Holidays and Family Stress

                Odilia Rivera-Santos

Share love, share food and share happy memories. Those persons who irritate you will die someday. When the person is gone, you will ask yourself

Did I seek to add value to our interactions by redirecting the conversations toward positive matters or did I add fuel to the flame of negativity?

Did I seek to understand how this family member became a tortured angry soul?

Could I have been kinder to this person?

Or you could choose to ask those questions before the difficult person(s) dies.

The one with the most self-awareness is in charge of helping the suffering. Be of service to your difficult relatives with gratitude in your heart.

You may have persons who are addicted to drugs or alcohol or who suffer from debilitating depression or self-pity.

You can't change them but you can pray for them to become willing to get professional help for their problems or to be able to let go of old wounds.

Is it a burden to be the most emotionally stable, emotionally sober or the only sober one in the family or are you blessed?

Is being the example of healthy living or mediator a burden or a blessing?

It is what you choose to make it

Lack of Time is a kind of Poverty by Odilia Rivera-Santos

The workaholic multitasker doesn't have taste buds or notice exactly when the leaves shifted from bright red and orange to a faded brown to fly off trees and become the crunch under his or her feet.

Details drift by unnoticed as people chase what they can never reach. 

The shift in seasons... The shifts in life

It happened like it did last year and every year before that just like the sun rises and sets ... The workaholic says with a knowing smirk. 

Being overly busy with no time to slow down for a slow meal or slow conversations speaks to a fear of what stillness might bring. Being still might mean thinking about uncomfortable issues or facing pain. There is personal growth in facing what you're trying to avoid by being too busy. And walking toward what you want in life requires clarity about your hopes and dreams. 

Facing each fear is the key to get to self- knowledge. 

And besides the deep consciousness shifting stuff, there is the matter of appreciating how quickly people and places can disappear from our lives. 

You might slow yourself down by remembering how facile it is to lose a fragment of a memory, it's textures, colors and sound. Finite resources require a slow inhale with all our senses for later recall. 

We are careful to store old photographs so they do not disintegrate, but how careful are we at grasping an experience for our memory fault?

Constant activity is usually fear-driven.

What are you running from?

What is the purpose of a drive-by existence?