FEST Writing Group

Both my mother and father had enormous issues in the effort to get along with one another and raise their children. As impossible as it might sound, I had not yet tried to figure out who these people were in my family—and who they were to me—until I joined the GUFC postgraduate program.

For the longest time, I only knew my parents were reacting to something, and that made me sensitive to their moods. There was something about the forces in the family system that I did not understand, and I needed to—if I were ever to know my parents as real people and understand what they were up against.

By trying to recall and get to know these people called family, I believed I would understand more about these named and unnamed, early forces that shaped my own behavior. From my experience in the postgraduate program, listening to the stories and seeing the effort other students made to reconnect with family, I knew this ignorance of the emotional process wasn’t just in my family—it was affecting all of us—every family.

Looking back through the lens of Bowen Family Systems Theory, I saw that our original nuclear family—mom, dad, and the three children—had, over time, become a multigenerational nuclear family: grandparents and the three children. My parents were sidelined by difficult-to-understand symptoms. I was curious: How come they fell apart? One hint might be: Who in the family got the focus—negative or positive? Another clue could be: What kind of symptoms emerged, and when? Ultimately: How did my nuclear family “train” me?

I got the sense that asking questions could be dangerous. Sometime during high school, when I finally had the courage to ask, my grandmother gave me an explanation—or two—about why she and her daughter didn’t get along. The “reasons” were: My mother loved horses; my grandmother, Anna, was terrified of them. My mother preferred going barefoot; my grandmother never got out of bed without putting on shoes and stockings and dressing up for the day. My mother sang beautifully and played the piano. She was generally freedom-seeking; my grandmother was tone-deaf and the opposite in temperament.

My grandmother’s explanations were comforting, but they were built upon feelings, not facts. The facts are that my grandparents were united against my mother. This was the most classic of all triangles. This story was just one part—the mother-daughter part—of the larger relationship pattern. What part was my grandfather playing? I had to go back to earlier times to see how these relationships were shaping the grandparents–mother–father–daughter group.

The automatic nature of the family focus can reveal how people are organized in triangles—two against one—where people gang up on one another, or are drawn in to cooperate and help, in both cases, without any kind of recognition of the emotional process that guides us. I didn’t know I was in a triangle much less how the two against one silently works to do others in.

My early life was mostly hidden, with only a few clues remaining. The faded photographs highlight sweet and scary moments found in the stories of my youth. At times, I had the luck of living a sweet life, and during more demanding times, I was able to develop a few problem-solving methods. Knowing oneself is not easy; this was my effort to remember both how I was influenced and how I influenced others—developing a few guiding principles along the way.

In this chapter, I map the family’s emotional process within my nuclear family—hopefully, without blame—to illustrate the ways these patterns have shaped my own programming and responses, demonstrating how the family operates as a preprogrammed emotional unit.

Exploration and Discovery
In 1939, my mother married my father, an older man with an excellent job as the youngest manager of the Washington Gas and Light Company. The way I initially saw my parents interact, I got the impression that my father wanted his wife to be his princess. As the oldest of five, and his mother’s favorite, my father was the only one, out of five children, to attend college and then law school. The family expectations appeared to fit with who he was at that time. His role was to be a dominant and successful male, “a savior” to his lower-to middle-class Irish family. There is evidence of this in several letters my father had kept that he was sending money back home.

My mother had been saved from being in a similar position by being born into a wealthy, more socially established family. As her parents saw it, her role was to attract and keep a solid male who would maintain her place in society. These expectations ran into a different reality than the one the families were prepared to handle.

There were nine years between my mom and my dad and an immense wealth gap to boot. I saw my mother’s frustration and perhaps her hope of being a princess with her prince, but then, damn it, the war came, and so many expectations and dreams were turned to dust. Perhaps, even without the war, my parents would have had troubles. But from my vantage point, the war provoked the early challenge for my mother to be able to continue her role as the princess and as her husband’s favorite person.

When the war broke out in 1941, my maternal grandfather believed that my father, Andrew J. Maloney, must go to war and defend his country from evil Hitler. There was no choice. Therefore, despite my mother’s strenuous objections, my father volunteered for the Army Air Force and was selected to be an intelligence officer. He was the very first Army Air Force intelligence officer to fly in a B-29 over Japan. His job was to document the number of deaths and the targets both hit and missed. He was intimately involved in planning for the firebombing of Japan and was on the staff of General Curtis LeMay.

