When I first heard the saying ‘family is more than blood’, it felt like a relief because as much as I love and care for my family there were times when I also met people with whom I felt as close and familiar with and who I loved just as dearly as my own family.
With family I got tied up in so many ideals and beliefs that I remember always feeling like I was doing what was expected of me rather than acting on what I felt was true. I always wanted to please my mum especially and play the ‘good’ daughter, so there were many times when I would put aside what I was feeling and do the ‘right’ thing. This of course ended up making me feel exhausted and moody, as I was not honouring of myself in any way.
I was holding this big belief that I had to conform because that was what families do – even when I was quite tired I would push myself to attend family events because of the pressure I put on myself to be there no matter what, and also because I didn’t want to miss out on anything.
Thank goodness I began to question these tightly held beliefs and ideals I had around family, because it was very draining on me and not loving in any way.
I can feel now how holding onto all these beliefs and ideals keep me trapped in some way, and then out of reaction to this it made me act out certain patterns and behaviours in my life to bury what I was truly feeling at these times: for example, I would eat a lot of sugary and comfort foods or would watch a lot of TV or go shopping, all to avoid what I was feeling. The whole way I was living life was in avoidance of myself – a running away from feeling my own strength and power. This is something I felt even more strongly when I became a first-time mother and was bombarded with a load of ‘pictures’ about how to parent instead of trusting that as a woman I have all the innate wisdom and qualities needed within to know how to parent successfully.
Learning to let go of these pictures I adopted that kept me in a spin and further away from being ‘me’ has been a work in progress.
Life for me has become very different as I now embrace people and treat them with the warmth and familiarity I would a dear or close family member. This has become more natural for me as I began to address the relationship with myself first and started to confirm and appreciate all the beautiful qualities that I bring. This was not easy at first as there can be many voices in my head trying to crush my new loving self-talk, but slowly and over time I have been building a deeper connection with myself and this has been key to transforming all the relationships in my life.
I am enjoying a greater connection and intimacy with others that I always thought was only reserved for that one special person in my life or a close family member. I am grateful that I challenged this limiting belief as it has allowed me to see the wider family available to me everywhere I go.
Family for me now has a very different meaning as I have learned to walk through life with an open and loving heart, no longer waiting for the other to first show their love to me to see if I can trust them or if I will be accepted: I see them as my equal and equally as loving as myself, even if they are too shy to express their love in that moment.
For many years I used to feel quite hurt and let down by people and so I went into protecting myself from others, but interestingly this shutting myself off from others hurt far more than how another could have hurt me. I was holding certain people I didn’t know, or trust, accountable for the way in which others had treated me in the past, something that I justified in my own mind but that really held me back from experiencing a deeper and true connection with others.
It took a lot of effort for me to live in this protected way because I had to resist any love that was offered to me: it doesn’t make sense as I was really craving and missing that connection and intimacy with others but I was putting up a huge protective wall that said ‘back off’.
No matter how we are in life or what our demeanour is, deep down we are all wanting to feel loved and accepted.
Having this awareness about myself has supported me to be more understanding when I meet others and to not react to their guard or to judge them in any way. Learning to hold them in love and acceptance with no expectations of receiving anything back has been life changing for me and has allowed the space for another to feel safe to express and to enjoy the connection that is being offered.
By Anna Douglass, International Flight Attendant, Mother, dedicated student of the Ageless Wisdom, Australia
Further Reading:
Family Defined by Quality
Truly Appreciating the People in my Neighbourhood
True Family
507 Comments
I just love the photo that accompanies this blog. Says it all.
“No matter how we are in life or what our demeanour is, deep down we are all wanting to feel loved and accepted.” And to love others too, regardless of whether that love is returned.
“Family Is More Than Blood” If we acknowledged this truth we would have far less wars on this planet.
All these ideals and beliefs are very draining, how much more loving is it for us to simply honour what our body is saying, ‘With family I got tied up in so many ideals and beliefs that I remember always feeling like I was doing what was expected of me rather than acting on what I felt was true.’
