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A former publication from Medium on personal development. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

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Zoom Thanksgiving May Be the Best Thing You Do This Year

3 min readNov 20, 2020

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Photo: Cavan Images/Getty Images

We think of Thanksgiving as a time to reconnect with family — but for many of us, even in normal times, the reality doesn’t exactly match up. Often, Thanksgiving dinner comes with a generous helping of awkwardness that can put us on edge. This social tension may also get in the way of our ability to nurture family relationships: Maybe you use your spouse or kid as a buffer to keep people from asking probing questions about your job. Perhaps you use alcohol as a crutch. Some families have football games blaring to keep the discussion away from politics.

These defensive tactics might keep us calm, but they don’t help us really get to know the people we call family. So how can you use this year’s bizarre circumstances to facilitate more meaningful conversations with relatives? How can you be intentional about relationship-building when your normal holiday routines are upended?

You need to be curious

Humans are storytellers at heart. It’s how we connect with others. So as you share a Zoom meal or a holiday phone call, consider asking your parents, siblings, grandparents, and others to fill in the missing pieces of your family’s story. Is there an ancestor you know little about? Do…

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Forge
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Published in Forge

A former publication from Medium on personal development. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Kathleen Smith
Kathleen Smith

Written by Kathleen Smith

Kathleen Smith is a therapist and author of the books Everything Isn’t Terrible and True to You. She writes about anxiety, relationships, and Bowen theory.