No one parents perfectly, but how do we as parents best love our children, how do we create a family environment in which children will thrive? How do we animate our homes with love? How do we create conditions for children to form secure bonds with Mom and Dad? How do we discipline from love rather than from anger or fear? How do children’s God images form? How do we help children launch successfully from the home into the world? Join Dr. Gerry Crete, Theresa Robinson, and Dr. Peter as we discuss the answers to these and so many more questions, all grounded in a Catholic worldview and through an IFS lens.

Do you want the human formation that can help you be a better parent, informed by IFS and grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person? And do you want to go on this adventure with other likeminded Catholics together in community? If so, the Resilient Catholics Community may be just what you need. The RCC offers a structured, step-by-step way to better come to understand and love your own parts, so you can better understand others in their parts. The RCC opens for new applications in the months of October, February and June. Find out more here: https://soulsandhearts.com/rcc. Have questions? Contact Dr. Peter at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or at 317.567.9594.

Applying to the RCC includes the PartsFinder Pro; you can download examples of the reports for a man and a woman:

https://www.mediafire.com/file_premium/zgqdzv21hjwxax5/PFP_Sample_-_Man.pdf/file

https://www.mediafire.com/file/dbtd91dksh7v56c/PFP+Sample+-+Woman.pdf/file

And you can take in a 19-minute experiential exercise about discerning whether or not to apply here: https://media.transistor.fm/d601eb42/521341ff.mp3

Check out Theresa Robinson’s practice, Greenhouse Counselling, here: https://www.greenhousecounselling.com

Dr. Gerry’s Parting Thoughts movie and film reviews are here: https://www.soulsandhearts.com/content/parting-thoughts/

And his Kingdom Within series is here: https://www.soulsandhearts.com/content/parting-thoughts/

Dr. Peter’s semimonthly reflections, including his series on the relational works of mercy are here: https://www.soulsandhearts.com/content/blog/

What makes a good marriage? In this wide-ranging discussion with Dr. Gerry Crete and David Edwards, we address this question from so many angles, bringing Internal Family System, Emotionally Focused Therapy, the Gottmans’ family therapy work and addressing idealization, love, vulnerability, attachment, wounds, conflict, devaluation, friendship, pressure, commitment, patience, giving, forgiveness, receiving, sacrifice. We explore how managers, firefighters, and exiles experience marriage and explore ways that marriage move beyond surviving to flourishing.

Dr. Gerry Crete’s practice: Transfiguration, is here: https://www.transfiguration.co/

David Edward’s practice, St. Joseph Counseling is here: https://www.stjosephcounseling.com/

Souls and Hearts have an amazing searchable archive of hundreds of resources on Catholicism and Internal Family Systems in dozens of topics, with an AI assistant to help you find what you need. Check it out here: https://www.soulsandhearts.com/archive

The Resilient Catholics Community (RCC) opens just three months each year: February, June and October. We will begin accepting applications for our 14th cohort on October 1.

Nearly 300 faithful Catholics are learning to love themselves, God, and others more fully in community, using the best of human formation resources grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person, informed by IFS and grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person.

As members work through materials in small groups and with companions, they experience the beauty, messiness and realness of human relationships in a safe environment, helping them first to love themselves in an ordered way and, later, learning to radiate that love upward to God and outward to others. Learn more and sign up for the interest list: https://members.soulsandhearts.com/rcc

Plan to attend our live Zoom informational meeting to learn more. The meeting will be from 8 PM to 9:15 PM on Tuesday, September 29, 2026. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/jyHHqRKiRYaDGWMaij4-1A

Home. Family. Belonging. Love. What does it mean to have a healthy marriage, a healthy family? Gerry Crete and Theresa Robinson join us to explore that question: “What does a thriving marriage and flourishing in family life look like? We bring in Internal Family Systems, attachment theory, perfectionism, the importance of family members delighting in each other, parents’ vows and scripts, how loving children involves more than the will, and the importance of “being with” each other.

Check out Theresa Robinson’s practice, Greenhouse Counselling, here: https://www.greenhousecounselling.com/

And Dr. Gerry Crete’s practice, Transfiguration, is here: https://www.transfiguration.co/

Episode 85 is all about perfectionism: https://youtu.be/bw-zUp2h_TA

Check out our Resilient Catholics Community – the RCC offers structured programming to help orthodox Catholic flourish in life by working on our human formation: https://members.soulsandhearts.com/rcc

If you are a Catholic therapist, coach, spiritual director, priest, or in another role where you accompany others in their human formation, consider the Formation for Formators Community (FFF). The FFF is all about the personal, human formation of the formator, so that you can better receive and give love in how you accompany others. More here: https://members.soulsandhearts.com/fff

And our daily sister podcast, Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts is all about helping our listeners integrate inside, heal from emotional burdens, and grow to flourish in accepting being loved and loving yourself in an ordered way.

https://www.youtube.com/@ScriptureForYourInnerOutcasts

Key moments:

0:00 The home and family as a human treasure and source of joy

4:30 The core question for this podcast series

11:10 What does it mean to have a healthy marriage and family?

13:30 The importance of the family, the “domestic church”

21:00 Parts’ expectations for family life – flourishing does not equal perfection

25:00 Dr. Peter was a great parent right out of the gate, but then things got much more real.

25:56 Perfectionism in family life – how “the best is the enemy of the good.” Attachment needs and integrity needs in family life. Dr. Gerry wanted to provide his children everything so that they would be happy.

29:41 Eudaimonia is about a life well-lived, not perfection, a place where children can rest in the security of love

33:30 Unconditional love in the family vs. a focus on “achievement”

36:20 What is flourishing in marriages and family life?

40:42 The importance of joy and delighting in children

45:45 How mothers and fathers can parents from a position of self-protection; the importance of pausing

49:15 Parents’ vows and scripts are often reactions to their experience of their own parents

50:53 Parents often take too much responsibility for their children’s behavior

57:25 Balancing wanting the best for our kids with the need to “let go”

1:00:10 Even heroic acts of the will are not enough in loving children

10:01:30 How understanding parts make family relationships much easier

1:04:20 Self-led parenting

1:05:19 Parts language and family life

1:09:00 How parts work helps with forgiveness in family life

1:18:40 Some reassurances about parenting: how earthy parents are not the primary parents of their children, God’s providence is active

1:19:20 “Being with children” is more important than solving their problems

1:22:30 Reversal with children and identification/counter-identification with parents

1:26:00 Earthly parents are secondary parents, redux. God has a plan for every miscue, every mistake. He's willing to rewrite the family symphony, to take on the bad notes and turn them into good notes in His Providence

1:28:25 Flourishing in a family is about creating an ecology or environment of worth and delight

1:30:20 For each mom to remember that she is a beloved little daughter of God.