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Welcome to episode 183 of The Nonanxious Leader podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. I'm back from my family reunion, and I thought it would be great to reflect on what I experienced and how it helps us to understand families of origin. Before I get into the details, it's important to give you some history. My mother was born in Seattle, Washington in 1923. Both her parents immigrated from Japan at the turn of the 20th century. She was the second of six children, but her older brother died when he was only seven. When my mom was five, in an accidental death. This made my mom the oldest of five children. My grandfather owned a wholesale fish business in Seattle along with his two older brothers, and in 1933, during the midst of the Depression, he sent his wife and his five children. So my grandmother and my mom and her four siblings back to Hiroshima to live with family so that he could rebuild the business and also care for one of his brother's widows. There's a lot more to this story, but suffice to say that my mother and her siblings ended up staying in Japan until 1947. My grandmother actually came back to the US.

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In the late 30s, but my mother and her siblings elected to stay in Japan. This had become their home, and they decided to stay there. When Hiroshima was bombed in 1945, four of the five children survived. The youngest, my Aunt Nobu, was 15, and she was never found after the blast. The four surviving children, three girls and a boy, came back to the US. In 1947 and all made lives there. Three decades later, my one uncle moved back to Japan, where he lived until his death in 2014. At this point in time, my mother and her two sisters, each two years apart, each were married and had children and remained in the United States. This is the backdrop for the family reunions that we have been celebrating every other year since 1997. The first family reunion took place in 1997, and it wasn't even designed to be a reunion. My mom's youngest sister was turning 70, and her children decided that they would throw a party and invite their aunts and uncles and cousins. At this point, my grandparents had already passed on. We had such a great experience that we decided we would do this every other year, and those gatherings occurred up until 2019.

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We were supposed to gather again in 2021, but of course, if you think back to a year ago, things were quite uncertain. We actually made a decision to postpone early in 2021 because we weren't really sure what was happening at that time, the vaccine had just rolled out. We weren't even sure how many people could get it, whether it would be effective and whether or not it would be safe to gather. So we decided to punt. But that meant that we were now coming to 2022 and the possibility that we could gather again. In the fall of last year, as Delta had waned and before Omicron has hit, we all decided, let's go ahead and reserve houses. Let's go ahead and plan on coming together in 2022. We decided to do it in the cascades of western Washington, not too far from Seattle. Earlier this year, anxiety started to surface about whether it would be safe to gather. The obachans, which is the Japanese word for grandmothers, or the aunties, as we sometimes call them, are now 99. That's my mom. 99, 97 and 95. They're still in reasonably good health, moving a little slower, not too much short term memory, but able to gather for a family reunion.

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And as we say, nobody wants to kill the obachans by giving them covid. As it turns out, each of the three sisters has one child who is a doctor. The doctor in my family happens to be my sister, and then there are two cousins who are also doctors. So we decided that we would get the three doctors together. They would POW wow, they would make a decision on if we can gather and if so, under what conditions. The following guidelines were set by the three doctors. Each attendee had to be fully vaccinated with a booster shot received by June 11, 2022. That's two weeks prior to the beginning of the reunion. Children ages five to eleven did not need a booster shot. If somebody was initiating a primary vaccination, that is, if they decided they wanted to get vaccinated to attend the reunion, they did not need a booster shot. Everyone was asked to test upon arrival and then two days after arrival, as well as self-monitor for covid 19 symptoms. Finally, everyone was asked to mask indoors around the three aunties/obachans. We knew that this was going to exclude certain people who had chosen not to be vaccinated, but we decided that this was what was best overall for the matriarchs of our families.

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I am guessing that our family is no different than many, if not most families. We have people who have differing opinions on COVID and its severity, on vaccines, on masking, and we did what we could to make the best decision for the common good, and especially for the oldest ones among us. This created a quandary for me that I kind of ignored, but eventually started to talk about it because one of my cousins, whom I like very much, I know, had elected not to be vaccinated, and I was willing to let him come and be exempt from the rules. When I mentioned this to a family member and to my wife. Both of them reminded me that there are other family members who weren't going to be able to attend because of this, and that wouldn't be fair. This illustrates the tension between self-differentiation and surrounding togetherness pressure. You see, I knew this cousin would be cautious around my mom and her two sisters. I knew that this cousin would be willing to mask and would not want to put any of the older women at risk. At the same time, just because I am comfortable with that, doesn't mean other people are comfortable with it.

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And we had agreed on established guidelines. I could have chosen to take a stand and say, no, I think we should let this cousin come. That could be considered self-differentiation. But I elected to go along with the established guidelines. The important point here, I think, is taking responsibility for self. So if I had agreed to the guidelines but then got resentful and dysfunctional about it, then that would not be healthy, that would not be self differentiation. Choosing to go along with the guidelines and owning that and saying, this is my choice is what it means to be self-differentiated. I also realized that for my own sake, I needed to talk to this cousin. So I did call the cousin a couple of weeks before the reunion. We chatted. They said they had actually elected to get vaccinated but had not been boosted. And they decided they were going to stay away and that was fine with them. What I will tell you about all this is it created quite a bit of anxiety in me. Being a nonanxious presence does not mean you won't feel anxiety inside. It's learning how to regulate it. It's learning how to think through it.

