Redefining Family

Families are made, not born

Do any of these stories fit your concept of family?

• A woman received a call from her brother recently. Not such a big event, perhaps, except that neither she nor any other member of the family had heard from him in over 15 years — and they didn’t think this was particularly remarkable.
• I once started chatting to a stranger during an airport delay in a small regional airport. He told me that his wife works south of the city, he works north of the city and their son boards at high school in the city. They are lucky to meet up together once a year.
• I know women who have changed their identities to keep themselves and their children safe from the family they grew up with or the family they built, full of hope and promise for the future.

Families in today’s world must fight to remain relevant, in the face of distance: the inevitable side effect of seeking fulfilling work or other opportunities, damage: emotional, psychological and physical, each as harmful as the others, and indifference: the apathy that affects many families, born of overwork, poor communication and the ‘upgrade’ culture we live in. Individuals in these families do not feel as if they have anything in common with each other, and they drift away in the wind.

Distance, damage and indifference: chances are at least one of these has touched your own life.

For me, the enemy’s name was Distance.

Do you live far from your loving and supportive extended relatives? What choices led you here? Are you away from them because you feel you need a certain job or lifestyle, or did you simply drift here on the tide of life?

I am a single mother by choice. I did not have a co-parent, but what I did have was a large and overwhelmingly supportive extended family. In my foolishness and stubborn pride, I lived far away from them when I first became a mother, pursuing career and riches and finding nothing but stress and depression. When I hit rock bottom, my family stepped in to move me closer to them and I slowly found myself again. I learned the hard way that solid family support is not a crutch, but a vital component of a happy, self-confident individual.

But perhaps distance is not your enemy. Perhaps you are battling against damage or indifference in your search for true family.

Damage takes many forms, emotional, psychological, physical.

While it seems obvious that our family members should be our staunchest supporters and most reliable sources of love and care, the tragic reality is sometimes very different.

Damage can occur in any family — your family, your neighbor’s family, your hero’s family. Once it happens, it can take a lifetime to come to terms with. Often, even if they do manage to escape, victims struggle to be heard. Once heard, they struggle to be believed. Once believed, they struggle to find justice and peace. It is easy for others to say, ‘just get over it, it’s in the past.’ For damaged souls, their ghosts haunt them every day, popping up at the most unexpected times to remind them of all they have suffered. Building new, loving family connections after such trauma is a mammoth and ongoing task.

Distance and Damage are the big bullies, the visible enemies of family.

But they have an equally insidious friend: Indifference.

Indifference stares at her screen and ignores her child’s prattling until the prattling stops and the house becomes silent. And indifference never even notices.

Indifference sits alone in an empty house and receives a card for Christmas from his children but never a call, never a visit, until he lies dying. Then his children return, only to plague his last days with talk of wills, inheritance and money.

Indifference is a group of people closely related by blood with not a single thing to say to one another; not a single shared, memorable experience to reminisce about, not a single story to differentiate them from any other random group of people. Indifference offers nothing and receives nothing in return.

I believe that it is up to us to recreate the concept of family.

If the family we have right now is distant, non-existent or harmful, that is our opportunity to redefine family for our own situation, to ensure we get the support and sense of belonging that every human needs.

Remember this: Families are made of love, not DNA. Family is not a matter of blood, but of action — your friends and friends-to-be can become your family.

Making friends is intimidating and takes effort. But like anything worth doing, the effort is always a small price to pay for the reward.

Exercise caution. It is easy to end up with people just like your inadequate family — we humans tend to revert back to what we know. So, drop the people who come into your life and add nothing to it. Drop the ones who will take your time but give none of their own. Drop the ones who make you feel judged or less than worthy; these are not friends, just bad habits you need to lose. Families are made of love, remember. So, look for the love.

Consider these concepts of family:

• A hugely busy career woman answered the phone at one a.m. before a massive day at work. She heard the panic in the voice of her friend, a new mother with a sick baby. Not waiting to be asked, the woman drove to her friend’s house, and then drove them to the hospital, waiting with her friend in the busy emergency room. The woman would not hear of leaving her friend’s side until the little boy was given the all clear — and then she headed home to change before going straight into work.
• A family whose six-month-old was diagnosed with cancer was overwhelmed with love and practical support from family, friends and strangers who paid the bills, closed up their house, cared for their pets and rallied around them, taking away every small burden of daily life so that they could concentrate on their baby.
• The husband of a new mum from a mother’s group heard about a newly single mother struggling to get by and arranged to outsource his company’s admin work to her, to keep money coming in while she got her life back together.

I witnessed all of these stories of true family. Instead of distanced, damaging and indifferent families, let’s fill the world with purpose-built, supportive, understanding, loving ones — starting right here with your own.

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