Personal Journal ... Why do I need one of those?

My 10 year old nephew, a kid now stuck in the middle of what will certainly be a messy divorce, has been asked to keep a journal. I’m not certain if he asked for one first or if it is the result of him being asked to remember what he does and where he goes when spending time with each parent. These things will of course be requested of him when custody arrangements are considered eventually. But in any case it has occurred to me that simply giving him a bound journal-type notebook and telling him to start keeping a journal isn’t really enough information. Does he understand what a journal is? Has he ever kept one in the past for personal or school reasons? How exactly do you explain to a 10 year old boy what he should be writing and how often it should be done? The obvious purpose in is his parent’s eyes would be to have a log of his activities while they are not with him, but there is far more to it than that. Journaling is more about recording how you feel about things, but not in a literal sense. Now how do you explain THAT to a 10 year old?

I was probably about 11 or 12 when I was first asked by a friend to start keeping a journal. (Thanks Stacey!) I had no idea why, and quite honestly hated doing it much of the time in the beginning. Eventually my nightly routine of scratching out a few sentences about what I had done that day grew into a few paragraphs and eventually into multiple pages over time. Those pages were filled with little things about where I had gone, who I had been with, and how I felt about events. At the time, writing in a journal seemed silly but looking back on it now it is one of the best habits I ever picked up. Writing is a release for everyone who does it; even those who claim to hate it and not be any good at it. Writing is like everything else in life, with practice comes greater ease of doing and a journal can be quite beneficial to improving one’s ability to write. For those who keep hand written journals, it also helps to maintain and improve handwriting skills. I use to benefit from this, until blogger arrived on scene and I began to type journal entries rather than hand write them. My handwriting has suffered greatly at the loss of those journal entries as well! :-(

Having kept a personal journal off and on for most of my life now I guess you could say that I am partial to the belief that everyone should keep one at some point in their life. For those who claim they are “dumb” or “pointless” I would challenge them to recall what they did on January 1 the year they turned 14. For those who keep journals, that answer could be found by flipping through the pages of an old journal on the book shelf. Even if they did not record an entry on that specific date, reading through the entries just before and after the date in question will often trigger memories we have long since forgotten. Trust me on this; old journals can shed a lot of light on fuzzy memories and help us to more accurately remember important times in our lives.

Sure many of the entries found in an adolescent journal will be filled with rants about how unfair it is that we had to spend the day cleaning our room, or why we can’t go over to a friend’s house, but even those entries serve a purpose. At the time we write them, they help to release the anger we are feeling and move past the petty nature of the issue. When we are older and reading through those old entries, it might help us to remember what it was like being a kid again with no control over many things in our lives and feeling picked on because we were asked to do certain chores. This can be an invaluable tool in dealing with our own children who will undoubtedly feel the same anger and resentment toward us when we ask them to clean their room and tell them they cannot do something they have asked permission for. The benefits of keeping a journal are two fold, one for releasing our feelings while we are having them so that we can move past them, and two for remembering what happened to us and how we reacted to the everyday events of our past life.

With that said how do you begin to write a journal if you never have before? What do you write about, how much do you write, and how do you know if you have written too much? Here’s a few simple rules everyone, no matter the age, should follow when writing a personal journal.

1) It is YOUR journal, nobody else. That means you write whatever you want, about anything you want, and as much as you want. A general rule of thumb is to start by listing something you did that day, in detail, and how you felt about doing it. The rest will begin to flow naturally from your brain to your paper.

2) Not every journal entry has to talk about your feelings or what tasks you did during the day. I often write about things that stir up my emotions, good or bad, but have nothing to do with my own personal life. It is fun to go back through old journals from high school and read about my take on a political or news event and why I agreed or disagreed with it. Even some book and song reviews found their way into my journal entries over the years. Apparently I was never really a New Kids on the Block fan though I had just about every cassette tape they released and knew all the words. I pretended to like then just so I could keep up with my friends at school … who knew?

3) Write like no one is reading! It is your journal of your personal thoughts and feelings. You should write like nobody but you will ever read it, don’t worry about the spelling or grammar mistakes you may make, just write. It is however important to keep in mind that if not protected your journal may well find its way into the hands of someone who will read it. Make sure you don’t exaggerate the truth in your entries; you may one day have to defend them!

