Hey family, this one is for you.
My life consists of many different families.
The one I was born into, the one I’ve co-created with my partner and come home to at the end of each day, and my larger group of friends-who-are-family.
What these groups have in common is each are full of people who love with their whole heart, and at the end of it, do whatever it takes to see me in joy and success. These people are unconditional supporters of my life.
They invest in me even when I have stopped investing in myself.
It’s an interesting thing to be in a moment where I feel the need for my family and they’re physically far. And yes, cellphones and internet, but there’s nothing like the mundane existence of a Tuesday when your loved one drops by for dinner, and crumbs on the countertop turn into late night conversations with laughs and learnings you remember long after the moment passes.
It’s the mundane that has the power to imprint on our hearts, the unplanned, the uncontrived, where we’re not trying so hard, or for anything at all, when we’re just being.
It’s these moments of “nothingness” that one misses when a family is far away.
It’s the doorbell ringing at 2 AM and your drunk friends-who-are-family show up downstairs for a surprise visit.
These things just don’t happen when you live too many miles away.
But we don’t learn the value of these things when our family is close, or when we’re feeling great and having fun. We don’t truly learn the value of a family until the sun isn’t shinning as bright and you just wish mom would come over and make chicken soup for your cold. Or you had the greatest day and celebrating over text just doesn’t cut it.
I think this is yet another cruel joke of our modern way of life. I know, I sound like I’m 75 years old, but when we go off and away from our family for the first time it’s typically for college. And you’re usually having such a great time. I was having such a great time. It didn’t matter so much that my family wasn’t around.
See, I was establishing my new, “chosen” family. While very important to do so, I think it wasn’t until after that second family moved away, all at once, that I really realized how much I missed our moments, and in turn, the moments with my first family.
Family for me is where I feel most at home, most free.
And I didn’t realize how special these spaces were until they weren’t in my presence daily.
As an adjustment to the absence, I’ve worked in creating new circles of friends and colleagues, and every once in a while I come across another human who fits right in and, in an instant, I’ve known them my whole life. But it’s rare these days, it’s like my heart knows exactly where it belongs and there is no replacement for those bonds.
While they’re away, I continue to work on me, work on my own stuff, so that when we do meet, and when we do talk, and when we do eventually make it back to each other, we will be that much richer in knowing what it is to miss the everyday Mondays and nothing special Tuesdays. Those days will be so much sweeter.
And then, there’s this little family I have formed that I participate in every day, one that doesn’t follow any of the rules. Sometimes I look at this little family and I wonder how it got here. It’s certainly mine, I’ve co-created it with another, but it seems as though if I have any shit, it all comes pouring out here.
Maybe of all the families I’m a part of this is where I’m most my self.
We’re at an interesting point of our journey together; we’ve come from moments of brining out all the fun, laughter and encouragement for one another to ones where we don’t know if we’ll ever figure out how to bring our best selves to the table again. But we’re still here, one moment at a time, full of that type of uncontrollable, indescribable love that happens only for your family.
That type of love that keeps you waking up the next morning saying, let’s try this again.
I love you all more than I can say, but I know you understand.
For it was in our homes that I learned what it is to love.
With my whole heart,
Nat