Family mediation is about helping families grappling with unresolved conflict find ways to a solution. Family conflicts most often arise where there is significant change: parents separate, blended families form, an aging parent needs to move to a residential facility, a teenager has been acting out, a parent has developed an addiction and isn’t available to care for a child, and so on. These changes tend to be very stressful – emotions run high, people don’t listen to each other, there is a lot at stake. Family mediators need to be able to help people work with difficult emotions, to know the right questions to ask (and when to ask them), and to know what information to bring forward. To make mediation satisfying for everyone, and for the mediation process to be truly effective, a family mediator must master both “process” and “context”.