WHAT is FAMILY CULTURE?
It's not about your parenting--it's about patterning
It's your unspoken contracts and compromises
It's your filters, or codes, that shape your reality
It's your generational wealth (or poverty) that is more than just $$
It's the stories you tell yourself about yourself and others
It's the roles and behaviors you normalize, or default to
It's the survival mechanisms you inherit
It's the environment your family is immersed in
It's your shared identity and experiences
I never could have imagined ten years ago that I would experience unemployment–twice, bankruptcy, relocating across the country–twice, a complete career change, a faith crisis, an identity crisis, a political crisis, and a complete cognitive reconstruction (not to mention a pandemic and a couple recessions) all because I started to examine my family culture.
Yet, that is exactly what happened!
In 2015, my life flipped upside down (and not the Fresh-Prince-of-Bel-Air kind-of way). My husband, Michael and I had already been making every effort for a decade to keep our heads above water. We were doing everything we could to stay afloat and provide for our family. We had been living just outside of Washington, DC where cost of living was astronomical for young, fresh-off-of-college graduates raising four little kids during the "Great Recession," trying to nail down a career path. Then, we finally got a chance to relocate! Already deep in debt, and stressed out, the house we moved into flooded, displacing us for two months.
BURNT OUT BY THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, I HIT A WALL.
I lost my executive function. Doing the most basic tasks made me spiral with anxiety. I became neurotic. I just could not understand where we'd gone so wrong. I started to examine everything I believed was normal because everything I’d learned up to that point was the usual script of my generation that everyone told me would lead to success: go to school, get good grades, work hard, get a job, serve in church, budget, start a family, buy a house…to what end?
I’d done all those things, and for some reason success still eluded me.
Maybe from the outside looking in, it seemed like we were doing OK: Successful marriage. Four beautiful children. Homeschoolers. Faithful church-goers. College educated. Why wasn’t all of this privilege producing the desired results? (I hadn’t even begun to examine how others without such privilege were fairing).
I wondered about the families I'd known who seemed to be amazing, fall apart: parents and children going no-contact, siblings who couldn't stand each other as adults, or kids who reject the values they were taught growing up--including my own family of origin.
I'd known wonderful couples who appeared happy and successful, only to announce their impending divorce. As much as I recognize that families who make the difficult choice to end their marriage are doing what is best for their family, it isn't what I wanted for my family. I wanted to figure out some missing link that these families had buried within their struggles that they were not talking about.
(And, were these things "failures" or were they just part of a narrative I'd assumed were breaking down "traditional" family values? Paradoxically, were traditionally "successful" families actually thriving?)
Somehow, I convinced myself I needed to start a podcast that I ended up running for five years hoping I could investigate the cause of my confusion. I knew there was this thing about family culture where some families had figured out how to succeed--whose children were Olympians, or scholars and entrepreneurs--and I wanted to know what they were doing. How little did I understand the Pandora’s box of answers I was about to let loose in my life!
FAMILY CULTURE IS THE OPERATING SYSTEM
OF YOUR Social PROGRAMMING
The input: Not only was my cultural programming running on autopilot, the systems I had operating in the background of my consciousness were wreaking havoc on my identity, values, and choices. My life was automatically following the cultural conditioning I’d been programmed to follow my entire life. I thought I’d had the freedom to choose my path, but I was actually just following the prescribed path I’d been fed. It was as if someone else had designed my cognitive AI chatbot and programmed preset biases and pathways I had little control over. I'd modeled my life after others who appeared to be successful and formed assumptions about "right" or "wrong." My social programming started from the moment I was born as evolution took hold of my survival instincts to be accepted by my immediate tribe, twisting my identity and roles to fit in. The missing link is that people aren't talking about what is actually going on within their invisible scripts that are forming their prescribed paths.
The output: Michael and I were miserable, depressed, deep in debt, unhealthy, and scared. Our future looked bleak. We had no idea how we’d gotten there or where we were going, much less how to guide our kids to have something different from what we were experiencing! We worked hard to keep up with the pace only to find we were climbing up the wrong ladder. We were exhausted: tired of running on autopilot to build a cultural legacy we didn't ask for while life escaped us.
