Hey, just before we begin, I wanted to let you know that we have a free advent guide available on my website.

And by that, I mean we have an enormous, gorgeous, free, giant ebook thing if you want it.

So it's something to help us ground our days in hope and love this Christmas season.

So if that's something you want, go to katebuller.com slash advent and it's all yours.

One of the weird things about trying to change is that sometimes nobody else wants to.

Not even a little bit at all.

The holiday season could be a strange reminder of that because it's that time again

when we get together with the people who might know exactly what buttons to push

or topic to broach that brings us right back to who we were as kids.

For better or for worse.

That uncle's inappropriate Facebook posts or the in-laws passive aggression is just aggressive at this point.

Or a parent who never wants to talk about the real stuff like their addiction or the divorce or how lonely anyone feels.

We can find ourselves stuck in our histories, especially our family histories.

And we might need a little boost to confront dysfunction, speak the truth, and find trusted people to know how to change.

I'm Kate Boller and today on everything happens, we're going to look backward in order to move forward.

Backward at our family dynamics of how we inherited stories of love and loss from our parents or grandparents or maybe even great grandparents.

How sometimes generational divides make it difficult to express what we're going through.

And how locating ourselves in the webs of our families might actually give us a little permission to change.

And my guess today is the perfect person to help us do just that.

Julia Samuel is a British psychotherapist.

Over the last 30 years she has worked for the NHS and then in private practice and she is the author of gorgeous and practical books like this two shall pass grief works.

And the one I am so excited to talk to her about today, every family has a story.

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