I had a really incredible experience a few weeks back and I wanted to write something about it for the feministing community because I hope it inspires others to do the same.
For many years my extended family on my mom’s side, which is mostly located in Colorado—with some outliers on the east and west coasts—has had a hard time getting everyone together. When I was growing up our Thanksgiving celebrations were legendary—kids everywhere playing board games and falling in the snow during touch football, parents laughing and reminiscing about old times, my grandmother pulling out her amazing pumpkin pie and drinking scotch on the rocks. But since we’ve all become adults, it’s gotten harder and harder to make this happen.
And let’s be honest, it’s not just a logistical difficulty. My family is really diverse, not in the ethnic sense, but in the political, cultural sense. We’ve got cousins who still think George Bush has been a great president, that abortion should be illegal, that homosexuality is an abomination. And then we’ve got my mom, for example, who uses words like “goddess” and “patriarchy” with ease, drives a Prius, and talks to animals in the backyard like they are her little friends. When the two meet—especially in these contentious political times—things can get ugly.
The women in my family—however—have a way of working with these differences that has always been more compassionate, more resilient, less fraught with black and white thinking. So, in the spirit of the amazing women who have come before, we decided to try an all lady reunion at my mom’s house in New Mexico.
It was amazing. It was actually more than amazing. I would sit around a table in the backyard and feel stunned by how unalike we all were, yet how wildly similar. It turns out that though we have traveled very different paths, so many of us have been traveling them in the same way.
We are a family of women with indistinguishable empathy and tireless work ethics, what my Christian cousins would call “servant’s hearts.” Among the “momma generation” we’ve got a psychiatric social worker, an emergency room nurse, a missionary nurse, a teacher in a poor, urban school, a business owner with a collaborative, cutting-edge ethic, and a bartender (aka another therapist). I’d never really seen all these women (at least with an adult consciousness) as a quilt of where I come from. I’d never felt my roots so deeply and profoundly as I did over this weekend.
It wasn’t easy to get everyone together. A lot of us, in truth, barely knew one another before showing up for this familial leap of faith. But I cannot tell you how grateful I am that we did it. I encourage you—especially if you come from a family like ours, where political tensions run high—to try to cut out the guys for a weekend (not forever, just for a weekend) and see what transpires. I have a feeling you’ll be as moved as I was…
(And if it’s something you’ve been thinking about doing, but just having gotten around to it, do it. Today. Email everyone or call and say, “Okay, let’s get a date on the books.” That’s what we had to eventually do to make it happen.)
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Wow. I'm impressed by how many educated, professional women you have in your family, political views aside. The fact that they *have* strong political views is also telling. Maybe such a background is average for this board, but it's very unusual in the general population.
I'm trying to think of a single female relative who wasn't really mean to me as a kid. Maybe a couple of older cousins, but that's about it. You are very lucky.
the women on my mom's side of the family are planning something similar this winter, and now I'm even more excited about it. My mom has always been close with her sisters, and we've spent a lot of time with them, but we haven't been able to see my mother's cousins and aunts very often. It's going to be a girls only weekend and I'm very much looking forward to getting to know the other women in my family. I'm glad you had a great experience.
Wow. That is truly lovely. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the entry, I can really identify! My sister and I are also quite politically different, we joke that we wouldn't be friends if we weren't related but because we are we are the best of friends.
I feel like its getting easier and easier to separate yourself from people who have different viewpoints. And while there's a certain blessing in being able to define your life in your own terms, there's also a dehumanization of the "opposition". We can't change minds or policy when we refuse to acknowledge the entire community. I think family is a great place to start.
I just sent your article to my mom. What a wonderful and inspiring idea. I come from a family like yours, so I can certainly empathize with the philosophical differences among you.
My family did this a few years ago! We're notoriously bad at communicating, and it was really interesting how the stories, hopes, and fears just came pouring out. My family has always had a strong conservative Christian foundation and the "women's retreat" (as we called it) ended up providing the opportunity for me to express how uncomfortable I had become within the family since going to college and evolving into a liberal feminist! While they don't totally understand me, it is amazing to know that they're willing to listen and love me anyway. We talked about making it a yearly event, but it hasn't happened since. Maybe it's about that time...
Wow, that sounds like an incredible experience. I'd love to have something similar, though it would be quite a small gathering. Both sides of my family are small compared to most families I know, and there's more men than women. And boy, would it be a motley crew if we did get together...though not uninteresting, I'm sure.
My family has been doing this for years! It started about 20 years ago, when my Grandma and her sisters would take an annual summer trip to the jersey shore. They would bring their daughters and their daughters' daughters and take up a hotel on the beach, no husbands or boyfriends allowed-- bringing a son is acceptable but no partners and even so, few males are ever there, as its such a girl power type of trip. It's become a tradition and the group has now expanded to include friends. Ages range from ten to about seventy. We stay for about a week, hang out by the pool, talk about what's going on in each others' lives, hit the beach and just generally have a good time (cocktails at five every day, rain or shine!). At night, the adults hit the bars, dance, drink, and flirt with random guys to our hearts content-- then go skinny dipping when we come back to the hotel (yes, my seventy year old grandmother). Thank god we've been coming to the same hotel for the entire duration that this trip has existed, so the owner is cool with it and knows us all well. It's all a lot of fun. I look forward to it every year. As a matter of fact, it starts up again this weekend! Woohoo!
My family is split up on two continents and i dont think i could get my cousins to leave their kids (the male and older ones) with their husbands for a day. Whenever we visit them its hard to even get them together to go to dinner (with everyone) and we dont go there but maybe every 2-3 years. They just aren't interested. Sadly.
You encourage us, eh? Because not one of feministing's readers were abused or molested by anyone in their family, and certainly not by their mothers, aunts or grandmothers.
While I'm glad you had a good time, Courtney, and that you enjoy good relationships with your family, please don't impose your positive experiences on your readers as indicative of everyone else's experiences.
You encourage us, eh? Because not one of feministing's readers were abused or molested by anyone in their family, and certainly not by their mothers, aunts or grandmothers.
While I'm glad you had a good time, Courtney, and that you enjoy good relationships with your family, please don't impose your positive experiences on your readers as indicative of everyone else's experiences.