Family Baggage...Unpacked

Wow! It's been a busy month and a half!! I've been offering a series of 7 Childhood Treasures workshops in St. Louis...and my family convened for a big celebration of Mom's 90th birthday.

Have you ever noticed that, when you're with your birth family, the adult costumes everyone walks around in most of the time seem to shift their seams and zippers in revealing ways? But it's not body parts that emerge; rather, it's our former child selves. The sibling alliances and rivalries, the pecking

orders, the secrets we keep.... All these immodest private parts begin to poke through openings we thought were sealed. Your past is no longer contained inside the carefully sewn exterior self you tend and mend, day by day, in the adult world in which you now move.

Yes, there's nothing like a family gathering to suddenly make you realize three things:

1. Your baggage is gaping wide open, with its tumbled contents on display.
2. Most of those contents have, in fact, already been pulled out and draped all over your frame by well-meaning family members who are more comfortable with this familiar version of you.
3. All that costuming conceals not one of the vulnerabilities you most want to hide.

Sigh. Ain't that just the pits?