TELESEMINAR SERIES FOR COUPLES AND PARENTS OF YOUNG CHILDREN AND TEENS
TELESEMINARS FOR ESTRANGED PARENTS
Featured Appearances
AARP The Stranger in Your Family
Dr. Coleman was interviewed in a recent AARP article by Meredith Maran on parental estrangement. To read the whole article go here: The Stranger in Your Family
NPR: Tom Ashbrook interviews Dr Coleman and Kathleen Gerson on “Women Bringing Home the Bacon”
Dr. Coleman was invited to speak to the faculty and students on Dual-Career Couples at Harvard
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7:57 pm
I have to agree with you Helen Marie, I have been very strong in my religion my whole life, except for the last ten years. God does not promise us a problem free life. My mother always said every family has a cross to carry. I never really understood that until I was older and had a family of my own. Now I have a daughter who struggles with drug addiction and I pray for her, but there again God helps those that help themselves. She needs to love herself keep her faith strong and pray for Gods strength and know that she is worth it to have a much better life and be strong. I tell her all the time how beautiful and smart she is, how she deserves a better life and how much i love her, but it doesn't seem to matter. My only hope is that God is walking with her to help her get better and stay strong.
12:06 pm
Dear Andrew,
I feel your anger and hurt in the comment you made: "Religion causes suffering. Estrangement is just a byproduct of that suffering."
So many things in life can cause suffering: abuse, addiction, poverty, love, health problems, unemployment, divorce, and yes, even religion.
When someone asks why god allows us to go thru hardships in life, we often question why. Instead of turning against religion, we need to realize that god does not promise us a problem-free life; if we have faith, he promises to walk with us to get thru them.
9:31 am
Religion causes suffering. Estrangement is just a byproduct of that suffering.
7:20 am
Estrangement makes it difficult to talk about with family, friends, neighbors and especially church members. I think one of the greatest contributions to family estrangement that is overlooked is the role that religions plays in it – or the lack of religious beliefs in a Creator God. It is a myth that Christians especially are immune to broken families because we are supposed have it "together." Well, some do and some don't.
Three of the greatest myths are:
1- Christians should not go through
2- If Christians suffer, it is because they have done something wrong.
3- If I had enough faith this would not be happening to me.
Christians suffer estrangement from the same causes that non-Christians do; divorce, abuse, In-law problems, drug and alcohol addiction and even incest. We are not immune.
For me personally, throughout these past years of estrangement it has been SO hard for me to understand the WHY of such a pointless loss of our relationship with our son who claims to be a Christian, is married a Christian and is bringing up his children in the Christian faith. It is this same child that attend church on a regular basis, attended Christian schools and whose best friends were Christians that has shut us out of their family and kept us from knowing our grandchildren.
It has been almost impossible for me to fathom how this could be happening to those who share the same belief in the same Creator God of the Bible, and the same understanding of who He is and what our purpose on earth is. I simply have not been able to wrap my mind around it – but I do have to accept the fact that God does allow it to happen to me as well as other Christians!
Having been a member of a large secular estrangement for some time, I was never able to get them to understand that the basis of our strength was in Christ and still have the freedom to express it without retribution and contempt. Christians did not have the freedom to express their concerns, their hope, their faith and their trust in Jesus.
Therefore, I created a member support group just for Christians dealing with estrangement. If anyone here wishes to check it out, the link is:
http://www.dailystrength.org/g…..king-peace
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