In mid August I am off to Colorado to a family reunion of about 70 extended family members that we meet every 4 years. The entire family is Christian and I've always felt like one of the very few black sheep in the family. I would say on a scale from 1-10 they are about at a 4 in their hardcoreness if that makes sense, so they're not as out right aggressive with trying to convert me or bluntly say I'm go to hell though I know that is going on somewhere in their minds.

I've been doing a lot of internal preparation on how to be with my family, how I can relate with them on a deeper level. I've been gifted a few gems through this process. One is to really just be inquisitive with them, to ask them about there hopes, fears and dreams growing up. This will be essential to how I relate with them and will be a great practice of just listening.

Two is to share more openly about who I really am and what excites me about Life. I've realized through preparing for this that I've shut down around expressing myself to my family due to fears of being judged. At the last family reunion I was just coming out of my days of pot, ecstasy, acid and raves, so it was difficult to relate about my Life but now I'm excited about so many bodily activities like massage, contact improv, yoga, watsu, water dance, which are all things that I can share with them through being tactile in how I'm explaining it. One of my main practices while sharing with them is to not judge them when I know they're judging me, which is a great practice in Life.

I also plan on writing a letter to the whole family which I've never done so writing what I'm writing right now is helping, thanks for reading...