Reuben Williams

But I did used to like, you know, put my phone down and record them.

Anyway, I go to my therapist and I said to him like, what do I do about this conversation with my family?

And he just looks at me and goes, well, what do you want?

I was like, well, I want my family to stay together.

He goes, well, let's make that happen.

Wow.

And so we started working on like, you know, how to basically have a conversation in a group dynamic in a way that doesn't blow it up.

And so we come together, uh, over the dinner table one night and I, I start by just asking how everyone's feeling.

And my, my mom's trying to keep everyone reassured that we're all loved.

And dad's, you know, a shade of his former self.

My two brothers are in total denial.

And my 14 year old sister, um, says, I don't know how to tell my friends.

And, um, yeah,

And so through that conversation with the help of the therapist, I kind of tried to guide our family to a point of like a shared goal of like, how do we become a connected family?

What are we prepared to do to do it?

What I didn't realize at that point in time is that this was probably the first strategy session that I was ever facilitating.

And, um,

And sure enough, by the end of it, like we're all bought in, we recognize it's going to take some work, but we had to make this explicit sort of commitment to each other that had always been, you know, an implicit, you know, thing that's been internalized.

And by the end of it, like we're just kind of sitting there in silence and my brother Isaac, he doesn't give you much.

He's fairly silent, quiet guy, but he chimes up in the end and goes, that was pretty good, Ruben.