It's the first week of Pride month so I'm talking about families of choice. When I came out it was not welcome. While my folks are fairly liberal and who, in the early 70's adopted kids of color and fought against racism (even in their own families). However, they weren't similarly prepared to accept me as queer. Especially for my mom: the church and the south led her to believe that my love was inferior, was wrong, and separated me from the love of God. That meant that I started building a family of choice. This was highlighted recently with my nephew. He'd had a terrible interaction with my dad (his papa) and we started talking about not being seen or loved enough by our family members. This led to a conversation about getting to build a family of choice. Some are lucky to be born with people who see them and many of us aren't. So we can assemble the people we can relate to as mamas, aunties, siblings, and cousins. Tell them that's who they are to you. The lesson I learned in queer spaces applies to being a sick person, too. Those whom we thought we could depend on may not be the people who stick around. We may have to "build" new families of choice. We are worth having family of choice to count on.