“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” –James Baldwin
There are many books out now about the subject of family—against the background of the pandemic; or in other centuries; perhaps within different cultures; or at different times of one’s life. Clearly this is a structure people need in order to feel safe and whole, and to understand their own life story better. Family, either prescribed by shared DNA or those people we’ve chosen, is the key to how we see ourselves, even though we perpetuate fictions about our ethnicity rather than deal with the facts of it. We don’t have to wait for science to edit the human Genome. We already do that when we write our own narratives. A lot of denial and wishful thinking inhabits our family histories, but when reality crashes up against the stubborn facts, there can be a painful reckoning before we pull ourselves together to start again. And when we look out to see what’s there when the tide recedes, do we deal with it or pretend it’s something else, yet again? Continue Reading