4) Write every day! The best way to make journaling a habit is simply to write every day, even when you think you have nothing to write about. If you sit down to write and nothing comes, turn on the radio or TV for a few minutes and write a few paragraphs about the song that is playing or the show that is on. Often times beginning with some sort of a journal prompt will lead you to write about things you didn’t even know you had in you. That is how I managed to note in an old journal my feelings toward NKOTB. By the end of that journal entry I had written something far more profound about how we tend to do things we don’t really like just to fit in at school. I was 13 and didn’t realize what I was writing at the time. However, as an adult looking back with a new perspective it is clear that I was very anti-crowd-following even back in junior high but knew some times we must hide behind a mask to protect ourselves from ridicule.

5) Have fun with it! Write about things that make you happy, and sad, and mad, and feel guilty. Write a song or book review, draw a beautiful picture of something stuck on your mind, or just doodle a carton about your silly brother/sister. Write about what you enjoyed about your day, and what you hated about it. What you are doing is logging where you have been, what you have done, and how you felt along your journey. It will help you to release those feelings before they fester into a larger issue, and it will be fun to look back on in your adult life and remember what you loved and hated about your childhood!

Oh, to be a kid again, just for two weeks this summer!

The days are getting longer, more sunshine in my morning commute and few evening hours spent at home during the week. I appreciate this, along with the warmer temperatures spring always brings. However, I desperately wish that summer would hurry up this year.

Spring has always left me feeling a little morose since as far back as I can remember, at least as far back as seventh grade anyway. While most kids at school were looking forward to playing outside in the warming temps and sunshine we had gone months without seeing, I was sitting on the sidelines of life wondering why I was so down. Given everything else that was going on in my life at the time, it was not out of the ordinary for me to be bummed and I never gave the timing of it much thought. Now, as an adult who has not been suicidal in decades, I find it a bit strange that every spring I get this same “dumpy” feeling that seems to cast a dark shadow over everything in my life.

When winter has faded to a recent memory of skiing and snowboarding adventures, but before it is nice enough to get out on a bike or boat, I am left with plenty of time that would otherwise be spent playing. This fact has not changed since my early school days. Maybe it's the extra time that allows my brain to wander back in time, to remember all the good times I had and people I once knew. Maybe it is the downtime I don’t allow myself to have during the busy months of summer and winter that leave me so blue in spring and fall. Maybe. Or could it be simply that the timing is a coincidence?

Whatever the case may be, it seems that every spring I find myself longing to return to my days as a camper at The Timbers. I knew that place was special the moment I set foot out of the car my first summer, but I had no idea just how much it would affect my life. As a self proclaimed misfit in school, my time spent at The Timbers was often the only place I was free to be myself, and I managed to make friends easily. I got along with girls from all walks of life, learned how much in common we all had no matter the skin color, religious background, or environment in which we spent the rest of our lives. All of us came with our own baggage, our own prejudices and fears, yet by the end of the two weeks, we were all family and few of us was ever ready to leave that special place.

I learned a lot about others, and life in general those four great summers, but I’ve discovered over the years that I learned a lot about myself there as well. I met people there who have been life long friends, some with large gaps in communication, and some who never strayed far. I remember names and faces of those I had the most fun with, and some I never got the chance to get to know though I desperately wanted to. I remember paddling a canoe in 3 foot waves on Long Lake for a day trip to the beach, then getting sick from too much sun and not enough liquids and being driven back to camp. I remember learning to do The Hustle, or at least Turtle’s version of it, on an overnight to Olsen’s Island and fending off “Drop Bears” with pie irons.

I remember days of little to no wind on Elk Lake and being so frustrated with our inability to sail that I jumped in the water, clipped the painter to the back of my life jacket, and swam the lightning back to the dock at the campground. I remember sneaking out of my tent with Chowder, hiking down the steep hill to the lake shore, and spending most of the night talking and singing Casey’s song under the stars. I remember tripping over a picnic table in Northport and not being able to finish my GTST trip, and I remember the beauty of Isle Royal witnessed in a way that only a backpacker can see it. Those are the events that quickly come to mind when I start to think about my time at camp, but for every one I listed here, there are hundreds more! I remember the good, along with the bad. I remember meeting new girls, reuniting with old friends, and the pain of saying good bye at the end of our time together.

