Family Union

Families.... What are they? As the place where once we found insufficient support for, or outright barriers to, our childhood mining efforts, can they help us, now as adults, to dig up and polish to a gleam the 7 Childhood Treasures that enable a successful life full of purpose and joy?

Having just returned from my biannual family reunion, I believe I can answer my own question with a resounding yes! Putting on my cherished "side" hat of Anthropology (my 2nd major, paired with Child Development and a minor in Psychology), I begin with a definition. In fact, I begin with three of the many definitions of family. According to Dictionary.com, family is all of these:

1. A basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not
2. Any group of persons closely related by blood, as parents, children, uncles, aunts, and cousins
3. All those persons considered as descendants of a common progenitor

Observation of the ethnology at our family reunion made visible the intricacies of all three.