Who is your family?

"If I could do anything as a Health Activist… Get aspirational. Money is no longer an option. What is your biggest goal that is now possible? How could you get there?"
Now bring it back down to size. How much of this can you accomplish now, in a year, in five years?"

It's an interesting prompt, and I will use it on one of the days when I'm not so excited about the prompt for the day. Today has had a lot of things going on that I need to process.  Daylight Savings Time has thrown me off a bit and I woke up early. I had time to lurk the web and went to Facebook. There was a message from my niece that said: 

"How are you doing. It is awesome that you need new clothes. I am so proud of you. I have a question you may not know the answer too. Why does Brenda not like me? She wouldn't talk to me at Steve's funeral and she just asked to be my friend on facebook then unfriended me. I am just curious. I hope you enjoy the rest of your week end. ILY"

 The question was the equivalent of asking "Hey, did you notice the elephant in the room?"  My sister blames my niece for poor decisions that her parents made. That and the fact that we all knew that Cindy wasn't a blood relative, but that was another elephant. I personally am tired of all the elephants my family ignores so I decided to out it. I gave Cindy the awful truthful answer emphasizing that she is not responsible or to blame for any of this. It wasn't surprising to me that I was only confirming what Cindy already knew.  My sister can be a royal bitch. I hate it. 

So with this background, I went to church. These are the people that I truly appreciate as family. Only one of them is actually related to me, and that is a distant relationship. But we care about and for each other. And we care about people around us. It doesn't matter that we aren't blood, we treat each other as family. I sat in the middle of this thinking about Cindy and Brenda and realized that it is better to just choose your family sometimes. 

After church I went to a restaurant and there was a large multi-generational family sitting near me. As I watched them I realized that I really miss this. And it's hard that I don't have this, and it's attitudes like Brenda's and actions like Ex's that I don't have it, can't have it. So I have been trying to work through my anger at them and my sadness all afternoon. Why does my family have to peck each other to death?

This post was written as part of NHBPM – 30 health posts in 30 days: http://bit.ly/vU0g9J