Family

As I did last year, I will attempt to write a blogpost a day for the 12 days of Christmas; except this time I will pick a new topic each day. This is the blogpost for the seventh day of Christmas 20/21.

While the rest are out watching the fireworks, I am writing this blogpost a little belated, but after midnight is better than not at all.

I have spent the last three weeks living at my best friends’ house in Denmark, where I have my own room; I also lived here 10 weeks this summer and I have been living with them on other occasions when I needed it. I met my friend Elisabeth 33 years ago, her husband a few months after she did, and her kids days or hours after they were born. It is a house of friends, and the kids are my oldest kids. The youngest even calls me extra mom.

This is where I am spending this new year’s eve with an addition of Elisabeth’s sister, brother-in-law, and niece.

This family has become my extra family and are very supportive no matter what I do. It is so much my family that when I called my dad to wish him happy new year, he ended the call with “wish happy new year to your other family for me” (except he said it in Danish ;))

Sometimes our family comes when we are born, or when we are married into a family. And sometime family comes when you make strong connections with friends, so strong that it is more than friendship; it is a relation goes beyond that. For some like me this is an extra family, for some it is their only family…

Blood does not always make a family. For many people Christmas can be hard, as their blood family has rejected them, or they have chosen to not have contact with them. As almost everything around Christmas can seem to be about family, meeting family, being with family, it can be hard if you don’t have one, or if you don’t fit into the one that you have.

My hope for all those people is that they find family in some other form – we need that belonging, we need to be part of something, and we all deserve it.

Who is your family?
Do you have someone who cares for you and where you belong?
And what does that mean to you?

Blogpost for the first day of Christmas 20/21: Time for reflection
Blogpost for the second day of Christmas 20/21: Unicorns
Blogpost for the third day of Christmas 20/21: Raining again
Blogpost for the fourth day of Christmas 20/21: Being or doing
Blogpost for the fifth day of Christmas 20/21: Gratefulness
Blogpost for the sixth day of Christmas 20/21: Having people in my space
Blogpost for the eight day of Christmas 20/21: Uninspiration
Blogpost for the ninth day of Christmas 20/21: Fear (and courage?)
Blogpost for the tenth day of Christmas 20/21: Jumping in puddles
Blogpost for the eleventh day of Christmas 20/21: The choice is yours
Blogpost for the twelfth day of Christmas 20/21: Anticipation