Boundaries Make for Happier Holidays—and a Better New Year!

 

 

 

Over the past 15 years I’ve come to value the power of setting boundaries. For many a year, I’ve joked about going home for my “annual dysfunctional family Christmas.” Family gatherings, for any reason (holidays, weddings, etc.), were often painful because I either didn’t know how to set boundaries, or didn’t feel worthy of setting them, much less having them respected. But in recent years that has changed.

I decided a few years back that I would no longer be party to negativity at family gatherings. Our family has long been divided by religious beliefs, political leanings and various levels of self-righteousness, as many families are; and I no longer wanted to participate.

So I set the boundaries that I would no longer participate in political or religious conversations. Instead, I urged that we talk about those things that unite us and bring harmony, instead of those things that divide us. Of course I couldn’t enforce these boundaries on anyone but myself. But if family members chose to engage in divisive conversations, I still didn’t have to participate. So I set a further boundary that if others wanted to engage in political or religious conversations, I would leave the room, the house, the restaurant, etc. One way or the other, I would choose to protect myself from drama.

It’s taken a while, but year after year, these boundaries have been more and more respected. This Christmas season was pretty much free from drama centered around thorny subjects. Instead we all did a good job of choosing to put love first.

Putting love first requires a good deal of humility, understanding and empathy. We have to be humble enough to acknowledge that being loving is more important than being right. But to truly be loving of others, we have to work at better understanding them and what makes them tick. And we have to have empathy with each person’s situation in life as we come to understand them better. We are all broken, some of us more than others, and it’s important that we empathize with each other’s brokenness if we are to put love first.

In my family we are putting love first even though it can be difficult. It requires that we accept the unacceptable about each other. Sometimes my family members post things on Facebook, for example, that make my soul cringe. I don’t understand how they could see things the way that they do, but I have learned to love them beyond their beliefs and behaviors when I don’t agree with them.

We don’t have to agree on anything to be kind and loving toward each other. Hopefully that love will provide needed conversion and salvation for all of us as we grow in being human beings.

Recovery has taught me much about honoring myself and others, and thus about setting proper boundaries, which require that love come first. If you are hungry for peace within yourself and your family, get to a recovery group like CODA or Al-Anon today and start the journey to wholeness.