Family and Unmasking Self

Today I remember to expand my definition of family. In order to do that I'll need to reveal, unravel myself.

I've been visiting my folks this past week, and fortunately for me they live in Sedona, Arizona. If you've never been there, it's an inherently mystical place. Some say there are vortexes, pools of strong life energy all over those majestic red rocks. Those canyons resonate with the feel of earlier residents, Native American cultures, primitive and in touch with the elements.

Years ago when my parents first retired I would visit them there for a sense of security. I'd bring my daughter when she was a baby and we'd both sit for a week and soak up the love and security of the place, of my parents in that place without much thought.

Now, my folks are older, faced with the challenges of their age, and my daughter and I are visiting not so much as tourists seeking an escape, but to check in and reconnect with them. The visits have a different feel. The trick now is to accept the changes in my parents' lives, and to not get hung up on preconditioned patterns that extend back through my childhood, when I often played the role of over achiever, back to their own stories with their families when they grew up as the son and daughter of Italian immigrants. I'm realizing that the individuals in families fall into patterns, that those patterns have repercussions that extend from generation to generation. How does a father treat his individual daughters without pigeon holing them? How does a mother keep from pushing her own daughter into preconditioned roles and expectations? How should a couple, together for nearly fifty years, the matriarch and patriarch of their own small family treat each other?

The conditioning from the past boomeranged into my visit with my folks more than ever this time. In order to connect with both of them, and enjoy them and the stories I had to allow myself to be unmasked, to recognize the conditioning from the past for what it is: a cover up, a mask for the self beneath it. Then I was able to see the individuals that are real, beyond the role playing of son, daughter, mother, father. The distorted way I've been conditioned to view them is not who they are.

When I could see through their masks, I become more able to get rid of my own cover up also, to dig into the Truth of who we all are. And that is when the largeness of my actual family hit me. I allowed myself to see everyone, not just my blood relatives as family, and to make an effort to see all of them, everyone, unmasked also.

Now I'm back in LA, but I'm remembering, as I interact with everyone around me, to expand my definition of family. I working on looking beyond the masks.