Family. This word has a great deal of meaning to each individual, and the meaning means so many different things to everyone. For me, I was fortunate to have grown up with parents that loved me, and sisters that also loved me too, although we often had times, especially my older sister and I, that we didn’t like each other very much. I think, as I look back on those times, that we both were emerging into who we were to become out of such different chrysalises. Who we ultimately became was so completely different from one another; it makes a lot of sense that we didn’t have much of a connection early on to one another. I grew to love my older sister in such a profound way when I saw how she interacted and loved my own children. One of my favorite photos I have of her is her, in a bathing suit with sea soaked hair, with my two daughters, donned in snorkeling get up complete with flippers, having emerged from the cove at our Hawaiian resort. After seeing Jaws in 1970, my fear of sharks precluded me from getting any further than waist deep in that water (I know, I know – a ridiculous result from a movie in which you can literally see the cables pulling the fake shark in almost every angle). As for my younger sister, she and I grew to like each other, a bit earlier. Being four years older than my younger sister, I just didn’t appreciate her until we were both young adults. She has the biggest heart of anyone I know and she parents so much like I do that we quickly became each other’s go to once we had children. When my sister, Kellie, hugs you, she holds on for an extended time and it is in that time that you feel your heart connect to hers. She is a true gift to this world and I cannot imagine the world without her. I’ve come to understand that my family, this family of mine from my early years, was not the norm for most, or at least that is true for my extended family, my family of friends, as I learned later in life. Having two stable parents that love you seems now to me, in retrospection, to have been a luxury that I so didn’t appreciate at the time because I thought it was what everyone else had. That just wasn’t the case for so many that I know today but it gave me a foundation that I have so appreciated. Being a parent, and now a grandparent, I have felt a love that I never knew before my first daughter, Kaitlyn, was born. I remember every minute of the day of her birth – looking at her for the first time and being overwhelmed with emotion knowing a love so deep as it pierced my heart and opened my level of emotion so vast, that I knew that if anything ever happened to her, I wouldn’t know how to go back. I felt like a fish out of water at every turn, wondering how a hospital just gives a baby to someone without an extensive competency test. Every day my goal was just to keep the little human alive and I honestly got little done other than that. Ever so subtly, so subtle in fact that I didn’t even see it, I got a little more comfortable and confident in our routine. I remember a time when we had just been at the doctors for Kaitlyn’s 4-week check up – she had weighed in at 8 pounds, 6 ounces. Following the check up, I headed to the store to pick up a ham for some special occasion. It was around this time that I had started to feel like I was getting the hang of this mothering thing, being able to comfortably haul Kaitlyn in her car seat down the three flights of stairs and snap her in and out of the car seat holder in the back of my small car. I’d also managed to keep her alive for four weeks which, honestly, had caused me so much angst early on that I spent most nights waking up hourly to listen to her breathing – but even that was subsiding a bit. On that day of her check up, as I perused the hams, I selected one that looked about the right side for our gathering and tossed it into my cart. As I did this, almost in slow motion, the weight of the ham registered in my mind – it was 8 pounds, 6 ounces. All at once I was filled with terror. The ham and my daughter weighed exactly the same amount. What if I’d mistaken the two? What if I’d carelessly tossed my daughter into the back of the shopping cart instead? What if, what if, what if…at that instant, I was overwhelmed, broke out in a sweat and started crying. I quickly took Kaitlyn’s car seat off the top of the cart and ran to my car, leaving the half full shopping cart alone in the meat aisle. I knew this was irrational even as tears were streaming down my face but I didn’t stop to breath until I quickly got her back up the three floors of stairs and safely back into our apartment. I just couldn’t help it – this love was so new to me and I was so scared that I might lose her. In retrospect, I think hormones were also at play but I still remember the terror I felt on that day, thinking I might do something to loose someone I loved more than anything else in the world. Over the years, and two children later, it wasn’t my love that diminished but my sense of inadequacy and incompetency of being their mom. I didn’t do everything right by any means, but I did what I knew to be right at the time, even when I felt, as so many do, when navigating the waters of pre-teen and teenage years. My family has changed and evolved and expended over the years. For me personally, some of this change came about when I fell in love with and four years later remarried a man that had four children of his own. At the time that we met, our children were very young, the youngest boys being just four years old. My new husband and his children became my family –I came to love those children also as my own. Rarely have I had a member of my family leave – I can count only one and as I see it now, and in light of it all, I now think that her actions were really the result of mental illness, not conscious choice or even within her ability to control. I think that often divorce is a reason for exile of a person from family, however this was not the reality for me. Although divorce is never easy, my ex-husband and I muscled our way through it to find balance for our children, despite the sorrow and anger that was there. Even in those difficult times, he was my family, as was his family who considered me family for 14 years (although there were many years a few of those members wished I was dead to them). Time heals and today my ex-husband and I are great friends – we have a much better relationship than we did when we were married – and our children would not have it any other way. Today my children have grown and become young adults themselves – many now have new people in their own lives – and those people have also come into my family fold. I now have three grandchildren who I love beyond measure – I cannot imagine my life without my little Navy Clark whose little face lights up each and every time I see her. I would not want to be Nani to anyone else. I’m excited to meet those who are still to come. They will enrich my family even more, and in ways I don’t even know yet. As much as I love my family, my family would not be complete without my extended family - my family of friends. I feel