Hmm. When my mother died, the family fell apart. It didn’t fall apart when father died — but when she died, it did. She kept it together… holidays, cards, I don’t know, she was the glue. Not being very articulate here…. I tried to keep it together after her, made attempts, but could not — it could not recover. We are all older now and I don’t try like I used to– Gosh this sounds depressing. But the state of family feels estranged. It does matter, a lot but I’ve accepted how it is…. One sibling is here. One sibling is there. One grandparent left, in a nursing home, an uncle, some cousins…. I’m closest to a second cousin who lives in my city. Yeah, estrangement, always kinda experienced a chill in my family. I am the only cardinal in immediate family, in a family of fixed (father, taurus, mother scorpio, brother aqua, sister leo).I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever make my own family or always be a satellite or with “friend” famlies (strong 11th house). I am trying to accept….what is.

My family fell apart about 10 years ago too.
Everyone is living in its own little bubble, not even trying to hold onto the traditions anymore.
It used to upset me but now I’m just jaded about it.

I consider myself very lucky when it comes to my immediate family, I think we are quite unusual in that sense. (not to sound like Im bragging, but I guess not a lot of families are.) I wouldn’t say we get along superficially (me and my sister fight like cat and dog) but we all know the importance of family, and to me it doesn’t feel like a duty or an obligation, but an essential part of my life. I know they feel the same way

We all have significant Capricorn energy on our charts. (except for my Mum, who has a lot of Gemini/Virgo energy, which I’m glad we have…. balances out all the seriousness and intensity! =D ) Dad and me are Cap rising- he also has a Grand Earth Trine- and I have Uranus and Neptune sandwiching my Ascendent with my Sun and Moon squaring it. Sister has a Cap Sun, Neptune and Mercury in the 4th house, finally brother has a Cap stellium in the 11th (Moon, Uranus, Neptune)

I think because the earth energy is so prominent, this is why we’ve always stuck together. So the upcoming pluto through Cap transit worries me a fair bit, since we’re all going to be affected BIG TIME. Should be interesting, to say the least!

My family has been dysfunctional from day one. Raised by a step dad and (my mom)with the step siblings that never accepted me or my brother or my mom from day one, and still to this day. I have chosen not to have them (the step siblings)in my life, and have created the kind of family I have always wanted with my kids, a loving, respectful always their for each other for the long haul family. I love it!

I think you’re right in that with many families, there’s one person that brings and holds them together as a family, in mine it was my grandma and when she died, the family went up like a bunch of matchsticks. I think it’s like a forest burning though — it may look like it’s razed to the ground, but eventually there’s an offshoot here, a new growth there, and a loooooong time later, a new “family” concept is there. It’s never the same family, never the same type of feeling among those who come back, but there can be healing and growth. I don’t think that the concept of family is dying, but it certainly isn’t the same “family” as 50 or 100 years ago. It’s a new growth, and it’s hard to see if we keep comparing it to what we knew in the past.

Oh I’m feeling this. I was on vacation and I said to my partner “I don’t feel like I belong to my family.” Things have been falling off the past several years – one of the biggest blows was when my parents gave my sister their power of attorney and replaced me as executor of their wills with her a couple years ago. Do I think it was a good choice? Yes, since she lives next door to them. Would I have liked to been consulted rather than presented with it as fait accompli? Indeed I would have.

So yeah, it’s almost unbearably painful to me, but it’s increasingly clear that I don’t belong with or to my family, and that I don’t merit the same amount of consideration or care that anyone else does. But on the flip of that, part of the reason I don’t get attention is that I moved 2500 miles away. And I don’t belong where they are any more than they would belong here. So in fairness, I’m not sitting here going “they fucked up” because I can see the consequence of my own choices. But that doesn’t mean those consequences hurt less.

And, to quote Forrest Gump, that’s all I’m going to say about that.

I guess that’s it’s quite telling that when I speak about my family, I’m really meaning my father’s family, which is close knitted by Western standards. My very Libran paternal grandmother is still alive, and yes, I think she really has been the one to clue the family together. She probably got it from her family, she still is in close contact with her living siblings and her nieces and nephews too. The good thing is that she has definitely passed it to her children too. My three Pisces aunts have built a holiday home together to replace an old one where my cousins, my brothers and I used to spend all our childhood summers. We’ll definitely continue going there and spending time together even when my grandmother won’t be around, since we genuinly like each other.

My mother’s family, on the other hand, really shattered the moment my grandmother, a dutiful Virgo, gave up. It was disfunctional to begin with – my grandfather probably wasn’t the easiest person to get along to begin with, and was completely shattered by the war. My grandmother constantly had to act as a negotiator between her family members. When she didn’t have any force to do so anymore, the family disintegrated.

