Family Dynamics

A huge theme in the book Cascadia’s Call is family dynamics. The way your family treats you can lead to either feeling belonging our looking for belonging elsewhere. Many times belonging is a way of feeling at home somewhere. Ari doesn’t feel at home in the beginning of the book because of her family dynamics. She doesn’t know this extended family that she has been forced to live with. They want to love her, but they don’t know how to treat her to make her feel like she belongs. And she doesn’t know how to let them in. Ari so desperately wants to go back in time to when her dad is alive and she belonged in her family unit. But life sometimes doesn’t let us stay the same. Our family changes, and our feelings of belonging may change in that family unit. Dysfunction in the family can lead to dysfunction in our hearts and minds. When does Ari finally feel belonging? She looks for it in the forest with the birds, with the devas, with the das. But ultimately does she feel like she belongs in her own family? Read the book and let me know what you think!