News — Family
DEEPENING FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS WITH WOMEN & THEIR FATHERS AND SONS: STEP BY STEP
Posted by Lisa Johnson on
When I was little, every Sunday morning started by walking with my dad “to get the paper.” Instead of The New York Times being delivered to our house, he liked to go down to the local drugstore for it, and I would accompany him. As the eldest child, my sister still a toddler and at home with my mom, I basked in his full attention. The neighborhood I lived in was called Indian Village, and all of the streets were named after Native American tribes. Probably less for tradition and more as a deterrent for cars, almost every...
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Precious and Valuable: Finding Personal Significance in Family Possessions
Posted by Lisa Johnson on
My mother is the kind of person who saves everything, including the unimportant, and over the decades, it’s taken over her and my father’s house. Within weeks of my sisters and I going off to college, our bedrooms were transformed into what appeared to be retail storage space for her clothing, as round chrome store-bought racks became centerpieces we had to squeeze around whenever we came home for a visit, the cold metal sagging under dozens of cheap dresses and floral pant sets. I don’t even remember her wearing most of them. To assuage everyone’s complaints and because she actually...
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- Tags: Childhood, Connecting, Death of Loved One, Family, Hoarding, Identity, Middle Age Life, Mother & Daughter, Relationships, Remembrance, Tough Life Decisions, Womens Issues
What Gets Us Through: Trauma and the Importance of Physical Strength in Healing
Posted by Lisa Johnson on
After nearly eighteen years of a fairly stable relationship, I learned that my husband had begun an affair with a girl thirty years his junior. Stunning for anyone, yes, but more so was that my partner, whose judgment I had always respected, confessed that he and the girl had actually never met. Several sites linking her to German porn made no difference; he was convinced she was his soulmate and promised to marry her within two weeks of their email correspondence. A few months into the rocky navigation of all attempts to save a doomed marriage, my son's best friend shot himself in the head...
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How to Throw The Best Funeral Party Ever: For Jim
Posted by Lisa Johnson on
First, fall desperately in love with one of the classiest women you can imagine. Live and be with her for half a lifetime, and become her best friend. Know her deeply. Know her so well that you decide to throw a celebration for her 80th birthday. It will be the first huge party anyone has organized just for her, and keep it a big surprise. Weeks will pass, and no one will slip up. Get very excited. And when she goes into the hospital from fatigue two weeks beforehand, when the long term serious illness is discovered, don't cancel anything. ...
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- Tags: Best Funeral, Best Party, Connection, Death of Loved One, Eulogy, Family, Happiness, Lifelong Love, Make a Sad Occasion into Something Good, Relatives, Remembrance, Saying Goodbye with Class
Saying Goodbye to My Fancy Aunt Ruth
Posted by Lisa Johnson on
One of my favorite relatives, my dad’s older sister, Ruth, was supposed to turn 80 this Friday, and for weeks, a big birthday party was being planned for her this coming weekend. But yesterday morning, I learned that she had died the night before, and everything has been completely upended. It’s so strange to lose someone you have known your entire life, someone who in a fairly small family, has always been a fixture. She lived about four hours away, but often traveled through the area, as she and her long-time boyfriend and partner had an antiques business together, and...
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- Tags: Affirmation, Antiques, Best Smile, Childhood, Connection, Death of Loved One, Eulogy, Family, Happiness, Love, Relatives, Remembrance