A Time for Healing: Dysfunctional Families: How They Mismanage to Get That Way, and What We Can Do to Break the Cycle of Abuse

By David E. Morgan PhD

Today, in real families, only a very small portion of the population comes from nurturing and supportive homes; most individuals have been products of dysfunctional families instead. In A Time for Healing, author Dr. David E. Morgan provides a study of a dysfunctional family and presents principles necessary for sustaining a healthy family unit.
Through the interplay of the fictional, four-generation Gardner family, A Time for Healing illustrates some events that can cause a family to be dysfunctional, reveals the carnage left from the pain, and discusses how to eradicate it. The Gardners’ story shows how unhealthy family rules of behavior are passed down from parents to children and what a devastating effect this process has on families, relationships, organizational lives, and society. With ideas gleaned from more than forty years as an educator in the Chicago public schools, including both part-time and full time in higher education, Morgan shows how we can envision and create a better way forward and avoid the imperfections of family dysfunction in the future.
A Time for Healing offers help for reclaiming the family by creating real, effective positive change. Cleaning up the family is about character, communication, forgiveness, healing, integrity, love, redemption, respect, understanding and the ownership of our acts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781477268698

David E. Morgan PhD

David E. Morgan, Phd, worked a combined total of more than forty years as an educator in various positions in the Chicago public schools and as full-time professor in Educational Leadership. Now retired, he writes, teaches part-time at area colleges and universities, and serves on a school board in a Chicago south suburban community. Morgan is married and has three adult children.

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© 2013 David E. Morgan, PhD. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/31/2019

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6870-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6869-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012917029

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

A Time For Healing: The book’s front cover picture of the Gardner Family

Foreword Clarion Book Review: Family & Relationships

In Memoriam

Definition of some commonly used terms in A Time For Healing

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction

Introduction: Conclusion

Chapter One: The Parents

Chapter One: Conclusion

Chapter Two: Family Communication

Chapter Two: Conclusion

Chapter Three: The Family

Chapter Three: Conclusion

Chapter Four: Leadership

Chapter Four: Leadership

Chapter Five: Family Apartheid

Chapter Five: Conclusion

Chapter Six: The 1997 Family Reunion

Chapter Six: Conclusion

Chapter Seven: The Limited, Angry, and Suppressive Inner Circle, Eve, Matthew, and Peter

Chapter Seven: Conclusion

Chapter Eight: Eve

Chapter Eight: Conclusion

Chapter Nine: Matthew

Chapter Nine: Conclusion

Chapter Ten: Peter

Chapter Eleven: Where Do We Go From Here? Continued Chaos or Family Unity?

Chapter Eleven Summary: Where Do We Go From Here? Continued Chaos or Unity?

The Twelve Gardner Family Members Profiles: Index Description

Index

A Time For Healing: The book’s front cover picture of the Gardner Family

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On the front cover of the book is a picture of the Gardners, how they were, and how the family looked by Spring 1962. In the front row of the picture, from left to right seated, are Luke, John, Matthew Sr., (the family patriarch), Lillian, (the family matriarch), and Mary, the youngest child in the family. In the second row from left to right standing are Martha, Miriam, and Elizabeth who is on the far right. In the third and last row standing, from left to right, are Eve, Matthew, Paul, and Peter. Among the Gardner family’s siblings of the inner circle (Eve, Matthew, and Peter) and the outer circle (Miriam, Paul, Elizabeth, Martha, Luke, John, and Mary), there were many copies but few originals.

Between spring 1962 and fall 2005, over forty years later in a family milestone, both the two parents (Matthew Sr. and Lillian) and one sibling (Miriam) were deceased. But in the family’s culture and relationships, not much had changed. By fall 2005, the family’s picture of the way things were by 1962 had been frozen in time. Within the Gardner family, by 1962, there were two parents and ten young lives with futures. These made a total of twelve. All of them deserved more than family apartheid. So justice too long delayed was justice denied. In this story, the number twelve is a symbol of faith, the church, and divine rule, according to scholars and theologians.

Our family is to be loved, cherished, valued, and protected. But it should never be abused, devalued, falsely accused, left unsafe, and disrespected. Today, we can no longer afford to devalue that which is valuable and value that which is worthless and destructive to our future, human welfare, success, and future happiness.

Nothing is more important about a family than its vision and culture. No one occupies a more influential position from which to influence a family’s vision and culture than the two parents. Every successful leader knows that vision and culture are everything. A family’s and society’s vision is a dream in action. It captures the goals, objectives, principle centered values, inspiration, ambition, realism, creativity, clarity, consistency and standards that determines our destination.

Said Stephen Covey, A family’s mission statement is a combined, unified expression from all family members of what our family is all about, what it is you really want to do and be, and the principles you choose to govern your family life. A mission statement is a description of an individual’s, company’s, a society’s, or a family’s reason for existing. A family’s mission statement encapsulates its idea of the good life and lays out the family’s principles, purpose, goals, and standards. All family members participate in articulating these principles that are aligned with our healthy and effective principle-centered values and all agree to live them.

A Time For Healing, constitutes a social-political history of a family, as well as a nation, told through finely drawn portraits of the twelve Gardner family characters who peopled it. It is our family’s and society’s wellness check. In this story, the author explores the intricacies of the human mind and heart in those of his twelve characters. In God is implanted a long series of twelve apostolic personalities which represent Faith (Peter), Love (John), Strength (Andrew), Wisdom (James), Power (Phillip), Imagination (Bartholomew), understanding (Thomas), Will (Matthew), Order (James), Zeal (Simon), Renunciation (Thaddeus), and Life (Judas). It is in the cosmic significance of these twelve characters’ paradigm and their details where the truth lies.

By raising our consciousness in discovering who we are and what we should live for, within these pages, with penetrating insight and revealing anecdotes, we will disclose a pathway for living with fairness, forgiveness, human dignity, integrity, empathy, love, service, and understanding. These are the principles that gives us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.

