We all have plenty of examples of how it goes off the tracks as we get older.
The key is to transition from parent >>>to mentor >>>to elder as you age and your kids become adults.
The more you look to help the ones that follow you find and navigate their “own path” …the more you/we are remembered when we journey on.
If you forever stay in your parent role or live with an outsized ego that is so sure of your importance… then your legacy will be lost. (And pattern likely repeated) For many it’s lost before you turn 50.
I know friends, fellow adults in their 60’s with adult children , who are still trying to control their kid’s lives.
Best to begin as soon as possible to walk beside them as adults. Travel together, with you helping them at times , and them helping you at times.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Unlike Christmas, it doesn’t feel transactional. I only hope for good food and the warm company of family and friends. Forgiveness is how I free myself, and that along with gratitude is how I stay connected to others. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Excellent analysis; it really makes one wonder how we can better operationalise the insights gained from these challenging family interactions into a robust algorithm for sustained personal development, a truly profound point youve raised.
I’ve never seen this Ram Dass meme, with the awesome 80s sweater. I might want this on my wall.
Forgiveness, it’s just not in my body to forgive. Definitely not there mentally. But I can pity, and think about what I’d miss if they were gone forever. That’s where I’m at 🤷🏻♀️ maybe it’s good to be really honest about this stuff now, like ugly honest. Thanks Jamie for stirring the pot 🦃
Forgiveness and humor should come easy when the cast of characters is a bunch of grotesques (obese QAnon cousin, Ned Flanders uncle, drunken racist aunt, grandfathers as toddlers). We have the double pleasure of feeling both more evolved and magnanimous, while never really asking whether we still secretly despise the people we’re supposed to forgive. Even though most of us know our families are a lot more complicated than these caricatures.
I also notice it’s generally the patriarchs who get sent up, while the “flow-y clothes, medicine hats, mala beads” crowd mostly gets a wink. Maybe that’s just what happens when you’re writing from inside that Austin self-help milieu, but if the work is really about family karma, it needs the same unsparing eye turned on the tribe you live among as on the Bible-belt cousin.
As I see it, at some tables the ethical move is to metabolize and let go; at others it’s to confront, set a boundary, or leave the room. Without that distinction, some readers will try to do what you’re pointing to, run into real harm or ongoing abuse, and then conclude the failure is theirs: “I just wasn’t forgiving or funny enough.”
you really had to dig for this righteousness my man. it's supposed to be a sendup. Of all of it. Medicine hats and Qanon cousins. the whole point was HUMOUR!
I thought this was great fun - maybe a little close to the bone but my family qualifies. Sometimes finding the humour and forgiveness requires distance. One of my sisters physically hit me at a family wedding this summer and my brother mocked me for saying something was magical recently. On Thanksgiving, my sister had our mother to her house for dinner and all my kids were with partner's families. I decided to volunteer at a free community thanksgiving dinner. From that vantage point I could laugh at the ridiculousness of it all and remember what I love about them. It took some doing to get to the forgiveness and humour though.
We all have plenty of examples of how it goes off the tracks as we get older.
The key is to transition from parent >>>to mentor >>>to elder as you age and your kids become adults.
The more you look to help the ones that follow you find and navigate their “own path” …the more you/we are remembered when we journey on.
If you forever stay in your parent role or live with an outsized ego that is so sure of your importance… then your legacy will be lost. (And pattern likely repeated) For many it’s lost before you turn 50.
I know friends, fellow adults in their 60’s with adult children , who are still trying to control their kid’s lives.
Best to begin as soon as possible to walk beside them as adults. Travel together, with you helping them at times , and them helping you at times.
I believe that is how the chain is broken.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Unlike Christmas, it doesn’t feel transactional. I only hope for good food and the warm company of family and friends. Forgiveness is how I free myself, and that along with gratitude is how I stay connected to others. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Hilarious 😂 .... and weirdly true. Thanks 🙏
Excellent analysis; it really makes one wonder how we can better operationalise the insights gained from these challenging family interactions into a robust algorithm for sustained personal development, a truly profound point youve raised.
I’ve never seen this Ram Dass meme, with the awesome 80s sweater. I might want this on my wall.
Forgiveness, it’s just not in my body to forgive. Definitely not there mentally. But I can pity, and think about what I’d miss if they were gone forever. That’s where I’m at 🤷🏻♀️ maybe it’s good to be really honest about this stuff now, like ugly honest. Thanks Jamie for stirring the pot 🦃
Forgiveness and humor should come easy when the cast of characters is a bunch of grotesques (obese QAnon cousin, Ned Flanders uncle, drunken racist aunt, grandfathers as toddlers). We have the double pleasure of feeling both more evolved and magnanimous, while never really asking whether we still secretly despise the people we’re supposed to forgive. Even though most of us know our families are a lot more complicated than these caricatures.
I also notice it’s generally the patriarchs who get sent up, while the “flow-y clothes, medicine hats, mala beads” crowd mostly gets a wink. Maybe that’s just what happens when you’re writing from inside that Austin self-help milieu, but if the work is really about family karma, it needs the same unsparing eye turned on the tribe you live among as on the Bible-belt cousin.
As I see it, at some tables the ethical move is to metabolize and let go; at others it’s to confront, set a boundary, or leave the room. Without that distinction, some readers will try to do what you’re pointing to, run into real harm or ongoing abuse, and then conclude the failure is theirs: “I just wasn’t forgiving or funny enough.”
you really had to dig for this righteousness my man. it's supposed to be a sendup. Of all of it. Medicine hats and Qanon cousins. the whole point was HUMOUR!
I did get the sendup, I was just tugging on how it lands for people sitting in the middle of real family damage.
I thought this was great fun - maybe a little close to the bone but my family qualifies. Sometimes finding the humour and forgiveness requires distance. One of my sisters physically hit me at a family wedding this summer and my brother mocked me for saying something was magical recently. On Thanksgiving, my sister had our mother to her house for dinner and all my kids were with partner's families. I decided to volunteer at a free community thanksgiving dinner. From that vantage point I could laugh at the ridiculousness of it all and remember what I love about them. It took some doing to get to the forgiveness and humour though.