Family, for better or worse!

Quick explanation: Not everything I write (or do) involves magic. Wise women are about wisdom in general, and lots of wisdom has nothing to do with the magical arts. This is probably the first time I'm writing about something non-magical, though, so I wanted to explain. Now, on to this week's post!

This week, a friend of mine was faced with a conundrum. She has this friend, you see, who she really doesn't enjoy spending time with anymore. This friend is unhappy, miserable, even, and brings drama wherever she goes. Now, my friend has tried to tell this friend of hers about how this negativity is causing a rift, but it went badly, to say the least. My friend has a good heart, and she knows that she is one of only a couple of people who bother with this person anymore, and she is genuinely worried that withdrawing would be a blow that this broken individual simply couldn't bear. So, when this friend asked if she could come to my friend's Thanksgiving gathering, as she has done a couple of other times, my friend lied in order to get out of it, feeling bad about it the whole time, and turned to her friends, including me, for support and advice.

After making sure she had tried handling the issue up front, and hearing about her concerns for the other person, and, in general, reviewing how my friend had handled the whole situation, I came up with the following assessment: On a practical level, this "friend" is, in fact, family.

The concept of family has been heavily in flux for a long time now. Once upon a time, people pretty much all were born, grew up, and died in the same place, with extremely limited contact with any other place. Family, as defined by marriages and blood ties, was pretty much all one had. But the world changed; we developed a level of mobility that is, when one stops to look at it, truly awe-inspiring, and now, with the advent of the internet, we have a more and more global society. Suddenly, when one is the odd one out in a family, one can look around and find people one fits with. This has led a popular concept: chosen family.

I use the term "chosen family" myself, and I mean it; there are people in my life (aside from my spouse) that are not genetically related to me that I genuinely consider my family. I think, however, that people often abuse this idea; just because someone is a really, really good friend that you love a heck of a lot more than that asshole Uncle Jerk doesn't make them family. We do need to keep drawing a line...or to eradicate the separate concepts completely, but I know we aren't ready for that! So, how do we define family in this new age as distinct from friendship?

Family are people we have enough of  a history with and feeling for that, even when we don't enjoy their company anymore, or even if we never have all that much, even when we would really rather they just Go Away...we don't make them. We choose to make excuses to avoid them, to look away from those things that we know they aren't going to change no matter WHAT we say, and to still be there in at least some basic, minimal way, because we care about them too much to force them to find someone else and because they care enough about us to do the same.

Family, in some ways, is an ugly, dirty kind of emotional bondage, but it's also the crucible of family that can shape us into better, stronger, kinder and more tolerant people. Enduring Uncle Jerk's tasteless humor sucks, but watching that same jerk dance with his grown daughter at her wedding, holding her like she was made of glass, with tears in his eyes and a loving smile on his lips, taught you that even that asshole you work with probably has someone he cares about and is good to, which enabled you to find a way to work with him and keep your job.

Friendship, far from being the lesser stepchild as it sometimes seems to be considered, is the equal of family, and, in fact, the antidote for it. Friendship gives us a truly safe place to find support and advice, like my friend found in me. As the winter holidays approach, and we are forced to spend more time than usual with those people we associate with not because we want to, but because we have to, we can remember that this, too, shall pass, and, in the meantime, our cell phones and computers will allow frequent breaks for us to hang on to our sanity with a little help from our friends, so we can smile and nod with even more patience as Aunt Martha tells That Story again.

Comments

[Acelightning]

"Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in..." (Robert Frost)

[Jenny S.]

That quote always bugged me, actually, because people hear it, and it was intended, I think, as a positive thing, when, in truth, it's really one of the suckier parts of family, this obligation we have to each other whether we like each other or not...and a lot of technical family certainly isn't, and not only wouldn't take you in, but might even have thrown you out to start with.
That's something that maybe I didn't stress enough, that just because one is related to someone, these things are not inherently true. I have far too many "relatives" who wouldn't take me in or really lift a finger to help me any more than they would a total stranger, and sometimes less.
It is important that we understand that, in a certain, fundamental way, all family is chosen family in the end.
(I know YOU know this, Ace; I'm writing for other people here.)