Family Resilience: Planning Ahead
October 11, 2023
Horror and Halloween
October 25, 2023
Family Resilience Wrap Up is the final blog in this series. To get caught up, check out Family Resilience, Family Resilience: Communication, Family Resilience: Flexibility, Family Resilience: Children, and Family Resilience: Planning Ahead.
For the past 5 blogs I have been writing about how to support the resilience of all the families you are part of. Open, healthy communication is a key ingredient. Ongoing flexibility allows your family to adapt to change over time. Considering the needs of children and vulnerable adults supports all family members. Together your family can work to prepare for oncoming challenges.
Two central features of long-term resilience in a family are connection and healthy boundaries. Connection is the ongoing narrative of experiences, conversations, and events that tie family members together over time. Boundaries are the spoken and unspoken rules about how people in your family interact with one another. A key to healthy boundaries is that you can talk openly to your family members about how your family norms impact you.
Connection
Connection, not perfection, is the central thread to long term family relationships. One way to create connections is to have fun together. Share experiences you enjoy. In considering what your family might do together, be open to new ideas. Maybe you don’t really care about the solar eclipse, or sumo wrestling but someone in your family is enthused. Join in, at least for awhile, to learn about it and to discover what they love about it. You may, or may not, discover a new interest but you will develop a new understanding in your family. Events don’t always turn out as planned; it helps to remember that the point of the activity isn’t the event, it is the time together. Focus on the connection, not the event itself.
Family connections are also forged in facing difficulties together. I have a deep sense of connection with those who stepped in during disastrous times in my life. At moments of deep vulnerability, they cheered me on and helped out. Other family challenges are the day-to-day work of raising children, caring for older adults, finishing a degree and/or starting a business. The challenges here are not disasters but the long term need for solid advice, a helping hand, or consistent encouragement. When the larger family helps, milestones become a cause for the whole family to celebrate.
Connections are often traced through family stories and inside jokes. “Do you remember when…” could start a story from last year or from decades ago. In my close friend group “going blueberry picking” means getting to know one another really well during a trip where so much goes wrong that no blueberries get picked. Even friends who weren’t there that day know the joke. Classic stories are when and how people join the family. Boundaries are the baseline assumptions about how you behave in this family. Wearing shoes in the house, or not, is a simple boundary. Expectations around privacy, sharing of money, and who makes final decisions can be much more complicated.
Boundaries
Healthy boundaries accept change. They allow new people to blend their own personality and interests into the larger family. People are seen as they are, not as they used to be. The youngest child who always wanted piggyback rides during family events is seen as a young adult who wants and deserves privacy and respect. The person who used to organize everyone and everything can step back from hosting the family meal when they no longer want to do it.
Healthy boundaries allow your family to operate with trust and freedom within routine patterns. To be fair and workable they need to be clear and consistent, sharing power and acknowledging choice. Tolerating abuse, hostility, or dangerous behavior because someone is “family” does not build resilience. Boundaries work best when they are acknowledged and are open to discussion. There is a broad range of family expectations that work just fine depending on each family’s culture, history, and circumstances.
Connecting in memorable ways builds family bonds over time. This is true for those you live with as well as those who live across town or on another continent. Clear and flexible family boundaries provide emotional safety and basic operating procedures for ongoing relationships. There is no such thing as a perfect family. A healthy and resilient family is continuously working toward being there for one another across time and space. It is a work in progress blending many different generations, perspectives, needs, and personalities together. In resilient families children learn, older adults are protected, and we all find meaningful connections.
Peace,
Laura A. Gaines
To learn more, explore learnmodelteach.com for tools, videos, and coaching opportunities.
