Family, Expanded

Someone once asked me, not unkindly, which family was my “real” one. I've been asked some version of that question my whole life, and I used to feel like I had to pick — like naming one meant erasing the other.

I don't feel that way anymore. I have parents who raised me and parents who never stopped hoping for me, and both of those are real, complete, whole relationships, existing at the same time, without needing to be ranked. Nobody in my life had to shrink to make room for somebody else.

I think “family” was always big enough to hold this. It was other people's discomfort with the shape of it that made it feel like a contradiction. A word doesn't need everyone's relationship to look the same to be doing its job.

If you're holding more than one family — foster and adoptive, biological and chosen, however your particular version is shaped — I don't think you need to pick a “real” one either. I think you're allowed to just let the word stretch until it fits everyone who's actually shown up for you.