“You are Not My Family.”
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“You are not my family.” I recently heard this from someone in my family directed at me and my children in a moment when we were gathering to take a family photo. While I wanted to cry and scream back, “But I am your family!”, I took time to absorb and embrace what this person was feeling when she said these words to us. I began to explore my own thoughts on family.
In my teens, I experienced the brutal and real truth that I could not choose my family. As much as I would dream about returning my parents and running my siblings over with a car I could not yet drive, these were just empty thoughts that would lead me nowhere. Instead of replacing my family, I addressed my desire to find my tribe by moving 500 miles away from home for school. I spent my late teens through my 30’s finding my own kind. Moving from the South to the Northeast, I was no longer the only ethnic person on my block. New York City was filled with every mix of nationality and cultural beauty I had ever seen. My eyes were opened to new people, new belief systems and new experiences. Over 20 years, I found people like me as I grew and evolved. While I hoped to avoid the organic conflicts of a biological family, I walked in to a hotbed of universal conflicts that made my familial ones back South seem small.
In my 40’s, I began to miss the familiarity of my Southern family. Even the word “familiarity” has family in it. And, what is it to be familiar? It certainly isn’t about being easy. Family life can be hard. Love can be painful. Relationships and individuals are complicated. To be family means we share a similar story and while imperfect, it is familiar to us. These stories bound us together. They cannot be unbound. We cannot undo time. And while we can choose where and with whom we create our future stories, our life is already sewn and with it the people who made up our past sown into it.
It was the passing on of the past that I missed the most. The ability for someone else to retell my story to me. The comfort in the retelling and the re-sharing of a common history. While I had mastered the future architecting of my life, I sought comfort in the anchoring of my history. My family and childhood community give this to me. It is sacred and good.
So when I heard these words from someone I’ve shared history with, my first reaction was sadness and pain. My second was to lash out and protect myself, which I did not. While I wanted to force my beliefs upon her, I could not. Everyone has a story and lives their own truth. Our task is not to tear down their truth, but to find the connection. And sometimes the only thing you can do is silently accept where a person is in the moment. As I use my family to weave parts of me together, I send loving kindness to her. I think about the magic of my journey away from family and pay it homage. It took a long time for me to find myself here. Wherever she is that is where she needs to be. It does not change my feelings about family. She is my family and parts of her are woven into me. I choose to focus on the parts I love the most, one being her laugh. Sending you laughter and love wherever you may be. Live well and enjoy the ride.
