My Definition of Family Unity Looks Different Now
celebrating wins on (and off) the pickleball court this summer
Crisis has a way of contaminating every life attached to it.
“How could this happen?”
“This can’t be my life.”
“Will my family ever be whole again?”
Thoughts of denial and despair gripped me in the Summer of 2021. My family was thrust into crisis when a choice made by my second-born daughter resulted in a traumatic experience with devastating effects.
I clung to the hope our brokenness could be “fixed”– but it quickly became evident we would never be the same functionally or cohesively. Putting our family back the way we were before would not and could not be the goal.
The goal was to recover and heal. And in order to do this, I needed to expand my definition of a healthy functioning family, what that could look like, and how long recovery might take.
In the book The Secrets of Happy Families, Bruce Feiler uses the term “strong family narrative” to describe the concept of bouncing back after crisis. He writes:
“The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative. Create, refine, and retell the story of your family’s positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones. That act alone may increase the odds that your family will thrive for many generations to come.”
Knowing something as positive as a strong family narrative could come out of something so gut-wrenching helped me do something integral to our family’s healing process:
I stopped holding on to the way things used to be, (hindering the flow of life), and began accepting things the way they actually were (a posture conducive to healing and growth).
Being an anchor for my family during this turbulent time often required one step forward and two steps back, but I managed to strike a delicate balance:
To assess the damage without fixing or fixating on it.
To see a hopeful future without denying reality.
To mourn the loss without living in it.
One of the hardest but most healing conversations we had as a family involved my children telling each other what it felt like to go through the aftermath of that traumatic event. Eighteen months had passed, and each individual had made progress on their own with the help of professional support.
The conversation happened when my older daughter came home from college for the first time. All of us being home together after an extended time apart triggered old wounds and revealed a chasm separating the sisters. When animosity came to a head after dinner one night, I knew our family could not move forward until the siblings aired their grievances.
Assuming the vital moderator role, I used everything I learned on my Soul Shift journey about acknowledging painful and uncomfortable feelings, so they can lead to healing and enlightenment. Modeling emotional regulation, I guided the discussion with things like:
“She needs you to hear what it was like for her.”
“Is there a particular moment of fear or hopelessness that really stands out in your mind?”
“How did you cope?”
“What do you need from your sister now?”
“Is there anything else you need to say to each other or to me?”
After ninety exhausting minutes of intense dialogue, there were no concrete solutions, no hugs, no I forgive you’s, but the sisters had heard each one another, and more importantly, they had felt heard.
That dialogue was the beginning of another eighteen months of healing, introspection, and growth… bringing us to present day.
Almost three years to the day of that horrific event that altered my family, my daughters played their first game together – a game of pickleball on our neighborhood tennis courts.
To an outsider, it might have looked like two young adults engaged in an ordinary pastime. But to me, an insider to the most painful details, it was an extraordinary moment I wasn’t sure I’d ever see:
Two human beings, irreparably changed by trauma, forming a new bond by getting to know who they are now.
“Next time, let’s play Mom and Dad,” the sisters agreed, realizing they’d be pretty awesome if they worked together.
It’s just a pickleball game, I know… but given what our family has overcome, these small acts of unity are major triumphs in our strong family narrative.
And I am celebrating this as a win.
🏆 I invite you to share the small wins in your life right now that indicate healing is happening. We can learn so much from each other.
🩵 CRITICAL ENCOURAGEMENT… As I was writing this essay, I received a desperate message from a member of our treehouse community. Both of her adult daughters were going through major life disruptions, and she asked if I had any encouragement for her. Several days after I wrote her back, I learned my guidance had not only helped her, but she had also shared my words with multiple people going through difficult life experiences. She noticed I'd written the encouragement so it could apply to any crisis without knowing the details. As someone who believes in respecting personal boundaries, I did that intentionally. Next week, I will share those words in a post along with the advice that did NOT help me at the onset of my own crisis. This extra essay will go out to paid subscribers next week. For the same price as a cup of coffee, you can enjoy monthly access to the full community experience at the treehouse and help me continue this work I love.
🌄 CULTIVATE HARMONY WITH ME… One of the biggest takeaways I learned from crisis was this:
Broken nervous systems do not heal a broken world.
I couldn’t effectively help my family heal until I started prioritizing creating harmony within myself. It is one of my greatest joys to be able to share how I did that in a safe space provided in my in-person Soul Shift workshop. If your nervous system is in need of true restoration so you can support your family and effectively manage life’s challenges, please join me Oct 4-6 in the mountains of North Carolina. One of my past participants said it best:
“Skirting the surface of the practices Rachel teaches is so incredibly different from taking a break from all the other things in life and spending time really focused on learning and growing.”
This same participant went on to use the Self-Compassion Reframing Exercise she learned at the retreat to help her daughter overcome negative self-talk. This is a beautiful example of how creating harmony within ripples out. What an important impact you make when you chose to cultivate peace within. I hope you will join me in October. Registration starts at $743, which includes weekend accommodations at the award-winning Art of Living Retreat Center, delicious meals, and course tuition for your entire stay. You need not know anyone to attend. Come as you are. You will be so glad you did.
And what a beautiful win this is Rachel!
I love you know the power of sharing our stories and the invaluable need for your girls to share with one another what the aftermath story was they were each telling themselves. To foster and create a safe space so the girls’ words could be shared and know that in their telling of their stories something is shifted and sorted differently in their bodies.
After we speak our stories our bodies no longer hold our stories they same. We embody the story in a new way going forward, room is made for more love, more ease and peace and more joy. Room is made for the chapter to continue writing a softer, more compassionate ending to our story. Then that is one, the softer one, which will be become the more remembered one.
This new narrative we write now is a necessary part of the healings, it holds medicine so we may find a way forward in our families. The telling of the story differently can give us a new way through the hard and the heart-aching. The words and the way we tell the story matters as we seek to mend and repair the rupture. The weight of what we say can greatly influence the way this story gets woven into our family story and our bodies.
How beautiful a space you hold in your family love, the hope that healing and happy are always a theme that can be written anew and holding a posture of grace that it is always possible to create new endings to old chapters.
Love wins!
Oh, Rachel, this is so beautiful! I am seeing a small win with my middle, Addie, who has been having the summer of her life- going to church retreats and camps, vacations, sleepovers, still working by babysitting many days, but mostly gone from the house. Heading in to the summer of her senior year, while we are happy for her, we miss her and want to see her. My husband doesn’t have the best way of showing this- when she comes in the door after being gone for a day or so, he will say something to the effect of, “Well thank you for gracing us with your presence!” even though he really is so happy to see her, or he will tell people in the family that she is “partying all summer”, which to her sounds negative (she isn’t “partying” in the way some might think he means- she is hanging out with friends and having fun, and really doing other important things.) I have been working to cut him off immediately by saying as soon as I see her with a bright smile and a big hug, “Addie!! It’s so good to see you! How was the sleepover? Who was there? What did you guys do?” I got a great hug back and lots of fun stories. I have learned this from your writings, and also from an essay that Kerry Foreman wrote, that we should never guilt our teens like that, or make them feel badly about not being around, and that has stuck with me, and has been so useful. Addie even came to me and said something to the effect of- “I’m sorry I haven’t been around much” and then something that broke my heart a little, “I didn’t think that you guys really cared if I was home or not.” 🥺🥺🥺 To be honest, we have all had a really busy summer, so I can see why she has felt that way. BUT, we did have a great visit to Ball State (which I do think she’s choosing!!) and have 2 more college visits planned in the near future. I look forward to those being times to reconnect and get back to being grounded firmly in love.