David E. Morgan, Ph.D.

Foreword Clarion Book Review: Family & Relationships

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A Time for Healing: Dysfunctional Families, How They Mismanage to Get That Way, and What We Can Do to Break the Cycle of Abuse. David E. Morgan, Ph.D., AuthorHouse

In this story the author creates a fictional family to handle real issues in a savvy, perceptive way. As a lifelong educator in the Chicago public school system, David E. Morgan has had many opportunities to observe dysfunctional families and work with children being raised in unhealthy environments. His A Time for Healing addresses the difficulties such families endure and perpetuate, offering some realistic advice for ending the cycle of dysfunction.

Morgan provides a familiar context by creating a fictionalized family, the Gardners, to demonstrate examples of dysfunction. In fact, the Gardners’ story takes over the book. Even he admits that they exhibit a shocking level of exploitation, insensitivity, a lack of caring, a lack of remorse, shame, and inability to tell the truth, yet like the stuff of reality TV, they easily claim their audience. The question here is whether those who might most benefit from the author’s insights will recognize themselves and their circumstances in the fiction he has created.

Morgan speaks of divisiveness within the family unit, appropriating the terms apartheid, inner circle, and outer circle to encompass the dominance of one group of siblings over another. He discusses parental incompetence, morals, and ethics, communication, sibling abuse, and more. God plays a major role as well, as evidenced when he employs this formula: Ego = Edging God Out. The other sections of the book, including the biblical and historical references, attempt to address the promise of the book’s subtitle, particularly the cycle of abuse, but it is the Gardners’ story that will most interest readers.

Morgan is savvy and perceptive, displaying an admirable grasp of effective family dynamics, both function, and dysfunction. However, his final chapter, Where Do We Go from Here? moves the family abruptly into the present day, as he reveals that more open discussion among family members, embracing hard truths, and turning to God to help the Gardners to better communicate are now allowing the family to heal. Respect for one another, team work, collaboration, and the building of equitable trusting relationships, with the addition of new, younger family members, are instilling a new spirit of wholeness and a determination to fight for a better future by promoting family healing, progress, and social justice."

While their solutions are both admirable and valid, the enthralling fiction of the Gardner family has disappeared. Like a good writer of fiction, Morgan has hooked his audience on that cast of characters and their exploits, so it should not come as a surprise that some readers will want to hear more about the Gardners, and fewer of his conclusions. Perhaps he never intended to write a novel, but he has started one here.

Cheryl Hibbard

In Memoriam

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This book was inspired by our parents, Henry Louis Morgan, our mother Linda Morgan and our siblings, children, and grandchildren. They inspired an interest in this topic and gave generously of their time and resources in the preparation of this book. It is dedicated to them and to their lifelong encouragement, support, inspiration, and personal sacrifices. As we delve into the tragedy of this invented American family creation, you should note that it is not enough to just read this book. Allow it to change the direction of your life. The most interesting and relevant subject that we can study is ourselves. We have to change ourselves before we can change the family. As adults, knowing our parents experiences will help us understand ourselves and what must be changed. Every seed of anger and disappointment are flowing down the lines from the parents. So, like us, our parents can only plant the seeds that were given to them.

Everyone was born into a family. To study the family is to study ourselves. To restore the family to health and wellness is a victory over ourselves. Aldous Huxley admitted that he wanted to change the world, but later discovered that the only thing he could be sure of changing was himself. In the struggle or quest in overcoming an antagonist in our efforts to achieve mastery against the odds and difficulties is the victory over self. In the quest for victory over self is the power of self mastery. Socrates, a Greek philosopher whose way of life, character and thought exerted a profound influence on ancient and modern philosophy admonished us to Know thyself for the unexamined life is not worth living. In our quest for victory, the most difficult victory is over self. Said Aristotle, I count braver him who overcome his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. The only struggle between you and your spouse, you and your job, and you and other people, or anything and everything else are all illusions. If you want true success, change, and growth, come to know yourself.

It is times that we step far outside our familiar environment and elements that we can experience ourselves the most. The first person we need to know is ourselves. To know a species, look at their fears. To know yourself, look at your fears. Today, we must do more than look. We must observe. Fear in itself is significant for when it’s there it may point us in the direction of what is important. When we are not afraid of our fears, they’re not there to scare us. They’re there to allow us to know that something is worth it. Said Lao Tsu, He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened. Said Adam Smith, The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.

Socrates was a widely recognized and controversial figure in his native Athens as he was frequently mocked in plays of comic dramatists. Although Socrates wrote nothing, he is depicted in conversations in composition by his admirers, with Plato and Xenophon among them. He is portrayed in these works as a man of great insight, integrity, self mastery and argumentative skills. Personal integrity generates trust and is the basis of many other kinds of deposits in success principles. Plato’s Apology of Socrates purports to be the speech Socrates gave at his trial in response to the accusations made against him. It’s powerful advocacy of the examined life and its condemnation of Athenian democracy have made it one of the central documents of Western thought and culture. Integrity, maturity, and self assertiveness requires a proper balance.

To build a relationship with our higher power requires a starting point in the mind. Prayers, meditation and sitting in silence will deepen this relationship. Meditation is a steady effort of the mind to know God. It is our spiritual approach to God. Spirituality is our opportunity to develop a relationship with a higher Power that will provide meaning and purpose in our lives. Dr. Janet Kizziar believes that the degree that family maintenance, nurturance, inclusion, privacy, understanding, recreation and spirituality functions of the family are excluded is the degree that its members will successfully cope with life in the world outside the family will be diminished. She also maintains that these family roles are significant in the persona of enabler (which may bring family nurturance and maintenance needs), the hero (which brings family esteem needs), the scapegoat (who mistakes so that the individual and family can find understanding and meaning), the Lost Child, (Privacy), and the Mascot (which represent recreation and the spirit of fun and comic relief.

