I am fascinated by what traits people tend to have depending on their birth order. I have frequently seen the oldest sibling being the one who was expected to be the responsible one, the more take charge person, the more conservative one. It is impossible to take one person and assume they will automatically have such traits given their birth order though.

Many factors can influence these typical traits:

• emotionally or physically absent parents, siblings
• age differences
• environmental and economic influences
• sibling personalities
• family size

She’s the kind of woman who you love to have as your friend.

She makes you laugh by telling you silly stories of how she got the guys at work to use vanilla glitter lotion because you know you’d have done the same thing.

She makes you know everything will always be okay.

She makes you cry because you share the same tender memories of when you believed the world was just as real as Pipi Longstockings and that Gilligan’s Island was real.

My grandmother would have been 86 today. A few years back she lost her battle with cancer. What was scary was it was sudden, within a week or so that we even had learned about it. What was a blessing was that we were able to be with her through it.

I feel so fortunate to have known my grandmother as the woman she was. After my mom’s divorce my sister, mother and I moved in with her and my aunt and lived the next 9 years together. My grandmother was an amazing woman who I do not know that I fully appreciated during those early years.

Family amnesia is an appropriate term when things go wrong and you go into denial. Life goes on, the saying goes and no one shall speak the truth. But what happens with the people who know about it and have no one to talk to. It is a destroyer of ones ability to live honestly, but how much honesty is appropriate?

I believe damage comes from unspoken secrets. The damage is not always easily noticed immediately but can have lasting effects. It is amazing how secretive some families are. Is this just out of pride or insecurity? Family balances are delicate, so one rocking the boat can leave the family topside. The pressure is great and therefore no one breaks the code of silence.