Hi, I’m Gary

So let me guess.

You think you’re kinda stuck

You think you’re kinda stuck with family relationships the way they are.

Maybe it’s marriage disconnect, sibling estrangement, the mystery of growing kids at home, blended family drama, or that mother in-law / daughter in-law friction thing.

Or maybe it’s that head butting that happens between parents and adult kids over expectations and life choices.

Or that one – or God-forbid, two – family members who just seem unloveable, no matter how hard you try.

Maybe your grown daughter’s heart is slipping away and you long to reclaim it before it’s too late.

Or maybe you’re mom, exhausted from knowing who your family needs to be and what they need to do, and feeling no one listens. You only wants what’s best for them and you tell them clearly, yet they complain you’re scolding! You feel misunderstood, under appreciated, and even rejected by some. You’ll never bring that up though, because it’s not about you.

How’m I doing? Am I getting warm?

Maybe you’re just tired of offenses and arguments. Sometimes you dread holidays and family vacations together, and wish you knew how to help everyone get along better.

You sacrifice, and try to create a supportive, loving, family atmosphere. You try to put everyone else’s needs before yours. You love them, and just want everybody to appreciate and root for each other.

You’ve been doing everything you know how, and it’s not enough.

You’ve always felt like just a few things changing might make a big difference, but you haven’t known exactly which things or how to do it. You’re even willing to take it all on yourself and just change your own attitude and expectations, if only you knew the attitude and expectations that would help.

You tell yourself that things really are pretty great, and they are, but you really wish some of these relational holes could get filled-in. And you’re afraid some of those holes might be getting deeper.

You just think you’re stuck

You think you’re stuck with it because you see the same scenes keep repeating themselves, and have for years. You think you’re stuck with it because you don’t know what to do about it. You’re totally game to look at things differently and try new things, if only you knew how to look at it and what to try.

Well, it’s not true, you’re NOT stuck, and there are definitely things we can do about it. You can look at things differently and try new things, and I know what a lot of those things are because I’ve been down that same road and come out the other side. And I took notes for both of us.

Hi and welcome to the familia!

We’ve been getting ready for you for quite a while (Years, actually. Decades!).

My name is Gary Morland, and I’m here to help you find relief and peace and joy in your most challenging family relationships.

I’m on the same journey with my family as you are with yours. Like you, I want my family to root for each other, and to chuck performance and manipulation and replace it with acceptance and grace. This includes our spouse, our kids and grown kids, our parents, siblings, in-laws, out-laws, or any other relatives we carry a relational burden for.

We want our families to be a safe place to launch, and a soft place to crash land

And, for those certain relationships in our families that are extra challenging, and cause us struggle and stress, we carry a special burden to find ways to make it better – they’re family, we love them, and they’re worth it.

I’ve been on this family journey over four decades, and I’ve been paying attention. If you’ve said or thought any of these things . . .

“We feel lost sometime and would love to just know what’s healthy and what’s not, in family relationships.”
“I want someone to tell me which thing is best for US.”
“We need realistic step by step suggestions from someone who has been there.”
“We’re often told what to do but not how to do it.”

. . . then this place is for you. We can show you what’s healthy and what’s not, we have realistic step by step suggestions from our own ‘being there,’ and we can guide you in discovering what’s best for YOUR family, not only in what to do, but how. ‘We’ means my wife Brenda and I, and though she stays behind the scenes, we’re on this road together for you.

And you know what? You’ll be shocked at how much can happen just through the power of adopting some simple attitudes, perspectives, and actions – the same ones that changed me and our family many years ago.

We’re assembling a toolbox of the things we’re adopting that are healthy for our families – we call it The Lost Tools of Family Peace.

There’s another toolbox, the one we’re trying to stuff way in the back of that unused closet, hoping the tools there gather dust and are forgotten – we call it The Most-Used Tools of Family Disharmony. Sometimes under our breath we refer to these as The Seven Deadly Sins.

