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.

In this revelatory book, esteemed family therapist Monica McGoldrick explores why families behave as they do, using genograms (family trees) to illustrate family patterns. Mapped out over a three-generation span, repeated estrangements, alliances, even divorces and suicides, prove more than coincidental. McGoldrick uses the genograms of famous families - including the Kennedys, Hepburns, Beethovens and Brontes - the discuss the influence of birth order and sibling rivalry, family myths and secrets, cultural differences, couple relationships and the pivotal role of loss. Relevant questions to ask appear at the end of each chapter, helping the reader become researcher, uncovering information previously withheld, misunderstood or overlooked.

The godmother of genograms revises her revelatory work that explores how to reconnect with your past and invent a new future. This notable work poignantly explains how a tool of family history—gathering the genogram, or a basic family tree—can help us to better understand and mend family relationships and dynamics. Here, fully updated for the first time, Monica McGoldrick's book elaborates on the ways in which genograms can reveal a family's history of estrangement, alliance, divorce, or suicide, exposing intergenerational patterns that prove more than coincidental. Weaving together photographs and genograms of famous families—including the Kennedys, the Freuds, and the Fondas—she 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 this important work, readers learn to mine previously untapped information about their own family patterns, leading to a reconnection to home and a deeper sense of identity. Originally published as You Can Go Home Again.

The genogram is a graphic way of organizing information gathered during a family assessment and identifying patterns in the family system. This title thoroughly explains how to draw, interpret and apply the genogram.

How can we work toward mutual understanding in our increasingly diverse and interconnected world? Pastoral theologian Melinda McGarrah Sharp approaches this multifaceted, interdisciplinary question by beginning with moments of intercultural misunderstanding. Using misunderstanding stories from her experience working with the Peace Corps in Suriname, Dr. McGarrah Sharp argues that we must recognize the limits of our own cultural perspectives in order to have meaningful intercultural encounters that are more mutually empowering and hopeful. Bringing together resources from pastoral theology, ethnography, and postcolonial studies, she provides a valuable resource for investigating the complexity of providing care and fostering communities of belonging across cultural differences. McGarrah Sharp illustrates a process of moving from disconnection to regard for diverse others as neighbors who share a common yearning for hopeful and meaningful connection. Leaders in faith communities, practitioners of care, and scholars will all be able to use this resource to better understand the conflicts, tensions, and uncertainties of our postcolonial twenty-first-century world. An included discussion guide facilitates classroom study, small group discussion, and personal reflection.

Updated with the latest research, this second edition approaches human development from a multidisciplinary perspective. Uniquely inclusive of the moral and faith dimensions of the life cycle, 'Human Development and Faith' examines the interplay of mind, body, family, community, and soul at every stage of development. (Back cover).

Family estrangement is larger than conflict and more complicated than betrayal. It is entwined in contradictory beliefs, values, behaviours and goals and is the result of at least one member of the family considering reconciliation impossible and/or undesirable. The cessation of familial relations, whether that involves rejection or deciding to leave, can be an inordinately traumatising experience. Whilst data suggests that around 1 in 12 people are estranged from at least one family member this topic is rarely discussed or researched. Based on the author’s in-depth research and exploration of the topic of estrangement, Family Estrangement: A Matter of Perspective captures the unique lived experiences of both estrangee and estranger. Offering multiple perspectives drawn from academic and popular literature as well as case studies, the book contextualises its chapters within current theoretical understandings of family relationships and estrangement, including Loss and Grief theories, Attachment Theory and Bowen Family Systems Theory. Practice sections provide estranged readers and professionals with a structured approach to exploring the various aspects of estrangement within a family and to help them identify resilience, strengths and strategies which individuals may harness as they attempt to live with estrangement. Written with the aim to provide guidance in understanding estrangement in context, this book is suitable for estranged family members and all professionals who encounter and work with people affected by estrangement, including social workers, counsellors, psychologists, allied health professionals, doctors, nurses and legal professions.