Father Away at War
With my father away at war, my mother returned home with Butch and me to live with her parents. Every tension that had appeared when she was a child resurfaced. My mother was a bit of a wild child and frequently went out with her friends despite her parents’ warnings or perhaps in reaction to their anxious demands.

I was so young, yet I can still recall calm moments like watching my grandmother and mother make lemon meringue pies. On Sunday mornings, Butch and I had fun with our grandfather. He would let us crawl into his lap and read the funnies to us.

Sometimes, my mother played the piano and sang beautifully at home. At other times, my grandmother and I would go to the theater to watch my mother perform in plays. At Christmas, we sat around the table stringing cranberries and popcorn for the tree.

My grandfather often walked us around their farm by the water, pointing out plants. I remember learning how long it took asparagus to grow—two years seemed like forever to me. There was a sailboat we weren’t allowed on without an adult, and I remember parties where people ate oysters and left the shells on the ground. There was so much to be curious about.

Father Returns from War
I was almost four years old before my father returned from the war, which ended on September 2, 1945. By then, I was firmly at home with my grandparents and regarded this returning soldier as the enemy. I still recall vividly when this tall stranger came to visit. My dad was handsome, but I was not comforted by him and his uniform. I knew he was there to take us away, but I was “just fine” living with my grandparents who made my life feel safe.

My father would get upset about trivial things and my mother appeared to have no ability to calm him down. There was an increase in conflict and fighting. Were there too many expectations on the prince and the princess for them to be able to clarify the predicament they were in? Or was it that, plus other issues, that increased the anxiety and made it so difficult to relate to one another? I could not make a connection between the war and what my parents and I were going through, much less realize that there were many other families with these same issues and little real help.

1945: Move to Washington, D.C.
After the war, we did not move right away as my father had to secure a job and find a place for us to live. Despite my strong objections, I was packed up and moved to Washington, D.C., around 1946. Butch was three, and I was five. As I saw it, my father took us to a strange, new place and my life began to deteriorate.

The division between my parents was easy to feel and difficult to talk about. Once we moved to D.C., there were “no brakes” on my parents’ ways of managing themselves by drinking. The fighting and the drinking escalated. I knew they were drinking but not really the reasons for drinking or the reasons for the upset between them. This unintegrated or meaningless conflict began to erode both their and my ability to function and possibly to communicate with one another.

As I recall, I started nursery school in D.C., and it did not go well. I remember being too embarrassed to raise my hand and get permission to go to the bathroom, so the inevitable happened. I had to learn to speak up.

My mother was especially fearful that the Japanese would come and steal her children as revenge for my father’s part in the war. One day, she told me I was to watch Butch at the playground. However, instead of looking after my three-year-old brother, I was talking to another girl. Without saying a word, Butch got on his tricycle and silently peddled away down the road. Eventually, I noticed he was gone. I looked all around and could not find him. Butch! Butch! Butch! I was in big trouble. I had to walk home and confess to my mother that Butch was missing.

My mother got so mad that she picked me up and threw me into my bedroom with my yellow galoshes still on. I knew they did not belong on the bed, and that was my focus—get the boots off the bed. I could hear what was going on as my mother called the FBI and my father to tell them what I had done. When the FBI got to our house, they interviewed me. After that, my dad was reassuring me and saying they would find Butch and not to be upset.

The FBI went on a house-to-house search and found Butch having cookies and milk with a widowed woman who lived a few blocks away. Of course, she would report Butch missing eventually, but it was so nice to have a young boy come to visit. My lesson: Butch could get me in trouble with my parents and the community—I knew that at some basic level. Therefore, I was more determined than ever to save Butch from getting into trouble.

The family anxiety was tilted toward Butch being the problem, even in those early years. Although most children were considered capable of being potty-trained around two, Butch would often poop in his pants even at three years old. This would set off a storm with my mother and my father. Therefore, I decided I would sneak him some new underpants and bury the old ones in the backyard. Problem solved. One day, I noticed a bulldozer on the property next to us where someone was going to build a new house. I panicked. They would uncover the dirty pants! Thankfully, no bulldozer came close to the secret burial site, but the level of tension in my life was high.

Separation and Return
We children went back and forth from my parents to my grandparents’ home repeatedly. Of course, there were also several attempts by our parents to try to live together in harmony. However, it was not to be. My mother finally left my father and took us children back to live with her parents again. What a relief. Back to Virginia Beach, where there was a much higher degree of safety. Eventually, my mother decided to officially separate from her husband.