Many believe that the only way to win a victory over human selfishness is to get self to be an ally of the Kingdom of Heaven. Self mastery is self control. It is essential to invoke the power of the priesthood of God. It’s great divine agency can only be exercised in righteousness. Self mastery requires self control, self determination and strength of character. Character counts in building respect, trust, quality relationships, and effective teams. It enhances and accelerates our gifts and talents in an essential way. Knowing our gifts is our success key. Self mastery is a challenge for every individual. It cannot be purchased by money or fame. Only we can control our appetites and passions. Self mastery is the ultimate test of our character. Heraclitus said that Character is destiny. It requires climbing out of deep valleys of our lives and scaling our Mount Everests. In doing so, we can acquire a lifetime of peace and tranquility from neglect. In family healing we must support the tools that will help the family move to another level.

In family healing, try to lead by influencing and respecting family members rather than trying to control them. The best way for family members to move forward is to work together and respect one another toward bringing peace, civility, justice and tranquility to the family. We’re stronger when we work together. The Gardners lived a life of trauma and disorder without having a simple conversation in equity to correct their mistakes through empathy and understanding one another. We must be strong and honorable in acting and reacting from a very broken place. We can’t govern our reactions beyond what someone else does. The inner circle couldn’t respect or value others in the family because they didn’t respect or value themselves in moving to the next level of maturity. At this point the inner circle had become irrelevant to both the issues within the family and in the wide community that began in the family. The work of healing is never finished. Time and time again, we saw one move forward, but then the family would fall back into its old childhood patterns but still not learning to live beyond the chaos, disorder, and lack of valuing and respect for others.

Lack of authentic leadership produces a world of fantasy built on too many lies. Those who fail to come to know our history are doomed to repeat it. Not trying to know or understand the historical truth and reality of what has truly happened in the family and in the world means that we will forever remain a child. To solve real world problems, we must view that problem in its true perspective, to contemplate it as it is.

As a book, A Time For Healing is a dedication and celebration of life, of our history of healing our families and society in overcoming family and racial apartheid as we deal with the ravages of family dysfunction which has helped cause gun violence upon the streets of our cities and educational apartheid in our schools. This book is a story about justice. It addresses family dysfunction, the effects of poverty, death, dying, and hope in family and societal rebirth in healing and in learning a new way forward in spiritual and academic rebirth and resurrection toward a brighter future. It is also dedicated to those families, where too often responsible fathers are missing, and who have lost loved ones to gang and gun violence and in America’s educational apartheid school systems. It is written in remembrance of our youth who receive inadequate and missed educational opportunities and essential academic, instructional and fiscal resources. It is addressed to lack of accountability, in school districts where inadequate financial resources are common where it is needed most; where lack of educational leadership commitment, and inequitable school funding prevails. The book addresses a need for visionary leadership in the knowledge, skills, and desire for excellence on the part of parents, school boards, superintendents, principals, teachers and other educational leaders. It addresses inequitable resources in educating our children to the limits of their talents.

It’s paramount that families insure that children begin school on time with readiness skills for school success. It’s essential that they become excellent readers to find opportunities for growth in obtaining a decent education, to do the work of the modern world, to see role models of success, opportunities for growth and progress, and parents who are involved in their education to help them succeed. Without these supports, they are left without transformative hope for successful futures, in earning a living, an ability to support self and family, the value in a vision of educational excellence, meaningful self direction, self esteem, self confidence, faith, or a healthy purpose in their lives. With family, community, and citizen support, we can meet the challenges of educating all children who show up at the schoolhouse door. The National Center for Homeless Education says that more than one million children enrolled in US public schools last year were homeless.

There is one in all of us who is inferior to no human being: our Christ Self. The Christ Self is the man that God created in His image and likeness. He is the real self of all men. Jesus told Thomas, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me, John 14:6. We are either the way or in the way. There is inspiration, hope, and healing in Christ. The biblical names used in this story addressing the Gardner family experience are not only about what the Gardners are presently as a family but also what the family can become as it moves toward the expression of its higher self. Cleaning up the family is also about character, redemption, forgiveness, healing, and the ownership of our acts. Forgiveness is giving up the negative for the positive. People never want to say the worst about their family members and they usually want to protect them in any way they can.

The Gardner family could be any family in our society. As a fictional account of the Gardner family, nothing in this book is personal. The law of the principles of mental action operates impersonally. There are positive consequences when we live in harmony with principles. There are negative consequences when we do not. We control our actions but the results that comes from those actions are controlled by principles. Principles ultimately govern, not values. Our own freedom requires standing up for the freedom of others. You can be free if I am free, said Clarence Darrow. To live a healthy, happy, and prosperous life without limits, we must understand and adhere to the spiritual principles that govern the universe. This book is a call to arms to embrace those who want to make a positive difference in their family, organization, and in the world. This challenge can create a family or organizational team of understanding to move that difference forward faster. Understanding is the agreed upon right of family members to make mistakes and learn from them. We will fail when we don’t understand. To feel understood is to feel loved. Love is the heart of the family. These principles work just as unfailingly as the laws of gravity and the universe. Reading this book is a beginning, but we must act and apply these principles for better living. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Today, in our families and in our world there is still something basic missing, despite strides in science and technology: poverty of the spirit, and the simple art of living together as brothers and sisters. It is never too late to discover the truth of who we are. Jesus said to those who were bound by sin, sorrow, and sickness: You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

Today, as a people, we must look first internally and correct the problems in our own families, organizations, and communities. Valid points and the truth will stand on their own. Truth means both honesty and accuracy. Our lives will improve only when we take small chances, and the first and most difficult chance you can take is to be honest with yourself. The degree to which we can honestly and accurately face our problems is the degree to which healing will occur. When we trust in God, (whom ever in our religious and denominational worlds we conceive God to be), or have the sense of a greater good or power in life, and stand for the truth, we have the incredible ability to impact the whole world. Accordingly, in our ethics overhaul, the truth will set us free. Truth resonates, transforms, vibrates, and transcends time and place. It is perhaps the most powerful force in the universe. It unfailingly outshines lies, deceptions and selfishness. If someone lies to you, they are un-lovingly disrespecting you and your relationship.

