About Julie
I was someone who struggled in most of my family relationships. So much so that studying relationship dynamics became my passion!
I received both my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Communication with concentrations in Interpersonal and Family Communication. I am a certified Love Coach trained through renowned Life Coach, Kathryn Alice. I have produced and presented research for the National Communication Association (NCA), taught Communication courses at the collegiate level, as well as worked with other leading Family Communication authors in the field.
Beyond my formal education, my own studies and education are ongoing within a university and worldly setting, where I have to practice myself, everyday.
My interest in Family Communication started when I was 11 years old. Even though I didn’t have the language to describe what was going on at such a young age, I sensed the dysfunction in my own family system and questioned that there had to be another, better way.
A way where I felt safe. 11-year-old me was right.
The deeper issues within my family-of-origin were invisible — not only within the words and communication styles of the family, but also within the unspoken between us all. So in turn, they invisibly and “unspokenly” hurt us all.
That hurt manifested differently for everyone within the family, but for me, it transformed into an obsession with finding a romantic partner that would hopefully make all the hurt go away, where I could start my own family from scratch. When you grow up in a family system with a lot of unresolved trauma, there can sometimes be a deep and desperate yearning to “escape” by finding love and having your own family. Although my obsession was a bit unhealthy, I look back and think how beautiful this yearning was because what I was actually looking for was a safe environment. Somewhere deep inside of me, I knew that finding healthy love, safety, and community was important for me and my body.
But, I was coming from a wounded, uninformed place where I didn’t know how to do it and ended up finding myself in romantic partnerships that resembled the unhealthy cycles within my family-of-origin. I felt so unseen and so unheard that the stress from these romantic partnerships resulted in physical health issues for myself. I really put myself out there when I decided to put my engagement with my college sweetheart on hold where I asked him not to speak to me for a few months so I could take time and space to reflect on why I felt so anxious around him. The engagement ultimately ended.
I took the time to heal in therapy and learned I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. While I woke up to how he was emotionally abusive to me, it took deeper understandings of relationships to realize I was also emotionally abusive to him. It’s not an excuse for the hurt I’ve caused, but at the time, I truly didn’t know better. I just thought the way we talked and related to each other was “normal.”
So many of us don’t know how to have healthy relationships at all. Our culture accepts a lot of things to be “normal” to perpetuate this.
I have found unhealthy family communication is one of the biggest and easiest things that we normalize and I would like to help change that.
After healing from that relationship where I was less prone to abusing others myself, I became curious about how I got there in the first place. Exploring further, I wanted to know what a healthy romantic partnership really looked like — How did it work? How did you “know” when someone was for you? How do you find them? And once all of that fell into place – how could you prevent cycles from repeating over and over again – whether you have children or not!?
Thus, began my studies of romantic partnerships and family systems.
While these studies have helped me and those I’ve worked with, it is my past experiences and daily attempts to put what I learn and teach into practice in my own family life that has been the greatest education of them all. I’m happy to share more details of that in sessions anytime someone needs reassurance.
Now, I am married and in the partnership of my dreams — where we both share a common goal of creating safety in our relationship. We attempt to raise our children and run our family as consciously as we can within the realities of life — where the #1 priority between all of us is everyone’s well-being. No one is better or above or less than anyone else, the parents and the children are all of equal importance within healthy boundaries that regularly discussed and adjusted as life happens.
We are NOT perfect, There are deep issues inside all of us, but we talk about them. And we talk about them in ways where everyone feels seen, heard, and validated. They are all out in the open because we know hiding them hurts us all even more. We feel these realities and we come together over them. We create safety for vulnerability and when that safety is fractured (which inevitably happens as we are all humans), we repair on the deep, true levels…not just the surface level ones.
That old saying of “It’s never about the dishes!” — it NEVER is! There is always more symbolic and deeper dynamics festering inside us that need proper acknowledgment. Acknowledging these feelings paired with aligned words, actions, and other forms of communication can set us all free and create strong connections. Truly OWNING imperfection can be the most loving communication of them all.
There are tough moments, but I will say, after all the family trauma I have been through, it’s been 8 years and I truly have the family and community dynamics that I need to feel safe and loved.
But, it took A LOT of honesty with myself, finding language, and learning new ways to communicate to get there.
