on #nationalsiblingsday, let’s honor our chosen families too

Earlier today I caught wind of the social media trend du jour: It’s National Siblings Day.

And I took pause. This pause feels familiar (no pun intended), because it’s something I’ve felt often. Like a vague shortness of breath, a faint fear of speaking up because I’m afraid my truth will ruffle feathers or hurt people unnecessarily. It’s a feeling that gets caught in my throat, and as I lean in to this, I realize . . . I can’t be the only one who experiences this. 

It’s probably just that those who feel the way I do also feel the same compulsion to submit to the silence. So in the spirit of honesty and self-expression, I’ll share what this feeling is about for me.

Holidays designed to celebrate certain familial relationships have always given me pause. Because, you know, inclusion.

I’m fortunate and blessed to have a family of imperfect people who fiercely love me and try to do this thing called life in the best way they know how. We have traveled together and shared epic meals together, fought about nothing and fought about everything, and filled in the space between with totally mundane and boring moments (this is the #stuffoflife, y’all). Cue Diana Ross: We – are – family!

Like, there’s nothing like the solid stability that goes on in an organic unit of human beings like this. If I’ve learned anything about human nature, it’s that regardless of packaging, we’re all fundamentally the same. Up close and personal, true love runs deep, and it has the potential to create profound levels of pain. While I’d go to insane lengths to protect or defend the people I’m related to, I also won’t lie about them.

The people in my family are intense. We are dramatic. (Hence, me.) There are moments where we’ve hated on each other so harshly I seriously have no idea why other people even bother forging enemies. 

I’m one of those people who unapologetically needs to build in some major recovery time between family gatherings and holiday parties. (We can talk about this again in the late fall, ’kay?)

But-but-but! What about those who don’t have many people they can call family, those who still occupy this world wanting to spread their love but maybe aren’t closely linked to people by their blood? Who have for whatever reason lost those ties . . . or spent their entire lives feeling somehow apart from their families of origin?

I have always fiercely believed that friends are our chosen families. Even if you already have a loving family, you can consider yourself doubly (triply! quadruply!) blessed to add on to it. 

Can we talk about how important and life-giving it is to hold loved ones close, even if and especially if those loved ones chose to love you in all your glory and your hot mess, even when they didn’t have to?

Can we honor also those people we hold dear who put their stake in the ground of your heart, of their own volition? The ones who chose us at the level of the soul, which transcends the hell out of the body?

Happy #nationalsiblingsday. I am grateful to all my brothers and sisters, both blood and otherwise.