Take this opportunity today, to say hello to those you don't know, forgive the ones you do know, and love all others.

Being with each other is not the tantamount nor important thing that television commercials and pretend families on our favorite TV shows tell us that it is.

Be kind to those less fortunate than you.

I have been told that it is wrong to say something about someone if you don't have anything nice to say. Okay, so I won't say it, but dammit I will write about it. Being "quiet" for the sake of keeping the peace is akin to keeping a sneeze quiet instead of letting it RIP!!!! If you keep a sneeze quiet, it may materialize as something a lot more annoying than a sneeze.

I have been told that we cannot choose our families, but to that person who said this to me I must say that you are wrong. It is those with whom we share blood and familial relations with which we cannot choose. Our families are those people who God has blessed our lives with so that He might show us that there is life beyond the limit of the family into which we are born. There is the family which we are allowed to choose, expected to choose. There is that family that we don't have to lie to in order to keep within their good graces. There is the family that has eyes shaped and skin colored differently, where the children know of no animosity, only love. Take time to be with them. Go and do what you "have to" do, and then go back to that place where you exist in a special light and be where you were meant to be. Go and be with the family that you created, and forget about the animosity that exists in the one that you came from.

May those of you reading this take with you the knowledge that somewhere in this crazy f*cked up world, there is at least one person who you call family.

Go with them. Be with them, now, as though it is the last time that you will ever see them.

Merry Christmas. Mele Kalikimaka. Happy New year.

Go. Be blessed. Bless others...

Aunty