Moonly Review 🌕 Family Time

Reflection on visiting my Family after over two years.

Happy New Moon!

As the plane crosses the sky Westwards, somewhere above the Alpes, I'm waking up from another journey - journey back to my Family Home.

It's always strange to come back. Since my first experience of living abroad, I realised that I don't connect with Polish culture, and it's not a country where I'd like to live. There's nothing "wrong" with it, it's just not for me. And while I always felt a lot of love and gratitude towards my Family, I haven't really felt close to them somehow.

As I'm now moving further and further away towards my current Home, as far as you can get from Poland while remaining in Europe, I somehow feel closer to them than ever before.

What changed?

I honestly don't know.

When visiting Krakow, I'd normally meet up with my old friends and extended family, visit my high school (which was one of my most profound educational experiences due to incredible professors), fly around the city exploring the old and new places... This time was different.

For the first time, my intention for the time in Poland was to focus 100% on my closest family: my mother, father, sister and grandmother who made so many of my dreams possible.

I went for a walk with mum every day to help her establish a walking practice to clear her mind after very stressful and intense work. I've spent mornings with my dad learning about his experience of buying land and building a house. I connected with my little sister, now an employed university student (which still kinda blows my mind - I still remember changing her diapers). I visited my granny as many times as possible, and used the opportunity to finally learn how to make pierogi, which is something she mastered over the years.

Before arriving to Poland, I wrote on my Moonly page that I want to embody grounded, loving, playful presence and be the gift for my family. The feeling in my chest might be an indicator of a successful manifestation of this intention.

The best, and perhaps most surprising part, is that it was all almost effortless. We just naturally connected, like never before. I could feel that in the farewell hug with all of them.

And my family is actually quite fucking badass.

🏠

My father designed and built our family home entirely by himself. His brother and father helped at some points, but the overwhelming majority was his own labour. And the only time a professional came to visit was to stamp some required documents proving that the building is safe. My father did it all without any construction experience.

It's the first time that I have enough of familiarity with buiilding structures to appreciate how gigantic and awesome of a project that house is. I remember as a little kid, I came back from school one day and found my father building a model of a house. He said to my mother that he is going to build a house and my mother dissmissed it with laughter. We had not much money. He had no skill. He had a full-time job. It took him seven years, and now the house is there.

🌻

My mother is a master organiser, creating an incredible learning experience for children in her kindergarden, despite the constant lack of funds and unimaginable chaos and stupidity of the Polish public administration and education system (you have no idea). Dealing with all this in time of peace is extremely hard. Two years of CVD madness and current dramatic influx of Ukrainians into Poland pushes it even further beyond. And yet, she manages, and the children are thriving.

And she makes great coffee, too, since the 90s (or maybe even before that).

🔆

My family was always relatively poor lower middle class, and I have no idea how we would survive without my grandmother. Somehow, she found a way to use her tiny salary (which later turned into a tiny pension), to buy my mother a flat, fund a flat for her other son, support me financially through my entire life, including funding my uni years in the UK, which was a crazy expense to have, considering the exchange from PLN to GBP. I don't even try to count how much the entire family recieved from her, thanks to her careful money management and resourcefulness.

Plus, she makes unbeatable pierogi, jam, and kompot, which she feeds me at any opportunity, because she knows that I can’t resist and I'm "too skinny and need to eat!". Granny 💜.

My sister and I certainly have a lot to learn from them all.

(Ahh, and I went snowboarding after 10 years break. I didn't ever realise how much I missed it!)

💚

The plane will be landing in Lisbon soon. A new dream begins. And I'm different. I don't have the words yet to describe what had changed, but perhaps words are not necessary at all.

I've been bathed in Love and support from the people who gave me the gift of life and did (and are doing) all they can to help me make it what I want it to be, even if our visions for what a good life means differ. A wave of gratitude pushes a little tear out of my eye, my heart opens, and I feel like I'm beaming light. Perhaps I am.

With Love, infinite, as always,

Michał