Different can be great! Makayla is visiting friends in her neighborhood. She sees how each family is different. Some families have lots of children, but others have none. Some friends live with grandparents or have two dads or have parents who are divorced. How is her own family like the others? What makes each one great? This diverse cast allows readers to compare and contrast families in multiple ways.
A provocation to reclaim our disability lineage in order to profoundly reimagine the possibilities for our relationship to disability, kinship, and carework Disability is often described as a tragedy, a crisis, or an aberration, though 1 in 5 people worldwide have a disability. Why is this common human experience rendered exceptional? In All Our Families, disability studies scholar Jennifer Natalya Fink argues that this originates in our families. When we cut a disabled member out of the family story, disability remains a trauma as opposed to a shared and ordinary experience. This makes disability and its diagnosis traumatic and exceptional. Weaving together stories of members of her own family with sociohistorical research, Fink illustrates how the eradication of disabled people from family narratives is rooted in racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic sorting systems inherited from Nazis. By examining the rhetoric of genetic testing, she shows that a fear of disability begins before a child is even born and that a fear of disability is, fundamentally, a fear of care. Fink analyzes our racist and sexist care systems, exposing their inequities as a source of stigmatizing ableism. Inspired by queer and critical race theory, Fink calls for a lineage of disability: a reclamation of disability as a history, a culture, and an identity. Such a lineage offers a means of seeing disability in the context of a collective sense of belonging, as cause for celebration, and is a call for a radical reimagining of carework and kinship. All Our Families challenges us to re-lineate disability within the family as a means of repair toward a more inclusive and flexible structure of care and community.
Our Families, Our Values challenges both the gay community and American society to examine carefully the meaning of family values and the nature of social institutions such as marriage and the family. It asks you provoking, even disturbing, questions such as: “Is it prudent for members of the Lavender community to mimic heterosexual marriage or define personal relations networks as families, when these institutions are rapidly collapsing?” “Are we attempting to mainstream American society into accepting different views of marriage and families?” “Are we subscribing to notions of sexual property that are inherent to the marriage ceremony and the institution of marriage, when we choose to be married?” Despite the complexities of this issue, marriage constitutes a privileged position in western society, and, as this book shows you, without the legal recognition of same-sex marriages, there are many fundamental rights, as well as privileges, denied to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons.As Our Families, Our Values turns upside-down the widely accepted notion that only heterosexual people are entitled to get married, have sex, and rear children, you gain insight into personal struggles and affirmations that testify to the spirituality, procreativity, and wholesomeness of the diverse relationships of the Lavender community. You will also learn about various ongoing efforts to give religious pride to the various configurations of gay relationships, families, and values and the disruption of popular interpretations of the Scriptures that have been used to justify the oppression of sexual minorities. This book will intrigue you over and over again, as you read about: value systems transphobia equal marriage rights Buddhism’s rejection of “traditional family values” Brazil’s sex-positive culture differences between gay male social formations and families choosing a language and terms that empower sexual minorities and the essence of the liberation movement sex as communion relationships based on nurture, not transactionDesigned for academics and students of religion, pastors, priests, rabbis, and lay readers alike, Our Families, Our Values is a multifaceted view of the gay community’s response to the public controversy over gay marriage, adoption, and foster care rights. Ideal as a textbook for courses in sexuality, theology, sociology, women’s studies, and gay and lesbian studies, this book will both inform you and delight you as it reminds you that same-sex unions bring much cause for celebration and that religion and homosexuality are not mutually exclusive.
