My Human Formation Story

Hi!  My name is Leslie Adamson. I’m the founder of Trinity Anchored Formation LLC, a Metanoia Certified Catholic Interior-life and Temperaments Coach, a Human Formation Mentor, a certified Called & Gifted™ Charisms Discernment Guide, an Inner Healing Prayer Encounter Facilitator, a trained MBTI cognitive functions specialist, a certified Aroma Freedom Technique practitioner, and a soon-to-be certified Virtues coach, and TCK Trained Grief Coach. 

I’m also a redeemed adult Third Culture Kid, and very passionate Catholic convert. My vocational calling for sanctification has been through the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. I’m a wife, mother, grandmother, and now a parental caregiver.  

However, above all of these earthly voyages and qualifications, I’m most proud of being a beloved daughter of the Most Holy Trinity—a truth I didn’t fully embrace until my mid-50s.  Now, that identity shapes everything I do!

🔥My Journey to the Missing Pillar

My human life journey began not in the pews of a thriving parish or safe family environment, but rather in the chaos of an unchurched home and alcoholic family, where faith, human formation, ordered self-acceptance and unconditional love were foreign concepts. 

As an adult Third Culture Kid and an adult convert to the Catholic faith, I know firsthand what it means to grow up between cultures and outside the Church—to long for true belonging while struggling to live from a fallen, wounded identity. I tried to love, yet my connections were often inauthentic. By God’s miraculous grace, I was led on a journey of inner healing, faith, and human formation—a journey that has brought me to a thriving place of integration, authenticity, and purpose.

In reflecting on my long and sanctifying journey of homeschooling, building a first-generation Catholic domestic church, and ministering to many disengaged or enmeshed marriages and families, I began to recognize a heartbreaking—and all too familiar—pattern also present among my fellow Catholic Christian sojourners.

I was not alone.

While many well-meaning catechized parents, teachers, ministry leaders, and even clergy diligently practiced and taught intellectual, spiritual, and vocational formation, one essential pillar that was continuously being overlooked was human formation.  The very foundation which St. John Paul II emphasized in his profound teachings on personalism.

Without it, even the most faithful efforts risk being built on sand rather than rock.

🔥Human Formation: The Forgotten Foundation

St. John Paul II made this clear in his apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis, where he wrote:

“Human formation…is the basis on which the other aspects of priestly formation—intellectual, spiritual, and pastoral—are built.”(Pastores Dabo Vobis, 43)  

Throughout Church history, great saints like Augustine, Teresa of Ávila. John Bosco, and Thomas Aquinas (through his philosophy of psychology) affirmed that no lasting spiritual or intellectual maturity is possible without deep personal integration.

When human formation is neglected—especially in the family of origin—I’ve seen the fallout firsthand: fractured identities, a deep sense of not belonging, unhealed wounds, unresolved grief, repeated patterns of sin, self-imploding secrets, harsh judgment, unforgiveness, and a painful loss of intimacy with God, self, and others.

I’ve lived through seasons of that fragmentation myself. I know what it’s like to feel unseen, harshly judged, and bypassed at the most human level—despite doing all the “right” things on the outside.

🔥 What Happens Without Human Formation?

In the absence of solid human formation, when people are confronted with circumstances they didn’t choose, can’t understand, do not like, or cannot change, the pain and suffering is often minimized and avoided—leaving unprocessed perceptions and unresolved misunderstandings. Without the means to process pain, people often default to these avoidant coping strategies—emotional detachment, cognitive denial, intellectual rationalizing, and even spiritual bypassing just to survive.  

Left unchecked, these poor coping mechanisms harden our hearts and entrench us in sinful behavioral patterns (cf. Acts 7:51). The inauthentic masks we wear for perceived protection gradually become so familiar that, over time, we begin to mistaken them for our true identity. 

Yet in truth, our sacramental bodies—temples of the Holy Spirit—are designed to make visible what is invisible. And when the interior disorder can no longer remain hidden, the breakdowns come visibly to the surface:

• Marriages fall into crisis
• Parents become overwhelmed and reactive
• Children internalize unspoken wounds, erupt in dysregulation, or withdraw entirely
• Adult children severe family ties
• Grandparents are abandoned 
• Caregivers burn out
• Perhaps most tragically—many adults leave the Church altogether—offering cultural justifications with groundless excuses for what are often unaddressed hidden wounds aka God-holes.

Inside parish life, the same dysfunction appears in different disguises:  burned-out church staff, clergy and ministry leaders stretched beyond capacity, resignations, disengaged students in parish religious education programs , and parishioners drifting away—leaving gaping holes in the Church’s mission and community vitality.

🔥What Happens When Human Formation Is Restored?

On the positive side, I have witnessed what happens when this foundational pillar is reclaimed.  

When Catholics experience solid human formation, they begin to heal from the inside out. They shed masks, rewrite false narratives, and rewire deeply embedded habits. Their personalities—once stifled obstacles of misunderstanding—become bridges for others to encounter Jesus Christ, the Redeemer.

They grow in their capacity to fully receive God’s unconditional love—and reflect it back into the world through their own uniquely gifted hues.

True identity, unwavering sense of belonging, ordered self-acceptance, regular practice of virtuous habits, authentic relationships, and a clarity of divine mission begin to emerge—no longer driven by fear, but anchored in grace.

🔥Why I Founded Trinity Anchored Formation

After years of witnessing the fallout of fractured identities and missions that went unfulfilled, as a consequence of diminished human formation in both homes and parishes, I knew God was calling me to be a part of the solution. 

Today, I help other Catholics and converts to the faith rediscover their true identity in Christ, find a home and secure sense of belonging in His Church, and thrive in their specific vocations and missions at full capacity and with grace.

I founded Trinity Anchored Formation (TAF) to help fill this critical gap, by bringing healing and restoration from the inside out, and equipping Catholics and Christian converts to rediscover who they are, where they belong, how they connect, and why they’re here.

This work isn’t about self-idolization, or any other disordered practice of putting self above God. 

At TAF it’s about grace-enabled integration—where identity wholeness is reclaimed, ordered self-acceptance is redeemed,  self-management and virtues are habituated, relationships are strengthened, authenticated and renewed, and specific vocations and apostolic missions are lived out with clarity, courage, certainty, and joy.

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock.”  — Matthew 7:24

💬 Ready to Begin Your Journey?

If you’ve ever felt unseen, unrooted, or spiritually bypassed—you’re not alone—and you’re not stuck.  There’s a way forward. This is your invitation to rediscover the fullness of who you are, anchored in grace, formed by truth, and sent in unconditional love. 

Let’s be sojourners together.

To begin 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