“My mom sent us a Christmas package by the post” B says all excited. I share in his excitement and look forward to the day the gift arrives at our house. On my way back home from work 4 weeks after Christmas, B is on the phone talking with me as he also is driving back home from work, then as he gets really closer to our letter box he says “ let check the mail”. 30 sec later he returns to his car and says “the Christmas package from my mom has arrived” yay! I m thinking all excited“ I get home 20 minutes later and see a box open on B’s office desk with chocolates and candies then I see two rapped boxes and a Christmas card on the kitchen table. B hands one box to me and he opens one. The box he opens has a transparent Christmas plastic ball and inside a small photograph of his mother and his sister. Ok great! Merry Christmas B… let’s open the box I m holding and in that box I discovered the same transparent Christmas ball that could hung in a tree, with a memory stick inside. On the memory stick there are short movies clips put together of his childhood. “ where is my Christmas gift one of my parts asks then an other part says yeah what does that have to do with Christmas? Isn’t this more like a birthday gift to B? plus this childhood clips were already sent to him some previous years we have seen them before. This is not a Christmas gift my part says… or maybe it is a Christmas gift for him but not for me. What do I get? Do I even exist here to them? do they see me at all? and if I dare saying anything about it will I be heard or will I get attacked for communicating what is going on for me? Most likely. I did in the past get attacked for speaking my mind. Do I want to get attacked? absolutely not, do I need to protect myself from their reaction to how I feel about this? Yes. The thing is from past experiences with my in-laws I noticed soon after we met that they have fixed ideas about how things are and they have a hard time getting to see that other ppl may have completely different ideas and that we don’t all agree on the same ideas and not liking or agreeing doesn’t mean we are against them or we don’t accept it also doesn’t mean I am difficult selfish and fussy. This little part in me is feeling very sad. We didn’t really get any family Christmas gift this year she says with tears in her eyes looking all disappointed and disheartened. I now feel like taking that little girl shopping and getting her a gift that she would have liked from her mother in-law. Then there is my ppl pleaser part who wants to be liked by everyone and hates being in conflict and rejected, who says can’t you just be happy for them don’t worry about us getting a personal gift from them like Bastiaan did. Then the critics part gets into the mixed and says they know nothing about us and we r just like a charity case who stole what belongs to them and gives them a reason to exist they actually don’t really care if B finds an other women whom can go along with their family traditions.