Dissident Daughters Holiday: Continued Family Reflection (and Diatribe!)

Last year, I wrote this blog post: Fighting Family Insulation.

For those of you that are unable to read the entire post again, I will offer a brief summary. Basically, I write about my concern that our culture is too focused on having one nuclear family and that we are too narrow in who we define as our “immediate” family. I strongly believe that this is to our culture’s detriment as we find ourselves either lonely (because we have such a limited understanding of who can be considered our close family), or else we overburden a few individuals to meet all of our needs.

I don’t have a singular answer to this cultural predicament because (like most issues) it is very complex, and it also would require many societal restructurings.

However. I do want to write about the Dissident Daughter Christmas because I am so happy with how our family organizes the holidays now. I also believe that the structuring of our family Christmas (as well as our priorities) is the beginning of a model for how we can reimagine family relations.

Now, before I get started, let me offer a disclaimer. I don’t mean to state that every family should copy our exact holiday celebrations, nor do I mean to imply that our family is without issue (because every single one of the Dissident Daughters could easily describe dysfunctional dynamics that are abound in our family system.) But still, I think there is something useful to be gleaned here about how we restructure our understanding of family and how different members are connected to one another.

First, the holidays are a BIG DEAL for the Dissident Daughters and the people that we love. The fact that they are a big deal means that it is a significant priority that we see one another for the holidays- it’s simply a given fact. It doesn’t matter who, where, or what you are in life- it’s a given that WE WILL SEE YOU. Sometimes I feel sad when I hear people talk about how they won’t see their parents for every holiday once they are dating someone because they will have to split their time. They seem to take it as a given that this has to happen- it’s almost as though it as benchmark of adulthood. Once you find someone to date seriously, you apparently have to loosen all other familial ties. Now, don’t get me wrong- I do realize that the more people there are in a family system, it does become more complicated to coordinate time together. But - I just HATE that our society is structured so that we try to only have one nuclear family. It’s almost as though the implicit, underlying belief is this: “Oh, I’m dating someone! This person is now MY PERSONAL FAMILY and it’s the most important FAMILY I HAVE! My parents and my siblings (my former nuclear family), now they are my SECOND TIER family.” No one actually thinks these words, but our decisions certainly reflect this line of thing. And I simply don’t like the presupposition that we have to create family hierarchies. This is (as I have argued in my previous post) vastly to our detriment in a variety of ways. Moreover, it’s a bit nonsensical. Why do we have to create hierarchies of love? Love is love, family is family, and it’s one of the only things in the world that is able to grow so beautifully with the more that you give.  So why do we have to create these crazy ass hierarchies of who is most important?

…Back to the holidays. Given that holidays are a priority, we will see each other. It doesn’t matter how many people are added to the family system, we will see you. So, here’s what we did:

1)     For Thanksgiving, a crapload of us went out to Boston to celebrate. Molly, Larry, baby LJ, and Larry’s parents all live in Boston. And to visit them this year was Dissident Daughter Jill, her spouse John, their children Trevor and Brooklyn, myself, Dissident Daughter Kristen, and our father.  The host of the big Thanksgiving Day is Larry’s parents (Leah and Larry Sr.) And they have just an incredible number of people over to celebrate the holiday in addition to the clan I just mentioned- their other son Eric…former neighbors…cousins….etc. It’s just a big gathering of amazing people.
Here is what I love about this gathering:

·        Molly and Larry don’t have to “split” their holiday between each of their family of origins. Because we all celebrate together, there doesn’t have to be any “splitting” of time! We can all just enjoy everyone’s company all at once.

·         It expands who is considered in the family. I am not related by blood to Larry Sr. or Leah, nor are they even my in-laws! However, they are starting to be a part of “my family.” I have memories of celebrating with them at Molly and Larry’s wedding in St. John…we’ve started a tradition of going out there for Thanksgiving…they are warm and welcoming people. It doesn’t matter how we are or are not officially related- what matters is that we have experiences and memories together.
That’s family.

