Relay Race Wisdom, a metaphor for intergenerational family patterns

One of my favorite activities growing up, in track and field as well as competitive swimming was the relay race.

I loved it because I had an individual stake in how our team performed AND it wasn’t just on me, there were three other team members that were also stakeholders in our overall performance; shared risk and shared victory or sometimes defeat.  I can still feel the jittery excitement of that baton hitting my hand as I was starting to run and the momentum of diving off the starting block when my teammate touched the pool wall.

Because of the running and swimming events I participated in, I was often third or fourth in the lineup, so by the time it was my turn, I had some information about how we were doing and what I needed to do in my leg of the race for our team. Sometimes that meant I needed to dig deep and run/swim at the top of my skill level, sometimes that meant I had the opportunity to run/swim in my comfort zone and sometimes it meant I needed to run/swim beyond what I was consciously aware that I could do.

Family patterns across generations can be explored from a similar lens.

We are each responsible for our unique adult life AND how we experience our unique life is also connected to the folks that came before us, how they were raised, the social conditioning that influenced them, the specific aspects of identity that marginalized them and privileged them and the trauma they experienced, witnessed or were raised with.

Those factors impact not only what we each see as possible for our lives; they also impact how we see ourselves, how we think about ourselves and how we process our challenges, our opportunities and our environment in general. We can’t truly experience ourselves and our life in isolation and those folks who raised us and the folks that raised and influenced them aren’t totally responsible for our lives either. 

It’s a team effort, another both/and.  We both have the responsibility of creating a life that makes sense to us AND that life is influenced by those that came before us and are around us.

Doing the work to understand that shared responsibility supports us in consciously creating our lives which involves making decisions that align with our values, our hope and our dreams.

I’m at the point in my family’s evolution where I can start to evaluate how I’ve shown up “in my leg of the race”. I can see where I’ve made up some ground from the team mates before me and I’m starting to see the challenges and opportunities my children have in their own “legs of the race” because of who they are and because of how they’ve been influenced by me and other family members.

Taking responsibility in this way, I believe, continues to hold us accountable for our decisions and invites us to stay in relationship with ourselves gently and compassionately; we aren’t in charge of the whole team, just our part.