It is the most traumatic time of the yeeearrrr.
How are y’all holding up? On a scale of 1 to 10, how homicidal have you been feeling?
More seriously, whether your family of origin is still part of your life, or like me, you’re quietly happy to be alone with old movies and snacks, or whether you’re one of those lucky ones who misses a family that felt like home—or somewhere in between all of that—this piece is for you.
I used to believe that there were perfect families living out there, and I was just unlucky. But the more I talk to people, the longer I am a somatic practitioner, the more I realise that all families have their fair share of dysfunction. Of course, some are way more dysfunctional than others. But I think that when we focus on which family is dysfunctional and which isn’t, we miss a big part of the story:
how each of us adapts, survives, and carries patterns long after the home we grew up in. It’s not about measuring perfection—it’s about noticing the ways our bodies, hearts, and relationships still bear the traces of what we experienced, and how we might begin to relate to ourselves and others differently.
Most importantly, what we miss when we hyper-focus on perfection is that the (nuclear) family itself—its very creation to serve patriarchy—is structured around dysfunction. It is a symptom of the dysfunction itself, supremacy.
For many of us, the family is where we first learned oppression.
Today, I’m offering you a full essay for you to find out about your Family Role—what it might reveal about your origin story, and how you can slowly find your way (back) to yourself. How you might even “parent” your fully integrated adult self, if that’s what you want—through the lens of some of my favorite “Christmas movies.” They’re not really Christmas movies, but this is the time of year I keep rewatching old favorites. Do you do that, too?
Disclaimer: I was born in the 90s, so all of my movie references are truly fucked up. I am going to therapy.
I wrote a full zine about Family Conflict Roles, and it will be offered for free to paid subscribers at the end of this essay!
I have talked about how I attempted twice to take my own life, and how the neglect I have survived has wired me for obsession. I have also unpacked how the (nuclear) family emerged as a concept not just to organize households, but to create systems of othering on the scale of the nation—while simultaneously exploiting female bodies for the unpaid production of labor and care for the benefit of who? The financial ‘elite’ class.
I think I’ve said it all. I think I’ve said so little.
What you have to know is that I really didn’t like my (white) family of origin. And still don’t. Like any other kid who felt completely estranged from their family, I spent a while thinking there must have been a mistake. I am not their child. This is exactly the feeling captured in a movie I adored as a kid: La Vie Est Un Long Fleuve Tranquille (Life is a Long Quiet River, 1988).
Except that… the older I get, the more I look exactly like the product of my parents having had sex once. So… that’s that.
Those are my parents at my age now:
