growing up

The quote, "If you think you're enlightened, try spending a week with your family" by Ram Dass has always made me laugh. I find it funny in that way that things are funny when they're so darn true.

I moved from my hometown of Knoxville, TN to Boston when I was 23 and I've never moved back. My sister moved to the West Coast and my brother to Florida, so we are now on opposite ends of the country. My parents divorced soon after I moved, but both still live in Knoxville. My mother is still living in the same house in which we grew up.

I had a wonderful childhood. I had, and have, attentive parents devoted to the well being of their children. My brother, sister and I are very close and travel around to be with each other as much as possible. And still, for years, a trip back home could cause my worst qualities, the ones I had worked hard to rise above, to come right back to the surface. Selfishness, manipulation, the suppression of emotion, stunted communication...I'd feel it coming on and want to flee back to the new world I had created, where I was free to be the better version of myself. The distance made it easy for me to escape the discomfort, but some part of me knew that life would make sure I dealt with it one way or another. Recognizing that our family provides the clearest mirror of our areas for emotional and spiritual growth is confronting, but can be useful. I didn't need therapy, just a commitment to being genuine and open, as opposed to coming from the conditioned reactions of a bratty teenage girl when with my family. So that is what I've been chipping away at for the last decade or so.

I was just in Knoxville to celebrate my Dad's 70th birthday. My brother and my sister and I, no spouses or children, home together again. The first night we all slept at my mothers house, each of us in our childhood bedrooms. That night, before falling asleep, I waited to feel any old unwanted patterns of feeling creeping in, but I only felt happy. And grown up.

photo of us with my dad at his 70th birthday party