FAMILY
None of us choose the family we are born to. There is no consent or freedom in being born. Rather, life is thrust upon us without choice. The people we find ourselves with at birth, for better or worse, are family, and as children we need them to survive. We are dependent. This imbalance--parent is caregiver and child is helpless--makes the parent-child relationship strange and unique.
If we are lucky, we make it through our adolescence, and the childhood dependence gradually dissolves and the ties to family that we thought were binding, we find to actually be voluntary in the rise of adulthood. We no longer need the family we were born to in the same way, and the nature of the relationship to family shifts from need to want, from dependence to choice.
This onset of independence opens up new freedom and balances the previously imbalanced distribution of choice and power in the parent-child dynamic. This naturally creates new questions: what kind of relationship do I want with the family I was born to? Do I want to maintain a relationship with the family I was born to? Choice is what maintains every relationship. As an adult, family is chosen, whether they're related or not.
This transition to equality of choice and power in the parent-child relationship can create beautiful growth in families and it can also create extreme conflict because the inherent imbalance that initially defines the parent-child dynamic is being contested. Self-advocacy and making and maintaining boundaries will be important tools to not re-enter the childhood imbalance and not abandon your choice.
Our existential right to life and to live as we wish, gives us freedom to choose to expand and redefine who is and who is not family. When I think of family at its best, I think of people that collaboratively cultivate, through word and action, a sense of belonging, home, love, acceptance, commitment, and safety. It's a group of people whose desires, values, and interests build the social support, the unit, the group that navigate the things of living, practical and spiritual.
This is not an impossible or unrealistic conceptualization of family. However, it may feel unfamiliar to many of us. It's a version of family that is made possible through choice, aligning value and action with our attempts to make it so. Explore: 1) what about family is familiar to you based on your own history of family. Next, 2) think about how your history has informed, expanded or contracted, what you think is possible for a family to do and be.
Be open to the possibility that family can embody genuine belonging, home, love, acceptance, commitment, and safety, or whatever values you want to define your family. What choices can you make that get you closer to being a part of and building the family that you want? Others are looking for someone like you and share the vision of family that you currently hold. It is possible.
Whether your family is filled with love or is severely lacking love, making sense of your family experience, the good and the bad, is a really brave and difficult thing to do. Wherever you are on your journey with family, I honor it. Know that you are worthy of good family, love, and belonging.
Consider these concepts: love, home, belonging, commitment, acceptance, and safety. These ideas reflect family at its best. How does your family reflect these concepts? How do you reflect these concepts to your family? What other ideas and concepts reflect a good family?