"Family" does not really mean the same thing to me as it used to. My kids are moving out into the world and I don't really have the money to pay for expensive family vacations and sequestered "bonding experiences." I pretty much still get the every day duty. Additionally, as many other queer people know, there is not always the benefit of on-going extended family closeness and relations that many hetero people experience. While I set out over two decades ago to have a big and bustling family, I really have something a little different...
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE being the every day parent and I always have. I feel fortunate to be helping with financial aid forms and job applications and daily conversations about daily activities and things. I make a genuine and constant effort to stay connected to my kids in a new way. I so get that it is their job to disconnect and move out into the world and it is my job to not only let them go with encouragement, but to also regroup and create a world for my own self. The reality is, however, that it means expanding my experience of family.
I don't live in the same town as my folks and my brother and sister and I all live in different states. We don't have an every-day sort of connection. I haven't really gotten to be a hands-on aunt and as a single person, I don't have any extended family in the partnering department. So, while I had intended to build family upon family all those years ago--what my world is starting to look like is something more creative.
What I do have is some of the most amazing long-term friends in the world--so emotionally close and weathered over years of changes and intensity as to be very much family. I also have some great newer friends and playmates--people to have coffee with, take in a movie, or who will come over for dinner, a swim or a walk on a moment's notice. I know that if I had to move or was challenged with an illness or injury--the people who would rally around would most-likely be a combination of my kids and their friends, and my own inner and outer circle of amazing people--what I am coming to think of as my family.
There is definitely something that gets lost in our society for many queer people--many of us experience a separation or distancing from family of origin that can be painful and inevitable. We just don't move in the same worlds and even though we may all try very hard (or even a little bit)--it is hard to reconcile all the pieces of our lives into one cohesive whole. I can honestly say that in all the dozens and dozens of conversations that I have had with dozens and dozens of gay people--we have all woven a challenging reorganization of what "family" means into our coming out and evolution process. Our relations with our kids, parents, siblings, etc. become something we not only don't take for granted, but these relations also become a fertile ground for some really tumultuous stuff.
My kids too, like most kids of queer parents, have had their lives influenced and expanded in creative ways. They have learned to make room for my friends and "causes" and I think that there are some really great things that have come from watching and sharing as I have built my own support circle. I see that some of those skills have rubbed off on them as they bring close friends and new acquaintances into activities, gatherings and holidays and I notice they have less rigid ideas of what family can mean.
The surprising thing I have learned is that family is evolutionary and revolutionary--for me it is ever evolving and changing. I make room, my kids make room, things shift and change and some of the strongest connections still surprise and amaze me. I work on being open and nonjudgmental and accepting those individuals my kids choose to bring into our version of family and appreciate the ways that they do the same for me. This isn't the family that I expected to have but I am incredibly grateful that it is the family I DO have...
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