Category: Cedar Cove

I used Ms. Debbie Macomber’s Ceder Cover book series to discuss the “Family Life Cycle” theory.

Cedar Cove, Couple Relationship

Family Life Cycle and Couple Relationship: What Does Cedar Cove Teach Us (Part 6)

Grace Chen, PhD. LMFT

family Life Cycle
Just a friendly reminder that you might want to read these articles before you started reading this entry.

Family Life Cycle Theory (Reuben Hill, 1949): Stage 6: Families in Later Life

The last stage is the stage when the couple moves into the “grandparent” generation and possibly requires the assistance of their children, or to assist babysitting to their grandchildren. They also adjust their roles socially and with each other as they face each other’s physical decline and the changes in their social responsibility, such as retirement from work. Continue reading “Family Life Cycle and Couple Relationship: What Does Cedar Cove Teach Us (Part 6)” →

Cedar Cove, Couple Relationship, Depression/Anxiety

Family Life Cycle and Couple Relationship: What Does Cedar Cove Teach Us (Part 5)

Grace Chen, PhD. LMFT

launching children
Just a friendly reminder that you might want to read these articles before you started reading this entry.

Family Life Cycle Theory (Reuben Hill, 1949): Stage 5: Launching children and moving on

Once the first child leaves for college, the couple enters into the stage of launching the children and moving on. When the last child leaves the family, the couple enters the empty nest stage. The important tasks for the couple are to realign their relationship with the adult children as they did when they were a young adult with their parents, to “fill” space once occupied by their children, and to deal with the issues from the aging parents.

Continue reading “Family Life Cycle and Couple Relationship: What Does Cedar Cove Teach Us (Part 5)” →

Cedar Cove, Couple Relationship

Family Life Cycle and Couple Relationship: What Does Cedar Cove Teach Us (Part 4)

Grace Chen, PhD. LMFT

family with adolescent
Just a friendly reminder that you might want to read these articles before you started reading this entry.

Family Life Cycle Theory (Reuben Hill, 1949): Stage 4: Families with adolescents
Once the children enter the adolescence stage, the family begins into another phase in the family life cycle. During this stage, depending on the age differences between the children, some of the children might still be at the young child stage while some children enter the adolescent phase. The parents need to adjust to the needs for freedom and independence of the teenagers while having a tighter leash on the younger children.
Also, this is the stage when the majority of the “parents” enters the midlife, which means, the “grandparents” in the family are very likely entering the stage in their lives which require the support from the “parents” in the family. This is where the so-called “sandwich” generation is coming from, the parents in the household are responsible for the younger generation and the older generation. Continue reading “Family Life Cycle and Couple Relationship: What Does Cedar Cove Teach Us (Part 4)” →

Cedar Cove, Couple Relationship

Family Life Cycle and Couple Relationship: What Does Cedar Cove Teach Us (Part 3)

Grace Chen, PhD. LMFT

family with young children

Just a friendly reminder that you might want to read these previous articles before you started reading this entry.

Family Life Cycle Theory (Reuben Hill, 1949): Stage 3: Families with young children
Once the couple has their first child, they enter the third stage of the family life cycle. At this stage, they expand their roles from husband and wife to mom and dad to their child. They also have to realign their household responsibility and financial responsibility to welcome the new family member in the household.

At the same time, depending on the age when the parents got married and the age of their first child, the majority of the time, the parents are at the stage of stabilizing their own career, which demands a lot of attention and dedication. At the same time, they also have demands from their young children who require a lot of attention. Continue reading “Family Life Cycle and Couple Relationship: What Does Cedar Cove Teach Us (Part 3)” →

Cedar Cove, Couple Relationship

Family Life Cycle and Couple Relationship: What Does Cedar Cove Teach Us (Part 2)

Grace Chen, PhD. LMFT

new coupleJust a friendly reminder that you might want to read these three articles before you started reading this entry.

Family Life Cycle Theory (Reuben Hill, 1949): Stage 2: The new couple
Once the two adults enter the marital relationship, they enter the second stage of the family life cycle: the new couple. The important tasks are to form their marital system in their family of creation and to realign the relationship with their families of origin. Continue reading “Family Life Cycle and Couple Relationship: What Does Cedar Cove Teach Us (Part 2)” →

Cedar Cove, Couple Relationship, Uncategorized, veteran

Family Life Cycle & Couple Relationship: What Does Cedar Cove Teach Us? (Part 1)

Grace Chen, PhD. LMFT

early adulthood

Overview of the characters discussed in this series is briefly described here. 

Family Life Cycle Theory (Reuben Hill, 1949): Stage 1: Leaving home: Single young adults

Continue reading “Family Life Cycle & Couple Relationship: What Does Cedar Cove Teach Us? (Part 1)” →

Cedar Cove, Couple Relationship, veteran

Cedar Cove to Couple Relationships (Prologue)

Grace Chen, PhD. LMFT

cedar cove

I love to read and love to “analyze” the plots and the characters using my therapy knowledge. Because of the HIPPA privacy, I can’t talk about the “real” clients. So, why not use the fictional clients? I hope you enjoy the lives of these characters and hope my analysis will help you to understand yourself and your life a little more.

The first one I want to share with you is Cedar Cove. This series of the book caught my eye because of its TV series on the Hallmark Channel. One night, I was browsing the channels and heard “veteran’s court” that caught my attention. I started to follow up this series that led me to borrow the books.

After finishing this series of the stories about people in the Cedar Cove, I have to say, I am delighted to have read this series. It contains my passion for the veterans and the relationship issues between the couples. More surprisingly, the author depicts a lot of the issues were clinically seen. In this series of the article, I am going to let you into the secret of how I, as a couple’s therapist make a diagnosis of the couple relationship and hope you will also learn from this to help your marriage go into a positive direction, instead of falling into the traps to end up in my office.

Continue reading “Cedar Cove to Couple Relationships (Prologue)” →