Jeff Russell

Thank you, I appreciate the kind words!

As for my family, my wife finds it a little weird, but is mostly like "hey, if this is what helps you be better, go for it." She's kind of "spiritual, but not religious" in a mostly-Christian-flavored way. My girls are 4.5 and 9 months, so most of their exposure to it so far is that my older daughter sometimes asks me to say a blessing before meals, and when she comes back from daycare talking about stuff she learned about Jesus, I tell her that some folks worship Him, and some don't. That and we sometimes read Norse and Greek myths, and I tell her that I worship more than one God. My approach is to try to get across that lots of folks believe different things, and that's okay, we each have to work it out for ourselves, while being happy to share what works for me when she shows interest.

The rest of my family, like my dad, sister, mother-in-law, and so forth, I mostly don't bring it up, but if they ever asked, I'd talk about it. My wife's aunt and her husband asked me what I believed (she's Egyptian, so Muslim in a fairly laid-back way) and I told them, and things got awkwardly quiet for a few minutes, but we were fine after that.

If I keep blogging about this stuff, though, it may come up more. I guess we'll see.