Episode 35: Remodel Your Family?

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Sparkle School, where together, we access our innate, iNtuitive wisdom as unique, self-valuing, and deeply Feeling women … and share who we are becoming in a safe, sensitive community.

Today, we complete, for now, our exploration of the impact that family of origin has had on us in the ten areas of life we work with in Sparkle School. We’ll do so, by looking at the impact our family of origin had on our life area of ‘family’ itself. As we uncover more and more secrets about what it truly means to be rare, iNtuitive-Feeling type women, we realize how the impact of our families of origin has been very significant in all areas of life, because, many if not most of us felt like the ‘odd-on-out’ in our family of origin.

‘Family’ is the primary place where we pick up our first ideas about all other life-areas. So, it makes sense that our experience in our family of origin would greatly influence our choices and actions in creating or adopting our next families, our families of choice. It seems quite common, that we repeat, in our second family, the challenges and gifts we received in our first family. This makes sense, since that is all we know about family. In fact, it used to be a myth in therapy circles, that we are likely to marry our father … that is, someone whose emotional makeup and behavior patterns are similar to those we experienced in our father growing up. Trouble is, we usually don’t catch on to the relevance that myth might have in our lives, until we have already said our vows! And then, if things become difficult, it can feel like it’s too late to do much about them.

However, as rare, iNtuitive-Feeling women, many of us soon start to notice that we do not want to repeat the challenges we experienced in our family of origin. We are fascinated by personal growth and development, and we tend to be quite courageous in mining for the real truth of our individual life paths. We are also open to the big-picture, possibility … that we can evolve in self-chosen ways; physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And because we have great compassion for others, we interrupt our dysfunctional, family patterns in order to protect our children, spouses and other close family members from the challenges we ourselves have experienced.

When we start to see that we are recreating the dysfunction of our family of origin, it can be very sobering. Sometimes we recognize what’s happening as a repeat of our first family drama, and sometimes we just find ourselves reacting to life’s challenges in ways that we don’t feel good about. Either way, we are likely to want to make changes, and thus begins what can be a lifelong journey. Indeed, some personal development professionals say that our first family sets up a psycho-emotional obstacle course that we spend the rest of our lives trying to overcome.