185 What Is Flourishing? Defining the Good Marriage and the Good Family

Home.  Family.  Belonging.  Love.  What does it mean to have a healthy marriage, a healthy family?  Gerry Crete and Theresa Robinson join us to explore that question: “What does a thriving marriage and flourishing in family life look like?  We bring in Internal Family Systems, attachment theory, perfectionism, the importance of family members delighting in each other, parents’ vows and scripts, how loving children involves more than the will, and the importance of “being with” each other.   Check out Theresa Robinson’s practice, Greenhouse Counselling, here: https://www.greenhousecounselling.com/ And Dr. Gerry Crete’s practice, Transfiguration, is here: https://www.transfiguration.co/ Episode 85 is all about perfectionism:  https://youtu.be/bw-zUp2h_TA Check out our Resilient Catholics Community – the RCC offers structured programming to help orthodox Catholic flourish in life by working on our human formation: https://members.soulsandhearts.com/rcc If you are a Catholic therapist, coach, spiritual director, priest, or in another role where you accompany others in their human formation, consider the Formation for Formators Community (FFF).  The FFF is all about the personal, human formation of the formator, so that you can better receive and give love in how you accompany others.  More here:  https://members.soulsandhearts.com/fff And our daily sister podcast, Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts is all about helping our listeners integrate inside, heal from emotional burdens, and grow to flourish in accepting being loved and loving yourself in an ordered way.  https://www.youtube.com/@ScriptureForYourInnerOutcasts Key moments: 0:00  The home and family as a human treasure and source of joy4:30  The core question for this podcast series11:10 What does it mean to have a healthy marriage and family?13:30 The importance of the family, the “domestic church”21:00 Parts’ expectations for family life – flourishing does not equal perfection25:00  Dr. Peter was a great parent right out of the gate, but then things got much more real.  25:56  Perfectionism in family life – how “the best is the enemy of the good.”  Attachment needs and integrity needs in family life.  Dr. Gerry wanted to provide his children everything so that they would be happy.  29:41 Eudaimonia is about a life well-lived, not perfection, a place where children can rest in the security of love33:30  Unconditional love in the family vs. a focus on “achievement”36:20  What is flourishing in marriages and family life? 40:42 The importance of joy and delighting in children45:45 How mothers and fathers can parents from a position of self-protection; the importance of pausing49:15  Parents’ vows and scripts are often reactions to their experience of their own parents50:53  Parents often take too much responsibility for their children’s behavior57:25  Balancing wanting the best for our kids with the need to “let go”1:00:10 Even heroic acts of the will are not enough in loving children10:01:30  How understanding parts make family relationships much easier1:04:20 Self-led parenting1:05:19  Parts language and family life1:09:00 How parts work helps with forgiveness in family life1:18:40  Some reassurances about parenting:  how earthy parents are not the primary parents of their children,  God’s providence is active1:19:20  “Being with children” is more important than solving their problems1:22:30 Reversal with children and identification/counter-identification with parents1:26:00  Earthly parents are secondary parents, redux. God has a plan for every miscue, every mistake. He's willing to rewrite the family symphony, to take on the bad notes and turn them into good notes in His Providence1:28:25 Flourishing in a family is about creating an ecology or environment of worth and delight1:30:20  For each mom to remember that she is a beloved little daughter of God.