Even when the people around us, through years of conditioning, do not see the truth, despite strong opposition, the greater universe does. Somewhere we’ve read that truth thrust to the earth shall rise again. By telling the truth, we empower ourselves in all areas of our lives to bring us closer to true spiritual understanding. We must tell the truth with a capital T. But the truth is often something that many people would like to forget or even deny. Getting ourselves and our family healthy is taking a huge step of faith. Do we have the courage? Spirituality is a force that enables us to reach beyond just ourselves and become part of something bigger than ourselves. It encompasses our better nature, the parts of our lives which are most noble. Most people believe that human beings have a spiritual dimension within them that needs to be nurtured. Spiritual principles provide answers to life’s most complicated questions such as What is life about? Why am I here? The family’s spiritual dimension provides many advantages. It provides awareness of a divine presence in life while expressing character in everyday living. We are not in control. Rather, principles ultimately govern and are in control. The more our practices are in alignment with our Godly principles, the more we are in control of our lives and destiny. Principles assist family members, organizations, corporations, and society in cultivating a positive outlook and guidelines for living while providing a sense of freedom and peace.

In our favoritism, unless someone is standing up for everyone in the family, nothing hits home until discrimination or tragedy happens to them. In this story of selfless courage and the audacity of hope, we give readers our own sense of something realistic, relevant, yet wild, as a sense about what is occurring in today’s families that run, like a mobile, as clouds or water continually changing shape, dissolving and transforming family images from a dream deferred to health and wellness.

The Gardner Family Tree: A Genogram. A genogram is a graphic representation of the Gardner family tree. It demonstrates the interplay of four generations within the family of grandparents, parents, siblings, and the children of siblings. Family is what we make it. If anyone within the Gardner family wanted to preserve his or her sanity, humanity, and reputation untainted by the deadly cost of the acts of family apartheid, which is synonymous with family dysfunction, he or she should have done the honorable thing and refused to cooperate with such an evil system long ago. Family apartheid is a moral struggle, and the family must discover how to rid the family of this scourge. To reach its goal, the family must discover the right things to do, and then do them right.

Definition of some commonly used terms in A Time For Healing

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Family: An interdependent group of individuals who have a shared sense of history, experience some degree of emotional bonding, and devise strategies for meeting the needs of individual family members and the group as a whole. In most societies it is the principal institution or arena for socialization of children. Family is also used here figuratively to create more inclusive categories such as community, organizations, state, nation, global village, and humanism. In historical revisionism, historians frequently rewrite history to increase self-esteem and to clear their conscience of guilt for historical misdeeds.

Dysfunctional Family: A dysfunctional family is one characterized by little or no respectful communication, extreme rigidity in family rules, high levels of abuse, arguing, and tension, extended periods of silence, blame, avoidance as primary coping mechanisms, and overall coded message of don’t feel, don’t talk, and don’t trust. It is a family of extremes in which conflict, misbehavior, often child abuse and neglect on the part of individual family members or parents occur continually and regularly. These omissions and commissions lead other family members to adjust and to accommodate to such actions. Children grow up in such families with the understanding that such family relationships and adjustments are normal. These family problems can take many different forms which may include battering, physical abuse of one or more family members, inappropriate physical or sexual behavior or sexual abuse, alcoholism, emotional abuse, chemical dependency, or workaholism.

Individuals from dysfunctional families can be attracted to abusive relationships or find themselves unable to maintain relationships, taking themselves very seriously, being overly responsible or overly irresponsible, avoiding conflict or aggravating it, but rarely dealing with it. Some believe that every family is dysfunctional to some extent. Dysfunctional families are primarily a result of co-dependent adults, and may also be affected by addiction, such as substance abuse, alcohol, drugs, etc. or sometimes an untreated mental illness. Dysfunctional parents may emulate or over-correct their own dysfunctional parents. In some cases, a child-like parent will allow the dominant parent to abuse their children.

Dr. Janet Kizziar characterizes four types of troubled family systems, which is described as breeding grounds for codependency: (1) The Alcoholic or Chemically Dependent Family System. (2) The Emotionally or Psychologically Disturbed Family System. (3) The Physically or Sexually Abusing Family System. (4) The Religious Fundamentalist or Rigidly Dogmatic Family System.

George A. Boyd has maintained that those who grow up in dysfunctional families experience trauma and pain from their parents’ negligence, actions, words, and attitudes. Because of the trauma these families experience, the siblings grow up changed, different from other children, missing important parts of necessary parenting that would prepare them for adulthood, and missing parts of their childhood when they were forced into unnatural roles within their families of origin. For Miriam Gardner, who took on the pain of the family, it led her to attempt to flee the pain of her past through alcohol while others within the Gardner family may have engaged in alcohol abuse or drug use. Still others in the outer circle have felt or was inexplicably compelled to repeat these abuses that were done to them either upon the outer circle or on their own children, siblings or with their own spouses. Other Gardner siblings have felt inner anxiety or rage, and may not know why they feel as they do.

