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Our Ethos: The 5 Cornerstones that Train Our Heart
Years ago, after dropping my son off at his boarding school, I started driving back down the mountain. It was dark. Rainy. Very quickly—terrifyingly so—an impenetrable fog fell. I could not tell where the road was or where the deep slide off the verge would begin. I did not know what to do or how to find my way. Tears streaming down my face, I heard this tender, inner voice guiding me to follow the illuminated lines on the road. My high beams lit up the pavement markings. I did not take my eyes off of them, and by keeping my eyes fixed on them, I found my way down the mountain.
We humans need all kinds of directional guidance during the many overwhelming nights of our lives. They are like gentle hands on our back, coming in the form of wise suggestions rather than commands, receptivity rather than pontifications.
At HOME, we offer these suggestions through our 5 therapeutic cornerstones, which invite family members to safely begin a journey—a journey that will often feel uncomfortable and seemingly impossible. This journey leads them through the foggy, terrifying moments into a deeper intimacy with themselves and those they care about. This journey explores stories and narratives, wounds and shadows, gifts and gratitude, mistakes and challenges.
By using these cornerstones as directional guides, families begin to repair emotional breaches, chart a trajectory of transformation, and seed a new vision for flourishing. The work we do in confidence changes the course of relational dynamics, empowering family members to be change-makers and chain-breakers, reorienting their collective futures toward a legacy of intergenerational health.
Family healing at HOME is like partnering with a cartographer who illuminates a kinder, softer, more effective process of finding our way. When this type of map is extended and received, people become capable of turning the mirror on themselves and learning new approaches to communication, conflict resolution, and deeper connection. They learn to be accountable for their part and change what they can change, thanks to having different tools, information, and the capacity to hold that which remains unresolved.
It is not easy. It is profound.
It is worth it.
Until this work is underway throughout the family system, it is much more likely that symptomatology persists, relapses occur frequently, disconnection prevails, and we get the same thing we have always gotten: scripts and behaviors that lock us in a fight over where the blame lies.
It is not easy to be rigorously honest with ourselves. Yet, putting down the microscope and picking up the mirror is one way to break the patterns that unravel families. In many ways, it is easier to label someone as the problem and say, “Fix them and we’ll all be fine.” That perspective – while understandable when a family does not have a healing map – fuels distorted thinking and projects all that is “dysfunctional” onto someone else. This becomes a strategy that eats away at families and renders relationships transactional. Like rust, it is corrosive. It is what gives birth to things like the silent treatment, earth-scorching rage, estrangement, and the shame-blame game.
The Germans have a word for this way of life (of course, they do). It is herzensbildung. It means training our hearts to see the full humanity in another. Note the word: training. Meaning: it does not just happen. Meaning: it is a practice. Meaning: the ability to see the full humanity in each other (and ourselves) is not about 5 easy steps found on Instagram or TikTok. Herzensbildung flies in the face of mental health jargon found on social media through which diagnoses are thrown around dangerously and family estrangement is peddled like the latest elixir.
This kind of heart-training takes practice: intentional, purposeful, devoted. I often say to family members with whom I am working, “It took 30 years or 4 generations to get here (wherever here is for a family), and creating something more generative is going to take time and practice, care and openness.” This is not about taking a pill or scheduling a surgery. Creating intergenerational health takes heart-training, which is moving from being careless with our relationships to being care-full.
HOME’s five cornerstones train our hearts to see the full humanity in ourselves and others. They are:
These cornerstones operate as gently shining lanterns. They illuminate our way to safe spaces. They guide us home. They invite us to name, feel, and hold the woundedness and unconscious contracts that drive our behavioral reactions and emotional patterns. They invite us to get curious about why someone is the way they are. They help us to be accepting and discerning about who gets access to us and how we guard our hearts while keeping them open.
HOME’s cornerstones are the therapeutic pavement markings that we follow during well-lit days and dark nights. They guide us to lean into sorrow instead of abandoning ourselves or others during times of heaviness. They invite us to heal our lineages as we err on the side of presence. They beckon us into self-forgiveness. They encourage a reverent approach to others. They are the portal into emotional and relational hospitality. They simply welcome us HOME.