Family is the Cornerstone for Happiness
Editor’s Note: In April and May 2020, WFWP USA Vice President Katarina Connery hosted an engaging online series based on the Cornerstone for Happiness: Marriage and Family Seminar that reached several thousand people over the course of five weeks. In this article, she shares the importance of focusing on family relationships at this time and her experience in leading this seminar via Facebook Live for the first time.
Close your eyes for a moment and think of someone who is very dear to you. Who did you think about?
Even though the answer will be different for each person, chances are the person you thought of is a family member — a spouse, sibling, parent or grandparent, aunt or uncle, or child. Even for people who are extremely important and close in heart with us, we talk about them in terms of family relationships to describe their closeness: “He’s like a brother to me” or “She’s like the mother I never had.” Family is that important to us. We know it on a very deep level.
In this time of global crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic, where many of us are experiencing very stressful and challenging (even impossible) circumstances, family can become even more important than before. It’s a time for us to lean on each other, support each other in ways that we can, and hopefully deepen those relationships throughout. Even though global circumstances are fluctuating, family remains the same.
Which is why at WFWP USA, we decided to offer exclusive access to our Cornerstone for Happiness: Marriage & Family Seminar to all of our followers. We wanted to learn and discuss together the importance of deepening and strengthening the relationships in our families — not only for ourselves, but for a bigger vision of building sustainable peace — and learn some practical ways we can do that. So from April 22 to May 13, 2020, we presented the four sessions of the seminar, “Where Are We At?”, “What Can We Do?”, “A New Way of Looking at Marriage”, and “Can You Hear Me Now?” via Facebook Live.
During a special bonus Q&A session on May 20, President of WFWP USA, Angelika Selle, and Author and Certified Relationship Coach, Debby Gullery, answered many of your relationship questions, delving deeper into how to create the intimate connections we all crave. (By the way, Mrs. Gullery’s book, which offers even more tools for relationship healing and building, “Small Steps to Bigger Love,” can be found on Amazon here.)
It’s been a wonderful experience preparing the material, interacting with everyone via Facebook, and hearing people’s comments of what they gained from the seminar. Many also shared about their own experiences and insights either growing up in their families of origin, learning new things about themselves in relationship with their spouse, and what they see as some of the major challenges facing families today. Overall, more than 7,000 people were reached through these sessions, and even more importantly there were over 1,200 “engagements”, that is people liking, commenting, and sharing the videos. That’s thousands more sparks to stronger familial bonds!
Here are just a few comments of appreciation shared during the sessions:
“These four sessions on the Cornerstone for Happiness have been well delivered thanks to our speaker and host Katarina Connery. Today's session was also very informative and exciting to us listeners. Thank you Rev. Selle and Mrs. Gullery. Hope to participate in more marriage enrichment seminars that you may offer in the future.”
“Thank you for all of your open genuine sharing. I noticed that everyone was smiling, with laughter interspersed, through the whole time of Q & A. That was such a wonderful addition - very uplifting.”
“It was great to listen to your practical points to help and develop my relationships with my husband and family.”
“This has been a really wonderful session. Thank you so very much for this tremendous investment; you are all giving so much.”
One of the main themes throughout was it’s never too late to improve our relationships! If you missed the live sessions, you can still check out the recordings on our Facebook page and share with your friends. As states across the country are starting to open more and more, our WFWP chapters will also be preparing to have in-person sessions of this transformational seminar, so stay tuned!
Even though the current world situation can feel out of our hands, each of us in our own way are contributing toward creating a more peaceful, loving, and kind world by investing in building families filled with love and compassion.