Today I understand that family illness is a co-creation. A family disease is a dynamic. Each time one person gets sicker, the dynamic can get sicker, and each time one person gets healthier, the dynamic can get healthier because each person’s input is important. In a sick family the “elephant in the living room” is a sick elephant. The disease becomes a large container in the center of the family in which painful feelings, such as shame, anger, resentment and fear, live, breathe and grow. Each person lives with the presence of this container, and each person is affected by it. Those who think that this container affects only a few
family members are kidding themselves.
I accept my family illness and my part in it.
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
