On Saturday, Artur (my husband) and I headed off to visit his family (brother, Celso; sister-in-law, Steph; niece; nephew; and sister, Idilia.) Now, I have a confession to make: I usually dread these visits. I usually fail to implement the brilliant suggestion Ariel & Shya make about doing things as if they were your own idea. Instead, I usually sit in their living room, or in their garden, and make small talk while I count the minutes until we can leave. For, while I love Idilia very much and am very close to her, the rest of the family I have just never connected with at all. I’ve given myself many reasons for this, reasons that mostly allow the responsibility to fall outside of myself! : we’re so different, we have nothing in common, they’re not interested in me, I’m not interested in them, we don’t care about the same things, they’re boring, they just talk small talk, there is no chance to get deeper with them - no chance to make a real connection… So, every time I would go, while holding tightly to my judgments, my heart closed to any other possibility of what it might be like to be with them. Well, the weekend started out with me still like this, and, as we set off to drive south, Artur and I started bickering a bit, and I realised it was because I was resisting the situation and blaming him for it. So I stopped, right then, apologised, and made a commitment to myself to embrace the trip, the people and choose to actually have fun!

After getting stuck in lots of traffic (which I must confess I was still a little relieved about as I was enjoying Artur’s company much more than I thought I’d enjoy theirs - I clearly hadn’t surrendered completely,) we arrived. And procceeded to have quite a lovely day. I wasn’t entirely there; I was still a little lost, but generally a good time was had by all.

After spending a lovely night at Idilia’s, we returned for a BBQ. This time I was a little more practiced at surrendering and accepting, and I chatted with my sister-in-law, Steph, and it was really okay - which, I hate to admit, was a huge step up from ever before!

Then, with the prospect of a whole afternoon of surrendering before me, I started to flag a little and decided to escape for a moment or two and nip across the road to Blockbusters to check out a video sale I’d seen on the way to their house. To my absolute astonishment Steph wanted to come with me. Now this was really incredible to me. In seven years we’ve never purposefully spent more than two minutes alone together. I always assumed she felt as awkward with me as I did with her. But we started to bond over the videos, talking about what we liked and why, and, for the first time ever, I really LISTENED to her! And, as I did, I started to love her.

We left the video store, me laden down with cheap DVDs, her with nothing. There was something she really wanted but felt she couldn’t afford. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing and talking and laughing, and it was lovely!! When it was time to go I really didn’t want to leave. I still didn’t feel quite comfortable enough to hug them (except for the kids), but when I left, I - to my total astonishment - felt genuinely sorry to go. On the way to the car we passed the video store again. I asked Artur to wait, ran in, bought the video Steph wanted, ran back to their house, up the stairs and handed it to her. Then I gave her a great big hug. I felt so overwhelmed with love for her it brought tears to my eyes. And when I let go I saw she had too.

On the way home we got stuck in lots more traffic and it was one of the loveliest drives we’ve ever had. We talked about everything, about our family, about our judgments, about how much we thought we knew and how little we really know about the people in our lives, about what we missed when we got lost in thoughts and didn’t take the time to listen to others. I realised that, far from being boring, Steph has so much to teach me about being open-hearted and accepting, about love and intimacy. And, of course, in loving her - someone who, two days before would have probably topped my top ten list of people I wouldn’t want to be stranded on a desert island with - I felt so, so close to Artur, and, I discovered as I looked into my heart, to absolutely everyone else!

It was an incredible weekend and now, I’m really looking forward to going back. After seven years of kicking & screaming before a visit. Now that’s Transformation!!

Thank you Ariel & Shya, for your compassion, your insight, your inspiration. Thank you all for helping make this world a more wonderful place to be!

With all my love,

Menna xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 9:14 am and is filed under Communication, Intimacy, Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.