Defining family has never been an easy task for me because of my skewed childhood.
I was born to a careless, negligent mother who cared more about sex and alcohol than her two daughters. This later resulted in her losing me as onlookers got tired of watching the abuse she was placing upon me at such a young age. As a result she lost me. It was her own doing as she had repeated opportunities to get me back but never took a single one. I was thrown around from foster home to foster home for awhile until I was finally adopted.
Most see adoption as a blessing and I should be forever indebted to my parents for being saints and taking me in; however, life with them was not the blessed road it was suppose to be. I had two working parents who were too busy for another child so they threw me from home to home and believed they were giving me a great life. Little did they know that my life was becoming full of despair, abuse, and adversity.
My biological family came back at the age of 19 and tried to take me back but it was too late. It took me awhile to realize this but once I did I moved past longing to know my family and decided to make a life for myself without either family.
Like I said, my definition of family is probably skewed compared to most. I would define family as those who choose to be around you and will love you unconditionally. They do not need to share a blood line they just need to share the desire to care for each other despite the circumstances surrounding them, in the good and the bad. This is how I hope to be with my family some day so my children can have an unbiased definition of family when they are my age taking this class.
