This essay is Part III of a series on co-creating new dynamics with our parents, learning to reclaim our cultural shadows, and bridging our identity between two worlds.
💬 This Thursday, 5/23, @ 3pm (PT), I’m hosting an online circle for paid supporters to discuss the themes I’m exploring in this series like integrating our cultural shadows and healing our relationships with our parents. Join us! RSVP here.
In April, I set off on a two-week trip with my family, both excited about returning to China after spending two years repairing my relationship with my heritage and a little uneasy about what might transpire after two weeks in close corridors with my parents.
As the trip unfolded, triggering interactions inevitably emerged. Yet, I found myself connecting with my activated parts and my parents in new ways. Our relationship transformed from one of tolerance to one of compassion as I built new bridges into my parents’ worlds.
This is the first trip with them that I’ve walked away feeling incredibly proud of how I (and as a result, they) showed up.
This guide is dedicated to my younger self and to those who can’t imagine the possibility of embarking on a deeply meaningful family trip. Better days are ahead.
subscribe for more essays on becoming more ourselves
1. Set boundaries upfront
With every trip, there’s a vibe that emerges as a result of the amalgamation of the energies and interactions among the people traveling together. We often wait until everyone arrives at the destination to set the tone, but it starts as soon as planning sets in motion.
As the itinerary comes together, ground into what you need to feel at ease and to enjoy yourself on the trip. Once you have a sense of your make-or-breaks, articulate them clearly to the trip organizer. Even better if you can get the group together in person or on a call to reflect on what each person needs to ensure your time together feels as nourishing as possible.
For me, I had two asks: 1) no shared rooms and 2) booking hotels with gyms (if possible).
I know myself well enough to know that I’m at my best when I have solitude to start the day. Since we’d have plenty of time together as a group, I wanted to ensure I had time and space in the mornings to meditate and journal.
Lucky for me, my husband, Ryan, is a get-up-and-out-into-the-world type of person, so I knew that most mornings he’d likely head out for a walk or to breakfast, leaving the room to me. On group trips, he often represents the two of us, beginning his day by starting the coffee pot and hanging out with whoever we’re traveling with.
I used to feel guilty for hiding out in our room until I was ready to emerge, but over the years, I’ve gathered enough data points to know that the hour or so that I take for myself in the morning makes me infinitely more present throughout the day. By now, most people in my life know that I have a daily meditation practice and respect that I do what I need to do to feel more like myself.
On the gym front, I know that when I feel overstimulated, I tend to accumulate stagnant energy that needs an outlet. My brother and sister-in-law similarly have disciplined workout routines so I knew this request would benefit at least three of us.
Setting boundaries starts with knowing your needs and owning what it’ll take for you to show up fully each day. It’s our responsibility to ensure that we’re advocating for the conditions that allow for our needs to be met with minimal disruption to others.
2. Fully arrive together
One of the things I’ve learned about convening people is how important it is that we all collectively arrive in a place, in a space together. This can be particularly challenging with international travel when we’re all recovering from long flights and adjusting to a new time zone.
To mark our arrival and ground into the reality that our trip was beginning, I led an opening circle for each of us to share our intentions for how we’d like to make the most of our two weeks together. It was an opportunity to call our energy back to ourselves and into the present moment.
Before we all arrived in Shanghai, I sent the group three questions to ponder in preparation for our opening circle.
t-12 hours before our trip began
As we each went around, sharing our hopes, fears, and needs, it became clear how aligned we were. The through line was that we all wanted to deepen our relationship with China and with each other in one way or another. Our fears varied from the physical, getting sick or injured, to the emotional, getting frustrated and losing my temper with my parents (my fear).
Since I was leading the circle, I shared my intentions first. It helps to kick off with someone who has the courage to be vulnerable — it gives others the permission to speak their own truths.
For me, it involved letting go of my ego and showing my parents my cards, acknowledging that I had the best of intentions to be as patient (and kind) as possible despite how our interactions might trigger me.
my intentions for the trip
Despite hosting many events and recently retreats (sign up here if you’re interested in a future retreat), I had never done something like this before with my family. I was pleasantly surprised by how open they all were to sharing a glimpse into their inner worlds which allowed each of us to calibrate where the group was mentally as we started our trip.
Whether it’s an opening circle, a group meditation, or a simple kickoff conversation, carving out the space to arrive together and getting a pulse on each person’s intention for the trip creates a sense of connection from the onset.
3. Prioritize your needs first every. single. day.
Once you’ve articulated what you need to fully show up each day, it’s time to commit to prioritizing those needs regardless of how you’re feeling.
In the mornings, I often found I wasn’t in the headspace to meditate — and that’s exactly when I needed to cultivate stillness. Learning to resource ourselves is about doing the things we know help us become more ourselves, whether we feel like doing them or not.
On the days that I didn’t want to meditate, I asked myself to just be still for 10 minutes. It didn’t need to be a long sit, just enough to show up for myself when the easier option was to skip that day.
