Family Trees

There's family you grow up with,  and family you give birth to, and if you are lucky  - at some point in your life you realize you have a family that you made.

I have a huge family - related by blood and birth and marriage.  They are a mixed bag of awesome, crazy, obnoxious, and loving.  Some are narcissistic, snobby, uptight.  Some are the very epitome of red-neck trailer trash. It's a very broad spectrum.  Not surprising, I suppose, when the count of first cousins reaches higher than 50 without including in-laws.  It's a big family tree by any measure.  I'm stuck with that family.  I love them, they love me. I'm closer to some of those branches than others, and it's okay.  They are my roots and have helped me to grow strong.

All the same - I'm one of the "strange" fruits on my family tree, and they don't always know what to do with me.  I've bucked the traditions of my upbringing in a conservative church.  I don't agree with or conform to the expectations of my youth.  I choose my own path.  It causes some consternation in my close knit family. I don't rub their faces in my life choices, nor do I let their concerns impede what I know is right for me. I will love them where they are.  They try to do the same for me, as best as they are able.  I will love and support their endeavors to the best of my abilities, even when it requires a love buffer.

And then there's my other family - the dear people in the world who have.... I don't even know the verb I want here.  Helped. Held. Hugged. Loved. Waited. Stood near.  These are the people who have seen my worst and best moments. They are not blood relations, nor people I've known since birth - but they are a group of people who I can only think of as soul siblings - like the spirits that inhabit our bodies just KNOW each other, without words. They offer a sense of resonance and completion whether we are together or distant.  Their presence in the world enriches and strengthens my life.  Sometimes the connection is evident on a first meeting - like love at first site without all that romantic nonsense added by movies.

These people are also my family, and often closer than family.  They are the people who let me be as I am in the world, and they are glorious.  It's like having a forest of family trees.