Sunday, May 06, 2012

If You Don't Have Family In Your Life, Create Your Own

One of the things I was thinking about as I was enjoying the company of my family and my cousin's friends at her birthday party two weeks ago is how blessed I was to be in this situation.

I'm fortunate to have educated people embedded in my family who not only are aware of the issues, but are people of faith who live and practice their values. 

I know I'm indeed blessed to have blood family members who actually think it's cool I have a blog and are proud of the fact I am an internationally recognized trans activist.  

But I am quite painfully aware of the fact there are others who aren't quite so fortunate.   They've been kicked to the blood family curb for daring to be their true selves, and that stinks.

But there is a solution to that problem.    If your blood family won't embrace you and give you the unconditional love you need to thrive, create your own family by surrounding yourself with people who do love and care about you unconditionally.

When I was having issues with that at the beginning of my transition in 1994, I surrounded myself with chosen family and friends who enveloped me with unconditional love until my blood family came around to the fact this wasn't a phase in my life but a permanent reality .  

So yeah, when I say create your own family to get through this time period, I'm not selllin' you woof tickets on it.  I've put into practice what I'm advising you in this post to do because it works.

And yes, that created family is still around and part of my life today. 

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