Posted: January 2nd, 2010
We begin the New Year, 2010, with an attitude of Gratitude
We have so much to be thankful for…………..
As some of our readers know, the two Co-directors of the Dasi-Ziyad Family Institute are husband and wife team who have a total of 19 children and several grandchildren. Every year, for the past several years, roughly half of these 19 children, many grandchildren, my husband and I, gather at one of our homes to share Thanksgiving with each other. We play games, watch movies, take walks, and eat good delicious meals. We have a special family ritual in which we all write down and then share with each other some of the many reasons we have to be thankful.
This Thanksgiving tradition has specifically involved the ten children that Dasi-Ziyad Family Institute Co-Director Krsnanandini gave birth too and often includes some the other 9 children as well. Years ago, she requested that her children make a special effort to gather together for at least a few days during Thanksgiving time to appreciate the unique and wonderful family that Providence has given us.
We have so much to be thankful for……….
Emerging realizations from the past year help us to increasingly appreciate that family is so important; individuals have a built in support system when families do what they are created to do. Elders in a family pass on healthy family traditions; parents and other adult relatives protect, provide and nourish children who grow to be contributing members of the larger society. Extended families, consisting of grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, parents and other relatives (including adoptive or foster members) along with concerned neighbors make up the village and because it is true that, “It takes a village to raise a child.” A wholesome family is a significant part of an individual’s village.
Unfortunately, increasing technological advances have not been matched with a similar advancement in family and community life. Extended family support systems have decreased like most people’s money these days. And, even nuclear families, consisting of only mother, father and children are dwindling, become less visible on the social scene. What becomes of a country when its families diminish? When more and more children are the products of single parent homes?
At Dasi-Ziyad Family Institute, we work with hundreds of couples, families and individuals each year to empower them with healthy relationship skills that can change the negative family paradigms (e.g. “families aren’t as important as they used to be” “it’s individual achievement that counts” “fathers aren’t so important in a child’s life” “I can do bad all by myself” and on and on) into healthy, growth-enhancing ones (“Teamwork makes the dreamwork”, “what most often separates those who make it and those who don’t is a family support system”; “Healthy relationship skills and values can be learned and with such skills and values, dysfunctional families can become thriving successful ones” )
So, during this time, we are thankful for the opportunity to be agents of change; to be instruments to provide proven communication and other relationship skills — to couples before and after marriage, to teens and others to prepare them for healthy relationships and to community groups, agencies and businesses.
To all of our readers and clients, we pray for this to be your best year yet! May you and your families be encouraged to share kindness and pleasant times and act with spiritual principles in your daily lives.