Family system Theory: Family system theory has become a popular concept for counselors and family therapy professionals. This theory maintains that the family is a system that functions as a unit and every family member plays a critical role in the system. Therefore, it is not possible for one member in the system to change without effecting a change throughout the whole family system. Within the system’s view, the family is the identified patient rather than just one individual, the scapegoat. The scapegoat mistakes, so that the individual and family can derive understanding from them. In this scenario, the parent will become aware that in order to change their child’s behavior, they must take the lead and first change their own behavior. Rather than blaming the family’s problems on a given family member, Miriam, or the inner circle, the system’s view argues that the behavior is a natural reaction to an unnatural set of circumstances or conditions. However, with an accurate identification of the process, the real patient, that sustains painful or stressful conditions in the family, change for the better can be both permanent and profound. The most significant principles of family system theory are: The system reflects family members in a manner that the family can be defined by the interrelationships of its members, not the total of its parts. The family system operates on the principle of balance. In this manner, when one family member acts out of balance, another one will compensate for the imbalance. The entire system is governed by rules to maintain its balance. In healthy families, roles are flexible and shared. In unhealthy families, roles are dysfunctional, rigid, and frozen.

Within these pages, we have sought to study what a healthy family looks like. I see healthy family dynamics representing strong bonds in building family connections. In learning what constitutes a healthy family, today I am not at a loss to know how to create warm, authentic, close family environments in following the golden rules in doing unto others as you would wish them to do unto you in better identifying and understanding what a healthy family looks like.

With practice these caring, healthy, and wholesome habits can become a regular part of your family life. Healthy families are attuned to each others’ needs. No one is perfect, but with mistakes made, they talk to get an understanding and to be understood, then to apologize for mistakes made to repair the damage to the their relationships. Effective communication in sharing feelings helps us to experience closeness in understanding each other better. Healthy families build each other up. They find out and praise what they most admire about their spouse and children.

Family apartheid: In this story, family apartheid is synonymous with the horrors of family dysfunction. It is a state of emergency within the family. Family apartheid is any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference that has the purpose or effect of nullifying, reducing, suppressing, or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or free exercise, on an equal basis of human rights and fundamental human freedoms and needs of all members in the Gardner family. It is South Africa’s racial apartheid and the American South’s segregation of the races. Family apartheid is a severe form of sibling discrimination from three older inner circle siblings over the six younger outer circle of Gardner siblings, including a grandson. The outer circle, who was barred from court, is a source of wide and unrivaled authenticity in witnessing to family apartheid’s effects upon the family. Family apartheid is family dysfunction that goes beyond sibling discrimination by requiring the domination and systematic oppression of one group of siblings, the seven younger individuals in the Gardner family’s outer circle, by another group of siblings, the three oldest siblings in the inner circle.

Family apartheid, like racial segregation and discrimination, is an unnatural set of circumstances and conditions that sustains limiting, painful and stressful conditions. But ask how the two family circles and unfair treatment by the fall of 2005 had actually affected the Gardner family’s relationships and people’s lives as adults living in the twenty-first century. It had prevented the members of both circles from living lives of decency, honor, respectful communication, fairness, integrity and equity within the Gardner family. Lack of integrity can weaken almost any other effort to create high trust deposits. Family apartheid is governed by the rules of the poisonous pedagogy which creates dysfunctional families. It is anti-democratic with inequality of power, unequal rights, characterized by denial and evasion of clear facts, and talking in vague and illogical egocentric ways about family, repression, lack of collaboration, emotional vitality, individuality, and spontaneity. It glorifies obedience, power, male supremacy, and is outrageously anti-life.

The simplest meaning of dysfunctional is that It doesn’t work right. For dysfunctional families the lines between right and wrong, and good and evil are blurred. In contrast, functional, solid, secure families have little ethical confusion. Moral dilemmas may challenge us, but when we come from a healthy family, we are seldom unclear about what is right or wrong. When families become dysfunctional, society becomes dysfunctional because the family is the foundational unit of society. Within the Gardner family, in the beginning, the Gardner siblings were innocent children and their lives were changed dramatically by forces in their family they had little or no control over, and by fall 2005, they were innocent survivors of that trauma. The impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family takes it toll on family members growing up in these families. A Time For Healing will discuss what families like the Gardners are like, the impact of growing up in such families, and what these families can do to begin the process of healing.

Interdependence: Team work. The idea that individuals and subsystems that compose the whole system are mutually dependent and mutually influenced by one another. In an interdependent relationship, family members are emotionally, economically, ecologically, and morally reliant on and responsible to each other. Some advocate freedom and independence as the ultimate good. Others do likewise in devotion to their family of origin, community, organization or society. Globalization of economies have led to an ever increasing interdependence of countries around the world.

Systems Thinking: Peter Senge maintained that when he is trying to help people understand what the word system means, he usually begins by asking: Are you a part of a family? Everyone is a part of a family so his next question becomes: Have you ever seen people producing consequences in the family that aren’t what anybody intends? Yes. How does that happen? Then people tell their stories and think about them. But that grounds people in not the jargon of ‘system’ or ‘systems’, but the reality - that we live in webs of interdependence. Consistently family has produced outcomes that nobody wants. Senge believes that the answer is A persistent commitment to real learning. Another characteristic of systems thinking is the need to triangulate or synergize. We need a different point of view that as separate individuals none of us can produce alone. The intelligence that we need and that matters is what we can do collectively, argues Senge. Systems thinking is a very deep commitment to real learning and being prepared to be wrong. The idea is that if it was obvious what we ought to be doing then we would be already doing it. Systems thinking, then, means a set of things working together as part of a mechanism or an interconnecting network to do a specific job.

Inner Circle: The three older Gardner family siblings who may have misused the seven younger Gardner siblings, which includes a grandson, in a dysfunctional, neglectful, and abusive manner reflected lack of appropriate boundaries and discipline of the inner circle on the part of the parents in the home. Within the Gardner family, in many cases sibling maltreatment, the greatest social problem of our time, occurred as second hand abuse in which three older children, Eve, Matthew, and Peter, who was obviously harmed or abused went on to harm their younger siblings. Most sibling abusers who had a long offending history admit to abusive offences. Eve, Matthew, and Peter’s intense feelings of repression, denial, failing to discuss or to deal with problems in an equitable, respectful, and collaborative manner, their persistence in Shut up, be quiet, forget, and don’t talk about it, and other dysfunctional patterns of inequality, disrespect for others beyond the inner circle, and abuse in disrespectful communication patterns and isolation from family have persisted in immature patterns of behavior and belief well into adulthood and old age. In addressing this problem, we must learn to think higher in valuing and respecting one another the outer circle but the inner circle must also learn to think higher of themselves.

