My NEW Family

I spent most of my life trying to create and recreate my “family”.  I think this notion is a HUGE reason I am here in this life.  For me we are all here to learn how to love.  Love ourselves, love our friends and family, love our communities, love our planet and understand the connectedness to all living things in our hemisphere.  We are all the same.

I believe we need to be willing to be vulnerable just as much as we need to be strong.  As it can be easier to be vulnerable with people who are close to you, we often explore this first with our primary family.

By the age of 19, I had already experienced the death of both of my parents.  This was tough and left an emptiness in me.  I spent the next 2-3 decades desperate to recreate that primary family with my partner’s family.  Twenty plus years later had me facing the loss of family again.  This brought me to my knees for 3 long hard years.

I did a lot of work during that time.  A lot of work learning how to accept this, how to make sense of the concept of “family” and finally how to redefine it for me.  Family are the people in my world who call when I am sick and bring me food, the people who understand the look in my eyes,  who support my lifestyle choices, encourage my dreams, share their pain and hurt and joy with me back.  They are people I met at birth to people I met 6 months ago.  The people I speak to daily and the people I speak to rarely but pick right back up where we were and I know I could reach out anytime to.

I am so grateful.  I have such a HUGE family now.

How has your divorce process changed how you feel about family?