What is the legacy left to you by your family? What are the messages and values they passed down to you? Family dinners, tv shows, walks and trips and vacations, jokes and anecdotes, personal stories of triumph and tribulation... were there secret messages? Overt instructions? Did they emphasize hatred, acceptance, or fear?
I've been thinking a lot lately about what my family (its many members on both sides through multiple generations) comminicated to me about who to trust and who to avoid... who to love and who to dismiss... who to honor... what assumptions to make... how to think of myself... how to define other.
We all receive messages - some overt and some covert. Secret missives, clear coaching, winks or nods or soapbox speeches laden with heavy and charged words. And then we go out into the world and begin to pave our individual path with its own tangents and complexities and twinings; we decide which lessons to ignore and which to embrace, which to pass on and which to ensure goes no further. It's an incredible responsibility, and something worth being mindful of.
What did your family teach you? What endures? What persists despite your efforts at eradication? What has been truly left behind?
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