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Zoom Thanksgiving May Be the Best Thing You Do This Year
How to nurture your relationships from a distance
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…
