Families, priorities and learnings

I dearly love my family. In all their various forms and complex relationships they have been a huge source of joy, pain, challenge, support and laughter for me and continue to be so invariably each day.

It is stuningly fantastic when we all happen to be together in our complexities and somehow the clashes of all our individual personalities, needs and behaviours creates this amazing paintball galaxy of comedies, tragedies and heroisms. It is magical to witness and not get drawn in, if you can!

I have just spent an absolutely heart opening and astounding winter/spring/summer recovering in the bosom of my family yet at the same time craving my own sanctity and peace.

I am torn now that I have the opportunity to be moving on into my own space from the unspoken security, love in all its innumerable forms and human interractions though frustrating to be extremely reassuring in its very existence.

I can see how complex family dynamics can create unseen dependencies and I feel like a teenager once again stepping out from the family's umbrella to face the world on my own again!

I am so excited about what I could be about to rediscover and yet the idea of stepping out on my own is overwhelmingly scary!

I know my family are simply a phonecall and a train ride away but gosh it's frightening loosening the strong supportive ever present apron strings that have held me safe for so long.

What I have enjoyed in the recent years has been the solid base that has always been there for me as I needed it, at times it felt like i was far too comfortable at home and would never leave - both to my family and outsiders!

I used to wonder about this, when I compared my life and family interractions with those of my western compatriots, being of Indian origin we were very much what others would say in "each other's pockets". Having lived the "western" way and returned home I can see the advantages and the disadvantages. At present though I see more advantages.

I watched a program recently about teenagers/young adults, from around the UK who were completely dependent on their parents for everything and had never worked a single day.

I believe sometimes the cossetted nature of the Asian lifestyle appears to suggest to English families that young asians are not allowed free will/choice and they are waited on hand and foot and that can be a detrimental image for the outside world. In some respects what I have experienced these past years is close to that but not entirely.

Purely out of fear for my life, my mother took it upon herself to make herself available to me at literally every step in my recovery. This was an absolute blessing yet I can see with hindsight it also made me less self-dependent on basic actions. Yes I would and could go shopping for weekly provisions but since mum likes to keep herself busy in the house and mainly in the kitchen I found myself frequently letting her "get on with it" rather than interfere with her choice of meal making.

Now I am considering shopping lists for house management and all the weekly chores that come with taking care of a home and feeling slightly scared that I may err more on the lazy side. I feel that would be a terrible slight on mum's efforts to train me into managing a house to perfection.

I remember I was not a devotee of cleaning the cooker hood every week, polishing the chrome until it glowed and other "little" chores that ensure my mum's home is presentable to strangers who drop in at a moments notice to carry out a full scale inspection on the cleanliness and atmosphere of her home ensuring it is up to grade. Will my cleaning skills pass their momentary inspections? I have dreams of my mum dressing up as these strangers landing on my doorstep demanding access as is her right to inspect my humble abode and of course my inspection will fail miserably!....

Will i remember to take the toothbrush and scrub out the drains? Will life be one long cleaning journey? Will I wake at night in a cold sweat remembering something I have failed to do? All these fears dawn on me at interminable intervals.. fears of the child wanting so hard to please the parent.

I have also noticed how dependent one becomes through illness or a loss on others. I can see the roots of my old dependency playing out in the childhood relationships I grew up with and the dynamics playing out in other relationships within the family.

Silent support can, if allowed to, easily cross a boundary changing a supportive relationship into a dependent one. Although love and support are neccesary elements of any positive relationship it can so easily become negative when individuals play out their needs in a powerless way. Being powerful can also be challenging to others within a relationship. I have noticed how some partnerships get threatened when the "dependent" partner takes the initiative to make their own decisions, the dominant partner can react in a way that totally de-stabilizes the existing status quo and demands are made of the partner that tried to free themselves from the old restraints that can bring to the forefront underlying issues that the individuals were happy to ignore previously.

Now more than ever, all of these changes are due to the shift in energies in our universe at this time.

All unbalanced relationships where power and dependency played a vital role are being challenged and being destabilised to enable partners to bring the balance in. Where partners resist the relationships will suffer immensely, where the partners are able to realign themselves and work with the changes demanded of them, relationships will succeed.

So I write this post to suggest that should you find yourself being faced with old patterns of behaviour you are being asked to examine what it is that no longer works for you that you may need to let go of because it does not work and learn to work with your partner to rebalance your relationship.

In soem cases where the imbalances in relationships have played out to the max most partners are now being challenged to let go of the partnership all together. This can be immensely challenging if you have been together for a long period.

If you find yourself in any of these dilemmas, I suggest you ask for support and if it is something you have never done, now is the time to learn to ask and allow yourself to receive. The universe is here to support you what it is doing is challenging you to trust that it is and allow yourself to receive and BE WARE the help MAY NOT come in a form you expect nor from the person you expect.