Every year, the holidays bring out questions like these: Why won’t my father stop drinking? Why won’t my mother stop criticizing me? Why doesn’t my brother come to family gatherings since he got married? Why is my ex’s family ignoring me?

We question behaviors that have gone on for years, for lifetimes. Why don’t they accept us as we are? Why don’t they want to be with us? Why won’t they talk about it?

Does the why matter? Can we ever truly know what is motivating our loved ones? Sure, we can make assumptions, but we can’t really know. Pondering the why keeps us stuck.

In my own family, my brother grew angrier and angrier as we got older. What was once a warm and friendly relationship became strained, and it was almost too difficult to talk to him, despite my yearnings for a deep connection.  He passed away before we could ever cross whatever divide was between us. Painful? Yes. Personal? I doubt it. Why? I can never know, since he couldn’t talk about it.

The iconic Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving Day painting, with Grandma and Grandpa at the head of a long table, sweetly serving a large turkey to a family where every person is smiling and very obviously happy, sober, and kind, symbolizes what we all want.

The holidays evoke longings for such warm, loving celebrations. We humans are social animals, hard-wired to connect and to care for each other. We tend to stay connected even when the going is not so happy or loving.

Sometimes, we can talk things through within our families. The popular television series, This is Us, is a wonderful example of a family repairing its rifts through betrayals, divorce, and loss. The characters were able to have honest and deep conversations.

But to do that, we must be willing to risk the rebuffs and rejections of those who can’t cross those divides. In short, it doesn’t always work in real life. And sometimes our longings can overshadow reality, making it hard to see the truth of what’s happening.

Here’s the hard truth. Families carry with them unconscious currents that shape, fragment, and disrupt them. It’s rarely personal, even though it may feel that way. In my own family, divorce, desertion, and alcoholism reach back at least several generations. It’s not a stretch to conclude that this impacted both my brother and me.

What can we do instead, to enjoy the holidays, despite the over-drinking, ghosting, and criticisms of our loved ones? What are our options in these situations? We can try to talk it through. But if we’re met with evasion or denials, the only peaceful, loving resolution is to see what is happening with clear eyes and to accept it.

I promise you that a critical parent is harder on themself than on us, that a relative who drinks too much is managing feelings that they can’t cope with, and that the evasive relative who denies their behavior or ghosts us has great fear driving their behavior. And it’s also very likely that they can’t step back and see it or talk about it.

It’s up to us to see the truth and accept it. We must make peace with our reality before we can attempt to make peace with anyone else. Sometimes we can reconnect and sometimes we can’t. Sometimes, people can only show us rather than tell us what’s inside them.

Seeing the truth and accepting it—Mom has been critical of me and everyone else my whole life, Dad drinks too much and has for years, my brother has withdrawn from the family and can’t talk about it, my ex’s family doesn’t respond despite my attempts to connect—is the only way to find peace within.

And isn’t that what we want from the holidays? Peace and warmth and kindness. Let us start with ourselves and go from there, finding it as we can.