Healing a frazzled family is no job for loners.
The more severe the personal injuries and biological mental disorders that underlie our family problems, the more we will need to call on others for help and support. Take pride in reaching out for help and comfort when your family needs it.
Find out what is missing. Maybe we need time to relax. Maybe it’s skills, companionship, connection with supportive family, or respite from our own hounding inner voices. Whatever it is, we would do well to find some way to rejuvenate ourselves in our regular routines. If we don’t feel loved and well-rested in our own lives, we will be hard pressed to give our children the love and good humor they need from us. This is the time to reach out to other people, to a higher good and to whatever faith we hold, for encouragement, companionship, new strength, a helping hand and new inspiration.
The more extensive and pervasive our family problems the more likely our need for outside help. Suggestions for change in Part 1 pointed to self-help exercises to help define problems and begin to address them. Suggestions for further reading appear in the footnotes, and in the annotated bibliography in the appendices.
Set aside time with fellow parents to explore these issues and share your stresses and successes. It may be the start of a supportive community focused on parenting. If such a group functions with the mutual respect and objectivity needed to be genuinely helpful, then it could become a model for healthy family interactions. If you’re not disciplined, it could also become another version of chronic conflicts from home. Keep in mind that any family-like setting is fair game for the ghosts from our pasts, which can make such a group a good place to master our ghosts.
Community groups will sometimes sponsor parenting classes, couples seminars, single parent groups or family nights. See what your own community offers. Enlist a friend or neighbor to go with you.