Family Touchstones

Whew! 2020 was a crazy year!

I actually wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve said or heard that phrase. I’m over it. I’m over the year, over the crazy, and over talking about it. I’m ready to move on.

There was a lot of grieving last year over the loss of normalcy, loss of traditions, loss of celebrations, loss of… everything. The grief was real. It actually still is real. I’m still grieving and I’m sure some of you are, too. I think somewhere in our hearts we were hoping 2021 would start, and we would realize 2020 had all been a blip. Like maybe the world had slid into some kind of alternate comic book universe, and we would slide back into place with the ball drop. Or maybe that was just me and I’ve been watching too many movies.

I have to say, we are only seven days into this year and so far, I am not impressed. If this was a free ten-day trial I would already be deleting my credit card information and cancelling. I have decided, however, to lay this year out ahead of me with some family touchstones. I don’t want to waste another year grieving what we missed doing.

I’m going to share some of these touchstones for you. They’re nothing radical, just family ideas and activities we can do together so when we reach the end of the year, we won’t feel like we missed out. Some of these are things we have been doing for many years and some are ideas I’ve only now decided to implement. Take what you like, add your own, share with your friends, or come up with your own list!

Creating touchstones doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, or any money at all. The idea is that you create moments of joy with your family. These moments can be called upon any time a little joy is needed! And most of these moments can happen any time, even during a world-wide pandemic. So when days seem crazy and nothing feels normal, you have moments of joy to reach for and remember that normal is relative – it’s joy that matters.