So here it is, spring in the air once again, and once again I find myself thinking of and, yes missing camp. I would love to go back there, to walk the road from the barn to the dining hall in silence. To hear the laughter of girls like ghosts in the wind. To feel the presence of all those who have been touched by the experience of being a Timbers Kid and, like me, have left a piece of themselves there. I long for the comfort of those friendships that made me whole for two weeks at a time each summer.

If only I wasn’t an adult with adult responsibilities and obligations. I don’t miss my childhood, not one tiny bit, but I do desperately miss camp!

The death of a Timbers icon

This has taken about a week to both write and post, sorry for the delay and for the lack of postings over the last week but as tends to be the case when things like this happen in my life, the writings have not been things I wish to post in the public domain. So last week as some of you loyal readers may know, a friend, an acquaintance, someone I use to know passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer. She was the director of Camp Timbers in Traverse City, MI when I was a camper there back in junior high and high school and not someone I ever knew well, or thought much about over the years that have passed since becoming an adult. When I learned of her passing, I spent a little time reflecting on some of those memories from camp and have realized a few things I never noticed back then.

I suppose it is typical that we overlook those who manage to stand in the background and oversee events in our lives. SAK was management, in charge of making sure we campers, and the staff she hired to care for us, followed every rule. She was an authority figure in my life and at that age it placed her squarely on the side of the enemy a lot of the time. Now that I am a little older and a lot wiser, when I think back over my years as a camper at The Timbers, SAK was always there. She was the first face I saw every summer at check in. She always greeted me with a smile, knew my name, what program I would be in without looking at her clipboard, and was genuinely happy to see me arrive each session. While I was at camp there were moments I spent alone in quiet conversation with her, not many in the first two years but certainly more than once in my final two. I had forgotten about those. I had forgotten how concerned she was the year I was removed from my GTST trip due to injury, and eventually sent home Friday morning for another much darker reason. I had forgotten that she called my house the day after I went home that year to find out both how my hand was doing and how my “other” appointment went. I had forgotten that she called the house to speak to me the following spring when my camper registration came across her desk for the Isle Royal trip. She wanted to see how I was doing and make sure that it wasn’t a mistake in registration since I had always been a sailor. And, that year when I arrived at camp for my session, it was SAK who took time out of her day for another quiet talk and asked my permission to share some info with my counselors, one of which had been a staff member the previous year and remembered me as Shane The Klutz.

As director of The Timbers, it was also SAK who had the final say in what staff would be hired each summer, what groups they would be assigned to each session, and as a result of that, what staff I would get the opportunity to spend two weeks with. Those decisions, while seemingly insignificant, impacted the direction my life would take form the first moment I set foot at The Timbers. My first year there SAK hired a short and spunky college girl who went by the camp name of Kool-Aid to be the waterfront director. It took a few days at camp, and one evening of Frisbee football, for me to warm up to her but that relationship is one that never went away even with a large age difference and hundreds of miles separating us. Most of you would know of her as Stacey, her name appears here on occasion. The following year I did two sessions of camp and found myself in a Windjammers group with Tigger as a counselor. There is a much longer story behind my connection to Tigg but suffice it to say, she too has remained a part of my life since. The Timbers, under the direction of SAK was a safe place for me during a rough time in my life. Each summer I loved every moment I spent there and the remainder of the year, I looked back upon my summer with fond memories and forward to what the next summer would bring. There were times when the hope of returning to The Timbers to reunite with friends from previous summers was all that kept me going and it was with a heavy heart that I walked out of camp on the last day my final year. I knew an era of my life had just ended and I would be leaving behind my carefree camper days in search of something to fill that void the next summer. And, with one exception I have not been back to The Timbers since.

So much of my memories of sun drenched days on sailboats and hiking across Isle Royal have faded over the years. It is a sad fact of getting older and creating new memories to fill those creases of my brain. But one thing remains even after all these years, the friendships I made over those years, the songs we sang each night after dinner and on our trips around the campfire, the sense of belonging someplace in a world I never felt a part of most of the time, and the people who made all of that possible. Joann downing, SAK, was a big part of that both in her management and her personality. She has forever left an imprint on my life and in many ways has succeeded in sending me in the right directions, one of her goals for all of those she worked with over her lifetime.

Below is the obit from the flint journal, an entry I made to her Virtual Guest book, and a photo i "borrowed" from someone who uploaded it to that guest book.

