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The Importance of Chosen Families


While most of us are born into homes that contain a mother, father, and a sibling or two, some people are born into families that can be as large as a village. Other people are born into homes with single parents or couples that couldn’t make it after the birth of a child. Some individuals are placed into a foster care system where parental rights are severed and foster homes come and go like the wind. 

When our biological families become a recurring source of emotional hurt or disappointment for us, we begin to gravitate to people who are more like us. While we can relate to these people, they are also the individuals who are there to provide support and make time for us when we need it. These are the people who may show us unconditional love and support at a deeper level than our biological family had the capacity for. 

These are also the ones that are there to listen to us and hold our hands during times when life becomes unbearable. They are always there to correct us and alert us about our behaviors when we may be sliding off the rails.  

Why We Choose Others as Family

While we are born into families with matching genetics and bloodlines, these are not always the people that we feel comfortable with or relate to. We may feel as if we do not belong or fit in with the people nature has chosen for us to live with. We may feel that our biological family does not understand us or agree with how we identify ourselves through our style, clothing, or gender choices. Some of us become members of blended families and feel like we have been left out of the mixture altogether. 

We may not feel comfortable on any level with the people that we are supposed to call family. However, just because we are born into a family unit does not mean we cannot choose to call other individuals our family.  

Who We Choose to Be Our Family 

When we can no longer take the friction that is attached to our biological families, we begin to gravitate to those who are more like us. We tend to gravitate to the group of individuals that share the same interests, choose the same sexual identity, or have experienced similar traumas as us. These are the individuals that are able to empathize with the pain of not being able to relate or be a part of our biological families. 

These are also the people that can understand us the most. They are the people that seem the most like us. We know that we feel better with them than with the people we actually live with. They offer us unconditional love and, in return, we offer the same to them. They may or may not have had the same experiences as us, but they are always there to listen, offer advice, and make us laugh when we really feel like crying. 

Once we find our people, our tribe, our circle of trust, we begin to build our chosen families. 

Why a Chosen Family?

Once we begin to gravitate to those who are more like us, we begin to see the possibility of offering just as much love and support to them as we have received ourselves. Through these people that were once considered to be just friends, the bonds of trust, support, and love have formed and been strengthened. Eventually, the ones in our inner circle who were once considered friends are considered family. 

The great thing about having a chosen family is you can always have more than one. If you are in the military or like to explore the world, you may have been adopted into many different groups. People do not just find us by happenstance, energies are drawn to one another. It is the very drawing of those energies that the foundations of our chosen families are formed. 

Chosen families are very much like biological or blood-related family members. These are the people that you know you can call for help or emotional support when life seems unbearable or a situation feels hopeless. These are the people that, no matter how far they are, will book a plane ticket or make that call just to be able to support you no matter what. At the same time, for these individuals, you find yourself doing the same.  

Nobody has the right to deem what we consider to be a family. For some, when the word “family” is mentioned, a picture of mom, dad, kids, and maybe a dog comes to mind. For others, this might not be the case. Some may think of family as those with whom they served in a wartime conflict or graduated boot camp. For others, family may mean those quirky souls like ourselves who have intertwined their energies with ours to the point that we can’t imagine our lives without them. The definition of family brings to mind many things to different people. While our chosen families can be expansive, they can be small as well. We can even choose family members and integrate them into our biological relations. In a world where there are hundreds of millions of souls, no one should be alone. Call SokyaHealth today at 866-932-1767 to get the support you need and deserve.

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