The Importance of Home & Family.

Growing up at home with your family, you honestly don't think much about how important they are. Your parents are cooking you meals, doing your laundry, and constantly telling you what to do. Your siblings are either your best friends or relentlessly getting on every one of your nerves. You hide out in your room 95% of the time, only leaving it when your family is watching a movie that you actually like, or your mom just made cookies and the smell is too enticing for you to remain in your hermit hole so you go to the kitchen and eat two........ or seven of those cookies.

Once you're older and you move out of the house (even part time for school, like me!), you begin to realize that everyone was right when you were younger; you don't know everything, and you will miss your family when you find yourself without them. Don't you hate moments like that, when you realize that indeed, the life lessons you were taught as a child are and were important? A part of me cringes, remembering the days of old when I would think, 'I know what I'm doing', 'why are people telling me these things?', 'these lessons that mom and dad say are important don't really matter....'. Like dang, I was rooting for nine-year old me; I should have been right! But alas, I hardly ever was (neither were you though, so HA!).

Moving back home last month to live with my mom, dad, and brother for the summer was harder than I had anticipated it to be. I didn't think anything of it when I came home from the East Coast tour; I'd lived with them my entire life (minus the eight months of college I'd just finished) so everything would be the same. WRONG. Everything seemed weird. Being without my parents, I'd quickly become accustomed to "doing what I wanted when I wanted". I put that in quotes because I still did things within reason. I'm talking more like, I had my best friend over without being like "Yo mom, can Rachel come over?" Like, no. I'm an adult. My parents aren't here. SWEET! I don't need to ask permission to do things!

Since coming home almost a whole month ago, I've finally transitioned back into the role of dependent daughter, as opposed to being independent adult; I'm excited to return to being an independent adult for another eight months at the end of August though!

What I've been learning since coming home is that home is safe. Family is safe. I know that I have a secure and welcoming place to turn to when things go wrong, or when they're right (don't just turn back to your family when you're sad or out of money).
In some previous posts, I've alluded to the fact that there are a number of situations going on in my family's life that are greatly affecting us all in different ways. I can't stress enough how comforting it is to physically be with my family through all of this. Having to face family situations "in spirit" is rough, especially being the youngest member of the family and feeling like I'm drowning half the time while I'm by myself without any of these problems.
Aaaaaaaaaaanyway...

Back to the point!

FAMILY AND HOME IS #LIFE. I really, truly, sincerely hope that no matter what you do in life, how successful you become, or how far away you and your spouse move, that you will never, ever forget that. Your family has done SO much for you. No matter how annoying you naively thought they were when you were like, 4.8888889 years old, do not forget your parents or your siblings. They helped to shape and mold you into who you are. They will always support you no matter what! They are your biggest fans; the first people to cheer you on in your successes, and comfort you in your sorrows. Cherish that.

My point in this post is simply these five things:

1. Appreciate the things that your parents do for you.
2. When your parents try to become your best friends before you move away for college, let them.
3. If you've already missed out on 2, go home and visit your parents on weekends or invite them to visit you!
4. Even though you think you won't miss your sister when she goes to college, BIG shocker! You will. (Just talk to my brother about that one!)
5. When you have the chance to visit home for weekends and holidays, don't hide out in your good ol' hermit hole the whole time...!

In a nutshell, don't forget how important your family is and always treasure them (and your home).

I don't intend for it to be super harsh; I simply want to clearly get across what I have been realizing and learning since coming back under my parents roof. I don't want anyone to make the mistake that I almost made of being a talking back, sassy, rude jerk to my family all summer. I'm snapping out of that now and am clasping onto the fleeting time that I have left here at home with my family before heading back out on my own for awhile.




P.S. I like to use a thesaurus website when I need a good synonymous word in a post and when I was looking for a synonym for "cherish", one of them was "enshrine" and I was like 'Yes. Of course. Let me just casually make a home and family shrine in my free time this summer!" ......umm, no. Hahaha!