Family Drama

   Got any of that in your family---you know, that drama stuff?  When I was a girl and even when I became an adult and started to build my own family, I was certain that everyone else's family was perfectly normal, no troubles.  Unlike my own family who had been fairly dysfunctional and had a buffet of problems. Of course, even when you reach a certain age, you're haven't necessarily become a grown-up. Now, so much farther down the road, I realize that the large majority of folks have family drama. There is very little immunity to it.

As a young mother I had a wonderful friend. I so admired her, she was very together, a woman of strong faith and seemed to have such a perfect family.  There was rarely any true conflict in her life. The years and our lives pushed us away from each other.  I assumed that her children, that had gone to college, married and had families were successful and happy, and the special family relationships they always had were still there.  In recent years, her health began to fail and she lost her spouse. Our renewed contact revealed the most surprising thing to me.  For years, her and her oldest child had not been on speaking terms.  I was so sad to learn how much pain that brought into her life. You just never really know the heart aches of others.

The point is, you would be in the small minority if you didn't have any conflicts or drama in your family. The bigger the family, the more opportunities for disagreement.  I suspect from the time we lived in caves, the inter-familial wars were on.  Human families are plagued by everything from minute aggravations to differences that truly cannot be fixed.

That "fixed" word is very important. Women, in particular, take on the responsibility for the emotional relationships of the family.  Men, aren't concerned unless it can be fixed with a wrench and a hammer. The secret to keeping your sanity, however, is to recognize the unfixable situations. The blood connection that runs through your kin, close and not so close, doesn't insure that you will be pleased with them. It doesn't even insure that you will always like them.

Whether it's a child, a sibling or other family---if you can't change the person to your liking or fix a situation that causes you distress, you truly have to learn to leave it.  Much easier said than done. If you can salvage some level to maintain your relationship, accept it.  As I've aged, my most valuable coping tool has become to remind myself that if I left this earth tomorrow, the world would keep right on spinning and whatever drama that seemed so important for me to fix would either disappear or work itself out.  I'm really not that important.