Navigating Family Gatherings Course

Learn how to navigate extended family gatherings with grace and joy!

Whether it's holidays, birthdays, or summer BBQs, extended family events can often feel more like an obligation than a fun occasion to get together. But it doesn't have to be that way.

In this 4-week course, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia share mindset shifts and practical strategies for making family gatherings a positive experience for you and your loved ones.

Packed with insights and real-world examples, this course will leave you feeling empowered and looking forward to family gatherings rather than dreading them—or coming up with completely new ideas.

Discover your ability to navigate holidays and occasions in ways that feel right for you!

This course is based on a monthly theme of the same name in the Living Joyfully Network. It consists of the four weekly focus calls between Pam and Anna, each discussing a particular aspect of the theme, plus the weekly question we share to encourage members to think about it through the unique lens of their experiences and family.

Here's how we'll help you explore how you want to navigate family gatherings:

1. Attendance is Always a Choice: It can be so empowering to realize that, truly, it's our choice to attend family gatherings—not just holidays, but occasions such as birthdays, weddings, and that summer BBQ too.

2. How Do You Want Your Choice to Unfold?: Whether or not you choose to attend a family gathering or get-together, envision how things might unfold, including any constraints that might be at play. Chat with your partner and kids to explore what will help make the event more enjoyable and fun for everyone.

3. Show Up with an Open and Joyful Presence: We've done some great prep work and now, with our toolbox full, we can choose to release our expectations and be present in the moment.

4. Navigating the Gathering: Feeling grounded and present helps us let judgmental comments roll off our backs (those comments say so much more about the person making them than they do about us) and remember that engaging with comments or questions is also a choice. It’s important to be present with our kids too!

5. Bring It All Together: How we choose to navigate family gatherings is an ongoing part of our journey and will change over the years.

Each lesson also includes a question to help you more deeply process the topic and what it looks like for you—because we are all different people. We encourage you to spend time with the question to move beyond an intellectual understanding of the ideas and get a feel for what they look and feel like for you in practice.

Family gatherings don't need to be a source of obligation and frustration.

Join us today to explore the possibilities!

HOW DOES IT WORK?

When you purchase the Navigating Family Gatherings course, you will receive each lesson through email, one lesson per week. You will receive the first lesson the same day you purchase the course, the second lesson seven days later, and so on.

You will also receive links to download both ebook/PDF and audiobook editions of the course, great for those who want to quickly immerse themselves in information they're super curious about. You might find your sweet spot is a combo of reading the ebook or listening to the audiobook and then using the weekly emails as great reminders to dive deeper and focus on the question.

All the content is yours to keep forever, so please take this course at your own pace. If life gets busy, don’t beat yourself up. Just jump back in! However it weaves into your life, we think you’ll find these insights and tools helpful as you navigate future gatherings with extended family.

WHO ARE ANNA AND PAM?

Anna worked for several years with families in crisis before turning her attention to helping parents build better relationships with their children and partners. She has been doing that amazing work for over twenty years. Currently, she works in a private practice helping couples and families move through conflicts and create an environment of collaboration and growth. She doesn't believe relationships have to be hard; she thinks they enhance our joy as we move through this life.

Pam has long been fascinated by how human beings tick and what it means to be in relationship with the people in her life. Over the last fifteen years, she's helped many people cultivate strong, connected, and trusting relationships with their children and partner while navigating the day to day challenges and conflicts of life.