Assessment

While the parents viewed their financial support as both a necessity and gasoline on a fire, early engagement with HOME revealed something deeper after the HOME team spent compassionate time learning about family patterns and history: Isabel was holding much of the family’s grief. Isabel’s mother, Claire, grieving the loss of her sister decades earlier, had been and continued to be emotionally shut down in many meaningful ways, although she kept up many social and philanthropic engagements. She used alcohol daily to relax and to help her shut down. Starting in childhood, Isabel ached for her mother’s presence, love, and care, but was left feeling invisible.

In working with the entire family, HOME uncovered other long-standing patterns. James, a high-functioning provider, approached family issues with urgency, intellectual business savvy, and problem-solving. He often mistook control for care and financial support for emotional availability. His financial generosity, while well-intentioned, blurred boundaries and inadvertently enabled Isabel’s financial dependence and relational drift since she was not required to have any accountability. Evan stayed busy chasing success to outrun the shadow cast by his father. Amy played the role of “people pleaser” and “high achiever,” and she, like Evan, had challenges with maintaining intimate relationships. The family would come together for milestones, yet did not know how to go deeper beyond the “how is work?” kind of questions.

Interventions

• A 360° deep dive into the family through assessment, connective interviewing, and family history gathering.
• A carefully facilitated 30-day pause in family communication gave everyone room to breathe and reflect without blame. During this time, each individual embarked on an intensive individual reflection period to connect more deeply with themselves and explore family dynamics through their perspective.
• Isabel entered a four-month integrative mental health program that she could attend by staying home and was supported by a reasonable, but not endless, budget.
• Parents began therapeutic coaching and psychoeducation. Claire attended an individual grief intensive that allowed her to integrate her grief.
• The siblings, too, participated in a customized relational intensive to examine their dynamic as well as their inherited relationship to money and meaning, relationships, and self-care.
• After the initial 30-day pause, the family as a whole began meeting in smaller cohorts to address relational strengths and wounds.
• Moving forward, in addition to ongoing individual therapeutic work, the family met once a quarter for a multi-day session to learn and apply relational approaches to deepen connection, enhance honest communication, strengthen values, and underscore accountability.

Breakthroughs & Challenges

Progress came in slow, powerful waves. Claire began facing her long-buried grief. James acknowledged he didn’t know how to connect without controlling. And the siblings, especially Evan, started asking deeper questions about their roles and relationships.

When the family came back together, something had shifted. Conversations slowed down. Silence became safe. Communication became more emotionally honest. Boundaries and accountabilities were created and honored. When decisions were made that did not align with agreements, consequences were in place designed to enhance wisdom, not to distribute punishment. One by one, a series of softenings unfolded. Each moment was modest, but extraordinary for a family used to performance over presence, and disconnection over intimacy. For the first time, hope felt real. Not as a fix, but as a way forward.

Outcomes and Reflections

Two years later, Isabel is in a stable relationship and continues her healing journey with her trusted therapeutic team. Evan and Sophie remain actively engaged in their growth, with both taking a more active role in the family enterprise, preparing for the future in a very deliberate, intentional way, and finding joy with partners they had chosen. Claire’s drinking is not as frequent, although she is still struggling with a lifetime of emotional patterns; her family meets her with acceptance and care while also finding other healthy outlets that can provide the connection they wish they had with her. James remains an active member in the weekly fathers/men’s therapeutic group through which he feels heard, seen, and understood. The entire family gathers twice a year for therapeutic retreats. When conflict does arise, they have the skills to address it with greater patience and curiosity.