Families in sticky situations

This week in class we talked about families under stress and how families can choose their own destiny at this point and become stronger together or fall apart like a very delicious crumble cookie. everybody deals with stress differently. everybody needs stress no matter how much we hate and despise stress we all need it. we talked about studies done on NASA astronauts and how when they leave earth and go to the space station or out into space, their bodies change in a way that they cannot physically hold themselves up. and the reason for this is because there is no stress on their bodies currently. gravity is nonexistent and their bones and muscles and all the things that make her bodies are under that stress and cannot be strong enough to support themselves. Therefore, we need stress so that we can function as human beings.

now, this is hard when the stress can make or break a family. we talked a lot about how a family can grow closer together or they can pull away from each other. some of the stressful situations we talked about were infidelity, death, job loss, major medical issues, and ultimately divorce. now we have a whole another week dedicated to divorce, so I will not get into divorce in this block but keep your eyes out for one in a couple weeks. one thing we really talked about was death and this is the death of apparent death of a grandchild death of a child and how death can really impact a family.

now just coming out of the historic year of 2020 there are thousands of stories of death and hardship.  my family is one of these unlucky families who experienced a lot of death and hardship in 2020. I think somebody who is really taking it hard is my grandma on my mom's side. my grandma not only lost her husband of almost 60 years, but she also lost her sister. my grammas support that had so many different legs of Support from her original family from her family from extended family and anybody that is considered family was lost in kind of broken this past year. because of how contagious everything is she could not go outside and visit friends or family, but she experiences this. this is big stress that impacts the family.

because of how crazy the COVID-19 pandemic was I personally have not seen my extended family in over a year. now some good things have come from this crazy COVID-19 pandemic we continually talk and interact with our family over zoom and any other virtual platforms. we got to experience almost everybody's birthday through a virtual platform. before the COVID-19 pandemic when it was your birthday my extended family would call you up on the phone and scream happy birthday over the phone. but now when it is somebody's birthday in our family we gathered and have our own cake and we sing happy birthday and blow out candles and we have a great conversation over zoom. we got to connect with our family through virtual means instead of in person. I got to have my birthday with my family over zoom my brothers and my mom got to have their birthday over zoom as well and everybody is so excited when we get to do a zoom birthday.

we are one of the families that when we get stressed out or anything gets hard, we decide to pull together when times get tough. I think this is important in a family because at this moment when we are stressed and anxious, we really need support from other people at least I do when I am stressed and anxious. family is important it is what we take with us. they are there for us no matter what and they are therefore anything that happens in our lives. there are hundreds of children out in the world that is being raised by grandparents or aunts and uncles or third cousins. when things happen, people step up to the plate, hit a home run, and just support and help people. I think this is become really clear especially in this past year with COVID because everybody needed support and help people suddenly passed away even though they were healthy and strong, and we just needed people there.

family is important and even when we are stressed and anxious, we need their help. family is amazing and we need to find our family and keep it close because we never know what is around the next corner.