I'm beginning to think "family" is a bully-word like "normal", that we use to beat ourselves up with.
I think it's been healing to make my OWN. So I did that with a few friends and a church community.
But I also think there's another kind of fantasy family. I'll call it phamily (like phatasmagoria, but good). With Family, the whole blood thing is that it is what it is and never can or will change. Aacck.
But PHamily, because it's a phantasm, it shifts and changes, and that's okay, that's its very nature. Nothing wrong with that at all. So people in my phamily (which is in my head, not the community) can be in and out. Phamily is my grateful reminding myself of the people who sustain and love and help me. Family's performance that way, at least most of them, has been pretty rocky or destructive, except for my Dad. But phamily is the current group in my heart, alive or dead, that very day, who are in reality actually being a sustaining nurturing source of life for me.)
In my phamily (which can be, but doesn't have to be, a CHANGING list):
My Dad's memory (the gentle one--I talk to him)
My old man friend A. who recently died (talk to him too)
My female friends
VESMB individuals
VESMB collectively
Gennulman
A few male friends
One coworker
My dog
Animals in general
Some authors
The earth
My D's not in my phamily right now but she will be again, I have faith. (I'm not in her phamily right now either.) My NMom actually does appear in mine at times. Sometimes I access the rare times when she had dug deep and actually was mothering me emotionally for a fleeting moment. When I let those in and feel comforted by letting that memory grow large, it's healing, and she's in the phamily. (Not for long but that's okay, not her fault and it doesn't matter how long one's in or out of the phamily, there are no judgements involved because it's only about maintaining something nurturing and positive in my mind.) It's not about someone being "good enough" to be in my phamily, EVERYONE deserves a phamily. It's a private creation, my phamily. It's not about power or judgment but about comfort and nurturing for me in that time
It's my phamily, I get to populate it and define it. It's not about biology, it's about always knowing, like the needle in a compass, that there is always love and support in my phamily just as reliably as there WOULD have been in my family if it were available. When I freak out about getting love from a specific family member I want it from, I set myself up for heartbreak. When I remind myself, I've got a phamily, and there is always love...I'm okay. I never, ever have to be "good enough" for my phamily. My phamily only exists when I decide it's real for me, that a name or source is actually sustaining and loving in the way I wasted years longing for certain family to do.)
Phamily CAN do it! Because that's exactly all it is!
Anyway, I think you can give up on family. Sometimes it's the life-affirming thing to do, just to release your relatives to be who they are.
But not phamily!
If you claim your right to build (and change as it invites being changed) your phamily, family can't hurt you any more.
Phamily can be one person. One person and a dog. Two people and 1 book. An entire choir you sing with. There are no rules. More is not better than fewer. Phamily is what feels right for YOU for it to be.
love,
Hops
