What is a Real Family?

Well my friend is sitting here reading me her stories, I have to say I am impressed, so I have offered to publish another one of her articles. It is on the subject of ‘what is a real family’. I found it interesting that she raised this as I had a discussion with a stranger today (became a friend) for 1 hour about life, families and her love of joy. The woman told me she had a brother who got married in his late 40’s recently. She said he doesn’t keep in touch with her. She said she and her husband and children had christmas dinner with another uncle. She was told this year that he didn’t want christmas with her. She said she doesn’t like being with him. We talked about the meaning of family. Turns out she has friends in Melbourne who are what she termed her ‘heart family’ where when she broke up with her husband and lost her job, they took her in under their wing, made her part of their family. She said she was invited on holidays with her children and theirs. Just recently she went to the wedding of one of the children who she sees as her daughter as well. I said the world can be your family. My own family are fragmented and often fight. Many of my family members don’t speak to each other, so in truth I don’t feel I have family around me. I don’t have a partner yet somehow I feel deeply connected to life. I do see the world as my family and I often chat with people not because I need to, but because I feel so relaxed and am just saying hi. I feel no need to belong, as I know I belong. I have found peace in my life. We really had a great chat and had a hug at the end and then she was on her way.

So this is my friend’s story about her meaning of family. She is an amazing person who has had many trials in her life, but what I marvel at with her, she is always joyful and kind hearted. So enjoy her work. It is illuminating.

Family by Bronwen Williams

If we were to look in the dictionary for the word ‘family’, we would find all sorts of explanations for what that word means. Now, in 2011, we need to rethink some of those ideas, as for many years they have been obsolete.

Take for example a single parent family, say a daughter and a mother. Are they are a ‘real’ family? Well, my son told me not so long ago that he felt that we weren’t actually a ‘real’ family, as we were only a single parent and child. I was of course mortified and brought to tears, telling him to “go and google the word family!”

Being a person who was brought up in government institutions and foster homes after being taken from my mother and 6 siblings at age 8, for me there has always been great confusion about the word ‘family’.

In one foster home I was told that I must call the parents mum and dad, which was strange, as every time I looked at them I could see that they were definitely not my mum and dad.

I have discovered that I have been creating my own ‘families’ over the years time and time again, within different groups of friends and social groups. I believe we all do this.

I recently organized my sons 21st birthday dinner party, and invited 25 people. There were no ‘blood relatives’ in the room – except me. Not his dad, no cousins, no aunties and no uncles. What he did have at his dinner party however, was a room full of people who love him, and who are his family now. They were a mixture of people he worked with, friends from the past, friends from the present, spiritual friends and of course his girlfriend. People he belongs with. As Desmond Tutu once said ‘I belong therefore I am’. I would have to agree totally with that statement. Belonging to a group or workplace gives us a feeling of ‘family’. We spend so many hours at work, school or Uni these days, it’s no wonder we are often more connected to our friends there than to our families.

I have 6 siblings out there somewhere, but can I call them my ‘family’? What makes someone our ‘family’? Is it that we are connected thru bloodline? Or maybe because we lived at the same address for many years, or maybe because we share the same last name?

I feel a connection to most people I meet everyday, they are my family – I just don’t know their names yet! But that doesn’t matter, only the heart connection matters, and that I believe is the real essence and meaning of ‘family’.