No one has the right to your company.

I allow myself to spend 4 hours per year in the presence of my brother. I do it so my parents can have the family together for Christmas dinner. Other than that we have not communicated in 5 years.

When mt parents pass away, so will those 4 hours.

You can always chose you a new family, made from people that you care about and that care about you.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

I’d spend the weeks preceding Thanksgiving reading popular holiday survival guides, praying I’d learn some trick to help me leave emotionally intact.

Some haven’t seen loved ones for years, finding themselves isolated, trapped in foreign lands or missing important life events – including being unable to visit ill and dying family members during global and national lockdowns.

For others, the pandemic at least offered an alibi: social media platforms like Facebook and Reddit were replete with users sharing memes and articles containing pandemic-related excuses to avoid family gatherings over the holidays.

You’ll notice this in the many holiday season advertisements that fetishize the idea of a loving nuclear family rather than provide images of friends gathering in mixed groups.

Many, like me, have invested ample time going home just to honor that family bond (in the absence of deep emotional connection), but as the Virginia-based psychologist explains: “The person [may] begin to doubt whether they have what it takes to be loved.

In the meantime, if I find myself perusing guides for holiday survival, I’ll remember that most of them are best suited for Target commercials and not the real-life complications of dysfunctional family dynamics.

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