My Family Lights Up My Heart

My family enlightens my heart and takes me away from sadness. Blood is not necessary to create a bond; it is genuine union that creates loyalty and affection.

At the end of 2015, an interesting study published in the Daily Mirror listed all the little things that make a family happy. Aspects such as “spending time together”, “laughing”, “sharing common passions” or even “respecting each other’s thoughts and opinions” were considered essential in everyday life.

A family offers a refuge, an education and food, but it is the daily life registered in the respect, in the sincere love, in the complicity and the reciprocity which creates the most authentic bond, that which of a certain way we can establish with more people.

We know that you don’t have to have the same genetic code or a certificate to appreciate someone as part of our heart.

Our family is made up of people we choose, hence the fact that we can include parents but also friends, or even, why not, pets.

The family: a sometimes conflictual social institution

As the anthropologist Lévy-Strauss already explained to us in his time, the family should be the ideal model which represents the most basic social group in a society, this first referent that every child will have in the first years of his life. life.

The most important thing in a family is not that it is perfect or that all its members live under the same roof, but that it is united and that it lives under this roof, so that no problem cannot overcome it.

No one chooses their family; we come into the world as if we had fallen from a chimney, and it is luck that determines whether the bonds we forge with our parents are going to be healthy, indifferent, or traumatic.

It is the most intimate link in humans, but paradoxically it manifests itself in many cases as one of the most complex and conflicting.

Family conflicts: accept what cannot change and put some distance

In situations of family conflict or in those families where relationships are negative, it is important that certain aspects be taken into account:

• We need to view a family’s relationships as any living system that can change over time. However, most of the time, these more defined relationship patterns and which generally do not change are consolidated.
• A traumatic or painful relationship with the family is a source of suffering. This is because you cannot “erase” this link, this relationship, which is why it is so difficult to move on and turn the page.
• The only solution in these cases of conflict or family trauma would be to accept what cannot be changed. We must not feed the hatred any more. We cannot get our family member to change this so “aggressive” way of communicating, nor can we erase the possible humiliations from our minds.

The only way to heal suffering is to accept reality, integrate experience and understand that one has no moral or social obligation when it comes to continuing to nurture a bond that hurts.

We cannot choose our family, but we can build our own and give value to those who really enrich us.

The family is also the people I choose

A family relationship is nothing other than a small social group united by more or less significant bonds.

We can live these same processes with friends or other important figures who feed our personal development, and who yet, “can be our family” without there being any blood connection between us.

Although many studies show us that having experienced traumatic events within the family can determine the quality of our later social relationships, each case is undoubtedly unique and special.

We can all initiate healthier relationships that allow us to heal the gaps in our lives.

It is worth taking into account these dimensions that build positive relationships, those that will allow us to build our true family or strengthen the one we already have.

Foundations for building positive relationships

If we want to build positive relationships, it is important that we take into account the following variables:

• The principle of reciprocity: giving and receiving in balance and respect is essential, it is to bring value to the lives of others to obtain personal satisfaction.

• Communication and sincerity: we all value this honest communication which listens and takes care of the other, which is sincere and which, far from judging or sanctioning, allows us to grow and to feel like a part of the others.
• Patience: We are all going to fail at one time or another, and relying on someone who shows us empathy, understanding and a lot of patience will help us.
• Loyalty: it is the disposition and the commitment, it is wanting to give the best of ourselves so that the relationship works and that we are loyal to others and also to our own principles. It means knowing how to manage conflicts and fight for the people you love, also in difficult times.

The family enlightens our heart, takes us out of our torments, respects our space, accepts our faults and offers us its smile in the days of sadness.