This week is the beginning of Passover; it is also the week of Easter. My family is coming to town.

I am excited, happy, sad, nervous, already feeling left out, already sensing my brother’s and sister’s feelings and anticipations and prejudices and beliefs, and feeling a bit trapped by them.

I find I am shallow breathing. As I sit with all this going on inside of me and my body, I gather some distance so I can look at what is happening within me a little differently.

Already my sister has let me know that she is anxious and wants our cooking together to be a certain way. This “way” is not my way and different than how I usually do things. She wants to cook some of the things I usually cook and that I already bought the ingredients for. I realize that I can step back, breathe, and leave it as her problem, and I can also step back and breathe and see how I can compromise and when I do, check in with myself and see if that feels okay with me. Even with this, I know that she is obviously feeling her own unresolved feelings regarding me and our family. It is those very unresolved feelings that she carries that I feel within me and feel trapped by.

So as I go through this process, I give myself permission to be myself and honor her feelings and still be my full and deep and silly and dramatic and eccentric soulful self.

That feels good.

Now for my brother; as he is arriving, I write to him and hear back from his wife. That is not unusual. He and I don’t communicate well. I also feel lots of judgment and misunderstanding from him to me. As I register this, I also then realize that, to a different degree, I probably do the same to him. I know I don’t really know him. Ok, good, that feels better. Now, as far as the judgment and how that makes me feel; that doesn’t feel good. He views me a certain way and that limits me. There is a place inside of me that wants to be seen accurately and appreciated for who I am in total. I realize that may not and probably won’t happen between the two of us, at least for now. Can I still be my true and full and silly and eccentric and soulful self around him, knowing he will judge me and doesn’t like some of what he sees? If I am truly honest with myself, maybe not in my entirety. It is my sense that he is judging me in things he doesn’t understand that still bother me. I guess I might just have to be with these feelings and see what unfolds. So, I allow myself to have all these feelings as I prepare for the week ahead.

I also am happy and excited about seeing and being with them, because I do love them. I also understand that when my little brother was younger, I often would not accept anything less than truth and full attention, and made sure that I was heard by our parents, often in a loud way. This gave him trouble, and he still looks at me with those same eyes.

And, he is a gentle, funny, intelligent man, and my sister is a gentle, silly, eccentric woman herself who just wants a little acknowledgement for her culinary skills.

I can appreciate them, and see them for who they are, and thank them for being them.

Happy Passover, Happy Easter, and the best to all of you!

Gail

I worked with a woman the other day who has a beautiful calling. Around fifteen years ago, she was called to do a service of opening a facility for homeless veterans. It took her thirteen years to reach her objective; and she, with the help of many, did!

I listened to her talk about her calling, and watched her face, and wondered to myself where this passion and calling came from. I find most often our calling in life gives us great information to understand aspects of our past. In her life, her mother lived with her own mother, and her father took her and her sister when she was just about three years old to live with his sister, her husband, and his mother. Her father took them away from their mother and gave them to his sister and husband to raise, basically while he was in and out doing his thing. Her mother stayed in the state in which they were living with her mother in her mother’s house.

When he was little, around three, Dad’s mom had to take care of her ailing husband, his father, and then also her sickly baby, his brother. Dad was left to be raised by his sister who still lived with her mother. She never had her own home as she then later married and raised her brother and his children.

I listened to this story and heard something very important. Both of her parents didn’t have their own home. And, she was taken away from her home, her parents, when she was three years old. Her calling became having a home for veterans who didn’t have any home after returning from serving their country, their motherland.

As I pieced this together in my mind, and then expressed to her what she is doing and that by doing her calling, she totally honors both of her parents who never had their own home, as well as herself.

Isn’t this beautiful? We all do this; find something that has great meaning for us that honors ourselves, our past, and many times, our parents. This is sometimes called “finding our passion.”

As you think of what you are passionate about, what brings you joy and peace, especially during this holiday season, take a look at your family and see how your passion relates to an action or a feeling that honors your family.

Happy Holidays!