I'm another one whose family is not the genetic family.
You only have to look at people like Kanalah (sorry, dear) to see that sometimes the family you're born into just isn't worth considering as family.
My best friend's mother is family.
My best friend (duh) is family. My husband is family.
We had another bit of family over last night - a young man (well, about my age so not so 'young' anymore) and his 20-month-old daughter. She's our niece, but has no genetic relationship to us.
Several other friends are effectively family.
My niece and nephew are family, mostly because they're innocent of anything their parents and grandparents have done to me. I stay in touch with my blood-family for their sake.
Maybe it's sad. Maybe it isn't.
I prefer not to live life on 'should' but on 'is'. It's very easy to say you 'should' get on well with your blood-family. It's sometimes not possible, and occasionally dangerous, to try to do so.
If you can build a good, solid foundation of friend-family; do it. That's what IS. Blood-family is just 'should'.
Fuck 'should'. It can take a flying leap.
Edit to add: People who have a good relationship with their blood family are very, very fortunate. Don't get me wrong. And I feel blessed to have shared life with my maternal grandmother. She was an amazing person, and in many ways similar to yours - treating everyone from the CEO to the janitor as a person, and baking cookies with her grandchildren and so on.
But while one may try to treat everyone as a person; that doesn't mean they're a person you can get on with for the kind of extended relationship the word 'family' implies.
You only have to look at people like Kanalah (sorry, dear) to see that sometimes the family you're born into just isn't worth considering as family.
My best friend's mother is family.
My best friend (duh) is family. My husband is family.
We had another bit of family over last night - a young man (well, about my age so not so 'young' anymore) and his 20-month-old daughter. She's our niece, but has no genetic relationship to us.
Several other friends are effectively family.
My niece and nephew are family, mostly because they're innocent of anything their parents and grandparents have done to me. I stay in touch with my blood-family for their sake.
Maybe it's sad. Maybe it isn't.
I prefer not to live life on 'should' but on 'is'. It's very easy to say you 'should' get on well with your blood-family. It's sometimes not possible, and occasionally dangerous, to try to do so.
If you can build a good, solid foundation of friend-family; do it. That's what IS. Blood-family is just 'should'.
Fuck 'should'. It can take a flying leap.
Edit to add: People who have a good relationship with their blood family are very, very fortunate. Don't get me wrong. And I feel blessed to have shared life with my maternal grandmother. She was an amazing person, and in many ways similar to yours - treating everyone from the CEO to the janitor as a person, and baking cookies with her grandchildren and so on.
But while one may try to treat everyone as a person; that doesn't mean they're a person you can get on with for the kind of extended relationship the word 'family' implies.
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