Using Your Intuition with Family: Building Bridges During the Holidays
Letter #6 From The Intuitive Queen (aka Jennifer R. Young)
My Dear Intuitive Readers,
It’s Thanksgiving week. For millions of people, it means a time of visiting family and friends and traveling near or far to share a special meal with them.
However, for many, the holidays can be a mixture of happiness, stress, and anxiety. Not all families are like the ones we see in the holiday movies. In fact, a third of American’s make an excuse to skip having Thanksgiving with their families. And previous research from the American Psychological Association has also found 38 percent of people feel more stressed during the holiday season while just 8 percent feel happier.
Why?
Well, partly because many families are dysfunctional. For example, 46 percent in the US have dealt with substance abuse in their family. Of that 46 percent, 18 percent of family members dealt with alcohol abuse only, 10 percent dealt with drug abuse only, and 18 percent dealt with both. If we don’t have family members affected by addiction, then many of us, about 50 percent, have a friend who has current or past drug addiction. Other Americans face different challenges at the holidays: how to travel to spend the holidays with family who live far away; how to afford the holiday travel and meals; and how to combat the stress of balancing work, travel, and hosting at the holidays.
Over the year, holidays have made me stop and take stock of my own life: being a single mom and sometimes being without my sons on the holidays; navigating the holidays with an aging parent who lives in another state; and traveling long distances to spend Thanksgiving with my sister and her six kids. And one holiday years back I even had to face a layoff the week before Thanksgiving.
However, holidays can also offer us joy and spending time with family and extended family and friends can have mental and physical benefits.
So, what to do?
These are some of the ways I’ve used intuition to help me with family relationships at the holidays.
Setting Boundaries and Building Bridges
Before spending time with extended family, I’ve learned to set boundaries of all kinds. Some of these have been verbal boundaries.
For example, I had to set a lot of verbal and other boundaries with my father.
My father was a notoriously verbally abusive—especially to me. In fact, when I decided to heal and get sober, I had to spend apart from him so that I could have the time and space to heal and start my own path to recovery. That “time alone” away from my father turned out to be 7 years.
When he wanted to reenter my life (and meet two of his new grandsons) in 2012, I set firm boundaries with him about what type of words he would use around me and my family. I also let him know the consequences if he tried to put any of us down. And guess what? He respected my boundaries, we had a lovely visit, and we had the healthiest relationship together as father and daughter for the remaining years of his life.
Even if you are visiting with family for the holidays, I think it’s important to go within and use your intuition to decide what you need to say and do to make yourself feel safe. It’s also important to determine what boundaries you need to set to feel respected. It's not only okay to set boundaries, but it is healthy to set boundaries too. Verbal boundaries are not the only ones to consider—but also emotional, intellectual, financial and other types of boundaries are important too.
Also, if your family is vastly different when it comes to politics, religion, finances or other polarizing topics, you can look for ways to find common grounds. Try to think of topics or commonalities ahead of time that you can bring up during the holiday meal to build bridges of peace between you and your extended family. Focus on these safe topics or keep them in mind if the conversation gets more heated than the food during the meal.
Infusing Positive Words into Your Holiday
If you have watched any Star Wars movies, you know all about the battle of darkness and light. The same is true with words. If the family sets a negative tone at the holiday, because of addiction issues, verbal abuse, or just because they are negative people—remember that the antidote to darkness is light. You can use positive words or find a way to read or speak to someone who will tell you the positive. Why? Because it will help balance out the negativity and lift you up.
You don’t believe me? Well, I have a story for you. Even though it’s not a story about using my intuition with my own family, it still applies.
I used to be a 9th grade English teacher for students with learning disabilities in Fairfax, Virginia. Many of my students were facing different types of abuse and neglect at home. They were also being picked on by their peers because they had disabilities. Regardless of the details, let’s just say I knew they were surrounded by negativity day in and day out.
I wanted to create a place for them that they would consistently expect and receive kindness and positive words. That place was my classroom. How did I do it?
Well, each morning I printed out a positive quote by someone famous. I’d pick a student and ask them to read it out loud.
My students, so used to negative environments, resisted my positivity at first. In fact, they would often take the paper, crumble it up, and throw it on the floor. Or, they would pass it around until someone would acquiesce and read it out loud.
They didn’t realize who they were dealing with. My middle name is technically Rebecca; however, I believe that “R” secretly stands for “Resilient” and “Refuses to give up!” So, I persisted.
And guess what? Begrudgingly, they started to read them. And one day, a third of the way into the school year, something miraculous happened: my students started volunteering to read the positive quote of the day out loud!
Some even said, “Hey, no fair. She read one yesterday, it’s my turn!”
In fact, one student, *Julia, said, “Ms. Young, could we read the quote and then hang it up on your wall? That way we can ready them over and over again.”
I said yes of course, and by the end of the year, my room was covered with positive quotes!
My students were human and, like the rest of us, they still had bad days. Despite these quotes, one day I found two students in one of my classes picking on each other—calling each mean names and putting each other down.
What was my solution? The principal? Lunch detention? No.
My intuition told me, that my students’ negative words required a positive solution to bring back balance to the Force.
So, I set aside my lesson plan and assigned the entire class a positive poetry assignment. They each had to write down one positive word about each person in the class—including me. Then, we worked to turn those words into poems about each of us and selected a picture to represent us. By the end of the class, the two students were apologizing, each impressed with the positive words that the other had written down about them.