My parents’ war had seemed to have stopped. It was hard for me to know exactly how much time I spent with my grandparents and how much with my parents. But by some time in 1946, I was firmly in place at my grandparents’ home and attending kindergarten. Now, I rode the school bus and was proud to live in the biggest house on the bus route, but I was an outsider at school. I liked to win at games, but I did not like to ask for help, and I was not friendly.

Despite living in a big house, no one taught me the basics. One day, the bus driver, an African American man, noticed my shoes were untied. He asked me to stay on the bus for a minute until the other children had left. When they were gone, he showed me how to tie my shoes. This man was a stranger, but he must have sensed my insecurity and gave me a small pat on the back: good job. It is interesting to me how one act of kindness, during a time of terrible bias, can stand out even in early, early memory.

Relating to other kids was even more challenging than adults, as they would ask, “Where are your parents?” and I would have to make up stories about them: My mother was going “back to college” and my dad had a job “elsewhere.”

In 1947, I entered first grade at The Everett School, a private school in Virginia Beach. I recall my teacher talking to me in front of my grandmother, asking if I would like to learn how to play the piano. I had big hands, a sure sign that I would be capable. I was very aware that although my grandmother said nothing, her anxiety about me following in my mother’s barefooted musical footsteps was palatable. Of course, I said no. I thought, who wants to be like their mother?

School was not of any real interest. I wanted to understand the world around me, which had little to do with school but more with how people around me behaved. I loved to be in nature, go fishing, take long bike rides with Gudrun, and just be outside in general.

My grandfather knew a lot about nature and the rate of change. He told us about Crystal Lake freezing over and how he and his friends would drag a boat across the ice—ready to jump in the moment it cracked. These older people seemed so very adventurous, and they seemed to know that time was changing the environment. My grandfather showed me a photograph of the day the ocean froze, saying, “You will never see that in your lifetime.”

I admired my grandfather, his red hair, and even his temper tantrums. He would tell us stories about his life as a young man, supervising men on the coal piers. He saw manual labor as basic to man’s life and had no patience for those who drank. Instead, hard work was the ticket to success. I had no idea how long this struggle between drinking and hard work to manage anxiety had been going on. There was so much about the history of my family I did not yet know.

Stories of the old days stuck in my mind. My grandfather showed me photographs of men shoveling coal into a six-masted sailing ship. My great-grandfather, Nicholas Dominic Maher (NDM), had been the Norfolk & Western Railroad president. This connection helped my grandfather get a summer job working on building the first Canadian railroad, with a crew made up of Englishmen. One day, they asked him to make the tea. Without thinking, he dumped the whole box into the boiling water and ruined it. Of course, they were furious with him.

I recall this story of “living with your mistakes” to this day. This lesson, of doing what people asked without thinking of the consequences and clarifying the details, was buried somewhere in the back of my mind. But eventually, it would prove helpful as I became more aware that I was not thinking for myself.

I thought my grandparents were a good couple, but what did I know? They seemed to stick together and yet each had their own life. There was no screaming at each other, but they slept in separate beds. I was vaguely aware that both my grandparents had high expectations for my mother and my father and for themselves. My grandfather was on the boards of various organizations: hospitals, banks, the country club, etc. My grandmother was a community organizer during the war, started the Red Cross in Virginia Beach and, after the war, the Garden Club. Every Wednesday, she and her friends would play mahjong and with her winnings, she bought bonds for us grandchildren. She was very fond of us but also wanted us to turn out well—just a small demand.

In my memory of those early years, I was close to my maternal grandmother – she seemed to understand me. For instance, we would go to her favorite dress shop, where she enjoyed picking out my clothes while I was free to read books. Dressing up was not my cup of tea, and that was OK with her…to a degree. There was a natural connection between us that was warm and real, and we shared “confusion” about who my mother was.

These early experiences with my grandfather and grandmother taught me the importance of relationships and to think carefully about what people ask me to do. Overall, I felt safe again. However, I was becoming increasingly aware that nothing lasts forever, and this time too would end, as my mother was now pregnant.

Reunited and It Feels So Good
After the separation, my mother somehow got pregnant with my brother, Drew. My grandparents may have realized that this was an uncertain or perhaps dangerous time for us children to go back and live with our parents, but they may have had no choice. I was eight years old when my mother officially reunited with my father and obviously, we were to live with them in this new family structure: mom, dad, and three young children.

