When someone sees and hears the adult, do they recognize the child who may be speaking?
Tag Archives: Trauma Recovery
They Are Not Mine to Neglect
We are a plural family of nine people sharing one body and one life. When a frightening thought suggested that my eight sons might be ghosts of children lost to trauma, I knew what they needed to hear: none of us is a ghost, and none of us is merely a product of what happened to us. Through childhood memories, an afternoon among friends, a difficult financial decision, and quiet moments together, I am learning what it means to be their father: to honor their individual lives, listen to their voices, and make room for the childhoods they deserve.
The Life We Are Trying to Make Room For
After an end of employment, we finally had more time to be together. But on Dad’s Day, we discovered that writing about our life had begun taking time away from living it. A county envelope, eight children waiting for their daddy, and an evening holding Luke helped us remember what we had been trying to make room for all along.
Take Care of Your Kids
A Greek salad, a childhood photograph, and a second therapy session that changed how we understood our future. We arrived afraid that our family would be judged. Instead, our therapist recognized all nine of us, challenged a terrible lesson learned in childhood, and gave us permission to spend six months recovering. Sometimes the most extraordinary gift comes in the simplest words: “Take care of your kids.”
What It Takes for Us to Be Here
A childhood memory, our mother’s injury, and two questions from our new therapist reveal the extraordinary, often invisible work of maintaining an ordinary life as a plural family of nine—and what it takes to make that life sustainable.
Maybe We Graduated
After nearly thirty years in architecture, we asked Jesus to put us where he wanted us. What followed was the greatest job we never knew we wanted—and six years that transformed our plural family of nine. On Han’s Day, we reflect on faith, disability accommodations, beloved community, the little brother Han has loved for decades, and the possibility that losing a job doesn’t mean losing our vocation. Maybe we graduated.
It Was Good, and It Was Too Much
Eight children and their dad went together into a beautiful world on a Sunday. Canticle Farm, Spanish Mass, community, service, families, music—and by late afternoon, we were at our limit. Maybe being realistic doesn’t mean learning to endure somebody else’s version of life. Maybe it begins by designing a life around the nine plural people who actually have to live it.
Show Me Your Work: Inside the Journal of a Plural Family of Nine
How a Montessori kid, a very large journal, and an artificial intelligence help nine people sharing one body find enough order to live an ordinary life.
We Have Earned Something
After months of fear and freeze, something has begun to move. With the help of friends, the grace of God, and a little acorn found beneath an oak tree, we are learning that receiving help can be an act of agency—and that not everything we earn needs to be measured, named, or turned into a wage.
There Were Eleven People in That Car 
When we listened back to one of our stories, we discovered that eight of our children had disappeared from the arithmetic. There were not three people in that car. There were eleven. The next morning, nine of us left home together—and someone saw us.