Anna, this is really beautiful; ‘ Learning to hold them in love and acceptance with no expectations of receiving anything back has been life changing for me and has allowed the space for another to feel safe to express and to enjoy the connection that is being offered.’ I love that there is understanding and openness to others, how beautiful for people to be met in this way, rather than judged and rejected.
“Family Is More Than Blood” – when we realise the truth of this our whole world opens up.
I 100% agree Anna that ‘shutting myself off from others hurt far more than how another could have hurt me.’ The protection we think it affords us is not true and really is not worth pursuing.
I reflect on my life and I have always been open to anyone coming into my family, my family is everyone in truth I get a very real sense of that. We have so many boundaries and false separation in the world, whether blood or not, we are of the same origin and we are here to learn to be together in love.
I can see how this pleasing and wanting to be liked/loved runs through families and other relationships but somehow in families feels more ingrained and more difficult to dig out and totally renounce. Sometimes we might think it doesn’t exist but we are merely reacting to it at a deeper level.
The way we use the word family now is not the true meaning of the word, nowadays the word family means licence to abuse.
We are often far more abusive to our ‘loved’ ones than we are with others – surely this is not what true family is about?
Yes, family is frequently where most abuse takes place! So what is going on with this, why is it ever acceptable to abuse someone, and especially someone you are supposed to love?
This is a very good question to ask ourselves – are we bound by a love that is true, ever-expanding and evolving, or are we bound by the ideals and beliefs that constrict us and make us be a certain way in our relationships with others that confine our expression of such love?
When we live in the ideal and belief of what family seems to be in life we live in a restricted way and thus lesser than we are in essence. The truth of what family is leaves no one lesser but everyone is equally powerful and connected to the truth of who they are and bring.
The more I open up to this that its not just blood that is family the more I find myself really allowing people in, letting myself be just who I am and not feeling like I need to try and be anyone. It feels super loving and respectful and the family is growing more and more and I love it.
When we do finally realise that family is more then blood we will see the demise of war and all the many conflicts that start all over the world thinking we are somehow different from another.
I can very much relate to this process at the moment, Anna – ‘I have been building a deeper connection with myself and this has been key to transforming all the relationships in my life.’ When we have love for ourselves and align to that quality in every aspect of our lives, this cannot but have a ripple effect out into every interaction with another.
“No matter how we are in life or what our demeanour is, deep down we are all wanting to feel loved and accepted.” so so true Anna, the thing is if we don’t love and accept ourselves first we can not let it in from another. It would be wise to teach self love as a main part of our mainstream education.
Things happen in families that would never take place in friendships. But we often make excuses culminating with ‘ah but it’s family’. It’s hard to halt these old patterns, but by working on one’s self, it allows the possibility for change in others too.
In the end all life is about us re-learning how to live Love, with everyone equally. This makes everyone in this world our closest kin. Wow – will we stop and let this in?
When we are in relationships with anyone we are part of a family – asking more or less in understanding one another is part of the learning process.
That’s exactly true that we all want to be deeply loved and accepted for how we are. Yet when we look at most family’s this is not what we are getting. The level of love that is offered totally comes with conditions and emotions. Once I clocked this and with the support of Universal Medicine I have been connecting the grand love that we are and now I can feel true love is this first and foremost and celebrating that we are all one and the same and a part of a grand universe.
Yes thus this teaching makes so much more sense than that family is in the blood, which never has made sense when you look at our energetic beingness first. We are made of love by origin which is a quality of energy always, how we choose to life is up to us for this might differ: it can be either fire or prana.
“No matter how we are in life or what our demeanour is, deep down we are all wanting to feel loved and accepted.” If we came with this knowing first to any new relationship we would be far more open to understanding and accepting of another.
This is a great way of viewing people, and with that a lot less reaction and more understanding and so our relationships really can blossom.
We are all part of one huge family called the human race, whatever we do or how we live, there is one thing certain we all deep down want to love and be loved.
The whole of humanity is our family when we deal with our hurts from our family of origin.