This is why, in tolerance, we must communicate for understanding and give each family member permission to have their own experience. So the family must learn to reason together, so that when someone’s experience is different than our, we don’t have to make that someone wrong when their experience is different from ours. Rather than facing and dealing with the family’s problems of dysfunction in respectful communication in tolerance in finding understanding and solutions, which is their problems too, they have silenced the sufferers who are in a high state of consciousness in the reality that something has gone wrong and run away from the problems and changed the subject. It is these dysfunctional behavior patterns which makes the problems in these dysfunctional family systems so dysfunctional and irremediable. The Gardner siblings were not able to communicate across inner circle and outer circle lines because their upbringing was dysfunctional and traumatic.

The Outer Circle: The outer circle constituted the Gardner family’s six younger siblings, including a grandson. They included Miriam, Paul, Elizabeth, Martha, the grandson Luke, John, and Mary. Within the outer circle there were many copies but few originals. The inner circle’s maltreatment was characterized by secrecy and imbalance of power between the inner circle and outer circle. It’s goal was to maintain imbalance of power, inequity, embarrassment, power plays, or domination of one group, the inner circle, over another group, the outer circle. The abuse was characterized by an enduring pattern rather than an occasional disagreement. With closed boundaries and fixed and rigid connections or no connections at all, the inner circle could limit the family, limit its communication, and behavior, or roles of family members by isolating the family system from the inner circle and larger society with no feedback. For the outer circle to reflect on the family’s rules as children and find them wanting in childhood, it would have to separate and stand on its own two spiritual and intellectual feet in childhood. As children, neither the outer circle nor the inner circle could do this. As a result, once started, the poisonous pedagogy of family apartheid worked for sixty years.

The extent to which a specific family dysfunction influences us depends upon the degree, our age, timing, and context in which we received the abuse, injustice, or injury and our coping capacities at the time. Like a genetic disease, family dysfunction is often passed on in some form from generation to generation. Although we may not have created the whole problem, we can’t deny or dismiss it. Rather, we must allow it to come out through the voice of reason and authority within the family. Its ripple effects can affect both the family and society in many negative and destructive ways in social costs. Until we, the family, gets rid of the dysfunctions in the no talk rules of Shut up, be quiet, forget, and don’t talk about it, develop a process of effective family communication in reciprocation, understanding, collaboration, and civility in acknowledging reality, and in putting issues on the table for examination and exploration in viewpoints from all family members, in exploring if a path is good or harmful in reasoning together in equity, civility, and understanding as rational and equal human being, the pain and the hurt will continue. Miriam had taken on the pain of the family. As children, who were often without guidance, counseling, rules to follow, they weren’t trained at the time to work together as family or to do work alone. Although it may have been a problem passed on to the next generation, it was still their problem to solve as adults. Leaning how to heal it through intervention, we can break the generational pattern of denying our greatness in having a functioning family in all for one and one for all. As children we may have wanted to escape from a family in turmoil and pathology and correct the problems through healing but in selfishness and noncommitment to the whole family didn’t know how to heal. Thus, the Gardners remained a broken family because the individual pieces, the family members within it, were broken.

Sibling Abuse: Sibling abuse is the physical, emotional, and may include sexual or incestuous abuse, of one sibling by another. Whipple and Fenton have reported that physical, mental, and psychological maltreatment between siblings is one of the most common yet undiagnosed and unrecognized forms of child abuse. Sibling rivalry is regarded as incident specific, reciprocal and obvious to others, whereas sibling abuse is characterized by an overall pattern of family dysfunction, secrecy, and is nonreciprocal with an imbalance of power.

The pleasure-pain principle: We were born with a pleasure principle, where we will seek immediate gratification of our needs, which our bodies reward us with feelings of pleasure. A satisfied need no longer motivates. But the reverse is also true for the pain principle maintains that as we seek pleasure individuals will also seek to avoid pain. Every individual is motivated in one way or the other. They either move away from pain or go toward pleasure and instant gratification. For a very simple reason, in most religions, there is a Heaven (pleasure) and Hell (pain) concepts. Individuals motivated by pleasure live their life to go to heaven. This implies that going to Heaven (pleasure) motivates them to be a good person. Individuals, motivated by pain, lives their lives to stay away from Hell. This implies that the idea of going to Hell (pain) encourages them to be a good person. The pleasure-pain principle was originated by Sigmund Freud in modern psychoanalysis. Aristotle also noted the significance in his ‘Rhetoric,’ by 300 BC. Thus, we can conceive that Pleasure is a movement by which the soul is consciously brought into its normal state of being and Pain is the opposite. Pleasure is related to Jeremy Bentham’s notions in Utilitarianism and is at the base of hedonism, the idea that life is to be lived to the fullest and pleasure sought as a primary goal. Hedonists in the extreme will be self destructive in their use of sex, drugs, rock and roll and other means of self gratification. Pleasure and pain are basic principles in Conditioning, where we get more of what we reward and less of what we punish

Structure: Structure is both the family’s composition and its organization. Composition means the family’s membership, that is, the persons who make up the family. Organization is the collection of interdependent relationships and subsystems that operate by established rules of interaction. When we fail to take time to build healthy relationships in our family and community, the community and family suffer.

Wholeness: The concept that the family system must be understood in its entirety is distinctly different from the simple sum of the contributions of the individual parts. It means complete, undiminished, undivided or containing all the elements properly belonging. It means every part, member, or essential aspect, the complete and essential sum.