Joann Arlowyn Downing
She was preceded in death by her mother, Arlowyn (Terry); aunts, Joann Owen, Jeanne Carlson; uncle, Don Carlson; cousin, Byron Owen. The family would like to thank all of her extended family and friends and the staff at McLaren CCU unit for DOWNING, Joann Arlowyn - Age 53, of Flint, died January 7, 2009 after a 13 year long courageous battle fighting breast cancer. Funeral Service will be held 3 PM Sunday, January 11, 2009 at the Hill Funeral Home, 11723 S. Saginaw St., Grand Blanc, MI. Visitation will be Saturday 3 to 8 PM. Joann was born November 7, 1955 in Detroit, daughter of Kenneth D. and Arlowyn (Terry). Joann graduated from Grand Blanc High School in 1973, and earned a Bachelor of Science degree with honors from MSU in 1978. She resided in the Flint and Ann Arbor areas for most of her life. She worked for the Greater Flint Arts Council as Development Director. Worked for Big Brother, Big Sister as Marketing & Fund Director, the Girl Scouts Fair Winds Council as Properties & Outdoor Program Director, YWCA of Metropolitan Detroit as Program Director. She was a City of Flint Human Relations Commissioner, and was involved in Rotary, Kiwanis, and the Gender Equality Committee of Genesee County. She is survived by her father, Kenneth; sister, Karen (Earl) Downing, Michelle (Rick) Wright, Suzanne McVey; brother, Kenneth II; nieces, Zana Downing Cook, Nicole (Dave) Read, Andrea Wright, Rachel Downing; nephews, Rich Wright, Seath (Nicole) McVey, Shane McVey, Seamus (Kelly) McVey, and Joshua Downing; great-nieces, Haley Wright, Jillian McVey and Erin McVey. their care and compassion. In lieu of flowers donations may be may be made to the American Cancer Society or the Greater Flint Arts Council.

The guest book entry ...
When I sat down to write this I was at a loss for words. Joann Downing is a name I haven't heard much over the last 13 years and have only run into once or twice in that time. It's safe to say I didn't know her all that well, yet the news of her passing has struck a chord deep in my soul.

I am a Timbers Kid and had the blessing of growing up a Timbers Kid while Joann, SAK as I knew her then, was the director. Every summer I was greeted at check-in with a warm smile, a friendly hug, and an enthusiastic "Hey Shane great to see you again!” As a camper I knew her from a distance much of the time, though there were a few quiet camper-to-staff chats over the years that allowed me a glimpse into who she really was and, I always knew that she had the best interest of those she worked with at heart and cared deeply about each and every one of us. However, it wasn't until I got older that I realized how much being a Timbers Kid, particularly one under the direction of SAK, actually affected my life and just how many lessons I took away from those experiences. Though I didn't spend much time with Joann directly, she was influential in my life in other ways. It was her choices of what staff to hire that had the most direct impact on my day to day life and allowed me to befriend some who are, after 17 years, still a part of my life. Her rules may not have been appreciated by all, particularly by some of the staff who had to abide by them against their better judgment, but they were a necessary part of the job. It's the staff and campers I spent my time with during my camp years that I remember most, but Joann was always there in the background making things run and allowing kids like me a special place to go for two weeks each summer where we could be ourselves.

In the few times I have run into Joann since my last year as a Timbers camper, she always recognized me and greeted me with that same warm smile and a "Hey Shane great to see you again!" Her legacy will live on for generations to come by those of us who know she touched our lives in some way and, in far more cases, by those who have no idea who she was or how hard she worked to make programs and places like the Timbers run smoothly. It was her life's work to touch the lives of others, and for thousands more just like me, she did exactly that.

A little reflection ... Amazing what you find when cleaning house!

I was doing a little thumb-drive-cleaning in preparation for both the new school quarter and the new writing project I am slowly beginning to piece together and ran across a blog post I started last fall. The time frame was end of October beginning of November 2008 and it appears it began as sort of a reaction to my last meeting with Jack. It was rough, a little random, and a tad disorganized but worth the effort to polish and post it. Read On!