Please Help Me With This Family is based on the premise that it is generally useful to expand the therapeutic system when it is not working. By calling in additional resources when therapy reaches an impasse, the therapist is giving two strong messages to stuck families-(1)the admission of the failure of the present system to grow beyond the impasse, and (2) a model of creativity in recruiting resources to improve chances of success. Often, the resources in the large system hold the keys to uncovering and correcting troublesome relationships and behaviors in the smaller system. Please Help Me With This Family is divided into four major sections, each illustrating unique approaches and methods for unlocking resources in family and therapeutic systems. The first section opens with a comprehensive review of the theoretical roots of family therapy consultation, followed by a discussion of the different faces of consultation around the world; a detailed case study of an anorectic family in which Maurizio Andolfi successfully provokes a therapeutic impasse; and to which Carl Whitaker provides fascinating insights into his role as a consultant. Section II discusses the variety of consultative resources available in the client system and how best to harness them. Chapters cover using the child as consultant; using family of origin and friends as resources; and the use of consultation in treating addictions. Using colleagues as consultants is the focus of the third section. Consultation has the advantage over cotherapy and supervision of requiring only a brief, cost?effective relationship. Chapters discuss how therapists can avoid replicating errors by working closely with the client's previous therapist: an eco?systemic approach with chronic pain sufferers that involves medical, family, and community systems in Israel; using consultation to evaluate therapy; the creative?preventive possibilities inherent in collegial consultation; how a family therapist and school system personnel can be mutually helpful with a conjoint problem; and a consultation that focuses on the position of the therapist rather than on the client system. Finally, Section IV addresses consultation as a valuable form of professional development. It explores the importance of timing when using a consultant; the effects on five therapists of live case demonstrations with Maurizio Andolfi as consultant; and consultation to correct gender prejudice. Contributors to this volume include Vincenzo F. DiNicola, Elizabeth Ridgely, Joseph Simons, David Keith, Jim Guinan, William Jones, Lars Brok, Joel Elizur, Sara B. Jutoran, Noga Rubinstein?Nabarro, Bob Wendt, Audrey Ellenwood, Peter Liggett, Marsha Purvis, Mary Hotvedt, and Marcella de Nichilo. Students and clinicians who wish to practice consulting as well as family therapists who want to learn creative approaches to handling the dilemmas that arise in therapy will find Please Help Me With This Family to be an incomparable resource.
Are you ready to reconnect with family in a meaningful way, but unsure where or how to begin? This beloved classic poignantly explains how constructing the genogram, or a basic family tree, can help us to better understand and mend family relationships and dynamics. Readers learn how genograms can reveal a family’s history of estrangement, alliance, divorce, or suicide, exposing intergenerational patterns that prove more than coincidental. The book sheds light on a range of complex issues such as birth order and sibling rivalry, family myths and secrets, cultural differences, couple relationships, and the pivotal role of loss. In the third edition of this revelatory book, “godmother of genograms” Monica McGoldrick and family therapist Tracey Laszloffy focus on aiding readers in their own work to understand their family history and change their role in relationships where there is distance, conflict, or cutoff. Readers will also find new and updated material on the intergenerational transmission of trauma, the ramifications of uncovering family secrets via DNA testing, and more. If you’ve ever struggled to understand the complex dynamics of your family—and your place within it—this book is for you.
Roger Frie explores what it means to discover his family's legacy of a Nazi past. Using the narrative of his grandfather as a starting point, he shows how the transfer of memory from one German generation to the next keeps the forbidding reality of the Holocaust at bay.
Father Robert Hater strongly believes that ?story without basic belief lacks direction, and basic belief without story is lifeless.? He illustrates this relationship between story and Catholic belief with sensitive and powerful narratives, including the account of his own mother's death and its impact on him. This is an invaluable resource for anyone involved in conveying the story of Jesus and the church: pastors, homilists, catechetical leaders, catechists and teachers, parish ministers, and families, as well as all who wish to find God in their own stories.
God never intended the Christian life to be boring, empty, or irrelevant. In The Rest of Your Story, Pastor Greg Lindsey takes us on a journey past forgiveness to freedom. The journey starts with diving deep into our own stories so we can let go of the shame, regret, and pain that are holding us back. Only then can we discover all the ways we need Jesus’ help—and become people of godly passion who live out the true desires of our hearts. Many of us find that despite our best religious efforts, we’re still chasing God’s abundant life instead of enjoying it. In The Rest of Your Story, Pastor Greg Lindsey shows us why believing the “right” things or behaving the “right” way will never lead to our fullest life. True spiritual growth happens when we journey with Jesus back into our stories. The Rest of Your Story is a roadmap to what God wants our Christian life to be: passionate, joy-filled, fulfilling, significant, and freeing. Along with his own vulnerable story of redemption, Greg shares: The dangers of knowing the significance of our sin but not the significance of our stories Ways our spiritual enemy uses our past to keep us from realizing our purpose The difference between living forgiven and living free Why the places we are most afraid to go lead us to the life we don’t want to miss What you’ve done and what you’ve experienced is not who you are. As you identify how your past is keeping you from experiencing Jesus’ abundant life, you’ll find that God can turn the deepest pain into your richest treasure.
