This reflection paper documents a student's experience applying the five-step "Blessing" framework from Gary Smalley and John Trent's book to her relationship with her mother. The paper walks through each step — meaningful touch, spoken message, attaching high value, picturing a special future, and accepting responsibility — describing the concrete results observed in both the student and her mother. The author reflects on how initiating physical affection, verbal affirmation, and intentional conversation gradually broke down emotional barriers, fostered mutual openness, and transformed a distant, sometimes strained relationship into one of genuine friendship and respect. The paper concludes with thoughts on applying the Blessing to other family relationships.
I have chosen my mother as the recipient of "the blessing." My mother and I have not always enjoyed the best of relationships, and I feel the various elements of the blessing are relevant to our situation. I want to enhance our relationship and gain new awareness of both my mother and myself in the process. I worked through the various steps, observed real results, and will explain those results step by step. I did see a difference in our relationship after applying the steps, and I saw a difference in my mother as well — which showed me the true power of the blessing in everyday life.
This step was difficult for me because my family has never been very physically affectionate, and hugging is not something we do very often. I wanted to hug my mother to show her that I care about her, but hugging made us both uncomfortable. So I told her that I was working on a school project and that I needed to hug her every time I saw her in order to record our feelings. Mom was very uncomfortable at first, but as the weeks progressed she got used to our hugging when we first saw each other, and she even began to initiate it after a while.
After we became accustomed to hugging, I also noticed that she was more open to physical affection with other people in the family as well. In fact, she even told my aunt that I "taught her to hug," and then she hugged my aunt. It was gratifying, and also a little humbling, because I realized that if I had reached out to her sooner, we both would have learned about meaningful touch much sooner.
This step was difficult too, because it took me quite a while to decide what I wanted to say to my mother and how I wanted to say it. While using the school project excuse had worked for the meaningful touch, I thought using the same excuse again might seem suspicious. If we have not been a physically affectionate family, we have not really been a family of deep talkers either. We communicate, but usually on an easy, non-challenging level. I know my mother approves of many of my choices, but she does not always say so. It was therefore difficult to find the right words and the right moment.
It worked out that we ended up alone in the kitchen one evening, fixing dinner together, and the spoken message came naturally. As I chopped vegetables and Mom cooked, I told her that I loved her and that I valued her. I told her that I wanted her to know this, and that even though we had had our differences, that did not mean I loved her any less. She was surprised but touched. I saw her wipe a tear away when she thought I was not looking. She did not say much beyond telling me that she loved me too, but it felt as though a wall between us had been broken by our words.
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