Common Ground: Family Matters

June 2008 | From the Editor

Family Matters

By Eliza Thomas

My parents like to joke that I’m carrying on the family business. My father is a Tai Chi/Qigong instructor and motivational speaker; my mother is a former fitness club owner who after decades teaching dance and yoga made a midlife career switch into occupational therapy. Both impart into their work a solid dose of Nichirin Buddhist philosophy, their practice for over 30 years.

So it’s probably no accident that as hard as I once rebelled, I’m now working a job dedicated to transformation. Given my upbringing, I had no hope of scoring one of those positions with a mondo paycheck and a healthy distance between what you do and who you are. Along with my inherent distrust of authority, my bleeding heart politics, and my inability to arrive to work at the same time every day, I seem to have inherited the need to merge my career with my ideals. I doubt I could show up at the office at all if I didn’t think what we do here matters. (Although I must admit, the yoga breaks and in-house massage treatments help a lot too).

This month, we’ve focused our coverage around the theme of conscious parenting and family life. Whether you’re single, coupled or busy raising your family’s next generation of meaning-makers, we hope you’ll find information and inspiration here to assist you along the way. In “Bringing Up Baby,” Jenny Rough, our long-ago intern turned regular CG columnist and freelance writer extraordinaire, parses the latest trends in progressive family planning, from conception through birth and beyond. Here’s hoping the resources she gathered helps all you longing parents-to-be achieve familial bliss (including Jenny!). In “Growing Up With God,” Jessica Kraft asks sons and daughters of spiritual leaders to share family stories and best advice for adults hoping to cultivate a child’s inner life. And in this month’s “Conversations” column, we discuss parenting with Toltec master don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements and patriarch in a shamanic lineage now extending to his two sons.

June also marks the introduction of our newest section, “People In Your Neighborhood,” in which we shine the light back on you, dear readers, to get local perspective on the businesses, people and places that make the Bay Area such a slice of heaven. As a recent arrival, I could not be more touched by the warm, welcoming spirit of community that exists here. With our wedding at San Francisco’s beloved Fort Mason this coming September, my man and I are hoping to convince more than a few key members of our extended clan to swap coasts and join us in calling this city home. But until that happens, thanks for making me feel like family.

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