I would say parts of my family are breaking off, but the overall extended family is as close and as crazy as they’ve always been. I think, and here is the scary part, they’re starting to wake up and deal with some dysfunction in parts of the family that has been swept under the rug for so many years. One aunt destitute, another alcoholic, another leaving an abusive relationship and I see them pulling together. Trying to be supportive. I see this DESPITE the extreme lack of energy to do so because their lives are busy and stressful (jobs lost, babies born to those unable to support, etc.) yet even those with little to give are giving of time and energy. I see it as hopeful. I also see it as not the norm amongst families around me (friends).

My SO’s family is good, small and tightknit but this pluto is going to run opposite his moon so I wonder if his parents (aging but healthy) might not be in for some trouble.

(((Shannon))) you’re right, not the way to find out btw. A bit of a “here is what we’re thinking of and why” would have made it nice and easy.

Hmmm…this IS an intereating post. Had a lot of family ‘stuff’ in the forefront lately. My family is fairly tight-knit but I am not sure what would happen were we to lose my Mother or Father anytime soon. We all have very different personalities as well and that makes our relationships strained at times. As my Father said “I couldn’t have had 4 children with more differences if I’d tried”. It’s like we were raised by 4 different families. There are some similarities in there, don’t get me wrong, but we are all quite involved in our own lives apart from the family.

My fiance’s family is a different story. His Father passed earlier this year and his immediate family has pretty much fallen apart since then. That should change again soon though as his Mother is moving back into our area. Once she is gone though? I don’t see he and his brother (who lives on the opposite Coast) continuing a very close relationship.

I watched this movie today called The Living and The Dead that you must see because it speaks to this exact theme. It’s about this last generation of an English aristocrat family that’s clearly about to die. The family dynamic in this story is one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen in a film.

Fortunately, my family is not like the one in the film. However, I am somewhat intimidated by the prospect of us “dying out.” My father’s parents were concentration camp survivors, and they each had only one surviving sibling. My father has one childless sister. My mother’s family was blended (her father had been married and had three children prior to marrying my grandmother, who was twenty years younger than he was), so there are huge age gaps on her side of the family. My oldest aunt is almost 80; the oldest cousin is almost 50 and the youngest just turned 5. (I’m 25, almost 26.) I don’t know how my sister feels about it, but I personally feel like I have somewhat of an imperative to have children, because if neither of us do, my mother’s line will shrink significantly and my father’s will be gone.

Pretty scary, especially right before bed. I think I’m going to watch some Muppets.

My “family” was never tight. Brothers were 9 and 12 years older than me, and I was raised almost entirely by my mom, grandmother and aunt. When I was young it was good; the three of them fought like cats and dogs sometimes, but it was family and it worked.

I had great fear of my eldest brother, due to his massive drug use in the late sixties when I was young. He and I passed that and I love him dearly, but rarely talk to him. His wife keeps us in touch to some extent, but he is so morose and such a “The End Is Near” kind of guy that he depresses the hell out of me.

Middle brother and I…not so much. I know where he is, but the only communication is him sending me a Christmas card every year. When Mom died, he stood twenty feet from where they were putting her in the ground, counting money her co-workers had collected to help me pay the bills those last months of 24/7 caring for her. HE decided we should invite all those assholes that showed up for the funeral that never even called to ask about her the last year of her life to the house. Washed my hands of him after I told him off the next day. DONE.

I think that’s why I stayed in my marriage so long. It was the only “family” I had at that point. I still have them in my life – including the ex, because we are being so grown up about this whole thing – but I also have an extended family I can’t believe exists. Lee’s family has embraced me and my daughter as their own, and once they get to know my boy, I know they will bring him into that circle as well.

Family is blood, yes. I still refer to the counting cash brother as my brother, but I have no use for him after that. For me, family is made up of those who love us despite our failings and weaknesses. The ones who hold our hand while we are sick or pass the kleenex when we cry and share the day to day living and laughter as well.

i was blessed to have a strong extended family that i was born into.
i used to think it was grandma. it used to all center around her house. but i’ve started to realize, as the cousins all get older, it’s what every single one of us does, to stay connected and support each other.

the way i see it, family is the core component of tribe (and we are neurologically designed to be a tribal species) and we cannot have community without first building familial bonds.
of some sort. i’ve seen a great deal of “families by choice” rather than blood…

i think maybe we’ve leached a lot of the potential power family can hold. as if we’re afraid to give family power. and i can see reasons why, but i think it leaves us a bit hamstrung as human beings and strongly social creatures prone to developing significant bonds with others in order to maintain positive community.