There is a cultural phenomenon deserving our attention. That is, the increased appearance of families committed to looking good. We’ll examine some of the actual dynamics in a looking good family and attempt to name what drives parents to create such a system. We’ll conclude with some suggestions to support healing for survivors of a looking good family. 

Characteristics of The Looking Good Family

*A LGF (Looking Good Family) is externally referenced. This means that the values, beliefs and familial rituals and protocols are adopted from the larger culture, based upon what is deemed socially commendatory.

There are many life questions.

Some will lead you to find sustenance;

some, where to work, where to live,

and some where to grow old.

Your soul continues to live one

question, even when there’s no

apparent way to get your attention:

Where are my People?

For millennia upon millennia,

a sensibility to your survival kept

you close to this soulful question.

Living the question: Where are my

People? helped you to hold the faith

that your tomorrow was more likely

We come to believe in a personal morality or a personal spirituality that will guide our decisions and choices. Our times, characterized by confusion, complexity and rhetoric are calling us to also adopt a personal epistemology. Episte means “knowledge”, and epistemology is our best understanding and exploration of how we want to go about knowing. Let’s begin to construct a possible epistemology employing a quote from the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. “Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.”

The ancients say that feeling vulnerable is knowing

that you can be wounded. With that in mind, why should

you value feeling vulnerable? Could it be that the ability

to be wounded might mean able to be penetrated,

penetrated by what life brings. And so, you are asked

to live the question: “Am I penetrated by too much

or too little”?

Your life force depends upon that question and your

honest responses. You will know diminished penetration

as your heart hardens, your mind clutches to contrived

The invitation is to live with these questions rather than to live by. To live by suggests each question gets a neat and tight answer and all is well. To live with reflects a commitment to respond to them throughout our lives, allowing them to refresh and renew our relationship with ourselves and deepening our capacity to be fully alive. In order to live with these questions, a refinement of pride must happen. Rather than be guided by undaunted certainty, we can engender an abiding curiosity that shepherds our beliefs and choices.  These questions will also call forward other questions meant to deepen our connection to ourselves and to our experience.

Men who are pro-feminism miss the boat when their supportive efforts are allegedly driven by altruism or kindness. It is not that kindness is somehow inappropriate. It simply misses the depth of something authentically relational. Here are some of the pitfalls both genders experience with altruistic pro-feminism.

• “Look at me championing feminism.” When self-interest remains unconscious, it gets worked covertly. More emphasis is placed upon the hope for positive attention due to getting behind women rather than simply prioritizing female empowerment.  Such a maneuver feels boyish, similar to, “Aren’t I good, I cleaned my room.”

Gender inequality is written and spoken about as a disparity of power.  What is meant by power? An ancient definition of the word power is “able to”.  We live in a significantly extroverted culture and therefore the idea of being “able to”, will likely refer to several external conditions: education, occupation and finances. When we are “able to” access these conditions we are engendering socio-economic and political power. This is the paradigm of power that is typically referred to in conversations about power and writings about power. 

Friendship is the place where our hearts are touched

and moved. Moved toward some depth of feeling

and insight. Moved toward some new courage ushering

me closer to a risk that has been waiting for me.

My friend remembers himself in my presence,

assuring me that distractions will be minimal.

My friend remembers me, and in this collective

remembering, I am wrapped in belonging.

The fear of remembering myself peels away. 

I, once again, find residence in my own soul.

Fear’s grip begins to atrophy and I offer a welcome

The same contractions that pushed and nudged you from the comfort and repose of your mother’s womb will again and again announce the presence of some threshold awaiting you. May you be received with welcome whenever you dare to be born again.

That initial incubation was meant to prepare you for something larger. You were, from your conception, destined to be a seeker—pilgrimaging to ever-larger worlds. These crossings will sometimes be held up with excitement and anticipation and, at other times, weighed down with the energies of fear and ambivalence.

Contrary to popular opinion, the arduous work of living in integrity has little or nothing to do with being moral.  It’s not about right and wrong. It’s about who you are. It’s about growing up.  It’s about leaving home enough times to know what are your personal values, rather than believing in something because you were told to. It’s about risking to know and to live your passions, uncertain whether others will find your choices to be honorable.  After all that, it means learning to bear the tension that will inevitably befall you when your values and your heart’s desire are polarized, or when you are choosing between two conflicting values.