Holidays that typically require obligatory visits with family members you don't otherwise speak to, have unfriended, unfollowed or even blocked on Facebook are so hard, fraught with so many complicated emotions and dynamics.The commercials will tell you holidays are for families in matching sweaters with snow falling beautifully outside picture perfect windows and everyone laughing in front of a fire. Nostalgia will tell you that the family traditions you have always participated in are meaningful and that you enjoy them.
It's taken me 30 years to realize it's less the tradition and more the traditional food that incites nostalgic memories for me. I live in the South where we wear flip flops the day after Thanksgiving so first of all, there is definitely no snow falling. And secondly, I come from upper redneck to lower middle class Small Town USA where everybody knows ya mama'n'em and they also know all of ya biznass you'd rather not speak about in public. In that little place, in that particular social class, you're more likely to find two men tusslin' in the front yard because one of the Bubbas ripped the other one's Dale Earnhardt shirt than you are to find an entire family snuggled up on the couch in matching $70 sweaters.
Maybe the details of your family are different than mine but the traditions still hurt. Maybe you're struggling with family togetherness this holiday season for the same reasons I am-our families don't see us for who we have grown up to be and if we try to be that person with them, they patronize us, pat us on the head literally and figuratively, cut us off because our opinions don't matter or because we aren't supposed to have opinions in the first place, we weren't supposed to discover life's work that included anything other than making babies and stopping by for dinner on Sundays. Glennon Melton said this week "Practicing authenticity with family is like practicing cat grooming in a lion’s den. If you’d like to practice being real and vulnerable and YOURSELF - don’t start with your family, start with your mailman. Because being real and relaxed has to do with going off script, with being a soul instead of a ROLE. Our families are where our roles are most deeply entrenched."
Can I take this moment to hold your hand and say "I feel ya, sister." Families are hard, sometimes icky, complicated, living-and-breathing-with-minds-of-their-own ecosystems. Can I also gently tell you one more thing I'm discovering this holiday season? Family isn't always everything. Sometimes the traditions we want most to pass onto our children have little to do with generations long discipline in the form of physical violence and shaming and more to do with a tradition of teaching them how to love each other, even when loving is hard. Hear me when I say that loving does not mean no boundaries. You love your children so you set clear boundaries with them. It is in this way that you can also love your family but not allow them to cross clear, concise lines without the same natural consequences you would lay out for your beloved savages at home.
I'm also learning in this season to be gracious and grace full, to be fully loved and be fully loving. It has been incredibly difficult for me since my natural inclination is more along the lines of fire breathing. It is in this season of intense personal enrichment that I am learning to love people from a distance so that I can teach my daughter how to love fully with clear personal boundaries.
