Traveling with family for the holiday vacation, I went to Mass on the “Feast of the Holy Family.” The church, in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is one of the missions found by Padre Junipero Serra in the 1700s. Amidst this history, the priest brought us to the present moment through his own family roots.
“Father Jim” described how as a boy, because one of his parents was Canadian Native American, he spent summers on a reservation. When he was home with his Anglo nuclear family, he learned the rules of that family with one mother and one father. However, on the reservation, he was taught that the family was the entire community so that every elder was to be listened to, and everyone younger was to be cared for.
This priest reminded the congregation that today the family comes in many forms — single parents, intentional families, blended families, same sex parents (not directly mentioned, but surely alluded to), grandparents raising their children’s children, and so on. He noted that, as parents age the burden of their care might become overwhelming for a family. He also stressed how the family, in whatever configuration it forms, needs support of the wider community. What defines a family is care for each other. Yet, there needs to be a community of care that extends to all as well.
A recent article in The Atlantic (November, 2013), “Why We Fight, and Can We Stop?” by Robert Wright discussed the work of psychologist Joshua Greene on the moral issues of good and evil, and emotion versus reason. The article, distilled to its essence, may be this: That perhaps doing good and being kind rests on perceiving the other not as other but as one of “us.” We do to others what they don’t want done to them for the very fact of their otherness. Pie in the sky perhaps, but the less we only consider “our tribe” as human and instead embrace each other as being together on this ark called earth, the better off we will all be. Or, as the priest reminded us, we are all family and we need to act — and enact — on that.
Now there’s a big resolution for the New Year.
* Kayta Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is in private practice in Chadds Ford, Pa. She welcomes comments atMindMatters@DrGajdos.com or 610-388-2888. Past columns are posted towww.drgajdos.com.
About Kayta Gajdos
Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.
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