I don’t have any family that is related to me by blood here in my little swath of the Midwest. Most of my blood family lives on the East coast of the United States, though I still have some family in the Golden State as well. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a family here in the middle of the country. I call them my kith, and I find that if I simply ask… I often get the help I need from them. Some are connected to me from geocaching. Some are connected to me from church. Others are friends I have made in the nineteen years I’ve called this little swath of the Midwest home. All of them are important to me.
“But they aren’t your REAL family!” I have been told by some tied to me by blood. But I beg to differ. They are family in every sense of the word for me.
I also get the whole “You care more about them then you do your REAL family.” And it’s true. Some of them I do care more about than people tied to me by blood, but that’s because my kith care more about me than my kin do too. They know me better.
In my Portals Series, the Portal Seeker Solilune of Delphian chooses to live in the Realm of Original Magic even though none of the family he grew up with accompany him. He creates a family of choice that is linked by respect, friendship and some distant kinship, forging ties that can never be severed.
He finds a place where he can belong.
If you want to read that story…. Click here.
Soli’s journey to finding a family of choice was inspired by my own. I grew up far away from my blood family, since most lived on the aforementioned East Coast and I was the daughter of a USMC officer stationed sometimes halfway around the world. Family members of choice filled the void of being far away from blood family. Even still, the idea of being separated from family was normal to me. And when I grew up and met someone who lived here in this little swath of the Midwest, it was normal for me to come here and forge my own ties. And forge them I did.
Even today, that family of choice often knows me better than my “real” family does. I have friends who constantly check in on me and I on them. I have people who go out of their way to help me with things, including rides to airports well before dawn. I have a family who doesn’t blink when I pull out the Squisheys to snap a photograph and accepts me for who I have become, not what I once was. They know my work schedules. They help plan adventures. They are who I call when I get stuck. I’m not told to “act normal” or “grow up” or “stop being silly” because to them, this is who I am and have always been.
I have found a place where I belong.
That’s not to say that I don’t belong to my blood family. Like Soli, who reforges relationships with those he left behind, I too keep in touch with the family on both sides of the coast as best as I can. I still have that connection, even if sometimes I wish I didn’t. But some relationships I have let fall by the wayside, as circumstances and the past are too much to allow me to forget the injustices I have been dealt or the troubles maintaining the relationships have caused, even though I have forgiven some of them. They are a part of my life, though they aren’t in the stories I am writing now simply because they are just background characters.
The same goes for my kith as well. There are relationships that have ebbed and flowed over the years. There are some that have been severed, never to grow again. Trust has been broken….. or just circumstance has led to a lack of communication. But there are others that have blossomed into wonderful legacies that have stood the test of time.
I know where I belong.
Stay magical, friends.
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K. S. Wood Writes 