My Unconventional Family

A couple of months ago, I attended my niece’s wedding and discovered (or rediscovered, rather), to my utter delight, just how truly unconventional my family really is. In attendance were: my daughter (transracially-adopted at birth), my niece’s estranged father’s second ex-wife (her father was not there), my mother (no blood relation to my niece, but rather the ex-step-mom of my niece’s mom, my half-sister), my mother’s step-father (no blood relation to my niece or sister, but whom my sister still calls “grampa”), and various other oddly related—or not related at all—relatives.

At one point my mother commented on what a dysfunctional family we have. Dysfunctional? I questioned. No way—we’re actually quite functional. Unconventional? Most definitely. What our family—as odd as it may seem to outsiders—has effectively done is weed out the “bad seeds” and keep all the good ones. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

A family is a family, no matter how you came to be. If it works for you, nothing else matters. I wouldn’t trade my family for anything.