We’d love to serve as guides on your journey to a family that roots for each other, and help you find relief and peace and joy in your most challenging family relationships. Together we can rediscover The Lost Tools of Family Peace.

To begin that journey, just leave your email. It stays totally private, promise, and you’ll get the FREE Ten Minute Guide to a Fun Vision Day Your Family Will Love to Repeat Year After Year – it’s the same vision day our family has enjoyed for over ten years to help us connect with and root for each other.

Wherever you are, you can get there. Here’s how we did.

In 1985 my wife’s husband was 34 years old, an alcoholic who drank 3 quarts of beer a day, fell asleep on the floor every night at 7 pm, no college education, no training or skills, no ambition, no motivation. He was lost, apart from God, unemployed half the time, drove an old Chevy Vega with a driver side door that flew open every time you made a right turn, never seemed to get around to fixing it. He drank behind her back and lied about it and she learned she couldn’t trust him.

My wife lived with this man in a 900 sf house with lots of arguing, mostly because he was clueless on how to be married or raise kids. He had vowed to himself not to have children until he ‘figured out how to be an adult’ but he never did and here they were, two daughters 11 and 8. (If you don’t already know them, the 11 year old was Myquillyn, and the 8 year old was Emily.)

This was normal for a long time.

This was my wife’s life.

I was the husband.

That’s how our family started, and how it went for the first 12 years or so of our marriage. No one had any reason to believe anything would ever change.

It changed.

It changed not overnight but over time.

It changed when I met someone who helped me the same way I want to help you. The things I learned from him about family relationships I now call The Lost Tools of Family Peace, and the more I adopt those tools, the better it seems to be for everybody and the better I feel.

But like you, I needed more than information – I needed guidance, and he became my guide. I learned how to think about which tools to use, and when, and how, and with who. I can do the same thing for you.

When you look at The Lost Tools, you’ll immediately recognize what you’re aiming for and identify where you are now.

Today our marriage majors on grace and patience and caring more for the other person than for ourselves. Most of our arguments are over giving the other person their way – yes, we argue over sacrificing for each other. We’re absolute best friends, and trust dominates and creates an inviting vibe in our home. Disagreements are brief and hardly an inch deep. We share a rich connection as a family between our daughters, their husbands, and their kids. And people seem to notice.

I believe if my family can get here with the start we had, then your family can get somewhere unimaginably good, too.

I believe – and this is important – that your attitudes and expectations shape your family. Change your attitudes and expectations, and your family changes.

Positive emotions, such as compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly influences our experiences of the world

~ Sam Harris

I believe small steps lead to big changes over time.

I believe by perseverance the snail reached the ark.

I believe you can make hay in a season, but growing an oak takes years, and your family is an oak.

I believe everything in your world fits and is connected, even when it doesn’t make sense. You, your family, God, your hopes and dreams, all your challenges and disappointments – they all fit somehow, and the more you see how they fit together, the better your family relationships get. This place here is designed to help you and your family relationships to keep getting better over time.

And I believe one person – one human person – you – CAN make a difference.

I’ll do my best to help you make that difference.

You have hope, but hope is more than waiting and wishing. Hope involves you. You can’t wait for the right circumstances. You can’t wait for others to change and see the light. Hope means a different future – a future you can’t make happen, but a future that won’t happen without your contribution. Contributions like patience and not giving up. Refusing to keep score. Putting high expectations on yourself, not others.

This is a place to help your family relationships, whatever your family is.

Whatever relatives are your greatest source of pleasure, pain, and concern, and who you want good for, that’s your family and this place is for you.

You could probably figure most of this out on your own by trial and error like me, but why make the same mistakes and take 20-30 years like I did?

We’d love to join you on your journey to a family that roots for each other, and help you find relief and peace and joy in your most challenging family relationships.

To begin that journey, just leave your email. It stays totally private, and you’ll get The Ten Minute Guide to a Fun Vision Day Your Family Will Love to Repeat Year After Year.