Family Time is Hard

Yes, this post was very much inspired by this incredibly validating bottle of wine.

I love my family. And I by no means encourage feelings of harshness towards one’s own family.

The reality is, family time is hard. And that’s ok. Of note, your family may be your friends, cousins, roommates, coworkers, whomever you identify as family. Someone once told me you can have the most loving, healthy family, and you can still have your moments of resistance with them. The idea is that we are not dropping into all or nothing thinking. And that we are also in acceptance of who we are amongst all of the challenging dynamics we’re facing as a family unit, and as individuals.

Last summer I went on my first trip to Europe with my family. Despite the beauty of the trip, the constant spending of time with them felt overwhelming. This feeling in quarantine is not dissimilar. I feel both an overwhelming need for my alone time, and a need to spend more time with my family.

We are all in one home, balancing our own, and each other’s busy schedules. With this, there are miscommunications, misjudgements, and questioning of intentions. Leaving items around the house. Dogs taking what is definitely not theirs. And conflict. Conflict is inevitable. Conflict with others - and conflict with ourselves. I used to fear alone time, because I didn’t want the conflictual emotions which accompanied it. Now I’ve learned what the alone time will do for my own mental health - for my soul’s survival. The fear of alone time has now become a need I now crave. Family time has re-taught me boundaries I hadn't processed since moving away, because it had been so long since I'd taken a bird's eye view of my reference points. Why I do what I do, how I do what I do - as well as what I don't do, can very much relate to how I was raised.

I have realized with every season pre-COVID-19, I have intuitively put together my routine. Translating the embodiment of that routine into a different environment has not been easy. We are on month 4.5 of quarantine (feels like month 22), and my body has not yet “settled” into the rhythm of a daily routine. My mind, is even more restless. I don’t think I’ve been able to embody my whole self, and complete my desired routine more than once a week.

What I have found, is a new level of appreciation for my own self care, and each of my family’s member’s jobs. Seeing everyone rush around the house and barely have time for lunch, makes you wonder how they function when they were not in quarantine. It makes you wonder when is the last time they were able to pause. Reflect. Re-align. When did my dad last have a full day off? When did my mother last have someone else cook for her? When did I last contribute to this home they’ve built?

Acknowledging these challenges, acknowledging the conflict, actually turned the guilt and shame into a selfless feeling. It turned my resistance into compassion. No matter how loveable of a person you are, being with others all the time can create conflict from them to you, and vice versa. Also, being alone excessively can create inner conflict. Let us not judge or fall into extremities of either. But instead dance within the intra- and inter-personal.

To dance in conversation does not mean to avoid conflict, but instead to have a conversation where muscles are flexed, points are made, and space is created for response. It means to create awareness of what your body is trying to tell you from having spent so much time absorbing the energy of others.

The energy of others of course, expands beyond my immediate family. I have also been in the process of letting go of the energy absorbed from societal standards. The disagreements, the re-learning, the cultivation of my own space and alignment, has been more important than ever to ensure I continue to embody my true self, despite my surroundings.

Spending so much family time, in so little time, has taught me multiple feelings and thoughts can be in reality together. Family time is hard. But denying its challenges, is much harder, and unhealthier in the long run. With this - the work lying ahead is not in trying to change others - but instead to make changes within myself.