Personal Narrative: My Family's Life Stages

According to Bowen, interpersonal relationships are based on a constant struggle between a need to gain togetherness with other people while also establishing independence. This interaction is true for members of a family too especially the children. In my family life, as an individual I have had to face a number of struggles while establishing my independence. There were times when I preferred to move away from my family and distance myself from them but at other times I wanted to experience emotional closeness with them. Over the years though I feel that I have moved closer to striking a balance between these two contradictory needs.
My family consists of four members at the present. These include my parents, me and my grandmother. My grandfather …show more content…
In the first stage where my parents came together, I do not have much information with regard to their relationship but from what information I do have my parents had a rocky start to their relationship as they were never open towards communicating with each other. When I was born I became the part of the emotional triangle and I was used as a means of easing the tension between my parents where both were equally emotionally involved with me while they distanced themselves away from each other, because of this over involvement I was very protected in my childhood and was not given the chance to do things on my own. Every need and want that I had was fulfilled by my parents and they were also very over protective of me. When I reached my teenage I wanted to rebel against the rules which had been set up for me by my parents but was unable to do so. I was not allowed to go to sleepovers or even birthday parties. When I reached the age of 18 and started with college my parents started giving me more autonomy but because of my own reservations about my ability to manage situations I had a hard time adjusting to this newly found independence. It took me a good three years to figure out how to exist without the constant support of my family and then I moved away from home and was in a better place to exercise my freedom and make informed decisions about my life. This brings me to the stage that is currently prevailing in my family where I, the only child in the family has now moved out. My parents had a hard time adjusting to this change, especially my mother but she has also opened up to me about how she feels and is adjusting better than she did in the initial