Family in Boston for Thanksgiving

2)     Meanwhile, our mother celebrated Thanksgiving in Iowa with Dissident Daughter Amy, Amy’s partner Brett, and Brett’s parents. (Both Amy and my mother had been out to Boston earlier that fall already.) Same thing here- I loved that people did not have to “split holidays” because of the in-laws and that they were able to simply celebrate and be together. Related by blood or not…officially married or not…it didn’t matter. Everyone who was in Iowa opened themselves up to everyone and celebrated together.

3)     We spent Christmas in Iowa. Christmas is a big giant shit show shindig for us.  It included all of the dissident daughters (Amy, Jill, Molly, Anne, and Kristen), our parents (Tom and Colleen), husbands of the dissident daughters (John and Larry, and partner Brett), children of the dissident daughters (Trevor, Brooklyn, and LJ), in-laws (John’s mother, Hope) and Kristen’s old college roommate (Shanice!). And again, it was a bunch of people celebrating together that had an incredible breadth of diverse life situations. Some of the people there were married. Some of the people were single and not dating anyone. Some of the people were in committed relationships. Some of the people were actually divorced (From one another, no less! The parents of the Dissident Daughters are divorced, and yet they spend holidays together with everyone else.) One of the individuals present was widowed at a relatively young age. Some of the people had children. Some of the people did not. Some of the people were related by blood. Some of the people were not. We all gathered together for 4-5 days, and we ate, played games, watched movies, laughed, argued, got each other sick, and just simply spent a LOT of time together with EVERYONE.

I just love how our family does holidays because it means that NO ONE is excluded (regardless of their life situation), we have a lot of time together, and it also means that I am blessed to have SO MANY PEOPLE in my family. We used to do the split holiday thing, and IT SUCKED. For example, we used to split time between the parents of the Dissident Daughters because they were divorced. Additionally, Jill and John used to go to Sioux City to be with John’s Mom on Christmas Eve, and then they would spend Christmas Day with Jill’s family. They also did the “split” thing.

     
And I will tell you (and I think others would agree), that it sucked when we did this. It sucked because people would inevitably be shorted on time. It sucked because other people would be so harried trying to make it to different places that they couldn’t even properly enjoy the holiday or the time they did have with loved ones.  It felt as though everyone “lost” to some degree. For those that didn’t have a partner or young children, they lost out on family time because they had to share what family they did have left with so many others. And for those that did have a partner and young children, they lost because they had  to race around trying to make everyone else happy. It was…it was like people were yet again the victim of our societal arrangements. That because our society is so limited in who we consider our nuclear family, we inevitably are shorted and lose in some way. We don’t receive enough, or we give too much.

Screw that. Just screw it. I love that this year, we said “screw it” to split holidays. This year, John’s mom came and celebrated along with us. Our divorced parents spent the holiday together. Kristen’s old college roommate was present for some of the festivities. It just seems like such a win-win situation to me. Everyone gets to spend more time with each other, no one has to feel different or singled out based on their life situation, and the number of people you have in your family grows. John’s mother, Hope, is also not my blood relative or even my own in-law. But I’ve spent so much time with her the past 10 years that it feels like we are related. Again, it’s the memories, shared experiences, and connections that make family. And she’s certainly a part of mine now, as well as my sisters, parents, nieces, nephews, in-laws, cousins, friends, etc. and etc. My family keeps growing, and I love it. We laugh, we argue, we get annoyed, we get ecstatic. We are-in short- simply family.

Don’t create hierarchies for your family members and family systems. Don’t limit who you consider a part of your family or who you love. Don’t make decisions simply because it seems like “that’s what everyone else does” or “that’s just the way it is.” It’s so easy for us to fall into these traps because our societal arrangements basically make it impossible for us to think outside of those lines. But I want to impress upon you that staying within the bounds of those strict arrangements are detrimental to your well-being (and please see my previous blog post for strong examples.) And I strongly believe that if we can all continue to find ways to step outside of the lines, we will open ourselves up to new relationships and additional ways of being in community with one another.

Our family has made a step in this direction with our holidays. Help us imagine and create other ways that we (and others) can take more.