Welcome to Hope for Our Families Website

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Hope for our Families is a small community and family improvement initiative founded by Peter and Rebecca Thomason. Through it we hope to share some of the things we have learned - usually through trial and error - about keeping our sanity while raising a large family (ten children, 18 grandchildren so far) ! We have lived and worked in the Ypsilanti, Michigan area for over three decades while being involved in numerous community-building activities.

Please visit our other blogsites by clicking here or on our favorite links for more specific information and pictures. The Thomason Family Farm (an urban micro eco-farm) can be seen at http://thomasonfamilyfarm.blogspot.com/
More information about Rebecca's Lionhead rabbits can be seen at http://sunnybrookfarmrabbitry.blogspot.com/
Peter's writing on other topics can be seen at http://notmyplans.blogspot.com

HOPE FOR OUR FAMILIES initially began in the winter of 2005 as a benefit concert to raise money for the 12-step program, The Family Foundation School, that one of our daughters was attending at the time. It then developed into a way to help raise community awareness about substance abuse, especially among adolescents, and recovery programs.

The concert was enormously successful on many levels thanks to the contributions and talents of many friends. We raised over $6,000 for The Family School and designated another 10% of the proceeds to help Daybreak, a program for adolescents jointly operated by Dawn Farm and the Washtenaw County Probate Court. Many of those who attended told us how refreshing it was to hear open discussion of our struggles and to see that it was possible for a family to work together to overcome a disease that has destroyed so many.

As we thought and talked during the weeks following the concert, we came to realize that there are many things that have helped us to become healthier as individuals and as a family over the last thirty years. Through this site we would like to share them with you.

Please feel free to share those things you have found to be helpful in your family life; we would love to hear from you!

With blessings for a great 2010 and HOPE FOR OUR FAMILIES,

Peter and Rebecca Thomason

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Families Anonymous

Last night we had dinner with friends from our Families Anonymous group. We started doing this about a year ago to give us an opportunity to get to know each other outside of our 12-step meeting. At one point the question came up about how FA is different from other recovery groups and why it is not the same as AlAnon, for example. The FA website is good to look at http://www.familiesanonymous.org/ it gives more specific information about the organization and directions to group meetings.

The main reason we are in FA is because the staff at the Family Foundation School in the beautiful Delaware River valley area of New York http://www.thefamilyschool.com/ strongly recommended it when one of our children was there for three years. We have found it to be an excellent way of helping ourselves to learn how to live with, what we strongly believe is, the family disease of addiction and specifically as it presents itself in children. We found the school when we asked our friend Jim Balmer, the Director of Dawn Farm http://www.dawnfarm.org/index.html what he would recommend for our child. He suggested googling "12-Step Schools," which we did. The Family School came up right away and before long we were visiting the campus in Hancock, New York.

The program is not as well known as AlAnon, AA, or some others but it has been operational for over twenty-five years and continues to grow. Our own group in Canton, Michigan, that meets on Tuesdays at Saint John Neumann Church on Warren Road, has been around for almost twenty years. When we joined three years ago is was languishing even though Bob H. came faithfully every week and was oftentimes alone. Since then we have grown to a strong and steady core of about ten members and recently started a new group that meets Thursdays in Livonia. We are very grateful for the sanity we have found in our lives as a result of this great program!

Here is the info about both groups:

Group #776MEETING INFORMATION
Location/Facility...St John Neumann Church
44800 Warren RoadCanton, Michigan
Meeting Day and Time...Wednesdays at 7 PM
Room location varies so ask Church receptionist
Local Contacts...Phone Numbers (313) 690-8901
e-mail Group 776 Online Contact

Group #1802MEETING INFORMATION
Location/Facility...St. Mary's Mercy Hospital
36475 Five Mile RoadLivonia, Michigan
Meeting Day and Time...Thursdays at 7:00 PM
Local Contacts...Phone Numbers (734) 748-6108
e-mail Livonia Group 1802 Email Contact
Other Information...Meetings are in classroom "D".
Posted by at 10:02 AM
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