And then, of course, there are the things beyond our control. For example: I know we’re privileged living in California, having access to as much fresh produce and as many whole food options as we do.
In China, it wasn’t always possible to find restaurants that served the foods I would’ve preferred, especially when we were convening with extended family and family friends. I prepared as best as I could but let it slide when it was more effort than it was worth. Knowing that consuming a large amount of grain-based foods often triggers a flare-up in anxiety, I was intentional about pre-packing snacks from the US, maintaining my typical fasting regimen, and reaching for healthier alternatives when I could.
Upholding my needs every day gave me the space to honor other people’s needs and stay grounded when I felt myself getting activated.
4. Find moments to ground into the grand context
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
In moments of activation, it was key for me to recognize the impermanence of it all. Prioritizing my own needs first allowed me to enter a headspace to appreciate the triggers for what they were: old stories and dynamics that needed love, unthawing, and repatterning.
Welcoming every triggering interaction as an opportunity to learn about myself allowed me to sit with the underlying insecurity being shaken, take the time to fully feel the “negative” emotions through, and then recalibrate how I might approach it differently next time.
Whenever a dynamic is unfolding, there’s a battle of egos at play. Softening and dissolving my ego felt like transmuting fire into water and letting that water roll off me.
As I began to view the interactions as material to work with, I found it easier to deactivate myself and appreciate the reality of how fleeting time is.
In The Tail End, Tim Urban poignantly sums up how little time many of us have with our parents as they age:
Being in their mid-60s, let’s continue to be super optimistic and say I’m one of the incredibly lucky people to have both parents alive into my 60s. That would give us about 30 more years of coexistence. If the ten days a year thing holds, that’s 300 days left to hang with mom and dad. Less time than I spent with them in any one of my 18 childhood years.
When you look at that reality, you realize that despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life. If I lay out the total days I’ll ever spend with each of my parents — assuming I’m as lucky as can be — this becomes starkly clear:
It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.
Note to self: this is all impermanent. One day, you’ll give anything to have this time back.
5. Live in your truth by having the hard conversations
When things inevitably seem to boil over, commit to your truth and have the hard conversation.
When I used to get triggered, I’d blow up and speak from a place of pain. I didn’t know how to speak my truth so when emotions took over, I often fought to hurt.
As a result of a lot of inner work and reprogramming how I view conflicts (as an opportunity to heal resentments rather than to fuel discord), I tune into my pain from a place of love rather than allow it to take hold of me. I’ve learned what my truth is and how to speak it in a way that doesn’t hurt others.
At the end of the day, arguments emerge from not feeling seen or heard. We’re doing ourselves a disservice if we don’t clearly see the person on the other side and instead allow conflict to devolve into a fight or numb us out.
Rather than succumbing to my emotional reactions or pulling out my phone to disconnect from the present in a moment of friction, I’m working on doing the harder, more courageous thing — showing up for myself, being curious about where the other person is coming from, and staying present.
After all, we can’t repattern old dynamics if we continue to play into old games or hide out until the coast is “clear.”
6. Reflect on your time together
This is one thing that I wish we’d done more formally on our trip. I intend to bring it to our next trip.
On our final night together, my brother, sister-in-law, Ryan, and I shared our peaks and valleys on the drive back to our hotel, but didn’t do a full debrief with our parents.
Especially when people are flying out at different times, it’s helpful to bring structure to closing out the experience and make the time to reflect on how each person is feeling as you say your farewells.
A sense of sadness and nostalgia welled up in me as our time together came to an end. I regretted not fully articulating to each person how much it meant to me to spend two weeks with them.
A moment to digest the experience with the full group gives you the opportunity to step back and appreciate all the memories made during your time together.
There you have it — the six steps to traveling with your parents and not losing your shit. I hope this gives you some inspiration on how to make the most out of your next family trip.
I’m curious to hear:
What rituals do you practice when you travel with family?
What’s something you’ve done to change the trajectory of how a trip was going?
I find it really interesting to read about #2 where you have a perspectives sharing session with your family/travelling squad.
Sounds like a useful reflective activity and a way to help realize everyone's goals for the trip, especially for people are afraid of expressing their desires out in the open due to fear of imposing. At the same time, the structured and deliberate elicitation of feelings seems kind of awkward in a artificial spoonfeeding way to me. On my next road trip with college friends, I hope to try something like this out!
I find it really interesting to read about #2 where you have a perspectives sharing session with your family/travelling squad.
Sounds like a useful reflective activity and a way to help realize everyone's goals for the trip, especially for people are afraid of expressing their desires out in the open due to fear of imposing. At the same time, the structured and deliberate elicitation of feelings seems kind of awkward in a artificial spoonfeeding way to me. On my next road trip with college friends, I hope to try something like this out!
Oh I love that you wrote this! I am going to travel with my parents this Sat :)