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)”
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)”
This Veteran’s Day, I ask you to spend a few minutes to thank the family members when you see the veterans.
Last week, my sister who is in Taiwan, sent me a news link in Taiwanese Newspaper, talking about a Gold Star child’s encounter with a soldier.
This news made me feel really sad. This boy has never met his biological father. However, years later, seeing another soldier still reminds him his father.
A couple days later, I saw this news about whether death sentence should not apply to the Veterans.
After reading the news, what made me feel really sad was the section they described how many people testified on this veteran’s behave and the trauma he suffered. It made me feel really said that those people cannot do anything for this veteran until it’s too late. This veteran’s family and friends and the victim’s family and friends are going to live with this for the rest of their lives.
Combat veteran’s PTSD is not their individual issues. It is a community issue. When you say “Thank You for your service” to a veteran, I ask you to remember there are many people behind this veteran who support him/her through deployment as well as their continuous battle with PTSD.
Grace Chen, Ph.D, LMFT 