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“Unbreakable” bonds are built within families. Friendships are established and nurtured. People fall in love and profess their unyielding loyalties to one another. Pledges of blind support are enthusiastically uttered to family and friends. Wedding dresses and tuxedos impact the world of fashion by never going out of style. Anniversaries are anticipated. Baby names are reviewed. Junior and Janie go off to college.
We bask in this utopic atmosphere, often ignoring the possible abyss that lurks in the shadows, when and if we fail to realize that words like love, trust, commitment, support, respect, dedication command personal actions that require continual attention in order to be brought to fruition.
Do we understand the depths and the true meaning of family? It is a universally accepted definition that is generally agreed upon by the masses, and has been given the “green light” to be the beacon of understanding and the blueprint for loving those that share your DNA as well as those that you deem worthy of your circle of individuals that are labeled family.
The juxtaposition of family ties and family knots may appear to be ambiguous and precarious to some who may prefer to ignore and to acknowledgment any skeletons that may be lying dormant in the “back yard,” they would rather forge ahead by exemplifying their; loving, caring, dedicated, committee to the things that describe family and love for and of family.
The ambiguity and precariousness visit the family ties and knots conversation when it is introduced and deciphered in the same context. When holding hands and singing Kumbaya, family ties are in full effect. Family knots raises and waves its hands vigorously in an effort to make visible the elephant in the room. The elephant begs to be acknowledged and often suffers in unbearable pain while screaming inaudibly for an audience with its family in a desperate attempt to begin the healing process and to be accepted as part of the family ties and not continue in the roll pseudo of being a member of the family knots.
Do we unleash the fire-breathing dragon that may incinerate and reduce to ruin what had appeared to be unbreakable family ties, or do we address the family knots and expedite the healing processes, fully understanding, that, just because it isn’t said doesn’t make it not be so?
© Melvin “Casey” Lars
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
