In my life, I'm working to redefine the term family. The family I was born with, while I will always have love for them, are not necessarily my FAMILY. Various members have caused me great pains through abuses both physical and mental/emotional. I have been uninvited to family gatherings (including funerals) and then had entire weddings (held on my birthday) hidden from me until I found out about them on Facebook. These actions are not actions of love or respect.
Let me repeat those two words: LOVE and RESPECT.
These two concepts to me are the most essential concepts that really, are basic to treatment of all human beings. All human beings are granted an automatic amount of love and respect out of me, not because they deserve it or because they have earned it, but simply because they exist. In fact, all living creatures are granted these from me. More love and respect than that which I automatically grant CAN be earned from me and CAN be lost as well. However, this base amount granted all living creatures can not be lost. If I were to suddenly stop granting this love and respect for any reason, I would lose my humanity.
Back to the concept of Family, then. Family, to me, are the people that come into my life and we synchronize so well that we feel we add value by having each other in our lives. By this definition, anyone in my life can become my family.
Presently, my family is myself, the four young people that live in my house, my two partners, my best friend, and a small host of other people's children. (The fact that there are multiple of other people's children involved in this will be addressed in a separate post.) There were some other adults that recently decided they didn't want to be family with us anymore and there are others sitting on the periphery who may at some point decide to join in.
Let's talk about my family for a bit...We are not a blood family, we are a LOVE family. We welcome all to our fold who are capable of the complete and whole love which we experience for each other. Again, it shall be addressed at length in a separate post, but this is how so many children end up a part of my family....more than any adult, they are capable of complete and whole loves. In fact, they crave it. Mine is a complete and whole love. At all times.
The
most beautiful thing that has ever been said to me was, "I'm here because I
want to be with you. Your kids, your family, your friends...everything
you do is part of who you are and part of you. And I want to be with
you."
I
was struck past the point of tears at these words. I was struck to
absolute dumb silence, the kind where all I could do was utter a
guttural noise and close my mouth and swallow, but continue to stare at
the speaker.
Those
words, those are a summation of how I love. When I LOVE you, I'm all
in, no matter what--and I love every part of you, even the parts that
make me say, "huh?" No one had ever said them to ME before. Never before
had I ever experienced the absoluteness of that kind of acceptance out
of another human being.
This kind of acceptance though, THIS IS FAMILY. You can take a look at the modern world and come up with any blame you want for why life sucks wall-to-wall, but I see as one of the biggest reasons this fact that we rarely simply accept individuals as they are anymore. Regardless of when or how or why, at some point we humans collectively gave up acceptance of each other at our base levels. We quit looking at another human being and simply seeing the beauty of what was. We now look at ourselves and others as broken and needing to be fixed.
Seeing someone as broken and/or needing to be fixed is neither loving nor respecting that person. I'm not saying we don't all have areas in which we can improve, but there is a fundamental difference between room for improvement and being broken. My iPhone is a perfectly functioning piece of technology. If it were broken in some way, I would take it to Apple and ask them to fix it. There is plenty of room for improvement in it however, starting with Apple Maps. ;-)
And this is the difference. Every member of my family is a perfectly functioning human being. Yes, they all struggle in one way or another. They may have anxiety or depression or some other condition which makes day-to-day life difficult for them, but these are not things that need to be fixed. These are conditions which can be improved upon, whether through diet, exercise, or heaven forbid some sort of medication, but they can be improved and made more workable and less interfering of their lives.
FAMILY. This is how I define it.
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