A Little Background and a Reality Check

I was just re-reading some of my posts, and thinking that being an "expert" of sorts is all fine and good, but how do YOU know that I know what the hell I'm talking about? So, I thought this might be a good time for a little background. Yes, I've been married to my best friend Dave for 10 years now and we have a fantastic marriage. Is it all peaches and cream? Heck, no! We nearly didn't survive our first year of marriage! Yes, I have two bright and beautiful children. Do I occasionally want to pack them off to boarding school or the nearest detention facility? Heck, yes! The truth of the matter is, I think I've spent more time, money, and energy putting work into my family relationships than I have my "real" work/career--which incidentally could explain a few things--but at any rate, what I've learned is that the "juice" in having a life you love comes from those important relationships that stem from your family ties. Even if you had the most horrible of childhoods, it IS possible to create a family you love and a life you love. It IS possible to forgive yourself and those from your past who you feel have wounded and betrayed you. I've done it, and I want to share with you what I've learned so that your path can be smoother and more joyful. I'll share more about myself and my past as we go along, but suffice to say for now that it includes abuse of a couple of different varieties, a good deal of getting severely bullied in school, a father with anger management problems, parental divorce, date rape, and anxiety issues.

You might be saying to yourself, "yeah, but I've been through......" and I'm the LAST person to invalidate someone's experience. But consider that if healing IS possible, if forgiveness IS possible, even if it doesn't seem attainable right NOW--what would that open up for you and your life? WHAT IF YOUR PAST DIDN'T HAVE A HOLD ON YOU? What would be possible? Who could you be? Think about it.

Taking on Becoming an Orbital Family

In becoming an Orbital Family, you are taking on your family just as it is, and just as it isn’t. The journey is about accepting what is so, and then CHOOSING CONSIOUSLY what the family will tolerate and what it won’t. It is about creating space for the miraculous to emerge, for every family member to be self-expressed and contributing to the family, and how to have peace within a family despite any circumstance. Becoming an Orbital Family isn’t a fix, it’s a FIND. It is a process of finding the center of the family, finding your orbit within the family, and finding the harmony that exists when the planets (that is, the people) are aligned. Let’s continue.

You're Full of Should

The last point to ponder here is—what do you think a family SHOULD be like? What are the images, archetypes, and parts that make up that concept of the “perfect” family? This is the meat of the matter, so don’t skip this part. Write down your family SHOULDS and then we’ll pull it all together.

When you think about how your family IS and then how you think it SHOULD be, what do you notice? Are you angry? Sad? Resigned? Annoyed that I’m even asking the question? The fact of the matter is, we have societal concepts of what a family SHOULD be like that is largely unattainable. As such, when we have expectations of this perfect family that aren’t being met by reality, there are consequences. We get angry with ourselves and the family we have, we resent our circumstances, and we try in all kinds of ways to “fix” our families to make them “better.” It might not be in our faces every day, but in the background of our minds we have a conversation that our family isn’t good enough and never will be.

Now what?

What did you notice? Are the statements about your family more negative, positive, or pretty well balanced? The point of this is not to judge what your family culture has been up until this point, but to bring awareness of the background conversations that you have about family into your awareness. That way, as you consider the possibility of shifting or altering your perceptions, you know what is floating around in the background that you’re going to run into. Here’s the next thing for you to consider…

What are your thoughts and judgments about other kinds of families? Think about going to the grocery store, the mall, church, or wherever you see lots of people. What are your automatic thoughts about the families that you see? How do you compare your family with other families? Yep, now’s the time to jot down a couple of notes on this.

Who is IN or OUT?

Think about YOUR family. Who do you consider IN or OUT of your family? What are your criteria for thinking about someone as a family member? Must they be a Blood relation? Do you need to have known them for a certain length of time? Are there “rules” for being a family member in good standing? What are they? Have people been kicked out of the family or have they disappeared? Are there honorary family members?
Now consider, what is the “IS” of your family? To discover your family’s “IS” you need to think about it this way:

My family is……….

Now fill in the blanks. List as many “IS” statements about your family as you can think of in the next few minutes. Oh, I’m sorry, you thought this was going to be a little blog you could just read and talk about and not actually have to do anything with? HA! Sorry, that’s not happening. Now, go get a pencil and paper and get writing.

A side note about how this is going to go...

Now, I'm not too sure how it goes on other blogs, but as much as I love the sound of my own voice I'm not here to just lay some wisdom on you--this is interactive. In my blogs and on my website are challenges, exercises, and questions that are posed for you to consider. Take advantage of this opportunity and you can also post questions of your own to get my advice and coaching on. I may not be able to address every question, but you'll get the very best coaching on a variety of areas that we as humans all have to deal with. Try me!

An Introduction to The Orbital Family

What is an Orbital Family?

Many years ago, I remember learning in school that there were different kinds of families: Nuclear Families were comprised of a Mother, Father, and children and considered the “normal” standard. Ok, that wasn’t blatantly stated but certainly implied. Then of course there were Extended Families, where grandparents or other family members live with the rest of the family. Of course it was noted that this wasn’t the usual arrangement. Finally, there were Blended Families, which is the case when two divorced/widowed/etc. people marry and bring their children into the new relationship to “blend” them together, a la Brady Bunch. These little categories always left me thinking that this cut and dry way of thinking about families left a lot to be desired, and a lot of people who didn’t fit into a category.

Fast forward several years, and I found myself at 19 years old with my parents announcing that they were separating. It was never something I could’ve foreseen through my child’s eyes, but the turn of events that occurred over the next several years brought forth a new idea of what a family could be—the Orbital Family.

Any family can be an Orbital Family. It doesn’t matter how many people are in the family, where they live, or how they live. It doesn’t matter if they’re married or divorced, widowed, happy or sad, with or without children, together or apart. You may already have an Orbital Family, and not even realize it. So, I return to the question originally asked—What is an Orbital Family?

Imagine if you will that every family is its own solar system, and every individual is a planet in that system. Consider this to be true even if some people in the family don’t get along (or hate each others’ guts) or aren’t always physically present. What then, is at the center of the solar system? What is the sun? In an Orbital Family, the center of the solar system is the CENTRAL COMMITMENT of the family.

Ok, after that statement we need to step back and consider something—why would a CENTRAL COMMITMENT be important or relevant to a family? What difference would that make? To answer that, we need to take a look at our assumptions about what a family IS and what our expectations are. Stay tuned for more!