My grandfather tried to make the best of the situation and helped my parents financially. There were several long letters written back and forth between my father and my maternal grandfather, Walter C. Maher, about the separation and the marital conflict in the past:

“In view of the manner in which you and Mother Maher have acted during the several difficulties in which Puddney (my mother’s nickname) and I have managed to get into during the past four years…I should have known that both of you would be kind, tolerant and generous. Irrespective of what might have happened to Puddney and me that I could not, even under the most adverse circumstances, have had anything but the friendliest and kindest thoughts for both of you, and never have done anything about either the children or Puddney which did not meet with your approval.” December 17, 1949.

We were headed to Daytona Beach where my father had a job. Neither Butch nor I wanted to go live with our parents again and it seemed as though my grandparents were none too happy about us leaving. I had no idea what was going on in the back of my grandparents’ minds. They must have known about the drinking, but to take the children away from their parents would have seemed impossible at this time. As far as I can tell, my grandfather returned to his work. He wrote to my father about the increase in his business, perhaps trying to give him hope as to how things can change for the positive over time. In one particular letter, he wrote about how they had broken a record, going from shipping one million tons of coal per month (12 million a year) to shipping out 48 million tons of coal per year.

My grandfather continued to tell us stories about the things he knew and how things changed. He explained that the Pony Express, which operated for about 1 and a half years, had cut the time needed to get a letter from Missouri to California from about 3 and a half weeks to 10 days. In a way, I sensed that my grandfather was wise, telling me things were changing, but even he could not talk about the real problems in our family lives. Therefore, I knew that things were amiss and that there was little I could do.

Butch and Andrea go to Daytona Beach
After Drew was born in Daytona Beach on September 22, 1950, my grandparents returned us to our parents. It appears I had an overly optimistic father regarding what he imagined he could do. My dad wanted to manage his own business. So, he talked to his father-in-law about his idea of buying into a Pyrex gas company franchise in Miami. For some reason, my grandfather decided it might help if he lent my father the money.

My grandfather, Walter C. Maher bought the gas company for my father. Perhaps he did this as compensation for pressuring my dad to get into the war. At least, this is the story I imagined making sense of what was going on around me, given that no one was talking to me. At the time, what I learned as a little observer was that the lack of money might make situations worse, especially for people who were in trouble.

But the deal was made, and now we would have to move from Daytona to Miami to stabilize our new family with baby Drew. I was going to be isolated from my grandparents and looking back, to me, this was the family’s downfall. This move and the financial funding was “the help” that did not help.

Sometime soon after we left for Florida, my grandparents sold their farm in Virginia Beach. I thought my grandparents wanted to be free of raising children. However, Gudrun was still living with them even two years later. I always wondered why Gudrun was being paid when there were no children there to look after. Did my grandparents have doubts about my parents’ future and, therefore, keep Gudrun in reserve? People were not talking about what was going on, so I had to guess. This was an indicator of the level of confusion that I lived with.

Then, my grandfather purchased five miles of oceanfront property called Sandridge and built a cabin there. It was a bit south of Virginia Beach with no road access, so remote and private that my grandfather had to have a Jeep to access the property. At one time, it had been a well-known Duck Club. Now, it was going to be a place for my grandfather’s friends and family to hunt ducks and have a summer home for great adventures. The war was over, and my grandparents were planning a life of their own, but hidden forces were shaping a different future for all of us.

Miami
While living in Miami, Butch and I were free of parental concerns and often left home on our bikes, free of our parents, who were drinking. But the teachers at school were worried. Teachers were more like the school police to me, less interested in helping but instead getting us to admit that we were the problem. In one particular meeting, where we had to be present, the teacher asked, “Where did Butch get the money to buy reams of paper?” Butch was seen as a small-time thief. Meanwhile, I got in trouble for skipping school and being unable to spell.

There was an African American woman who worked for the family, preparing meals, doing the ironing, and taking Drew in and out of his highchair. She told us that smoking was bad and to show us the proof, we had to blow smoke through a sheet to see how the tar from the tobacco would stain the fabric yellow and would likewise stick to our lungs. Yes, all this lecturing because we stole our mother’s cigarettes and smoked in the bathroom. Across the generations, there seemed to be no clear guiding principles, and any sense of right and wrong came only from a very few outside the family.

Butch and I created our own lives, biking all over our neighborhood and trying to avoid school and parents. On many days, Butch absolutely refused to go to school. He even resorted to climbing a tree so high that the fire department had to come and use the ladder to bring him down. But by August, school was out, and I found adventure and freedom riding my bike through the steamy streets of Miami. The rain would produce steam, and I could ride my bike and be as wet as if I were showering. The stickiness and thickness of the air made the perfect metaphor for our family’s problems. But all these moments were like snapshots, not yet connected to increasing stress or any real meaning.