I did it! For the first time in my life I managed to tell Jack exactly what was running through my head, explain a few things I felt he deserved to know, and be open about my feelings with little hesitation. It’s a conversation I first asked for way back in May, after another event in my life made me realize how quickly life can slip away from us, and later backed out of at least once. Our schedules didn’t mesh most of the summer and the few times I was in town he was not, or not available, so last weekend was my first chance to see him in almost five months. Our short hour and a half conversation covered more ground than I think the one last fall did when I hadn’t seen him in a little over 12 years. Both of us spent some time asking and answering questions and I walked away feeling a whole lot closer to where I want to be with our relationship. I’m still the quiet one, some things may never change, but at least I’m quiet now because I don’t have anything to say, not because I’m afraid to.

I learned a bit more about him, a little more insight into the way he works and why he values some things over others. I answered at least one of his unspoken questions, possibly more, but I know of one for certain. For the first time in almost twenty years, I sparked that connection with him again and this time I’m wise enough not to walk away from it.

You know, it’s funny how something that we think may be a deal breaker, or give another person the opportunity to think less of us, winds up being nothing at all. I spent the better part of the last year wondering how to tell Jack why I left without a word. I pondered the best moment, the right words to convey my thoughts both then and now, and tried to figure out exactly how much I needed to say without saying too much. I’m still not certain what I was afraid of, maybe bursting his bubble, maybe offending the guy, maybe just showing how much of an idiot I had been. In any case, it took months to get up the courage and collect those random thoughts and feelings into coherent sentences. Last weekend, I finally managed to do just that and was pleasantly surprised both at how easily the conversation happened, and Jack’s response to my news.

I spent almost ten years hating Jack, yes I did say hating, doing my best to erase him from my past, convinced that he thought less of me for something I cannot change, something that is as much an innate part of who I am as my eye color. I walked out on our friendship a long time ago believing that he was a bigot and a coward, something that was completely opposite of everything I knew of him previously. I took the word of someone I thought I loved, who had never even met him, over my own instincts. I listened to what he had to say through biased ears, was angry and hurt, and walked out of his life without so much as a “good bye” one cold January day. Years were spent forgetting him, not mentioning his name, and changing the subject when others who knew him would try to tell me they ran into or heard something about him. As far as I was concerned he may as well have been dead, I was already morning his loss and had been since shortly before graduating high school.

I know I did the right thing by leaving; I needed to go for my own sanity and, of course education. I had to get as far away from that town as quickly as possible before I lost it, and make no mistake about it, that is exactly where I was headed. Had I not been on my way to college in the fall after graduation, I doubt I would have even made it that far. It’s safe to say that I was closer to the edge my senior year of high school than I ever had been, and I was suffocating in that fishbowl of a town. Not even Jack could have stopped me from leaping off that cliff because nobody, especially Jack, knew I was standing with my toes over the edge contemplating the jump so seriously. I hid behind the smile, learned to act like nothing was bothering me, and evaded eye contact with the one person who might see through the facade if I let him get too close or ask too many questions. That was most of high school for me and by the time my world completely collapsed senior year, I had them all, my friends, my family, my support system, and the high school administration convinced that I was okay. Unlike my dark days in junior high, I didn’t want their help; that was the scariest part of all. I clung to my ticket out, my acceptance to Oakland University and the belief that life in the city had to be the answer to everything that was wrong in my life. I isolated myself from everyone who cared, even managed to push away those I never thought I could, and I buried my head deep under the lies and mind games of my girlfriend. That was why I stopped writing to Stacey and left Jack behind without a word.

After much contemplation and self reflection it dawned on me in the fall of 2007 that I had been running from Jack and his memory ever since. I was tired of hiding, changing the subject, or simply walking out of the room when his name or face came up, but I didn’t know how to fix it. I knew I had been wrong, to be honest I think I always knew I was wrong even at the time; I just didn’t want to face it. I had tried to get in touch with him a few times since leaving town over a decade ago, some short lived communication came of it once but eventually the e-mail stopped getting returned. I always figured I wasn’t important enough to make time for, which probably added to my anger and eventually I stopped trying all together. Now, twelve years after that fatal mistake of listening to my now ex-girlfriend rather than my own instincts, I knew it was all or nothing and somehow managed to pen a lengthy letter that got his attention at a point in his life when he too was willing to take a risk. His initial e-mail reply to that letter got me thinking, and I went digging through some old journals and letters that had not seen the light of day in at least six years. What I discovered was exactly what I had been searching for all along. In those written words, some from me, some from Jack, and some from others I considered important enough to write to, and about, was why Jack’s memory had never faded like the others from my past. And, it brought back the one question I had never been able to answer no matter how many times or how hard I tried. How do you explain to someone why they are important to you, or how much they have impacted you, your life’s direction, and your vision of the world as a whole? My answer, Unconditional!

