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FamilyLife Blended®

Ron L. Deal

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159 The 3-Step Guide to Navigating Hard Feelings in Your Blended Family

March 10, 2025
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Dr. Alison Cook What do you do with feelings like anger, jealousy, hurt, or rejection in your blended family? Listen to Ron Deal’s conversation with Dr. Alison Cook, who offers a three-step process to work through hard feelings and find healing and hope for your journey. "Is it okay to admit when we feel hurt, rejected, lonely, jealous, mad, or experience other hard feelings in our blended family? What do we do with those feelings so we don’t allow them to control us?

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Past Episodes

Parenting a prodigal creates pain and helplessness as we seek to navigate difficult relationships. Listen to Ron Deal’s conversation with Judy Douglass, a prodigal parent, on how to tenderly manage these tenuous relationships while staying calm, present, and patient in rebuilding a relationship on their terms.Douglass and Deal discuss the Prodigal Son story in Luke and the parallels with our prodigals in opening our arms to them when appropriate but not chasing or threatening in any way with our behavior. We move toward the goal of gaining influence as we patiently work to bring back love and trust in our relationships.
February 24, 2025
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Cheryl Shumake wants to reach brown & black blended families with brown & black voices. She & Clifton Howard talk with Ron Deal about her new ministry, Sawubona, which means “I see you” & its goal to break through the barriers with culture-informed spaces.
February 10, 2025
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What does the apostle Paul mean in Philippians 2:4 when he says, “Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others?” How do we apply that to marriage, and to relationships in a blended family?In this podcast episode, Ron Deal talks with Brian Goins, author of Playing Hurt, A Guy’s Strategy for a Winning Marriage, about taking care of our own needs and always being mindful of the needs of our spouse. Goins explains that marriage is about finding the motivation and resolve to stay in the game despite the pain and calls husbands to be the heroes they long to be--men who play hurt in order to win at marriage.
January 27, 2025
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Do you think your marriage could improve if your spouse were different? Is it easier to look at their faults instead of considering your own? In this podcast episode, Ron Deal talks with co-authors of his new book, The Mindful Marriage: Create Your Best Relationship Through Understanding and Managing Yourself. Terry and Sharon Hargraves and Nan Deal share how the book can help couples understand their part of marital distress, why they react the way they do, how to be more empowered constructively, and how to cultivate more loving and harmonious relationships as they understand themselves better and learn to relate to their partner as a companion.
January 13, 2025
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Luke Landwer was young when his parents divorced, and he enjoyed time with just his mom for many years. When she remarried a man with six kids, Luke made many adjustments. Listen to his conversation with Ron Deal about adjusting to a bigger family.
December 30, 2024
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Life in a stepfamily as a young adult can carry challenges and blessings. For Amelia Dellaripa, it carries many more blessings. Listen to her conversation with Ron Deal on how her stepfamily of 7 developed love and acceptance with one another over time.
December 16, 2024
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What’s it like to be a teenager in a blended family? Ron Deal talks with Davis and Campbell Faulkner about adjusting to a stepdad after their dad passed away and how they’ve navigated loss and grief and found gratitude for their current journey.
December 2, 2024
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Gratitude doesn’t always happen naturally in blended families, but it can move us toward unity in our relationships. Ron Deal and Gayla Grace talk about intentional ways to posture ourselves toward a heart full of gratitude, even in hard seasons.
November 18, 2024
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Foster care & adoption present difficult issues with similarities to stepfamilies. How do you help a child cope with ambiguous loss or connect as a parent when children act out from prior wounds? Listen to Ron Deal's conversation with Jenni Lord for help.
November 4, 2024
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Laura Husband, daughter of Columbia astronaut Rick Husband, was 12 years old when she endured her dad’s very public death. Laura shares with Ron Deal her layers of grief that followed and her experience growing up blended after her mom’s remarriage.
October 21, 2024
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About FamilyLife Blended®

FamilyLife Blended® provides  biblically-based resources that help prevent re-divorce, strengthen stepfamilies, and help break the generational cycle of divorce.

About Ron L. Deal

Ron L. Deal is the Director of blended family ministries at FamilyLife®, and is the author/coauthor of the books The Smart Stepfamily, The Smart Stepdad, The Smart Stepmom, Dating and the Single Parent, and The Remarriage Checkup. Ron voices the FamilyLife Blended short feature and is one of the most widely read authors on stepfamily living in the country. He is a licensed marriage and family therapist who frequently appears in the national media, including FamilyLife Today® and Focus on the Family, and he conducts marriage and family seminars around the country. Ron and his wife, Nan, have been married since 1986 and have three boys.

Contact FamilyLife Blended® with Ron L. Deal

Mailing Address 
FamilyLife ®
100 Lake Hart Drive
Orlando FL 32832
 
Telephone Number
1-800-FL-TODAY
(1-800-358-6329)