Knowing that we are all part of one family means we need to take far more responsibility for ourselves and others – no wonder so many people deny this truth.
You can have a close working relationship so they can become part of the family and you can treat everyone with the same love that you treat your family with – your love for your family doesn’t become less this way.
Imagine how life would be if we could all let down our guards and treat everyone the same, the same as close family members, nothing held back no race, religion or belief getting in the way. I’m sure it will be like this one day and with people in the world like you Anna making the choices that you do the whole process will be speed up.
I feel the point you raise about how exhausting and effort-full protection is is a very important one that ought not to be brushed over. Especially considering the enormously high rates of exhaustion today and just how closed and guarded from each other.
It is quite incredible how our relationships change and deepen, once we make the commitment to really look at our own relationship with ourselves, and deepen that, first. From there, from making the space to go within, everything else flows from what we’ve connected to, and we blossom outwardly.
The very fact we have fallen for the notion that family is all to do with blood accounts for the many atrosities we see world wide.
With family events there are so many expectations that play out and at times emotional blackmail, to make you conform and toe the line. I know this from my own experience when I refused to go for a late night meal to celebrate a birthday. The event went on without me, and my absence was commented on, but what later transpired was how tired everyone was from going out so late, along with being fraught with complications.
Our family members are free to make their own choices and so are we.
I’ve just returned from visiting my family living overseas and I must admit as much as I loved visiting them I couldn’t help but feel a sense of ‘duty’ I was playing during my visit. There were many things I didn’t engage in whilst I was visiting immediate family members and can honestly say I wasn’t popular at times.
When I was with friends it was so lovely to be with them, no demands, no expectations just happy to be around each other, sharing life events, and truly being open with each other. This is how I am with my Australian family and I was missing being around them.
During my visit all I did was constantly reflected to my blood family the truth and what wasn’t, after that it wasn’t my responsibility in how the family responded – I loved them no less.
“Learning to hold them in love and acceptance with no expectations of receiving anything back has been life changing for me and has allowed the space for another to feel safe to express and to enjoy the connection that is being offered.” I totally agree, Anna. Learning this has also been life changing for me, too.
If we considered that we are all from the same family, and that nothing divided us, it would change the whole way that we all interacted with each other.
We are all connected and as a humanity we are unified by the quality of love the reside within the heart of every human being. This is something that we cannot escape even though we mostly try resist it. When we come back to love it is there that we discover what true family is and the evolution that is always on offer for us to live our true and great divine potential.
I love my bigger and wider family, they represent all colours, gender, past religions and countries. I have meaningful conversations about life and opportunities offered for all to evolve. Sometimes I don’t see them regularly and yet I can feel them around me and in some ways they may not be ‘blood’ relatives, they are still relative as we are from the one source – God.
There is no such thing as family where we come from, the unity, connection and bond is a given not something dependent on blood lines. And so Love too is also totally unconditional this way.
I had made my life about ‘blood family’ protecting my husband and children was my duty as a wife and mother and of course I could hide myself and withdraw to not deal with my hurts. i can say now it was a complete illusion, frustrating and exhausting. I had to build a relationship with myself first and this opened me up for other people. No hiding and no protecting anymore but living with a forever growing love and openess with myself and with others.
I find it remarkable how we can treat our blood family how every we want yet when it comes to friends or other people we would never be like that with them. It really exposes how disregarding and abusive we can be not only to our families but also to ourselves. What has just come to me also is that the ones where we are not doing this they still get that same energy just laced with a false front. Everything is energy and getting to understand this is breaking down everything we have been taught. To treat everyone equally and have the same connections that you do with someone like your butcher to your father or your partner is where it really is at and remaining open to being all that we are with everyone.
Holding the whole of humanity as family is a game changer to deal with people. We are so much alike than we are different.
Willem, I was reading an article recently about the caste system in India and I wondered how it is that we could adopt such a system where we treat others in such a way. Why is it that today slavery is more prevalent than then ever. What is it about us that we want to live in separation with each other when we know separation isn’t the answer? As you correctly say we are so much more alike than we are different.