Ready or Not..Here The Holidays Come!

I looked up the other day and realized I was making plans for NOVEMEBER. Where has October gone?  Where has 2011 gone?  It seems like yesterday I was having iced tea instead of hot tea?  New Years and 2012 will all be here quickly.  Thanksgiving…for many that means big, steamy meals with family.  Thanksgiving also marks the coming of Christmas, Hanukah, Black Friday, reminders of what we don’t have in our bank accounts, sparkly and fragrant trees and last minute mailings.  And then…discounted gym memberships and suggestions on how-to-beat-the-winter-blues that follow New Years.

Same ‘ole, Same ‘ole

Every year, we cycle through the end-of-the-year holidays, the repetition allowing us to build traditions and also be bored by them.  Holidays are not happy times for many people.  Even for “normal” people, there is often tension during holiday plans.  Or loneliness, or a tremendous amount of stress, or sadness, or grief.  The All-American Holiday can include some difficult memories, difficult moments and difficult feelings.

Ready or Not

The hard part about what we see holidays “should” be (e.g. easy, warm, calm, fulfilling) is that the harder experiences cannot be avoided, or snuffed out by the best laid plans, creative decor, and cozy homes.  This year, I know people that will celebrate their first Thanksgiving without a much-loved family member, never to return to their table.  I know friends who will suffer through Thanksgiving with their difficult mothers or mothers-in-law, fathers or fathers-in-law, or wait for a sister or brother to criticize the way they always have, or try to connect with an estranged child, or cringe as mom and dad (or whoever) try to mask the regular angry, bitter interactions.  We could all list what friends might experience, fill in blanks of awkward or painful situations that they will face in the 2011 holiday season.  Remember to think about yourself…your own blank, your own strain or unfilled desire…and what you might like to see happen in a new and different way.

The Family Stone

When writing this post, I thought of a movie I love…The Family Stone.  An all-star cast presents a well-rounded version of what many holiday situations include – they involve people we may not like, nosy family members, lots of travel, awkward conversations around the dinner table.  This story is told over an upcoming engagement that never happens (hence the need for the family stone), but the bigger picture is what is happening in the family.  The matriarch whose

Rachel McAdams, Diane Keaton & Sarah Jessica Parker in The Family Stone

breast cancer has returned and will soon die, the gay son and his partner who are trying to adopt for a second time, the awkwardly rigid girlfriend attending this family’s holiday gathering and seems to make a mess of things, even when it is not her fault.  What most can relate to in this story may not be the specific situations, but the desire you sense from all family members to enjoy the holiday, but the difficulty in having Reality and History as guests – we cannot escape what has happened to us all in our families…Reality and History do not take breaks for the holidays.

Any Ideas?

How can friends support one another during times of holiday stress, pain, loneliness or grief?  There are no quick fixes to the issues we face, ones that usually require work and change prior to the holidays (e.g. if something is ignored all year, why would it have changed by Thanksgiving?), and sometimes may never be fully resolved.

• Do something new.  Make a new tradition.
• Do something new with a friend.
• Gather with a group of friends to encourage, celebrate, give thanks.
• Share your true angst with someone you trust.
• 

  New Traditions With Friends!

  (One of my personal favorites…) Don’t eat your feelings.  It can start a nasty spiral downward.

• Say no.
• Offer a kind word to a friend you know is going to have a hard time.
• Invite a lonely person to join your family.  Many people do not have the All-American meal, with or without the awkwardness.

If I Can Do It…

My attempt?  For a few years now, I have filled my Thanksgiving morning with my brother and some family friends (in matching knee socks) and thousands of others running the Dallas Turkey Trot.  The run to Starbucks afterwards allows for warmth, laughter and reconnection.  A great start to my day, to my holiday season.

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Fresh Starts with Friends We Call Family

Every one of us can imagine that our friendships with our female family members could be better. For instance, think of your mother-daughter friendship, either with your own daughter (should you have one) or with your mother.

Many mothers love to have their daughters close, both relationally and geographically. I know a mother that felt very close to her daughter, until this daughter moved thousands of miles away. Now, where was their friendship? How would they remain close?

Moving to Steamboat away from my family has meant many changes for me.

Instead of a crisis, irrevocably harming their friendship, this move could be the first real adult test of their friendship.

Just as I cannot know if I can do a pull-up (I can’t) unless I hang from the monkey bars and try, I cannot know the strength of a friend unless we walk through a difficult time.

This month we’re talking about “fresh starts”, an idea that assumes something about our friendship needs a restart.

Think of a family friendship that feels strained, an unspoken awkwardness, a past sticky conversation or confrontation, a feeling that you are walked over or ignored or unwanted. I think every woman wants to have a better, fresher friendship with SOME female family member, don’t you?

How can you begin afresh and initiate a healthy friendship?

1. What do you believe about your family member right now that bothers or concerns you? Something is causing the strain, what is it? Another way to put this is what expectations do you have and how have they not been met? My friend who left her family chose to join a mission in Hyderabad, India. She wanted her mother to be excited about her new sacrifice and adventure. She wanted her to believe that she still loved her even though she was moving. She also wanted her to promise to visit. These expectations led her to a lot of disappointed, at first. Any time we face our disappointment we have fresh material for forgiveness, though this doesn’t mean we just forget what happened.
2. How do you treat the family member who has disappointed you? One jewel I’ve held close from Harriot Learner’s book The Dance of Anger: A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships is mature, loving boundary making. Learner teaches if you are about to change something in your relationship, you are also responsible to maintain warmth and connection in your relationship. With my friend who moved to Hyderabad, the distance was created by her. She would be part of a work, community, church and friendship circle that didn’t overlapped with her mother. Because she was initiating change: it was also her responsibility to move with warmth toward her mother even as she geographically moved farther away. She regularly called her mother, footing the extra phone bills, and visited every few months for the first several years. Of course, her mother may not have felt warm and close with me. Practicing Learner’s principle with success does not mean the person will feel warm and tight with you. She may feel the opposite, but it is important to know that you have done what you could to be warm and loving even as you set up boundaries to move in any way.
3. How do you respond when your family member doesn’t like what you do? Do you try to fix your family member’s feelings or can you listen to their disapproval or feel their coldness without picking up guilt? With my friend, she had to walk through some strained moments, where her mother was clearly not in the cheering section of her move. When her mother once came to visit her in her new home, her mom left early, when she spoke on the phone she didn’t know how much to share about how delighted she was with this new culture. But, she tried to let her be her because deep down she hoped she would, one day, be able to say, “My mom let me be me, even with a cross-cultural move halfway around the world.”

My friend has lived in India for over ten years. In that time her friendship with her mother has changed.

Market in Hyderabad

Her mother visits her regularly and she visits her mom in the States. Her mother accompanies her to the local market and they cook together like they did back in Tennessee. And when my friend visits, she stays with her mother in her old childhood home.

Though, they still work to be fully themselves with each other, they are beginning to see the integrity and hope of letting a huge move re-start their friendship.

As my friend put it, “Our friendship has gotten better, better even than the friendship we had when I lived in her same town. I feel supported and respected by her in ways I could never have experienced before.”

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