Last fall when I began to remember why it was that I was mad at Jack to begin with, I quickly realized what an idiot I had been. I made the effort to find him again, right where I had left him so long ago, and through half a dozen e-mails and one lengthy initial letter, I managed to make a connection with him again. During the process, I began to work on Unconditional and somewhere in the middle of writing the second draft, it dawned on me that I was writing our story, our history and relationship. Unsure of how he would feel about that, I made a conscious effort to remove as many traces of Jack from the story as I could but still keep true to my view of our relationship. The initial version was decent enough, the writing was good and the story prompted enough questions that I began to take a second look at it in early 2008. That’s when it dawned on me that removing Jack from the character in the book was partly why the character came across as both larger than life and a little flat. I had a few new conversations with Jack, got his feedback on a slightly updated version of the story, asked the right questions, and began to edit with a new goal. I began the story from a position of retelling my connection to Jack and Stacey in the first place and knew very early on that it would be the perfect way to let both of them in on what was running through my head all those years ago and how I viewed our relationship. While working on the re-write it became clear that, while no less important to me in my youth, the story was less about my relationship with Stacey and far more about that unique connection I have with Jack. When I agreed to let that show through in the pages of the book, and got his permission though I didn’t really need it, it rapidly became less of a coming out story and more of a story about unconditional friendship. Make no mistake about it, Stacey is still there in the mentor character, her patience, her tenderness, her unwavering support, but the dynamic of the friendship between the two characters in Unconditional reflects more of Jack and that connection I could never explain any other way.

Jack has now read all but the final version of the story and I left that copy with him when I left last weekend. I was nervous to get his feedback on the first copy he read and even more nervous to hear it after the initial re-write where I put back in all the character traits I had taken out of the original version. I made it clear that one of the goals I had in writing the story was to shed a little light on where I was coming from and how I viewed him growing up. The final version pretty much lays it all out there and yet I am totally comfortable in sharing this knowledge with him now. I’m not certain what I was so afraid of last year and why I felt I couldn’t, or shouldn’t tell him why I left the way I did. I knew it would be impossible to live with if I left it unsaid for too long and missed my chance to at least explain. Jack always figured I left because I didn’t need him anymore, I knew that even back then, but I felt I owed him the truth and spent most of the summer wrestling with the words. When his fall schedule cleared I knew it was now or never, he heads south in December for a few months and I won’t see him again until probably March. I put it a little more eloquently but somehow I managed to tell Jack that I didn’t leave because I didn’t need him anymore, I left because I was an idiot.

I’ve always been a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, well maybe not always but certainly for the last decade of my life. I knew long ago that I had to get out of that stuffy little town and that in order to do that I would be leaving Jack behind. That may be part of why I heard his words the way I did, maybe I heard what I wanted to hear to make the separation a little easier on me. I had no idea what happened in his life for the next 13 years, and for the most part he still has no idea what really went on in my life during those years, but he knows the important things. He knows I survived them, have made a life for myself with a partner who loves me, and somehow arrived at the decision to contact him again. I filled in some of the blank areas, mostly by answering his questions and discovered that connection I always felt with him is still alive and strong as ever. I know that I’m taking a risk in resuming contact with him. I know that eventually I will once again lose him and that pain will be intense, just as it was in the past. I can only hope that something good will come of that loss, some lesson will be learned, or some new connection will be made that makes it all worth while. I know that had I not experienced it the first time around, I may never have fully appreciated his influence or fully understood all the areas of my life he impacted. And, it’s a safe bet that Unconditional would never have been written.

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.

Well ... I found an address and phone number for Stacey, should I call or send a post card. I haven't heard from her in over a year, last I knew she was 6 months pregnant ... Wonder if everything turned out okay with that.

I just finished typing an e-mail to Mr. Cairy, sorry ... Jack. I just can't get use to calling him that. I don't know if I'll send it yet but it felt good to get everything out of my head and onto paper. I should probably send it ... shouldn't I?