Tag Archives: blessings

And I didn’t have anything to drink!  Just the whirlwind of vacation that leaves one needing a vacation…

Being around so much family made me want so much to bring it back with me somehow.  I am getting to know some people in my new area but my level of community is nothing like when we visit my husband’s family and I am surrounded by loving people that know me and accept me.

I always wanted that as a child.  My parents love me, I know that, but my family is a bit stand-off-ish, and there aren’t many of them (on my Dad’s side, that is, which is the only side I ever hung around with due to geographical proximity.)  As a child I didn’t even eat dinner with my parents, who preferred to pretend they were European and eat at 10 p.m., and I was an only child until I was 13.  So it was meal after meal alone.  You would think I didn’t know what I was missing, but I jonesed so hard for a big gathering.

Now I’ve got my own family of six to gather around the table, when schedules permit.  But Thanksgiving, with 30 plus people, is a dream come true.  Some part of my soul just gobbles it up like a starving wolf.

We need connections in this world.  I always come back to that.  I get inside my own head, I philosophize, I spend time with my nuclear family, I put out tendrils into cyberspace and into the folks who live in my area.  All this is satisfying.  But there is also a real need to be in a realtime space and see an extended group of faces where you belong, unconditionally.  A tribe, so to speak.

You can live without it.  I did for most of my life.  I feel so blessed that now the very intimate and personal connection that my husband and I have has led to so many other important relationships that feed my soul: a blossoming of our nuclear family, time and resources to develop cyber companions as well as maintain connections with my childhood nuclear family who are all far away now, a new group of friends in a new town, as well as the huge extended family I always wanted.

Thanksgiving is over but there is still so much to be grateful for…