We Are Family
Monday evening we (the kids, myself, and Nick) decided to meet my Mom, my sister Jenni and her husband Joey, and my brother Adam at a centralized Waffle House for dinner. This is what my mom wanted for Mother’s Day. She got it. Afterward, we loaded the jukebox down with quarters and shook our booties. Well…Mom and I did. Everyone else just laughed at us. The cooks thought we were a riot. One even came out to the parking lot as we were all hugging goodbye and snapped this photo for us. I am so thankful to have it even if it isn’t the greatest quality picture.
It was a very good time. Everyone got to meet Nick for the first time. I wasn’t sure if he was going to come as he hadn’t let me know if he was going to make it. He intentionally surprised me which made it even better! He got his chance to see how crazy we all are and surprisingly he didn’t bolt for the door ;) Everyone seemed to like everyone else. It was pretty cool to get to hang out for a couple of hours and laugh and just be together.
They have all been very worried about me and super supportive over the past year. Going through all of this has really reshaped my thinking about the way people handle the most traumatic things they go through in their lives and why sometimes you come out better and stronger and why sometimes you never recover. It has also made me learn some really tough lessons about family in general, and why it is important to forgive people their faults and just keep trying to move forward through all the bad with the good.
I am rebuilding my relationship with my family and I understand so much more about how hard it has been for them to go through things in their own lives whether those things pertained to me or not, and I understand more all the time how crucial it is to find it within myself to genuinely forgive and move forward than I ever did before. Unless I really learn to do that I cannot let go of the past and I cannot find peace within myself and be truly happy in the present or hopeful for the future. It really makes me appreciate the fact that even after everything we have all been through individually and together, they are all still there for me. That is what family is all about.
They see how happy I am and they are glad for me. My mom said to me this week that I am just back to being her Gwen again and she is just really thankful for that.
Most of all, I am thankful for each and every one of them.
Posted 05/14/2009 01:32 AM