I saved my poem that the kids came up with about me:
Negative words have power. But so do positive words. We can use them to combat negativity. If that doesn’t work, call a supportive friend or family member, read a heartfelt story, or heck just reread this blog! Just know there is light if you look for it you will find it and can follow it out of the darkness. And if you need a positive word or two about you, reach out to me and I will be happy to supply many about you!
Alternative Plans & Escape Routes
Sometimes, despite our best efforts at setting boundaries, limiting dinner conversation, or using positive words to snuff out the negativity—family dinners can be taxing, whether it’s at Thanksgiving or all year round. That’s why, it’s okay to make alternative plans and have escape routes scoped out.
One year, when my son Colin was little, we couldn’t make it to Boston to spend Thanksgiving with her and her six kids. I think it was due to a combination of my job and exhaustion from being in early recovery. So, I invited a good friend over and made my first turkey—upside down—and it was a success! (It’s juicier and you flip it over before you serve it).
Another Thanksgiving, when I was separated from my husband, I took one of my sons to a neighbor’s house for Thanksgiving. I was upset because it wasn’t what I had planned. During the meal, I ended up talking about how I was in recovery, which I don’t normally do with new friends.
My new friend *Katie who hosted me, reached out to me not long after that Thanksgiving meal and asked me to help her get into detox. She said she’d been praying for someone to help her to get sober. I helped her get in the detox program at Fairfax Hospital. When she was out, I took Katie to local recovery meetings.
Now, 18 years later—she is still sober and happily married to someone she met in recovery.
Alternative plans may not be what we expect. But they are usually part of a larger plan that the universe has for us (or what I feel is the divine orchestration). Afterwards, we realize that things happened exactly as they were designed to.
Other years people go to friend's houses, to a church Thanksgiving dinner, or attend free community Thanksgiving meals. There are so many options. You don’t have to eat alone unless you want to.
And if you still go to a family Thanksgiving but it is especially stressful to be with them due to one of many reasons (dysfunction, addiction, etc.), set a time limit and let people know you must go at a set time.
Not all families are balanced and healthy. Some are downright challenging and dysfunctional. If you feel you must go be sure to take breaks. Walk outside, call a friend, or offer to run and get more gravy and fight the lines at the store instead.
Use your intuition and go within and ask yourself what you need. You may just need to take a momentary break (and go to a back porch, your car, a bathroom) to take time to meditate, breathe, or call a friend. Whether it’s a walk through the store or a drive around the block, regardless, have a place to go.
Compromising: Letting go of Control
To me, Thanksgiving is about sharing a meal with your loved ones. The time, the place, the meal, the guest list, even the date are all flexible. Some people are nurses and doctors and others who work Thanksgiving. Compromise, and maybe celebrate the next day or the day before. Let your intuition be your guide. Only you will know what type of compromise is best for your situation.
Maybe it won’t be the exact way you wanted it. The sides are not what your mom made. The potatoes are clearly bought and not homemade. It’s ok, you’ll get through it. It doesn’t matter if the people on the TV are eating their Thanksgiving dinner off of china and look like they all stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Or that you are choosing to eat off paper plates so you can spend time watching a movie after your dinner. The important part is to be together and to try to enjoy your time.
Creating New Traditions
There are many things in life that can impact holiday cheer: divorce, grief over the loss of a loved one, economic struggles, health challenges, and more. This can make holidays hard to get through or cause stress because things don’t feel the same as previous years.
One way to deal with this, is to create new traditions. You can do something totally different from previous years or incorporate new traditions into your previous ones.
Even though for many years, I went to visit my extended family for a traditional Thanksgiving meal, one year the boys I had ham and not turkey. Another year, I had Thanksgiving in Sicily and ate pizza for Thanksgiving! Once, because I couldn’t eat the Italian stuffed mushrooms that my former mothers-in-law made at Thanksgiving (I can’t eat the breadcrumbs), I developed a new Thanksgiving tradition: stuffed mushrooms with bacon and cream cheese–yum!
It's okay to cook, to go out to a restaurant, or to spend Thanksgiving with friends (“Friendsgiving,” like Charlie Brown did). Let your intuition be your guide and it will lead you to the right solution for you.
Healing Power of Gratitude
Holidays can be a complicated time. Returning to our family homes, hometowns, or even our family of origin can remind us of our childhood. This can bring up good memories and trigger old unhealthy patterns of behavior with our family members. Depending on where we are in life, being with extended family can bring us closer together with our loved ones, stress us out, or fill us with tinges of grief for holidays gone by.
Regardless of how we spend the holidays, I am grateful for my intuition and how I’ve used it to help me with family relationships—not just at the holidays—but all year long. Gratitude can be a healing balm not just at Thanksgiving but every day.
And now I’ve made myself hungry for cream cheese and bacon stuffed mushrooms. So, I will follow my intuition and add them to my holiday menu for this week. And it's all thanks to you and this blog!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Music that I listened to while I wrote this blog:
- "We are Family," by Sister Sledge
- "Autumn in New York," by Billie Holiday
- "I Love Me," by Demi Lovato
- "Walking on Sunshine," by Katrina & The Waves
Love,
The Intuitive Queen of The Intuition Empire (aka Jenn 2.0, Fully Oxygenated)