Do you have a sense of family?

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Phil_Marinus

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There are and has been really Enjoyable Television Shows which Present a Happy Family.
A Family that show Worts and all… A Family that has Drama and Mayhem, Conflict of interest etc…
And Sometimes we are invited into family Homes which can seem a little like a T.V Show…
where Families come together on a Regular basis to celebrate Just being a Family…

My Problem is this… I Rarely see this in reality … Real life Families are like Strangers…
Rarely visit there Parents or siblings because they always seem to busy…or the Elderly just don’t seem to fit in with the younger generation so there avoided… Parents Must ring there Children just to see how there going,How are the Grandchildren going… The grandchildren don’t bother talking to there Parents let alone there Grandparents because there to busy playing on there smart phone… I Guess I’m a family Romantic… A bit like the Waltons of a zillion years ago…
I would like to know your opinion, is your family a close knit group ? or is your Family like a handful of dry sand on a very windy day…where the sand just falls away…
 
My family I guess is unusual. We count down to when we’ll see each other again. 😉 I think my family really is the best part of my life. I’m really close to my siblings as well as my cousins and aunts and uncles. Yep I even text my grandma.

I feel empty if I go more than two weeks without seeing any of them.

For awhile my grandma would do Sunday dinners every week and almost all of the extended family would make it. It’s too hard for her to host so many people (about 20 of us) every week now, so my mom or my aunt do it about twice a month.

We also all go to the same Mass, so everyone at the parish knows us, since we take up almost two pews now.

My cousins I think are still my best friends after all this time. We’re all close in age, (well the older ones, we range from age 20 to 3) Close enough that when we were kids we fought a lot, lol. But we’ve had good times. They’re awesome. I can’t really imagine life without them.
 
I’m living in a foreign country, now, no family here about. Most of my family’s not close. Also, I’m having a heck of a time making any real friends. I’ve begun volunteering at a blind organization here, and it may be a “long shot”, but my hope is to make some friends through that.

The friends I dream of making would be like family to me. I don’t know if that’s even possible.
It’s just a hope I try to keep alive.

Probably my closest friends are those here on the forum, believe it or not. Emotionally, they’re really about all I have.
 
Yeesss…

Just not the kind of family you might be thinking of.

No parents, and, sad to say, that is not a bad thing in my case; no siblings - that is the result of two separate tragedies; no husband, another tragedy.

But two daughters, both married into big families; one that I know very well, and regard as ‘mine’ as well; the other I don’t know as well because we are separated by geographical distance and religious difference; trying to make contact with the 2 cousins left in my biological family; there is also a large family in the UK with whom all contact has been lost.
 
I’m close to my immediate nuclear family (wife, kids), but outside of that?

My family is more dysfunctional than the Jackson bloody five, I have no idea how none of us ended up being sectioned to a looney bin. So to answer the question…Sort of.
 
I feel really blessed to have close family ties. I know too many families that suffer devastating disfunction. Divorce and remarriage wreak havoc on that wonderful dynamic that is too easy to take for granted.

Thankfully, my two brothers and my sister and I have all stayed with our marriages over the last 25 years and our 14 children all have a nice sense of family and cousins. All of our spouses are from intact families as well so all our children have that experience on both sides of the family. I genuinely feel that that is testimony to my mothers prayers. She is a pray-er and has made a point of praying specifically for all her children and grandchildren through all of our endeavours and crisis. She dedicates daily rosaries to us. My father, who used to go along with the daily rosary thing… now with his dementia, depends on it like it food. He pesters my mother to hurry up with her chores so they can say their rosary together.
 
I was very close to my parents who both died quite young, in the 1990s. They gave me a wonderful childhood, filled with love and acceptance. I have an older sister who means the world to me, we talk most days and share our memories all the time. Two grown-up nephews, one I am closer to than the other, but they are both great guys - and a little great-nephew.

My husband isn’t as close to his family, but we try to keep in very regular contact with his elderly widowed mum and do what we can for her, although we live a long way apart.

So yes, I think I have been blessed, as far as family is concerned. I would have loved to have had my dear parents for a while longer, but that wasn’t to be. And my lovely sister reminds me of them in so many ways.
 
I think it is important not to let the notion of an “ideal” family keep us from making the best of our real family situation. In my own family, there is divorce and tension, but there is still always the possibility of making good come from these less-than-ideal circumstances. How can I move forward? I can’t undo mistakes and sins of the past, but I can make the best of what we have now.

