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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]
People are different, I would travel to my siblings wedding under these circumstances because I don't think of sibling weddings as optional. To each their own. I would never move somewhere that would preclude me from being able to attend these kind of events. But I drag my kids all over the country and the world so perhaps we're just different.[/quote]

It’s weird you how are interpreting OP’s overseas move as some kind of jab against her family. Given the language she is using it sounds like three are in the foreign service or USAID, i.e. serving their country/others. Most families would appreciate the sacrifices these people are making and not give them hell for not toting a 4 year old, 2 year old, and several week old to the other side of the globe for an evening event.[/quote]

My parent moved overseas. While it wasn't a 'jab' against me, it was a life choice that separated them from their family in a meaningful way that skype calls, while great, cannot fully make up for. They are foreign service BTW so in the same bucket. They're not making a sacrifice because they believe in the cause, they like traveling and always have. Their choice to join the foreign service was one in a long line of choices that allowed them to have an arm's length of distance from their family. They have an impression similar to yours kind of baffled as to why anyone would be bothered by this. Incapable of understanding that people want to see the people they love. And that making a choice that means you don't see the people you love for sometimes a year or more at a time impacts that relationship. And that if you make that choice, yes there is an obligation on you, IF you want to maintain that close relationship with your family, to come back and see people at important events because you are absent for all the little ones. I also have military family members in the same situation and I will say that it feels different since they aren't making a choice to leave and they don't have a lot of other career options. And they literally don't have the money to make a trip like this.

My post said VERY clearly that I believed being one month post partum was a perfectly understandable and reasonable reason for OP to not attend this wedding. 100%. But it doesn't mean there isn't a cumulative effect of being gone on their family stateside. Maybe that isn't fair but it is reality for MANY people with family abroad. And a SIBLING'S wedding is the kind of thing that is big enough to warrant a serious conversation about whether it is worth the effort, because you can't go back on missing an event like that.

And for the record I love my parent very much and we are close. But I have always felt like they valued their lifestyle more than me, they love me a lot, but never enough to stay put for longer than a few months. Perhaps in response to this I have become a person who always shows up, because I know what it feels like when people don't. [/quote]

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