From Dysfunctional Childhood to Family Therapy

Irene Weinberg (0:00)

Hi, it's Irene Weinberg, and welcome to the Grief & Rebirth Podcast. Before we get started with the episode, make sure to like and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching so you never miss an episode. Every week, we share heartfelt stories, spiritual insights, and practical guidance to help you navigate grief and trauma, find hope, and discover rebirth after loss. By subscribing, you'll get access to every episode and join our supportive community on this journey. Thanks for being here and let's dive in. Hi, everyone. I hope this message finds each of you so very well. I'm speaking to you from my studio in West Orange, New Jersey, and I could not be more delighted to welcome Dr. Rae Dumont, who is both a pediatrician and a licensed marriage and family therapist. Rae spent years at Harvard Medical School and the Joslyn Diabetes Center, studying how one person's illness can infect an entire family system, and her work has shown again and again that emotional well-being and family connection shape medical outcomes. Rae's professional wisdom is inseparable from her personal journey. She has known love, loss, widowhood, motherhood, and the profound responsibility of caring for families in crisis. That kind of life creates a quiet reverence for the human condition, for the ways we break and the ways we mend. Rae's debut novel, In the Shadow of Silence, explores the corrosive effects of mental illness on families. Rae wrote this book because she hopes it will offer insight and comfort to those who struggle with depression and to the loved ones who walk beside them. Inspired by real experiences but transformed through fictional characters, the novel seeks the deeper emotional truth beneath the facts, giving readers a window into how depression and suicide shape a family, a marriage, and the silences that could grow between people. I'm truly looking forward to this interview with Rae, who lives and practices in Montclair. We're sort of neighbors in New Jersey, which is nice to know.

Together, we're going to explore her life, her work, and the powerful themes that pulse at the center of her novel. The impact of mental illness, the courage it takes to speak honestly about suffering, and the profound possibility of healing that emerges when long-silenced truths finally find their voice.

Rae's journey through loss, grief, and rebirth is uniquely layered, shaped not only by her personal experience of widowhood and transformation, but also by her role as a therapist walking beside others, even as she was navigating her own heartbreak. We'll talk about how mental illness affects an entire family system, the bravery required to name what hurts, and the quiet openings toward family healing that appear when we allow ourselves to speak what has long remained unspoken. This interview will surely invite each of us to reflect on our own stories, our own silences, and the ways we can move toward greater compassion, understanding, and resilience in our own lives.

Hi there, and welcome to the International Award-winning Grief and Rebirth Podcast. I'm your host, author, and trauma survivor, Irene Weinberg, here to support you wherever you are on your healing journey. Each week, I connect with leading grief and trauma experts, intuitive healers, mediums, and inspiring voices who share powerful stories of loss, resilience, and transformation. If you're searching for hope, meaning, and a path forward after loss or trauma, you're in the right place. Together, let's rediscover joy, healing, and the possibility of rebirth.

Hi Rae, a warm welcome to Grief and Rebirth Podcast.

Rae Dumont (4:38)

Why, hello Irene. It is a pleasure to be here with you.

Irene Weinberg (4:43)

Thank you.

Rae Dumont (4:43)

Thank you.

Irene Weinberg (4:44)

We're going to have a fun, interesting conversation because as I was telling Rae before we started, I've been affected by the issues in my life. I've had mentally ill people, I've dealt with in my life, I've had family dysfunction that was carried forward through generations. So we're going to have a very interesting time. I've done a lot of healing in my life with all of that also. So we're going to have a really enlightening conversation. For those of you who are saying, I've got this person in my life, and what do I do and all that kind of thing.

Let's start with your roots. Could you tell us about your childhood and how it shaped your career choices, especially your instinctual resonance with children and adolescence and your ability to hear them so deeply, which is beautiful.

Rae Dumont (5:34)

Well, thank you for that introduction. Can you tell I'm blushing? So I was born in Belgium, and I actually went through most of medical school in Belgium.

Since we're talking roots, my childhood was influenced by two poles. One pole was a pretty dysfunctional family that I grew up in, and the other pole was an amazing aunt and uncle who had been active in the resistance movement during the Nazi occupation and walked back from, he walked back from a concentration camp. And so they taught me all about resilience just by listening to their stories. And they made my dysfunctional family seem like something I wanted as little to do with as possible, but of course that's where you grow up.