Every family has a culture whether
by default or by design
In 2019, we made a jump--without a parachute or a safety net--before we had any idea what was about to happen next. Michael quit his toxic job and we sold our home. We moved in with my parents. These conditions, on top of the COVID 19 pandemic, sealed our fate.
We faced all our demons.
Situations that should have broken us--and almost did--taught us about our patterns, and the generational traumas we did not ask for but wanted desperately to change. There were moments when we almost fell into the deepest kind of hopelessness, and it felt as if we were never going to escape. We were trapped by the systems and barriers designed to make it impossible to break free.
These experiences revealed the deepest set of inherited code we’d been living by that were shaping our choices, beliefs, and identities. We finally woke up to all the invisible scripts we’d been allowing to control our lives, encoded in our subconscious by our families, education, society, and culture in general. We made a hard reset on everything we'd ever known, to reboot our outlook on life and our vision for our family.
Since then, we’ve been slowly rebuilding our life from scratch: overwriting old code, reprogramming our scripts, reframing our reality from a whole new perspective. Starting over meant having no framework to build from and no script to follow. But, since I’d been studying family culture I knew how to create a personalized handbook of instructions for our family to live by our values, shape our standards, and consciously choose the path we wanted to take.
So, even though our family was in crisis, knowing how important our family culture was for our survival empowered us to be able to maintain a strong foundation and enabled us to be resilient in spite of the trauma we faced. Michael and I were the stabilizing force for our family in spite of the uncertainty of our situation, COVID lockdowns, and my parents' confusion about how we were choosing to raise our kids as conscious parents.
SO, WHAT IS Intentional FAMILY CULTURE?
It's setting up system optimizers and firewalls to prevent viruses and hackers from hijacking your day-to-day
It's being vocal about the invisible scripts, contracts, and compromises that are expected and assumed rather than openly discussed and arranged
It's broadening your lens to see outside of your own lived experiences to learn how other people experience life in a variety of beautiful ways, being inclusive
It's recognizing that legacy is not about the past, but about how the next generation will have the tools and resources to create a brighter future
It's interrupting and examining the stories being told, confronting your biases and assumptions, and telling better stories
It's being aware of what is being normalized in society and in your home, reinforcing healthy norms and patterns
It's building resilient coping strategies to get you out of reactive survival tactics and into proactive thriving skills
It's cultivating an environment that nourishes your family, deepening healthy behaviors and attitudes
It's designing traditions and rituals that ignite your shared purpose and identity
That’s what The Family OS Framework is all about. You don't have to wing it. You don't have to leave it up to chance. You don't have to follow old programming just because that's the way it's always been. You don't have to keep a faulty cultural heritage full of glitches and malfunctioning systems. You don't have to keep giving away your power to some external force or internal struggle. You can guide your family with confidence. YOU are the authority of your family's cultural epic. You get to rewrite the code and follow the path that's right for your family, where safety and trust are at the foundation of every formula that keeps your family resilient.
Combined with my education in health promotion and lifespan development, I’ve been working on this project since 2016, and it has revolutionized my perspective on family, parenting, generational patterns, societal systems, spirituality, evolution, education, and the principles of success. When you become aware of the systems and programming you’ve been living by subconsciously, you get to choose how to rewrite those programs. The Family OS Framework is all about your family culture and the operating systems you intentionally choose to build to guide your family and your future.
YOU ARE THE Authority OF YOUR FAMILY'S CULTURAL OPERATING SYSTEMS
THE Family OS FRAMEWORK
Inherited, unexamined scripts that might be running in the background without your knowledge. These shape your identity, beliefs, relationships, and world views.
Reactive, or responsive? Does your family have a vision? Do you live by your values, or are you just living on autopilot following the preset code you might not actually value?
Everyone knows it takes more than love and good intentions to navigate family life. We need maintenance strategies and coping skills to help us stay on track.
These are the pillars of family culture that shape the way your family's operating systems function, or malfunction generation after generation. Is it time to break the cycle?
The change you want to see in the world begins in your homes and in your families.
