One Fight Away From Sitting at the Kids' Table

We sometimes don't see our available options during the holi-daze, especially during family get togethers. You get to choose to follow the lead of your body and excuse yourself should it all get to be a bit too much. Join me over at the kids' table where funny jokes and peals of laughter are worthy of celebration.  Or, see if you can find a like-minded kid at the adults' table to shift the Energy! 

Transcript

I'm Lizanne Flynn. I'm a master healer who holds space for any Earthling as they reunite body and soul. I am a bridge for relationships between all species so that 

the heart bond becomes stronger, deeper, and more loving. I serve in the roles of animal communicator, medium, and medical intuitive, and I use the tools of shamanic journeying and soul retrieval 

to support all Earthlings in their recovery from past trauma. I'm certified as a Reiki Master Teacher and as a canine massage therapist. This is the Animals' iView podcast.

In full transparency, the title of this podcast "One Fight Away from the kids' table" is my rephrasing of a cocktail napkin that I have on my refrigerator door like I do several others and mostly because they make me laugh! Usually with a snarky sense of humor because that's the kind I like the most. The actual napkin is "one drink away from being sent to the kids' table" which I quite like. It's true for me that being at the kids' table especially when my sons were growing up and we had dinner together with my extended family it was a chance to get to talk with my nieces and nephews and find out what was going on in their lives. Occasionally the kids in the family were small enough to need a bit of help during dinner like cutting up food or pouring a glassful of - usually - milk and I'd never mind being at that table and performing that task. Sometimes if I was lucky it meant that I didn't have to do the dishes or clear the table. I didn't mind serving up dessert because that felt fun and creative to me even if it was our standard homemade holiday cookies, peppermint ice cream, and hot fudge. As the kids grew, of course, they were less welcoming to an older aunt who might just tattle to their parents/her siblings about their conversation and share their secrets that they'd just as soon keep to themselves. I'd like to think that they saw me as trustworthy if only because as we all grew older the distance between my siblings and I grew more distant which was never more evident than at the holidays. And perhaps for you as well, gentle listener, this emotional withdrawal was done out of necessity or maybe just because it's how you were raised or the path that your life took away from theirs. And you discovered that these relationships, biological though they may be, are filled with toxicity that has grown more dense over the years and to quote Shakespeare, "Aye, therein lies the rub". 

To prep for this podcast I took to the interwebs to get a sampling of quotes about families and here they are:  

“You must remember, family is often born of blood, but it doesn't depend on blood. Nor is it exclusive of friendship. Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are related to you, can be your family.”

― Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society

“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.”

― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Erma Bombeck - "Family, the ties that bind and gag"

“A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart.”

― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“One situation – maybe one alone – could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness.”

― Patricia Highsmith

And let's be clear. I think there's a difference between the 20% friction that may be part of any relationship that does crop up in families and fingers crossed mellows over time because there have been no deep wounds that are still in the process of healing. There's a difference between two sisters getting snarky with each other in the kitchen because as one (me) told the older sister, "It's like we're still in high school again and you think you're still in charge just because you're older!" Yep, those 20% of set roles in a family may be set in cement and yet, you get to choose how much or how little you want to incorporate those roles into the times you are interacting.

I would honestly love to be able to tell people - "Just love your family and try to repair those relationships no matter how badly they were damaged. That's not what's important, how you were traumatized or they had been traumatized and how that repentance that makes forgiveness more balanced never comes. It's the family staying together, sticking together, you know, thick and thin, blood and water and all that jazz." Would that I had a magic wand maybe that's what I would set as my intention before waiving the wand about with the well-known abra ka dabra whose etymology lies in the Hebrew language, ebrah k’dabri, meaning “I will create as I speak,” ie that the act of speech will magically create new realities. That seems certainly to resonate with how I view spelling and that it's the resonance of the sound along with the meaning in the language of Energy that fulfills the communion pact between the Animals on Earth, except the human one. You might even begin to feel with my attempt to placate everyone a familiarity with someone in your family during the holidays or maybe year-round. Maybe it's your mom, your dad, your cousin, your ex-brother-in-law - oh yes, the places that these statements come from might surprise you. Then again they might not. It could be a good friend or a favorite teacher you touch base with once a year, really, the list is endless these potential angels in disguises. I say potential because it all comes down to your choice, you see. And what feels the best to you.

Another reason why I like the kids' table is that the arguments or disagreements are rarely serious and may be more deeply felt than the ones at the adult table. Such as the fact that Aunt Rosie's cranberry sauce did NOT come from a can, she made it on the stove and you watched her! Or that green bean casserole is the absolutely last dish you'd take with you to life on a desert island and that stuffing is good only if it's got a crust on it - this last one's mine. It's just that kids seem to let these issues come to a boil unheeded and yet they manage to put the wooden spoon on the top of the pan to avoid it boiling over. So that it stays contained in the pot and doesn't harm anyone else. Sure they might let lose sometimes with a heckuva lot of steam and maybe a bit of splashing over with tears. Yet when it's done with, this issue, it's rare that kids don't move past the temporary trauma of familial and otherwise disagreements. I'm not even sure we can call them fights and for sure not in the way adults can get into them.

We can't be bothered to turn down the heat. It's as if we know that the smell of burned milk or egg on a stovetop lingers and causes the whole atmosphere of a kitchen to sour and so there! Because I feel bad and I've felt bad for oh so long inside this group, this family, this biological soul contract fixed construct that I simply have to let everyone know how I feel. And I will keep telling everyone how I feel no matter the consequences because when I'm with the people who I perceive harmed me, I can't ignore how my body feels. It feels ugly inside and so I feel ugly outside. It feels squished inside and so I feel squished and appear ill at ease outside. Or maybe you would never know that at all because the edges of my mouth have been superglued upward in a smile since I left my house or welcomed you into mine. You would never know the fatigue my body feels because that's just not how it's done in my family or how I was raised or maybe how I turned out. It's the consistent fighting or ostracizing or blaming or being the scapegoat in the family that gets mighty old and here's the thing - you get to choose. 

You get to choose to not take anything your family of origin says seriously or wonder why you turned out the same or completely different. You get to choose whether the soul theft from an older relative or sibling is too great and your body with its PTS gives you all the signals to get the heck outa Dodge. You get to choose to reclaim that soul piece and know that in this space and where you are right now is not the space where you were when you were 3 or 4 or 7 or 11. You get to choose. You get to choose to speak about things that are important to you in a sincere effort to share these with your siblings and parents in an eternal hope that you might deepen the well of your connection with them as is always possible on this planet and in this experience. So that you might become friends while still using the more or less assigned roles within your family, the support and love you receive from them and they from you gets everybody closer to an actualized human experience. And you get to choose to realize that the arguments and fights and lack of resonance with your family cost too much and that you'd just as rather sit at the kids' table where the purity of soul makes the moment all the more fleeting and less important. You get to choose - at least, that's how the Animals see it.

Thanks for listening today. Leave a review and be sure to subscribe to this podcast. I offer all new clients a free 15-minute 

consultation, to schedule online go to lizanneflynn.com. Come find me on social media - 

FB, X-Twitterverse, Instagram, and Linkedin. I encourage you to sign up for my quarterly newsletter on my website where I also post notices 

for upcoming events, the starting date of courses in The Animals' iView Academy, and online psychic fairs. The episodes of this podcast are available

on my YouTube channel complete with subtitles, you'll find that link in my podcast footer, and be sure to subscribe. 

This has been the Animals' iView podcast - I'll see you next time.