Family and F/friends

This is a photograph of  my fiftieth birthday with my family in 1996. It is incredible that now John and I have ten and a half shared grandchildren.My immediate family has grown up and have families of their own.

We are quite close and forgiving, Rachel, my niece, the youngest girl in the photo, is to be married this year.  Missing is my eldest son from America

He is our high flyer. Dr. Nigel D. Browning. Every family I think has  a high-flyer and /or a black sheep, although Rachel flies pretty high herself.  I have always been in the black sheep category. Fifteen years ago my daughter gave me an innocuous titled book called "The Grandmother's Book"  It asked simple questions like, " What do you remember about your father/ siblings/school."

Well, this set me off on a journey of self discovery. After studying for a BA in Humanities, majoring in literature, this book sent me to Person Centred Art Therapy and a Diploma in Psychology. What a can of worms.  Enough said that I visited the resting place of my dead father who I didn't ever see again after I was thirteen due to my parents divorce.

You may agree with Philip Larkin who said "Parents Fuck you up." but families also give strength, community, love and support. It is really how people respond to their backgrounds and their traumas that make the personality.

There are rifts in families but there are also long lost relatives that go to enormous lengths to find one another. I veer to the love and support side. My brother has a strong sense of family and I try to be a good grandmother.  This year I am hoping to publish the "Grandmother's Book" for private members of our family and put my heart and soul into it.

F/friends

I feel that they are like deep warm pockets in the overcoat of my life.  There are the friendship couples with whom we have meals and times out. There are my fibromyalgia friends who understand physical pain and the life bending condition and to whom I can talk frankly. There are my craft friends who are my inspiration when there is a fallow time.  There are my writing friends at Millhouse Retreat who test my intellectual creativity.  And then there are my spiritual Friends, they are the testing ones, the difficult ones, and so it should be.

There are also the friends that I have lost touch with and the long distance friends, energy is needed for these.

And Friends on Facebook. I love new technology, I am not very expert at times but find it also a creative and exciting medium.

Thanks for reading and  being my online F/friend.