My parents fought and they drank—it was not a good time for me. The fights would begin with the drinking as soon as my dad came home from work. He would pour a drink and go to his favorite chair where he would sit stone silent. Then my mother would get mad with his not helping and my father would get mad with her trying to dominate him with her nagging. I could never decide who was winning the fight. Sometimes Butch and I would watch all of this and then retreat. As a result of the fighting, there was a lot of turmoil.

My father told me a bit about his experiences in the war. He once described how he witnessed the fire-bombing of Japan and the smells of burning flesh. I had no comprehension of the war or what he had experienced.

During the good times, Dad said we were in his army. He would wake us up in the morning to march and enjoy some lemonade afterward. Two-year-old Drew could not walk, even though most children begin to walk around 12 months. This made Drew exempt from military service. Years later, we were to learn that my parents’ drinking also had a severe impact on Drew, who was later diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome.

Who knew that our parents were trying to survive the memory of war? These two events, war and drinking, did not seem connected. All I knew was that there were frequent, loud arguments between my parents, some of which were about the problem with the priest from our school. Apparently, our mother was too close to the priest. I could see they were too close, snuggling on the couch. I could also see my dad hiding bottles of whisky under the bed. The one and only time that I recall confronting my mother about what I saw, she smacked me.

No explanation was available that could clarify how the war and the family falling apart were connected. There was no coherent story. Life was choppy, and I was unsure of the storms that might lie ahead. Even later, I would see this confusion as reflecting and affecting my inability to integrate my thinking with my feelings about my life.

I am not sure how long it took for my parents to completely fall apart. It seemed like a long, drawn-out affair to me. They were both drinking, and one or the other went for treatment, which did not last. My grandmother came for a visit, as did Gudrun. But there was little that could be done until my parents fully collapsed.

Then, one hot August night, the anger mounted; there was yelling and cursing. We three children were used to the fussing and fighting, but the neighbors were no longer putting up with this. They finally complained to the police, who were sent to assess the situation. It did not take a genius to see that the children were neglected, and the parents were suffering from out-of-control emotions. Our parents were arrested.

The police put the three of us in one car and my parents in a paddy wagon. As we sat in the police vehicle, the neighbor woman approached us. “I am sorry,” she said, “but you will be better off.” How did she know that we would be better off? How did she know the future? I was mad and scared, so I asked if we could stay with her. But the police officer said it was a legal matter now. Our parents were charged with being drunk and disorderly. That was easy to see as when they brought our parents into the police station, they were still yelling and kicking at each other.

One of the police officers told us that they were charging our parents, and therefore, we were to go live in an orphanage. So, back in the police car we went. It was very early in the morning when we arrived. One of the police officers rang a bell and a woman came out, grumbling. She was in a foul mood, cursing the police for bringing us out there at 3 a.m. Two other people came to take Butch and Drew to separate buildings, and I was taken upstairs to a shower. She told me, “Take off all your clothes and give me your necklace.” Then she drenched me with a chemical guaranteed to kill bugs.

The following morning after breakfast, a teacher took me aside and told me I was now going to attend school at the orphanage. Our parents were unfit to care for me, Butch, or our little brother, Drew. We were 10, 8, and just under 2 years old. I knew my parents were not coming to get me, but how would my grandparents find us? Looking around in the orphanage, I realized I was on my own to solve very big problems. This was the first time I had to figure out what to do without my parents and no way to contact my grandparents.

Butch and I had been able to skirt the authorities and meet for a moment in the back of the auditorium, where I told him the plan I had developed, “We could kidnap Drew and hitchhike back to Virginia Beach,” where our trusted grandparents lived. I would distract “the helpers” by making noise, giving Butch time to run in and get Drew. I took into consideration the fact that Drew needed to be carried when planning our escape from the inhumane ways of the orphanage. Yes, I was a child, and I made funny and unrealistic plans to escape the orphanage, but at least I was making decisions.

Luckily, I did not have to try out my plans. We were there three long days before our maternal grandparents came to the rescue. How did they find out how to get us? We stayed in a hotel while they went to court to get custody. Later, they made it official by adopting the three of us. Even then, I realized how brave they were to take on three young children when they were in their sixties.

Reflections
There are points where decisions were made that altered the course of my life, and there were periods where I just kind of muddled along, watching what was going on, knowing it was a bit crazy. Living with alcoholic parents was a challenge, especially because I was only ten years old. I had to figure things out—not necessarily making great decisions, but understanding, at some level, that I was on my own.

There are people whose names I don’t even remember, but I remember how they tried to help—nudging me in the right direction or to grasp some basic truths, like what’s wrong with smoking. It made an impression. I was confused by my parents—probably still am—confused by whatever burden they carried that seemed too heavy for them and too difficult for me to understand.

The war was the biggest shift—the biggest head turner. Whatever normal was before, the war came and changed it. Wars just come along. Some people survive, and some don’t. And those who don’t survive leave remnants—echoes, traces of what might have been. Maybe the next generation picks up the horror and realizes, Geez…war stinks, but I’d rather fight than be dominated by some authoritarian bastard. I don’t want to lose my language, my culture, my family. So yes, there are times when fighting seems necessary. But not all wars are worth fighting.

The Vietnam War—that war was not worth it, to me. I believe it created a rift between Marty and me, despite our best efforts to stay aligned. I’m still not sure what his full experience of the war was, but I think it left each of us a bit more suspicious of one another, of love, of people. War changes people – for me, I experienced this inability to relate well to others. For someone else, it might not have been war—it might’ve been cancer or some other life-altering event. But for me, it was war. It’s not always possible to pinpoint the cause. The ripple effects are hard to trace, but I felt them. I knew something was off. Not to blame the war—but to name it: War was a variable—a major upheaval for my entire family.

I’ve come to think of life in terms of the kind of storms one encounters. Life can be very beautiful and then a storm appears. If a hurricane is coming, and if I don’t prepare for it, then I might be the one swept out to sea. My house might get torn down because I didn’t board it up. If no one in my family will cooperate and help me, I’m in real trouble. These outward forces change relationships in families.

Some families are better prepared and get through the stress and strain and therefore work together because they understand the nature of what they’re up against. Others don’t. And war is kind of like that – a natural upheaval that might occur in my lifetime that will change the trajectory of my life. One day, at three weeks old, I’m fine. The next—Pearl Harbor. And suddenly, my whole family is forced to adapt to this new thing called war. It arrives like a storm from nowhere, and everything changes, and one might be left standing there in the storm, unprepared.

This is what Dr. Bowen became interested in—how it is that so many people came out of war with psychological problems, far more than those who came out with physical wounds. Emotional wounds outnumbered the physical ones. And if you looked at how people coped, many were good at organizing armies—but not at managing their marriages, or their relationship with their mothers and fathers.

Without war upending everything, what would my parents’ lives have been like? Under what conditions might they have gotten along? Could they have developed the emotional maturity needed to raise three children without the intense symptoms that eventually surfaced in the next generation? Would the same problems have emerged anyway, even without the war? That’s really the question—not just what happened, but how a war impacts different families across time.

It’s difficult to estimate my parents’ level of maturity—or to know how much the war contributed to their downfall. I was seeing that the collapse is not about “one bad choice” or “one problem person.” The symptoms were and still are the expression of the unaddressed, unresolved, and often unarticulated anxiety plus the level of tension throughout the entire emotional system.

Therefore I think it is useful to imagine a different road that could have been taken, despite teh increase tension and or stressful events. I think the idea of choice can be enhanced by looking back and imaging what roads might have been taken and could be taken in the future. What do I need to remember? I see more clearly through the lens of Bowen Theory, how the past continues to influence us? Can the past enlarge my perception of ‘reality’ as being driven by the way anxiety is managed. By considering other ways that my life could possibly unfold, I go beyond merely tracing family history. The effort to understand how people lived their lives shows me how automatic choices have been made that come un-bidden to direct our lives? Perhaps imagination can overwhelm the automatic action dictated by the way the past has influenced us to take action or to indulge in nostalgia.

Imaging various choices for my tribe or family to deal with increases in anxiety, hopefully can go beyond WAR. Jack Calhoun, Ph.D. pointed out that even mice benefit from designing an environment that forces more cooperation. The mice tell us “NOT WAR” but cooperating is linked to less stress and anxiety and therefore to greater survival. The future will demand imaginative ways of being. With the advent of AI will bring new ways of relating to one another. This change can be more exciting rather than feared. Learning from the past and imaging a better future might become a fun and better way to be. Many questions remain, but choices can lead to greater cooperation and less hatred for the “other.” The stranger will slowly just become one of us.