fortunate that I have a family that gave me a solid foundation. I am also fortunate that I am blessed to have so many friends that complete the fabric of the tapestry of my life. As I look back over the years of friendships, there are friends that came and stayed a little while; they were here for a period but when that period ended, the friendship sunset as well. I am grateful for those friends and for the lessons they brought and the love that we shared. Interestingly enough, as of late, a few of those friends have reemerged and we’ve reconnected. You know that you’ve had a true heart connection with someone when you connect after 30 years and you seem to take up just where you left off. My friend Donna and I just did that over the phone. Within a few minutes we were laughing and recounting our silly shenanigans so many stories but bikes without brakes and sparks were at the top of the list – I got off the phone after an hour and a half, wiping tears from my eyes from the laughter and feeling so grateful for that reconnection. The same was true with my friend Carolyn – we met for coffee and spent the next three and a half hours together where time literally seemed to stand still. Neither of us realized that it had become dark outside and as we hugged outside of the shop, I knew that my friendship with her had been rekindled. Friends come in and out at different times for different reasons and I so appreciate the fluidity of that. There are work friendships that develop too – I’ve had so many of those as well – sometimes people that you wouldn’t otherwise ever cross paths with, cross paths with you at work – forged over eight plus hours a day, five days a week. I remember meeting my friend Doug at Xerox when we both were working as temps during our summer in between our freshman year at our respective colleges. Doug was a punk rocker – I was not. I was a sorority girl dressed in IZod, penny loafers and headbands. We could not have been more opposite and I think both of our first thoughts when we laid eyes upon one another was “Oh Dear God!” - but somehow, thank God. That summer with Doug was a summer I will never forget. Once we got over our differences, we got to know one another as people so well. We were tasked with a scrounge job – albeit a fairly well paying scrounge job of inventorying Xerox warehouses over that course of that summer. The trouble that we seemed to get into over those three months of work was inconceivable. The highlight or perhaps demise of it, came in early July on the day we began to inventory a new warehouse. In the center of this vacant warehouse (void of any type of supervision) sat a forklift with keys in the ignition. Xerox was so big back then, as evidenced that we had to inventory what they had because there wasn’t a record – with this, we weren’t even sure if Xerox knew that they had this warehouse and that thought gave us some assumed reign as to what we could and couldn’t’ do. We were young and stupid – also evidenced that somehow Doug convinced me to stand on the forklift to see how high it could go – (ok so maybe it was just me that was stupid!). With that, I climbed aboard and up I went, with both of us laughing as we zoomed all over the warehouse for 30 minutes or so. Our conscience then got the best of us and we decided it was time to get to work. Unfortunately the down button on the forklift malfunctioned and despite an hour and a half of trying, I was still stuck two and a half floors up. Doug tried to convince me to jump, which was out of the question in my penny loafers. With that, we had to call our supervisor who was, to state in mildly, not at all pleased. After getting maintenance involved and getting me down, we were then escorted back to Eric’s office to be read the riot act. Additionally we were given very specific instructions as to what was on and off limits for the remainder of our tenure there. Our only tools to be used were flashlights, clipboard and pens. After that incident, we played by the rules with the exception that days after that incident, we discovered a board room in a far back wing of the massive Xerox building with a large television set – it seemed that no one other than Doug and I knew this existed. From that point forward through the rest of our summer there, Doug and I would sit, with feet up on the board room table, eating our lunches and watching All of My Children (something Doug got me hooked on). By the end of the summer, Doug and I had redeemed ourselves and we both actually received a bonus for all of our hard work over the past three months – this was above and beyond our temp agency wages. I left that summer with a Punk Rocker as one of my closest friends and a strange disdain for Erica Cain. I ended up working for Xerox in a different capacity for the next two summers, mostly because of the recommendations made by our boss, Eric. I am so grateful too for having met and befriended Doug that summer, and for the fact that he befriended me. Knowing Doug made me realize that Punk Rockers weren’t strange, nor is anyone else that is different from me – there are just different ways of expression. That understanding has served me well over the next forty years of my life. And lastly, but not at all least, then there are the friends that are just your people. Those are the people that have known you through the good, the bad and the ugly. They are the friends that drop everything for you, to rush over to hold you, to listen and to cry with you during your pain. They are the people that hold you accountable, tell you to get out of bed and come over to get you out of bed if you won’t. Those are the friends that are the glue of it all. I am so fortunate to have those friends, and if you’re reading this, you know who you are. These friends are the super glue of all of the rest of your family – they are family that you didn’t anticipate, but the family that is such the gift. They are the colors in your tapestry – the strength that holds that fabric together through the hardest of times. These are the people that are irreplaceable. As I sit here today I find my self so blessed with my family, all of my family. I look at each and every one of them and feel such a sense of love and of connection. From my parents and sisters, to my children, their “people” and grandchildren, and to everyone else in between. When I consider all of you, all of my family, I truly know the Source of this world is love because when I think of you all, it is only love, such a great love, that fills my heart. And that means the world and everything else to me.
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AuthorKristyn Baker, CECP, is an intuitive energy healer and writer. Her forty years of working with energy medicine has evolved as she has expanded her own healing abilities and understandings. Combining her abilities as an Emotion Code practitioner and Simpson Protocol practioner with her intuitive insights and channeling, opens opportunities to heal and to release what no longer serves. . Archives
January 2023
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