A Relationship Handbook for Family Visits

You don't have to re-play the old scripts of your past whenever you're with your family of origin. Show them who you are now, and enjoy exciting new ways of interacting with your loved ones.

Excerpts:
“This book is about our taking ownership for our visits home to see parents and family, acting like grown-ups with the people who knew us as children. This requires preparing for our visits in new, relational ways. The hard work includes cutting down the annoying cedars of thoughtless activities and digging out the thistles of frustrating relationship patterns. The invitation includes clearing new roads in the form of new patterns and rituals for our family.”

“When you grow up in an unsafe, unpredictable environment, you become like a scared rabbit or a tyrant’s soldier, attuned to every noise and movement outside yourself that might represent danger . . . If you have grown up more attuned to others than to yourself, work on developing the inner ear to your soul.”

“Those whom I see who are the most victimized in their family lives have the deepest pain and greatest ongoing challenge in their visits home.  But they also have the greatest potential for movement and coming to life. When they gain their voice to sing, the song comes from a passion and joy at finding life, and the sound is often richer than any other.”

Editorial Reviews:

Newton Hightower, LMXW-ACP, President, Houston Association for Marriage and Family Therapy

“I often feel I regress from 54 to 14 years old, driving up the driveway to my parents’ house. I am 8 by the time the door opens and 3 for the rest of the visit. Anne has a beautiful guidebook on how to stay grown up around your parents.”

Winnie Honeywell, Director of Catholic Family Life Ministry

“Anne Grizzle’s way with words, her creative images, and her personal examples come together to invite the reader to made the most of his or her family relationships.”

Leighton Ford, Leighton Ford Ministries

“[This book] open up a common challenge with uncommon grace and wisdom . . . Anne Grizzle enriches us with stories form her own life experience and faith in God who, as she say, ‘must fill our deepest wells.’”

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