Genogram Journey

Monica McGoldrick from The Genogram Journey:

“Families are, except in rare circumstances, the most important emotional system most of us ever belong to. They shape the course and outcome of our lives, which makes them potentially our greatest resource as well as our greatest source of stress. The book grew out of my own efforts ‘to go home again’—efforts which began more than thirty years ago when I first heard Murray Bowen speak and began to try to learn his ideas and change my role in my own family.
Through exploring my family history, I came to love my powerful and vulnerable mother more deeply and to acknowledge my sweet, brilliant, funny father’s limitations in ways that did not make me love him less, but did enable me to love my mother more. This book’s tries to show that at the deepest level we are part of all that our families have been and that keeping our connections matters. Becoming a “researcher” on family patterns and history is the best way to start the process of understanding relationships that may have been frustrating, boring, tense, or painful. This book will help you embark on a lifelong journey to understand your own family and gain skills to help clients do the same. By understanding your ‘genogram’ or family tree you can survey the family over multiple generations. As you learn details about relationships and events, you can clarify the family’s chronology, Mapping the family in this way can be the start of a fascinating and profoundly rewarding journey.”