Antisocial Personality Disorder: Factors inclusive in Antisocial Personality Disorder (sociopathy and psycholpathy) involve Pathological Lying, Lack of Planning, promiscuity, irresponsible, impulsive traits in behavior. Other factors include Disregard for Others, Adult Criminality, Juvenile Delinquency, Impulsivity, Acting without Reflection, Dysfunctional Information Processing, and an inability to sustain attention.

Parentification involves the process of role reversal where an elder child is obliged to act as parent to their own parent or younger siblings. In extreme cases, the child is used to fill the void of the alienating parent’s emotional life. Within the dysfunctional family, favoritism among siblings is the norm, and there is abuse, neglect, love is inconsistent, children are parentified, and feelings are alright for the dysfunctional parents only. It is not a Norman Rockwell home. That is why the dysfunctional patterns and behaviors are not our creation alone as the next generation, but the dysfunction is ours to break. We must open our hearts and minds to hearing our parents’ story because that is our legacy. That is why we must listen to and share our father’s or mothers’s challenges about their pain and why they may have turned to drugs or alcohol. Like their children, they all have shared a pathology of dysfunction adopted from their parents.

It is characteriazed by intergenerational patterns of dysfunction. These are repeated in family crises, absence of a safe and structured home life, and denials are the norm. Within the family, there is the sacred don’t talk, don’t trust, and don’t feel rule, and family roles include responsible parentified children, the family hero, enabler, scapegoat, clown, and lost child.

According to a study conducted by Judith E. Pierson on Treating Adults from Dysfunctional Families, two thirds of fifteen hundred Smith college School of Social Work graduates were Parentified Children. (Lackie, 1983). Social Worker students had twice the level of family addiction as business students (March, 1988). Thirty-one percent of social work/counseling students had an alcoholic parent. Thirty-four percent defined self as parentified. Sixty percent grew up in dysfunctional families (Pierson, 1994). Many of us grew up this way.

Synergy: When something is synergistic it means that various parts are working together systemically to produce enhanced results. The synergistic effect is when two or more agents are working and interacting together to produce an effect that is more than the sum of their individual parts or a result not obtainable by any of the two or more agents working independently or alone. Synergy is not compromise. Rather, it is when one plus one equal more than two. It is creating alternatives that can meet both person’s or individuals’ needs rather than just one person or one side of an issue. It is value driven for both sides. When we can create and demonstrate these creative team principles in common vision we can produce a third combined alternative that is better than either of the original two sides can produce alone. Synergy is the creation of a whole greater than the simple sum of its parts. It is the interaction of elements that when combined produces a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements. Like the Eight Best Practices Principles in educational leadership working systematically together, synergy results produces increased effectiveness when two or more people, ideas, groups, families, organizations, school boards, businesses, corporations or nations work together synergistically to produce a third alternative. In effective families, school boards, and organizations, synergy is more about feedback than control.

Preface and Acknowledgments

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I give special thanks to my devoted and dedicated wife, Robena, for her love, support, concern, inspiration, and personal confidence in my love for family and history. Beyond all other attributes, it is love that makes us human. It is the great harmonizer, equalizer, and healer. It is a spiritual quality that we each possess. Family history can inspire a wonderful spirit. She has taught me that being loved and accepted for who we are is a normal and human desire. We must see ourselves already in possession of that which we desire. We cannot desire anything that we are not capable of attaining. Desire is the starting point of all achievement. Finding a wife is a small part of a relationship. Being a great husband is the biggest and most difficult part. When we can offer unconditional love and acceptance to others, we share a great gift that can be nurtured and passed on. By doing so, we also strive for greatness and achieve success in the process. That is how we help others heal and grow. Love is a natural state. Children are predisposed to love and affection, but they must be loved before they can love. Being forgiven can also teach us to forgive others. Robena inspired an interest in the topic and gave generously of her time, ideas, and interest in the preparation of this story. I also give special thanks and dedication to our children, the leaders of our future, Christine, Amanda Cheryl, and Paul David Morgan.

This book is a fictional account of the Gardner family based upon principles, but is otherwise reality-based, in that it is predicated upon the careful research and observations of actual dysfunctional families. To avoid disparaging real people, all character creations within the Gardner family account are fictionalized, except for known historical figures and historical events. We have described scandals involving the Gardner family’s fictional characters while pointing out the truth of what really happens in these instances to cause a family, an organization, or a society to be dysfunctional. In this story of a family, we will examine a specific family as the evidence will speak boldly for itself within the family system and its social and cultural context. The truth may hurt some time but it will also set us free. When we let go of the old, we often erase thoughts contrary to truth. This is done through denial. Denials also enable us to say no to that which is unlike the nature of God. The story also reveals the carnage left from such pain and how we can eradicate it. It shows how we can proactively envision and create a better way forward and then avoid the imperfections as well as the stigma attached to family and organizational dysfunction in the future to enable the family or organization to work together and to grow stronger. Said Henry Van Dyke, We hold it true that thoughts are things; They’re endowed with bodies and breath and wings; And that we send them forth to fill the world with good results or ill.

The writer would like to thank his real family for their views and opinions and for taking the time to share their knowledge and experiences. We are also deeply indebted to the spiritual leadership and life changing new thought Christian principles of the late Reverend Dr. Johnnie Colemon who is founder of Christ Universal Temple in Chicago, Illinois. I also dedicate this book to her because she taught the power of imagination in transformation, our purpose, and of positive thinking. My philosophy and approach to life is based on her teachings and her commitment to helping people find and heal themselves and define their lives. Today, we pay special tribute to our mentor that helped change the world. The International New Thought Alliance has acknowledged Rev. Dr. Johnnie Colemon as a magnificently, spiritually empowered individual who has brought light, strength, and understanding to members of the family of humanity world-wide.

