What does the word family mean to you?

Most people define family as those in their biological and/or legal family unit, but I disagree. Obviously the traditional definition of family fits me from an outsider’s perspective. I have two parents who are both my biological and legal mother and father. I have two siblings with no half or steps thrown in. Simple. Unfortunately, though they make up my legal and biological family, I have always felt out of place with them, like maybe I was, or should have been adopted. Other than biology I have almost nothing in common with most of them and when people who know me meet them, they ask if I’m sure I wasn’t adopted. Not fitting into my traditional family was a source of much frustration and a few episodes of depression in my youth but eventually I began to discover that family has little to do with biology or laws.

I remember many days and nights as a kid spent wishing I had a different family, one in which I at least felt a part of. Outside of biology I don’t’ have much in common with most of my family members and as a result longed for that missing connection our families are suppose to provide us. Sure I knew they loved me, that was never a question, but I wasn’t certain they liked me and I knew that had we not been forced to be related most of them wouldn’t have chosen to speak to me at all let alone live in the same house. It sounds harsh I understand, but it is a fact. My eldest sibling and mother are two of a kind in more ways than they would either care to admit. The middle child was always the peace-keeper who got along with just about anyone. And then there was me, the quiet reflective one in the corner who watched their dysfunctional way of living in utter amazement and longed for that missing connection.

To most people I know, their family is their refuge, their support, and the one group of people they know they can count on to be there no matter what. Knowing the group of people I was living with as a child met few if any of those qualifications, without even realizing it I began to search for my own version of family. Over the years I adopted friends’ families for short periods of time and managed to make friendships with others whose view of the world was much closer to my own. By the time I hit high school I had created my own support structure, my own refuge of people who I knew would always be there for me no matter what, my own family. To this day, those select two or three people I considered family in high school are still around and still members of what I define as my family. I’ve added to the list after meeting my partner Jen and having such an active role in raising her nephew Tristan. I suspect in time I will also add Tristan’s new brother Scott to that list, but for now he remains in that special category of “extended family” along side the rest of Jen’s relatives.

I guess I’m lucky in that I have my original family, those I am legally and biologically related to, and I have the family I have chosen, all who love and support me in their own way. There are those who have no family, no parents or siblings to call their own, no one there to stand up for them or catch them when they fall. I wonder if they were wise enough to expand their definition of family if they couldn’t find a family of their own, much like I did.