Despite the many imperfections, I have a very strong sense of family, and I thank God for that. It is a true blessing that I spend time with my elderly mother and my adult son every day. I help and see my siblings who live close by very often, and keep in frequent contact with those who live far away. I understand how some family situations become intolerable, and this is tragic, but sometimes we can choose to make things better if this is our priority. For me, that means becoming less selfish, which is always a struggle.
 
Phil_Marinus said:
There are and has been really Enjoyable Television Shows which Present a Happy Family.
A Family that show Worts and all… A Family that has Drama and Mayhem, Conflict of interest etc…
And Sometimes we are invited into family Homes which can seem a little like a T.V Show…
where Families come together on a Regular basis to celebrate Just being a Family…

My Problem is this… I Rarely see this in reality … Real life Families are like Strangers…
Rarely visit there Parents or siblings because they always seem to busy…or the Elderly just don’t seem to fit in with the younger generation so there avoided… Parents Must ring there Children just to see how there going,How are the Grandchildren going… The grandchildren don’t bother talking to there Parents let alone there Grandparents because there to busy playing on there smart phone… I Guess I’m a family Romantic… A bit like the Waltons of a zillion years ago…
I would like to know your opinion, is your family a close knit group ? or is your Family like a handful of dry sand on a very windy day…where the sand just falls away…
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Family is important, but sometimes our definition of family is off base.

While I have a biological family, I also have a family which is the church, the Body of Christ.

Recall the gospel, and Christ’s response, where Christ is told his mother and brothers were looking for him.
 
I have 7 siblings, but after my mom died, we all started sort of drifting apart - though efforts were made not to do this. Then after my dad was killed, we sort of re-grouped, more out of shock than anything else I think. Since then, over the years, it’s evolved into sort of mini families within ours. I’m close to a couple of sisters, but not the others. Love my brothers a lot but have very little contact with one and mostly facebook contact with the other. 🤷 With one of my sisters, she seems to doubt my motives in everything I do and that has, unfortunately been picked up by her daughter (my niece) who now has said she no longer wants contact with me. Still not sure what the heck happened there…
I think I get more of a sense of family from my parish and my best friend & her daughter. I’m definitely closer with my best friend than most of my family.
 
The last conversation my father in law had with me before he died was about the importance of family. I’ve tried desperately to honor his wishes but several of my husband’s siblings will not speak to each other, indeed some have made it difficult to even know where they live. I keep them all in my prayers.

In my side of the family we are close even though we are spread throughout the country. I feel really blessed by this.
 
My sisters and their families live close to us as do my husband’s family. We see each other regularly, our children get along well. I talk to my mother almost every day and we see her every week. One of my sisters and I talk almost every day. We don’t speak daily/weekly with everyone else, but more out of busyness and lack of habit than anything else.

I do have friends with difficult family relationships and it is hard for them. I encourage them and the OP to look to close friends and their parish for the support and companionship they are missing.
 
Not much. I have contact with a sister but she’s on the other side of the country. Brother is very dysfunctional and has contact with no one by his own choice.
Families like the Waltons seem like science fiction to me. Being close in my family growing up meant you were in the same room with them (never mind trying to have any conversation). After school or dinner, everyone went to their own “space”. It was more of a family you wanted to get away from.
 
Sunbreak said:
Not much. I have contact with a sister but she’s on the other side of the country. Brother is very dysfunctional and has contact with no one by his own choice.
Families like the Waltons seem like science fiction to me. Being close in my family growing up meant you were in the same room with them (never mind trying to have any conversation). After school or dinner, everyone went to their own “space”. It was more of a family you wanted to get away from.
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I agree completely .... These shows like The Walton's do seem like science fiction...
It is perhaps because so many Families are Dysfunctional held together by circumstance…
Fortunately not all families are Dysfunctional … Many Families are held together by love and respect…plus they also accept other people to become part of there family…
I myself think that nationality has something to do with it… Italian and Mediterranean countries have what I think a sense of family,a sense of community, where as some European countries do not to the same degree…
 
It depends on who you are talking about.

When my parents were living, they lived about 10 minutes from my house. We regularly saw them, either here or there, or out in town. My son had a very close relationship with both of my parents.

We spent every Sunday, every holiday together.

So, yes we had a *very *close sense of family.

When they were dying, they moved in with us. So we could be there to help them.

I also have a sister. She married someone in the military and spent the first part of her marriage living overseas. When she came back to the US, and back near our hometown, she didn’t change how she lived. She was used to not being near family, so she didn’t think she needed to spend time with us. We reached out a few times, got rebuffed and we stopped reaching out.

So, no, I am not close to my sister and her family. But that has been her choice.
 
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