What Does Family Mean To You?

Many people feel that the holidays are a time for family - to travel to see family we see only once a year, gather with loved ones, and share these special days with each other. And that does sound lovely, doesn't it?

Our son is a pretty sensitive kid and loves his family more than anything else. He's now attending school with children who have family around all the time and he's often wondering why he doesn't. We have family friends that we're very close with and share special times with, which means a lot to him, but it's not always the same. We've had some challenging discussions recently and I'm constantly struggling to answer his really tough questions.

Through all of this I've come to believe is that "family" means different things different people. 

I'd love to hear what "family" means to you. If it's important, and you live far from family, how do you maintain the ties? Do you sacrifice adventurous vacations to new places in order to visit family each year? What else are you doing to make family a priority?

Thanks for sharing.

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Comments

[jwiedner]

Having come from a split home, for me family is more than just those related to you by blood, and really includes those, who support you. They're the people you know you can turn to. For those people [and my "real" family] I spend a lot of time on email, social media and [gasp] sometimes even pick up that telephone thingy. And when possible, making time for lunch or dinner, because for me food and family go together. It takes effort, but you can always make time if it's important enough. :-)

[Gina]

Thanks for sharing, Jeff. I totally agree that it's important and worth the effort. Growing up, we saw our grandparents, aunts, uncles & cousins weekly so it's really hard for my husband and I to not have much family around. We do our best with technology and vacations but it's definitely effort.

Food and family go together for my big italian family too!

[Kelly Orehovec]

I come from a military home and my family rarely spent the holidays with blood relatives. I learned to love the holidays in a unique and different way every year since we did very different things every year. We always went to midnight mass and my dad and I always watched a holiday movie to keep us awake before mass. That was the extent of the traditions for me. We always spent the holidays with dear friends that felt like family since it was too expensive to fly to Oregon where all of our family lived.

I really like what Jeff said--"it takes effort, but you can always make time if its important". For us, we (Stefan and I) carve our holiday planning conversations around just that--What is important to us this year? We do not talk about what is expected of us and what we think we should do. We talk about what we are going to remember in 10 years. What holiday traditions are we starting now that we will continue in 10 years? What is important to us? And, whatever the answer is, we have to be good with that and support each other in our answers to that question.

[Gina]

Thanks Kelly. Taking time to reflect on what's important and what traditions we want to start or carry on is a great suggestion. So often we do things because we always have, or just don't really think about it.

I can't thank you enough for sharing this quote with me - I've been thinking about it a lot.

Home is not where I live, but where people understand me.