It’s always on a Saturday morning in October. Our family meets down at a place called the Red Barn. We get their homemade apple cider and freshly made apple donuts for breakfast and then we climb aboard a tractor trailer to ride on hail bails out to the pumpkin patch where we explore a corn maze, shoot apples out of cannons at targets, go down the big slide and race around a dirt track on adult size tricycles. Then once the kids have picked out their pumpkins we head over to our favorite sandwich shop and get sourdough turkey BLTAs for lunch together. It’s a family tradition we have done every October since my kids were young and we look forward to it every year.

Family traditions are something I treasure and this year I have an even greater appreciation for them and our ability to still do them. Traditions can provide us a feeling of stability in times of instability. They bond us together and help us all set aside the stresses and worries of life for a moment while we just enjoy being together.

There have been some family traditions that we’ve let slip during the pandemic but this weekend I realized just how important it is to keep doing our family traditions. We all need that sense of stability amidst all the instability in the world. so even if we have to wear a mask, or do some of them via zoom – whatever it takes the important thing is TO KEEP DOING THEM.

~Amy Rees Anderson (author of the book “What Awesome Looks Like: How To Excel in Business & Life” )