And what is a family?
I used to teach the kids in the children’s home I worked in that family is who you want to run home to when things are bad, family are the people who will always take care of you and always love you no matter what. It’s the people you want to look after and care about. It’s where you feel safe, where you feel important, heard and loved.
For them that was often not among the people who gave birth to them, or were otherwise related by blood. It became us. And we would be who they came to, even after they left, when they needed help, guidance, a shoulder, a good meal or advice on how to get ketchup stains out of the curtains.
I think what we tried to show them was that family means: no matter what. And you can get that in different places.
“These are the people who make you feel safe in this world.” -Tim Minchin
I love that song! I’d also add with Robert Frost that “home (and by extension family) is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
Even though I’m not much of one for Disney movies, I’m going to use a quote from Lilo & Stitch:
I sometimes repeat that to my rescued dogs.
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I have extended family members that have no biological or legal relationship. One member is my god-daughter. My SIL is engaged to an informal god-son. There are variety of other close, long term relationships. They’re all still my family. Some of them closer than the blood relatives. I was also closer to the mother of an aunt by marriage than some of my own blood relatives. Family is where is you find it.
Funny that people go right to that. Blood relatives are useless, I guess.