This Fourth of July I find myself running short on love of country and of myself.  Maybe that’s why I responded with so much warmth to an article about family love–either families of origin or chosen families of mutual support.  It’s in the New York Times and maybe you can only read it if you pay a dollar a week to recieve it on the internet, like I do.  Seems like the last time I tried to share I got blank squares on my site….If you can, try it:  Chosen Families, by Melissa Kirsch.  I’m not even going to try it, because I hate to see my messy posts when I do something wrong, so I’ll just try to convey some of her thoughts.

Melissa Kirsch writes in this morning’s ‘s  This Morning’s  column that despite an absent or unsupportive biological family–and even if it is intact–supportive relationships with friends and neighbors can provide welcome kinship.  Many discovered this during the pandemic

She reminds us that both families of origin and mutually chosen families can serve as a lifeline to survival. As an example of this solution she discusses how many of our fellow members of the L.G.B.T.Q.  population manage to survive and/or thrive.  Outlawed out of existence in some states, many have been able to develop mutually supportive “chosen” families.  That’s true for many of the rest of us, through luck or determination.