Our Relational Patterns Across Cultures

I recently returned from a trip with my family where I got to connect with my partner/husband’s family who flew in from Japan, which is part of his Lineage and Ancestry. It was a powerful experience to get to witness our Children and my husband connecting with his Family and Lineage. What a Gift.

In my observations, I became increasingly Curious—an element I have been trying to cultivate more of as of late. I was Curious about their ability to relate to one another. I became Curious how easeful that seemed to come for them. I witnessed my own Children experience a level of safety and security that they often reserve for a select few. I became especially Curious about what and how the Japanese culture relate to one another from Childhood through adulthood.

What does that initial relationship with a caregiver look like and feel like in a Japanese family? What I have perceived as “distant” or “critical” perhaps is a way that one’s culture preserves and maintains their ways of collectivism. And maybe it appears “harsh” or “cold” in a country where a particular flavor of attunement to Children is encouraged. And perhaps this might also be preserving ways of Individualism in the United States?” With neither being “good” or “bad”, just different from one another.

When you consider and sit with your own Cultural identity, how much of how your people relate(d) to one another is/was an adaptation due to circumstances? How have your/our Peoples related to one another and engaged in close relations? And how much/in what ways has Colonialism and Supremacy Culture influenced our relational patters with each other? In other words, is what I perceive as “distant” an adaptation to another’s own colonial histories and traumas?

And here is a BIG question I keep going back to: What does is mean and look like to be “securely attached” across multi-cultural relationships and contexts? Especially when we are investing in relations where there is more/less emphasis on particular behaviors and ways of relating?

To begin to answer parts of some of these questions, we need and must work to better understand and hold more Curiosity with our relationships within our own identities (Culturally and otherwise). Including the many layers and parts or Identities hold and that our ancestors may have held.

I have curiosity and am learning everyday how to better relate to my partner in ways that honor his cultural identities as well as my own lineages, boundaries and needs—questioning SO much along the way. Cross-cultural relations are not easy. And they are so powerful. Necessary.

In the spirit of inviting curiosity, this fall, I am so excited to be a guest with my dear friend, Elizabeth Gillette, LCSW and Mo LeBlanc, LCMHC and their offering, HELD. In my guest experience with HELD, we will be exploring our Identities and the parts they may hold. I am so excited to facilitate an experience where we will move through and begin to explore possible wounds our Identities might be holding—wounds that may be impacting our interpersonal relationships, especially across multicultural groups and Peoples.  I will facilitate this through the wisdom of my own Lineage as well as concepts of Internal Family Systems (IFS). I hope you will join Us in the beautiful offering of HELD --and the medicine that can come from it. You and your People deserve the Medicine. We ALL deserve relations of nourishment and Love—especially when the Systems around us can feel and be so overwhelming. Lets get Curious together. See you there.