🌺 Still Good: What Lilo & Stitch Taught Me About Mental Health and Family

We’re watching Lilo & Stitch again tonight—my kids and I.
It’s one of those movies that wraps itself around your heart without asking permission.
Silly, sweet, deeply sad in places… and surprisingly wise.

Maybe it’s the music.
Maybe it’s the color and whimsy.
But for me, it’s always been the words—those quiet, aching lines that say everything you’ve ever wanted to say but didn’t know how.

🌿 “This is my family. I found it, all on my own. It’s little and broken, but still good. Yeah. Still good.”

That line lands in the softest part of me.
Because if you’ve lived through loss or transition—or carried a love that didn’t look like the picture you once imagined—you know what it is to gather up the pieces and still call them good.

Sometimes family is stitched together by biology.
Sometimes by friendship.
Sometimes by faith, or foster care, or the sacred work of second chances.

And it doesn’t have to be perfect to be real.
It doesn’t have to be whole to be holy.
It can be little and broken, and still… so very good.

💔 “It’s me again. I need someone to be my friend. Someone who won’t run away.”

And isn’t that the heart of it?

Even as adults—especially as mothers, caretakers, or those who carry invisible weight—we long to be chosen. To be held in the middle of our mess, not just when we’re polished and easy to love.

This line brings us deeper. From family as a structure to belonging as a need.

Mental health isn’t always dramatic.
Sometimes, it’s this: a quiet voice inside us saying,
“Please stay. Please see me. Please don’t run.”

For the anxious child.
For the grieving spouse.
For the overwhelmed mom.
This cry lives in so many of us—soft and strong all at once.

🧠 “I know. That’s why you wreck things and push me.”

And when we don’t know how to ask for love, we test for it instead.
We push.
We act out.
We sabotage connection before it can leave on its own.

This is emotional intelligence, wrapped in a child’s voice.
And oh, how much we can learn from it.

As a therapist—and as a mom—I’ve seen it again and again.
The tantrum that says “Will you love me even now?”
The silence that says “I don’t know how to trust this.”

What looks like defiance is often just a heart afraid of being abandoned.
And the greatest gift we can give is to stay—especially when it’s hard.

🕊️ “I’ll remember you, though. I remember everyone that leaves.”

Because sometimes… they do leave.
And it hurts.

Whether by choice, by distance, or by circumstance, grief comes quietly into the room and takes a seat beside us. It lingers in the places we thought love would stay.

And yet, we remember.
We carry the voices, the laughter, the ache.

This is not just a movie about aliens and surfboards.
It’s a story about memory.
About abandonment and attachment.
About the resilience that builds quietly in the hearts of children—and in the hearts of the parents who love them through it.

💛 Love, Chosen Daily

If Lilo & Stitch teaches us anything, it’s this:
Family is not about perfection.
It’s about presence.

It’s about loving what’s misunderstood.
It’s about choosing each other, even when it would be easier not to.
It’s about saying, “You belong here,” not once, but over and over again.

This is the work of parenting.
This is the work of healing.
To offer love when it isn’t earned.
To stay when it would be easier to walk away.
To believe that love can exist in the same space as mess, grief, and struggle.

🌸 For the Families That Feel a Little Broken

If your family doesn’t look like a picture-perfect postcard…
If your home is stitched together with prayer and patience…
If you’re parenting through mental health challenges—your child’s or your own…
If your love feels more like a quilt of second chances than a glossy magazine spread…

Please hear me when I say:

You’re not alone.
And it’s okay.

Your family may be little.
It may be broken.
But still good.

Yeah.
Still good.

With heart,
Patricia