion, integrity, trust, the ability to have fun, an openness, creativity and courage.

I was at the funeral this week of a young man, my late sister’s brother-in-law who passed away at age 41 from ALS. At his funeral one of his sisters gave the eulogy and said that John had never once complained while suffering greatly from Lou Gehrig’s disease, not once whined, “Why me?”

Nobody’s ever going to be able to say that about me.

I have ranted and raged against the unfairness of my traumatized children taking their anger and grief out on me, the only one who has ever remained with them.

I wish I could have told everyone that I’d held my head high and just smiled during our many trials and tribulations, but I’d be lying.

Maybe overall, when the final score is taken, I will have found that I held it together pretty good for one scrawny girl who’s been under a great deal of pressure. Maybe my passion overflowed and erased my lack of patience at times. But what I lacked in creativity, I more than made up for it in optimism.

I just learned that a dear friend of my mom has passed away, just months before her 101st birthday, she could have easily passed for her late 50s or early 60s, and she was beautiful and active, out ballroom dancing night after night. Her funeral, up in Virginia, will be packed and there won’t be enough positive adjectives to describe an amazing woman like her. I aspire to go out with a bang, to live a long, rich and full life even though my kids often seem hell-bent on shortening it.

Last summer even their youth pastor had hollered at my teenagers, “Are y’all trying to kill your mama?” after a bout in which two of my sons had been arrested, one was involved with the juvenile authorities and a daughter (not pictured here) was in the throes of her raging, hormonal, oppositional behaviors.

And truly, I do have the ability to have fun…in spite of them all, when there’s a group effort to bring me down. Y’all might as well go bark at the moon kids, I’m gonna win this one. I have more perseverance than all 39 kids put together.