Opening Up

a book about Parenting Journey’s story and the organization's hopes for the future. It tells the story of how the core program, Parenting Journey I, developed, and it also tells the stories of brave and challenged families from low-income neighborhoods who have encountered the toxic intergenerational stressors of their surroundings, family histories, systemic inequalities, and internal pain, and who have struggled to get beyond them. Including a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Opening Up is a chronicle of the struggles and triumphs of families suffering the internalized stresses from poverty, domestic abuse, racism, and neighborhood violence, among other challenges. Through Parenting Journey these families resolve harmful habits and identify their strengths to raise their children in a healthier environment. Anne Peretz tells the story of this bold organization and flagship therapeutic group program that takes a different approach to helping families in need. Told through the perspectives of the families who have participated over the decades, Opening Up challenges readers to think differently about family. These stories view symptoms of stress, fear, and hopelessness that extend throughout generations as remediable and how even the severely traumatized can regain stability. This book is a testament that with mutual respect, compassion, and openness, together we can address the personal and systemic injustices that are at the roots of many of these patterns and together we can rebuild these communities.