This touchy family conversation topic has started coming up multiple times a day on the phone and in zoom meetings and in the news. Friends are: annoyed with a rigid relative, saddened by grandparents that canceled, ecstatic to avoid their usual unpleasant family meal where loud political yelling reigns, nervous about upsetting a friend who has nowhere else to go.

That’s a whole lot of emotion. It’s not new emotion, right? It’s a combo of the usual family of origin angst plus the pent-up frustration of 2020 plus the urgency to come up with a plan for NEXT WEEK.