Family connection and May. What the busiest month needs most.

May is the month that sounds good but is often very hard. The weather is improving, school is visible on the horizon, the pressure of examinations arrives for older children, and the calendar fills with events. My household in May is physically close and emotionally scattered. We are together but we are not together.

The distinction between proximity and connection is one of the most important in family life. Proximity is being in the same room, eating at the same table, travelling in the same car. Connection is the exchange that happens within that proximity — the moment of actual contact, actual attentiveness, actual presence.

Proximity is necessary but not sufficient. The family that spends the evening in the same room without genuine connection has proximity. The family that has twenty minutes of actual attentiveness and then goes to separate rooms has connection. Both matter. The connection matters more. This is the specific thing that produces the change. The change comes from the practice. The practice comes from the decision to try it once, this week, in the ordinary moment that is already available. This is the specific thing that produces the change. The change comes from the practice. The practice comes from the decision to try it once, this