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It's learning how to not react spontaneously, but to be intentional about how you manage the situation. What made things worse for me was that I called my cousin on a Saturday, I believe, and got voicemail and left a message and the cousin didn't respond until the following Tuesday. So in those intervening days, there were all kinds of stories going on in my head about what was going on. And what I realized was I didn't want to pursue. I didn't want to keep calling back and bugging. But at the same time I needed to manage how I was feeling so that it wouldn't drive me crazy. As I'm guessing is with most people, I sometimes was okay with this. I was able to set it aside and say, there's nothing I can do. And then there were other times when the anxiety would just build up in me and I couldn't stop thinking about it. But I actually couldn't do anything about it either unless I wanted to just keep calling and be a pest. In the end, we had a great conversation. I was happy that we remained emotionally connected and I was able to let go of that part of my desire for the reunion and go ahead and attend the reunion, feeling a sense of peace about that.

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The reunion itself was great, but not without its rough spots. And that's where I want to share a few reflections. At this year's reunion, we had about 70 people staying in seven different houses, all reasonably close to each other. And the way we do reunions is, during the day, everybody just does what they want to do. Now, sometimes there are group activities. A couple of days, people play golf. One day, people went on a rafting trip. One day we all gather to tie dye or reunion tshirts. But in general, most days people have the time to themselves with their families, cousins, whoever they want to gather with. And then we all get together for dinner at the largest house. At the first dinner, it became clear that not everybody was masking indoors around the antes. I was not too worried about this because the weather was good, and I made sure that the doors were open and we had lots of fresh air in the room, but there were some grumblings about it. I elected to wear my mask indoors according to the guidelines, but I also made the decision not to try to convince other people to follow the guidelines.

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I didn't feel like it was my battle to try to fight. As long as I felt like I could keep my mom and her sisters safe, then I wasn't too worried about it. I was greeting people at the front door when one of my cousins family showed up, and they were all masked. And I said, well, some people aren't masking in there, but the windows and doors are open, so it's really up to you to do what you want to do. And one of the cousins children said, we're just following orders. It was clear that they were told to be masked by their parent, and that's what they did. My primary reflection on this is that all families are dysfunctional. You can agree on guidelines, but then people don't want to follow. And the question is, what do you do? I elected not to get into a conflict of wills. I wasn't going to tell people whether to mask or not to mask. I did mask indoors, but I wasn't going to get in somebody's face if they didn't. And as I mentioned, I wanted to make sure there was enough fresh air in the room that I felt that the obachans would be safe.

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In the end, everyone managed. Some people grumbled, some didn't care, and we made it through the week. Well, our reunions typically run for a week. This time it was Saturday to Saturday, and on Thursday morning, the group texts started going around that one of my cousins had tested positive for covet. They started having symptoms Thursday morning, and they tested and they were positive. After some discussion, it was decided that there would be no more group dinners. And each family, that is the family of the aunties or Obachons, would gather with their own pod, with their own group to have dinner. So we didn't totally shut it down, but we did do what we could to avoid any additional spread, or at least minimize additional spread. We did get the Antes and the Obachans together on Friday night. The last night we brought them over to one of the houses. They were all masked this time. Everybody did mask around them, but we gave them some time to be together and to say goodbye. Nobody said it, but most of us were thinking, we don't know if all three of them will be together again. And that leads to my second reflection, which is even though our families are dysfunctional, when you get that many people together, you get people complaining, you get people talking about other family members to you.

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That happened to me multiple times. Even though we are dysfunctional, it is so worth it. The generational bonds that are created are priceless. This became really apparent to me because my kids who were born in the started going to reunions when they were very young. They had been seeing their second cousins every two years for the last two plus decades, and typically this is the only time they see them. My two aunts live on the West Coast and most of their families are on the West Coast. We live on the East Coast, so we don't see my cousins and their children very often except for these reunions. But now that my kids and their second cousins are mostly in their 30s, they actually will look each other up when they're traveling to one of the other person's hometowns. This has happened multiple times where one of my kids has been visited by one of their second cousins when they happen to be in town and they go out for a drink or they go to a football game together. But the mere fact that they would even take the time to say, hey, I'm in town, do you want to get together?

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Tells me that there is a connection that goes beyond what you might expect by just seeing each other one week every two years. As I mentioned at the outset, we really just stumbled upon this idea of a biannual reunion. It started with my aunt's 70th birthday back in 1997, but it has become something that is almost foundational. It's bedrock on my mom's side of the family. And now during this reunion, we are seeing third cousins, the great grandchildren of the aunties, the Obachons, playing together, getting to know each other, bonding with each other. I am grateful that we stumbled upon this tradition and I am hopeful that even after the first generation is gone, the Antes and the Obachians pass on that we will continue this tradition because I believe we all see the value in it, despite how dysfunctional we are. And I would encourage you that even if you don't do this now, you can be that first generation. You can start doing something. It doesn't have to be as elaborate, but something where you get together on some kind of regular basis, maybe once a year, once every two years with family members, because it is the intergenerational bonds that are life giving to a family of origin.

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Thankfully, that's something that we as a family have learned from experience. That's it for episode 183. A little bit of a different episode, a little more personal, but something I felt might be helpful to share. You can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com and you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. Until next time, thanks and goodbye.

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