Family hurts. They are the hardest reminders of the gnarliest, unprettiest bits of ourselves. They hold up the rawest reflections. No smoke, just mirrors.
And so we revert to our 12-year-old selves in defensive response. I don’t know about you. I was 12 when I really started to hurt. I was 12 when I was first really bludgeoned with the realization, “Holy shit, my parents might just be wrong”…in their outlook, their values, their take on life. This was a lonely feeling. (I was also 12 when I started my first business and took up my “investigation of God”, trialing a different church every Sunday.)
I was 12 when I really felt abandoned, left on my own to define myself. And my reference point was my family.
Last weekend I was in Canberra visiting my large, raucous family. It’s not often all eight of us are in the same place at the same time. We tell ablutions jokes (me: “When we’re 70 what do you think we’ll talk about? Them, in unison: “Fart jokes”) , pay each other out, test each others patience, wrestle and compete physically (to climb trees, ride faster, jump rocks). You