"Um, no, everyone's dead..."

When people ask about my family...

There’s often this awkward interchange with people from other cultures, from some who come from small towns and never left that community, or who are very close to their family members.

They will ask me about my family—parents and siblings.

And then I have to say, “No, I don’t really have any family.” That is, any immediate family.

Generally speaking, I mean, I do have some family members. I have a couple of close cousins, a few aunts and an uncle that I consider family. But really, other than that, not much. And those close extended family members and other ‘family just by name’ ones all live far away.

My biological grandparents are deceased, so are my parents, so is my only sibling.

Sometimes this plain shocks people. Sometimes it elicits looks of profound sadness and sympathy, dare I say even pity, because they simply can’t understand existing without their family.

I mean, I’m glad that they can’t. That that is so foreign a concept for them that they can’t quite grasp it.

It also makes me realize I’m different this way. (Not that there aren’t other people my age or even younger who are in a similar position. I know that they are. But it’s not the norm.)

Because I’ve had this conversation often enough with enough people to see the shocked and saddened looks on their faces. Their awkwardness at this fact.

It’s another way that this ‘gift’ of grief just keeps on giving. It’s a new rite of passage, a different stage of life, not one you ever move on from.

My feelings about not having [immediate] family members anymore, they’re complex. The ugly truth—the shame—is that sometimes it’s a relief. It’s easier.

My family members were not well. They did not make healthy choices with their bodies often, did not get the mental health help that they needed. I loved them, but it was often incredibly difficult to be their family member. To be the youngest, but arguably, most stable one that they looked to for help and guidance, especially when I was in graduate school and not yet able to help in the ways that I would have liked to.

But it’s also the truth that it’s still hard: Christmases, Thanksgivings, Easters are certainly challenging. Social media at those times displays all these pictures of people with their family members hurts. I don’t have a husband or partner, any children of mine own. I set with that. I feel it, deep within me and carry it in me. That stings, sometimes it even aches.

I am an incredibly extroverted person. I like being around people. I am social and outgoing. I did extremely well in a collectivist culture, living in Indonesia for five years.

Loneliness and being the sole survivor of my family would be hard for many people, period. I get that.

But for my character, family-oriented, extroverted, people-person, gets energy from being around people, it’s uniquely challenging. All of those things are part of me. I can’t change them about myself (even though sometimes I would like to) but that is undeniably who I am.

And I like and have always liked ancestry and genealogy. I have always been interested in my lineage and where I came from. I wanted to make family trees and read them. I would have liked to have a richer, more solid, firm, familial foundation.

But I do not.

I think about that from time to time now, as I am staring down these remaining years of my childbearing years, that deafening biological clock ticking away ever more loudly, persistently, annoyingly. And I think about how limiting a lack of family would be to my own hypothetical children, not having many family members from my side. Or, perhaps at all if I went at parenthood as a single woman.

But still, at moments like this I sit with the lessons that my mother instilled in me from a very young age.

I very distinctly remember hearing her say this:

“You cannot, will not, get what you need from your family, so you will need to look elsewhere for that.”

She meant for emotional support. For acceptance. Especially from my father with his emotional distance, a byproduct of his alcoholism.

But I took her advice. I have taken her advice for many years and I will continue to do so.

I am grateful because I am also extremely extroverted. I like people, mostly. I am interested in them. I care about them and make them feel at ease, socially. I have interpersonal skills and, as such, I curate my family wherever I go.

I move to new places, I go abroad, I leave old places and go to new parts of the country, but still, I find my people. My kindred spirits. And I hold them close even when I move on.

I may not have a lot of kin, related to me by blood, but I do have family. All over this globe.

I have people. People who held me up— the friends near and far, the penpals, who have been endlessly supportive and loving when my four year relationship was revealed to be rife with lies and betrayal…When my perception of him and of our relationship, my reality, crashed and burned, and it felt like my world imploded.

Still, I knew where I was going for Christmas. (One of the invites was from ‘Monica’, my new friend who also happened to unknowingly be dating my boyfriend at the same time that I was.)

But still, I had people to help me through. I always will, because they too know that when their world comes crashing down or even if they’re just having a rough day that I too will be there for them. I will reciprocate.

My best friend, soulmate and sacred soul sister/life-long best friend, Holly, whom I call my sahwira (from Dr. Tererai Trent, Awakened Woman), told me over break that, “You’re doing what you always do, meeting people where you go, caring for them, making connections.”

Just like mama taught me.

Not having family is hard. (Though I also am very well aware, from personal experience and that of other friends that I have, that having family also can be very very hard too.)

So whichever the case it may be, for you, whether like me or not—it’s important to develop your chosen family.

I learn a lot from indigenous elders, Native American mentors and honor and cherish ways of knowing.

They use the term “relatives” a lot. You meet people, develop relationships, you reciprocate. In doing so, you make them relatives; they become family.

And so, amidst sadness, I cultivate gratitude. I have chosen family. It may not look traditional, it may not be what others mean when they are asking about my family, but yes—

I DO have family. I have my people. And for them, I am sustained and forever grateful.

(And I hope that you do too.)