When I approached Berks County Living about writing for them, I asked for space to more closely connect with the community through my storytelling. We developed the concept of Living Well, a blog dedicated to what it means to be well, and to live well, in our home town. I’ve begun to weave my personal stories into Living Well because I believe storytelling is what will begin to heal the divide in our nation. People will toss around the reasons for this divide, but there’s no denying its existence. I’m interested in how we heal those spaces between us. The quickest way I’ve learned to do this in my own life is through vulnerability and intention.
In thinking about this month’s theme, Gift Guides and the Holidays, I wanted to dive into how to use the practice of gift giving with the intention of making true connections. Some of the most divided conversations in our country happen during the holidays between family, and the thought of spending time with each other is sometimes approached like a checklist. You know, like the ones we tend to carry around with us when buying presents for the holidays. We buy presents for people, even though we may have a difficult time even agreeing on something or don’t really understand one another. Those spaces remain, and the divide continues. I have a theory that the simple act of giving an intentional gift can be enough to close those spaces, or begin to. It will require us to get vulnerable, with ourselves and with each other. What every human craves inside of them is connection; we want to truly be seen. This is a way we can cultivate that space.
What I propose is that we gift each other this season with things or experiences that tell each other, “I see you.” We normally give gifts from a space of what we love about someone, or from what we are trying to tell them about where we stand. For example, “I love you, so I got you this fancy and expensive electrical toothbrush because I knew you asked for it.” (An actual gift from my mother-in-law, and arguably the best one I got that holiday - that toothbrush rules.) She wanted to show me that she cares about the things I need; that’s the space a lot of us shop from, and it is a good space. I’m not here to say we are giving gifts for selfish reasons, because most of us truly love the people we exchange with. What I’m here to say is that when we shift the intention behind it to show those we love that they are seen, it is a level of connection that is different than checking a box of obligation.
My mother-in-law has already started doing this, potentially without even realizing it. She has begun to show me and my husband that she sees us, and it has significantly shifted how we connect. This woman figured out how to make a fully vegan stuffed squash at Thanksgiving last year; she has likely eaten a turkey every single year of her life and was understandably surprised to be making this for her son when she used to make him liverwurst sandwiches. It required her to be vulnerable, and my husband absolutely sees his relationship with her differently because of it. When thinking about her and setting our intentions for the holidays this year, I have realized that she likes the process of sitting around a tree and unwrapping beautiful wrapping paper. She loves getting a cake on birthdays, and singing the song, and blowing out candles. She says fondly, “It’s what we do!” And it is, they keep things going for everything they have a tradition for. We share wildly different political views and there are few things we agree upon when it comes to how to handle issues in our country; we also have very different beliefs around religion and god. She has a love for sports that I will never, ever, understand; and she will likely laugh at that. She knows how I feel about the baseball and the football things. Her beliefs and her loves are deeply steeped in family, tradition, and how things have always been…nostalgia. (My life has been dedicated to dismantling traditions and breaking rules.) I love her; she created my life-partner. And she has demonstrated that she is beginning to see us.
My intention this holiday is to show her that I see her too, even if I don’t always see things from her point-of-view. My gift to her could look like a book about Donald Trump wrapped in pretty wrapping paper with a bow, given specifically on Christmas day - because she loves him and she believes in the sanctity of celebrating a holiday on the actual day it occurs. I will tell you what, it stresses me out adhering to specific dates; I do not share those beliefs about Mr. Trump in the least - but I will not spontaneously burst into flames getting her that book, or betray how I feel about things in doing so. When we go to church with her and my father-in-law to celebrate their faith, I will not be betraying my gods and goddesses by observing Christmas mass. (I am pagan.) I will simply need to be vulnerable and willing to cross into her space, and I will live! Showing people we see them requires us to meet them where they are. It requires us to be so solid in who we are that we are willing to be open to holding space for people and their beliefs without necessarily changing ourselves in the process. A big part of “living well” is living in a way that allows us to be connected with the people around us, even if it means breaking or bending the rules of society a little bit. Rules in our society say that because I have certain beliefs and ideals, I shouldn’t buy something in support of Donald Trump and I shouldn’t participate in mass in a Catholic church. But when I allow myself to be vulnerable for a moment to break those rules, to show my mother-in-law that I see her and I recognize what is important to her, I create a space for us to be connected in a way we wouldn’t be if we each stayed on our side of the lines. And that should be the highest goal for all of us this year - to get connected with people on a deeper level.
As you approach this holiday season and your gift-giving, I want to ask you to sit with your intentions prior to creating your list. I invite you to come from a place of showing the people around you that you see them. Choose gifts or create experiences that illustrate your understanding of who they are as a person, whether you agree with their beliefs or not. It is never a bad place to gift-give from where you are in your heart, like we normally do. But what could it look like if we shifted our gift-giving practice to give from a place of standing in the other person’s shoes, or from where their heart is? This practice requires us to step back and surrender our current understanding of a person, or to drop our opinions on what we think they want. It requires us to be vulnerable in approaching them, because it may require us to ask questions to become clear on who they are. We have to get over ourselves a little bit; that’s what it means to be vulnerable. This will certainly require us to cross into those spaces between us to see each other. And that, my friends, is the point - the point of this post, and the point of why we are here. The point of why the holidays exist, deep down, is to connect. To do that, we must show up to heal the divide between us. I believe gift-giving with intention and purpose, to show people they are seen, is a way we can begin to do that.
Alli is a local storyteller, creative professional, and book-nerd who grew up loving Berks County. She is a communications professor at Alvernia University, and the Director of Marketing for a national project management firm. When she isn't reading, writing or teaching, you can find her practicing yoga with her husband, hiking Nolde Forest with her pup, or hanging out with family in a local brewery.
