This reader mentioned that setting and managing boundaries with challenging family members didn’t feel as salient of a topic to them because they were totally cut off from family now.
Instead, the pressing topic for them was and is the question of how to raise a healthy, functional family when they themselves don’t come from one.
I think so many of us (myself included!) ask this question. And while there are seemingly millions of parenting books, blogs, and podcasts out there, few address the nuanced aspect of this question. How to raise a healthy family when you yourself don’t come from one.
Questions to address to raise a healthy family
When you’re estranged, cut off, distant, or dealing with strained, dysfunctional, or challenging family dynamics, there’s a panoply of unique questions we have to address when raising our little ones:
- Am I even equipped to be a good parent given what was modeled for me?
- Should I carry on my line given who I genetically come from?
- How do I do my own healing work even while I show up for and raise my kids?
- How do I explain to them that they don’t have grandparents? That there are gaps on the family tree when they have to make one in second grade?
- What will I say to them when they learn they have more aunties/uncles that they’ve never met or when and if those family members abruptly leave their lives?
- How do I make sure those parts I hated about my parents don’t come out in me as a parent?
- How can I give them a great and wonderful childhood when I didn’t have one? I am not even sure what this even looks like.
And so forth.
You probably could add another half dozen questions to this list that ruminate in your own mind.
Regardless of whatever specific questions dance in your own mind, if you relate to any part of this – wondering how to raise a healthy family when you yourself don’t come from one – then today’s post is for you.
Raising a healthy family when you don’t come from one: set your intention and clarify what healthy means to you.
I say this all the time to my therapy patients and I say it to myself nearly every day. Our intention counts for so much.
The mere fact that we want to be healthy, functional parents for our children and do the best we can speaks volumes about us and can also predispose us to being this, I think.
So that’s the first thing that I want to say. It’s beautiful and powerful that you are even asking this question. And that you have the intention to show up differently and better for your children.