The iconic Reverend Dr. Johnnie Colemon’s remarkable ninety-four year journey in life was filled with passion, principles, progress, and purpose. She is often referred to as the First Lady of the New Thought Christian Community. She not only overcame illness but proactively combated sexism and racism through faith in education. Her unconquerable spirit brought forth a vibrant and resourceful ministry whose magnificent scope expanded to radio, television and other significant publications which included construction and creation of Christ Universal Temple, the Johnnie Colemon Institute, and the Johnnie Colemon Academy. In 1974, she established the Universal Foundation for Better Living Incorporated with ministries throughout Chicago land and around the world. CUT has become one of this nation’s most prominent churches. Her interest in people and the gift of ministry has encouraged generations to explore their inner selves in tapping into our goals in dreaming, planning, and acting.

As during Reverend Coleman’s ministerial leadership tenure, she built five structures to spread the Better Living teachings, including three churches and two institutions of learning. She constructed a luxury banquet hall and restaurant in service to a community that, formerly, had little access to a high quality dinning experience. The first church was built in 1962, named Christ Unity Temple, with a later addition to accommodate another 1000 parishioners constructed in 1972. The church began its journey in becoming a thriving, spirited, and progressive New Thought Church in 1956. When the congregation outgrew its beginnings in the first church and the additional building, Reverend Colemon designed, constructed, and moved into the current Megachurch that is Christ Universal Temple in 1985. It is located on a one hundred acre campus at 119th Street and Ashland Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. As the influential and life-transformative founder of one of Chicago’s largest congregations, on January 5, 2015, Christ Universal Temple mourned the death of its founder who retired as the senior minister in 2006. Chicago’s Mayor, Rahm, Emanuel, and many other business and spiritual leaders paid tribute to Reverend Colemon both at the church and to the Chicago community in extending their sincerest condolences to the congregation on the loss of a beloved esteemed spiritual teacher, devoted friend and cultural hero and in her memory and legacy which will continue to touch many lives.

Said Reverend Derrick B. Wells, Christ Universal’s present senior minister, She was innovative and had a knack for making religion and theology simple. The Reverend Helen Carry, a long time friend and assistant minister, said The Reverend Coleman believed in people and dedicated herself to helping others lead better lives.

We also pay special tribute to Reverend Helen W. Carry who is known in the Universal Foundation for Better Living as the Teacher of Teachers, to our present highly spiritualized, resourceful, and dynamic Senior Minister Reverend Derrick B. Wells, Reverend Dr. Winston Johnson, the other associate ministers at Christ Universal Temple, Minister Louis Farrakhan, and legendary leaders and institutional builders alluded to including my sister the Reverend Dr. Dorothy Maddox, E. Franklin Frazier, Dr. William Julius Wilson, Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. Du Bois, Sir Winston Churchill, George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, and to historical legends from Frederick Douglas, Elie Wiesel who is the World War II Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate; Victor Frankl, Carter G. Woodson, Dr. John Hope Franklin, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, and John Bradshaw. Other iconic figures include the scholars and leadership views of sociologists, family therapists, Biblical and spiritual giants like Charles Fillmore and Desmond Tutu, psychological, family therapeutic, social, and political leadership experts, and spiritual, intellectual, historical, motivational, philosophical sources of inspiration and many others upon whose shoulders we stand. These are the voices that are crystal clear and illuminating. This book is a celebration of the unsung giants.

I am also indebted to Dr. Jerry E. Garrett, who in his career was first teacher, principal and then full time college professor. I give special thanks to Dr. Larry J. Thomas, Dr. Stephen L. Jones, Sr., and the late Charles E. Mingo, all of whom were retired Chicago public schools principals, master practitioners, and some who were both full-time and adjunct college professors with missions and profound visions, for reviewing portions of the book. For their kindness, helpful criticism, and wise counseling, I am sincerely grateful. As both educational practitioners and leaders, their broad backgrounds in knowledge, skills, desire, practical experience, positive mental attitudes and spiritual motivation contributed in no small measure to make this study possible. This book is a celebration of the human family, of some of America’s and the world’s greatest leaders and icons in the moments they were making history, and of the people, places, heritage, and success values we hold most dear. The aristocracy of achievement is numerous, wide, and omnipresent. When we stand on the shoulders of giants, we are often benefactors of much for which we have extended no labor. But we still have the privilege of entering into the labor of others said scripture in John 4:35-38. In touching and transforming lives these are the prolific leaders who defined a generation. Sudden moments in history produce exactly the right human beings. By June 2014, the Baby Boomers Recognition Day saluted the accomplishments of a generation that helped change the world. These proactive leaders remain very passionate about their message and hope for the future of our human family.

I am also deeply indebted to Kira L. Bennett, Justin Dimos, and the other editors at AuthorHouse in Bloomington, Indiana for their diligent proof-reading. In doing so, they have helped direct this study in its entirety. Others at AuthorHouse who gave generously of their time include Alan Bower, Rudy Thomas, Leo Montano, Brandon Drake, Kayla Hovius, Rick Van Deventer, Alyson Bell, Nolan Estes for publicity marketing, and the editorial services coordinators at AuthorHouse. The AuthorHouse directors, supervisors, consultants, editors, and check-in-coordinators helped inspire a further interest in the topic and gave generously of their effort in the preparation of A Time for Healing. A Time for Healing is also lessons experienced, lived, and learned in the history of the American experience. This book will help people find their passion and improve their potential toward making a contribution to the human race. It can be tremendously insightful yet healing, hopeful, inspiring, purposeful and therapeutic. I am also thankful for the Authorhouse editors’ careful scrutiny of every sentence, constructive criticism, and judicious advice in strengthening the mechanical portions of this book and in encouraging me to constantly reevaluate my own work.

With all people, we operate on the level of our vision. Before we can change our world and circumstances we must change our vision. Vision helps the family to understand the complexity of the epidemic of family and organizational dysfunction. When we understand another, we accept that they live in their own world. Unless we understand the other person’s world we will not have influence with that person. It takes much courage to allow ourselves to grow in the