About Julie
Hi! I’m Julie and I’m so glad you found your way here. I’d like to share my story so that you have more information in deciphering if working with Family Comm Flow could be helpful for you.
I am someone who has struggled with my family & romantic relationships most of my life, so much so that it led me to decades of studying family and relationship dynamics.
I received both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Communication with concentrations in Interpersonal and Family Communication, as well as Applied Developmental Psychology. I am a certified Love & Relationship Coach. 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 an academic and worldly setting, where I practice creating emotional safety for myself and others, every day.
My interest in Family Communication started when I was 11 years old. Even though I didn’t have the language to describe what I was sensing at such a young age, I suffered deeply from the dysfunction in my own family system. I often wondered if there could be another, healthier way to function as a family.
11-year-old me was right.
The way I dealt with the hurt from my extended family was by trying to find the love and acceptance I didn’t receive from them in a romantic partner.
I remember feeling like the only way to heal the hurt my family caused me was by creating a new family of my own, that maybe that would make the hurt go away. I’ve learned in my studies and in working with my clients that this is a very common coping mechanism when you grow up in a family system with a lot of unresolved or invisible traumas.
Although my desperation for a romantic partner was coming from an unhealed place, 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 and emotional safety was important for me and my body.
Since I didn’t know how to find or maintain a healthy romantic partnership, I ended up finding myself repeating the unhealthy cycles from my family-of-origin.
The stress of not feeling seen and heard in these romantic relationships became so taxing that it caused physical health issues for myself.
Things shifted 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 uneasy. The engagement ultimately ended.
Which meant I found myself alone, trying to understand – How did this happen!?
Through therapy, coaching, and my own deep dive in Family Communication education, I was able to heal a lot of emotional hurt from unhealthy romantic partnerships and family relationships.
Eventually, my healing integrated and I met my now spouse. We got married, had the partnership of my dreams, then had a kid, and BOOM! We realized we were both still unconsciously repeating A LOT of unhealthy dynamics that were harmful to all of us. We didn’t know how to stop, and it really caught up with us.
I felt a lot of shame for not realizing some of these, I mean… I’m a Family Communication expert, aren’t I!? But I think this time was such a valuable life lesson of realizing how intrinsic, subtle, and invisible these unhealthy dynamics can really be and how human it is to not notice them. (And if this is where you are at, please give yourself the utmost of grace; it happens to all of us).
It took time and a lot of honesty with ourselves and one another, and reaching out for support, but eventually we shifted into much healthier and safer dynamics into the family we were growing and really upleveled our marriage.
Now, we create and grow that emotional safety for ourselves, each other, and our children daily. We attempt to 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, where the parents and the children are all of equal importance within healthy boundaries that are 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 free to express. 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.
I can say now that shifting my relationship
& family dynamics has made my life not only much more fulfilling,
but has also deeply healed my nervous system.
Now, I am so passionate about helping others do the same. It would be my honor to help you walk down this path.
I have helped dozens of clients shift dynamics in their family and romantic relationships that weren’t working:
- Helping individuals heal and/or reconnect from family estrangements
- Shifting unspoken and long-term dynamics between parent/child relationships, sibling relationships, in-law relationships, marriages, and other romantic partnerships
- Walking through and helping individuals navigate a huge change in their family system dynamic including when new information is revealed, the death of a family member, welcoming a new baby to the family, a new marriage, an illness in the family, a move, a new stressor, a new routine, etc.
- Preparing my single clients for healthy romantic partnerships and helping them alter unhealthy or unhelpful dating/relationship patterns
- Giving guidance to individuals looking to deepen and have more fulfilling family relationships and romantic partnerships
No matter what is coming up for you in your relationships these days, Family Comm Flow is here to help!
If any of my story resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you
and hear your story, too.