Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day! For many of us it is a time to appreciate a 3 day weekend and enjoy visiting friends or family who live close, but not too close, so we don’t get to see them too often. Or it might be a day when friends who are close eat good food together that they cook outdoors.

Supposedly this holiday began as a way to honor American workers for the American Labor Movement and their economic and social achievements. (Yes, I did get this information from Wikipedia. Please don’t tell my former professors, but I no longer have access to my parents’ Encyclopedia Britannica.) So lets take a moment to think about our own economic and social achievements.

I’m a therapist (LMFT Associate). My job is to think about people’s mental well being and learn new ways to help people make the necessary changes for their optimal mental health. I have to say, though, while this isn’t something that usually requires great feats in heavy lifting, unionizing, or getting more people the right to vote, it kind of does. It is required in a family that everyone is heard, even though the parents have the ultimate responsibility to make healthy decisions for their family, not the children making their decisions for the family. It is important that everyone have responsibility within the family and pull their own weight, as it were, within the family system. And finally, it is required that families bind together and become a union in order to face outside challenges. Outside challenges can be anything from the loss of a job, to a poor quality school, or even a mental illness within the family.

As a family it is necessary to work together and to consider every individual within the family system.

I hope that this Labor Day you honor the workers who made it possible for us to enjoy many of the benefits of being an American. I hope you also honor the family system to which you belong and enjoy the company of the people with whom you’ve built a family life.

Keep breathing. Keep playing. And celebrate!

Nyssa Hoerner is an LMFT-Associate, supervised by Bill Woodburn, LPC, LMFT, MEd, and is currently accepting new clients. Sign up for her biweekly news letter at her website: www.nyssahoernercounseling.com

Photo Credit: United States stamp: Labor Day by Karen Horton, https://www.flickr.com/photos/karenhorton/