The Sharing Place & The Fine Family

The last couple of days I've found linking ideas in the podcasts that I listen to when I run.

A big chunk of the work I do in my recovery is to overturn and shift through my childhood to help me understand my triggers, my gut reactions and to grow from a product of my past to the better version of myself.

This American Life episode, "The Birds and the Bees" last act was about a place called the Sharing Place, where kids go to talk about death in their families in kid friendly language. What a great idea and I found myself choked up hearing a 6 year old talking about his dad's suicide. I'm glad to hear that this place exists for families, to give grieving space and language for kids to process their feelings and fears. A take away from for me was thy that kids grieve differently than adults, in fits and spurts and that they grieve anew at each developmental stage as that loved one isn't there with them.

Contrast that space of open communication with the "Fine Family." A label I heard on the Bubble Hour this morning as the guest Raquel A. describes how in her family they didn't talk about emotions, especially negative ones, "we are fine!"  I grew up in a "perfectly fine family." 

Life is giving me a "shit gift" where I can practice openness and break my role in the "fine family." My Aunt Pammy is in the last days of dying of a long battle with lung cancer. She is my mom's older sister and of course dying in May. There has been some Facebook messaging among the cousins, aunts and uncles about her declining condition, and here is my opportunity to put my family in my center, to get on the phone and listen and talk. Something I haven't done with my family for any of the deaths, something I will have to do and don't really know how to do-I've never even spoken to most of my cousins on the phone. But I'm going to now.