What Does Family Mean to You?

I’ve thought quite a lot about what I wanted to make my second blog post about, and because of what has been going on in my life lately I have decided it will be about what family means to others, and what it means to me. This is a complicated subject for me, as I have a very bad relationship with everyone who is related to me by blood (excluding my sister). Family is also something that is very important to me, and I treasure those that I consider my family far more than I can explain.

First, I will dive into what family means for a few other people around me. I do largely agree with all of these points & feel very strongly about them myself as well. There seems to be a common theme among the ones I asked – admittedly not surprisingly – and it’s that family doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with blood. The majority of my friends and the people I consider family have families that consist mostly of people with no blood relation. This is largely because we have had very bad experiences with the people who are legally & biologically our families. We have learned how to build our families around our values and have created more solid foundations of trust in this way than we had in relationships with our biological and legal families.

Another commonality between these people is that ‘family’ are people who will stick by your side & support you through life no matter what. That when things are getting hard, they won’t just run away, ignore or avoid the situation or the person. We all strongly believe that family will always be there for you – even if or when they don’t want to be if the situation calls for it. Everyone goes through hard times, but the ones who stay with you through it are true friends and family. One person made the comment of families still sometimes having their arguments, but sticking through it and learning to communicate effectively with each other in the end.

This next point was only briefly mentioned by one or two people, but this one is probably the biggest one for me; family loves and supports unconditionally. This may sound pretty obvious to most, but I have noticed that as a society, most of us only give conditional love – yet we are under the belief that they are giving unconditional love. To try to explain this a little further, I will first give the dictionary* definitions of unconditional and conditional. The definition given for unconditional is “not limited by conditions.” The definition for conditional is “Imposing, containing, subject to, or depending on a condition or conditions” and “made allowed on certain terms.”

Just by the definitions it may appear as though we are giving unconditional love, but the majority of us are not aware of the many ways we may be conditional in our love. For myself, my parents love was always and will always be conditional. One example would be when I was around 10, the elementary school had some kind of event that had a table from a toy shop. My sister and I found pogo sticks there (the kind you jump on) and our Mom bought one for each of us. Later either that day or week, something happened – I can’t recall what – that made my Mom very mad at me. We were out, and once we got home she took my sister, went upstairs into her room, and locked the bedroom door.

I was feeling a vast array of large, scary emotions and I didn’t know what to do with any of them so I thought it would be a good idea to call my Dad - because I didn’t know what to do. My parents were divorced by this time, not quite sure how long, but separated for about 3 or 4 years at this point. They never really had the best relationship, but I can’t complain too much because it could have been drastically worse. I probably couldn’t have made a worse decision though, as it upset my Mom significantly more.

She was so upset by my calling my Dad, that the following day she returned my pogo stick. I had never even been able to take it out of the box, and to this day my sister still has hers. To say I was devastated would be an understatement, but it is a more obvious example of how our love can be conditional. Another more obvious example is when parents try to push what they want for themselves or their children onto their children. Like how a family of doctors may want their children to become doctors, or even just in moments where we don’t consider certain career choices as being ‘successful.’

One of the things I will stress most to my children is that no matter what they do, who they are, who they want to be or become, no matter what, I will always love them, and there is nothing they can ever do or say that would change that.

My view on family has changed quite dramatically over the years & at the moment it has landed on the key points I’ve mentioned above. For me, family should love each other unconditionally; they should support and be there for each other especially during times of need; and family isn’t necessarily the ones who created you, or the ones legally and biologically related to you.

Now I’d like to know what family means to all of you! Please feel free to comment/reply – I’d love to see what everyone’s thoughts are.

*Dictionary
Unconditional - https://www.dictionary.com/browse/unconditional?s=t
Conditional - https://www.dictionary.com/browse/conditional