Choosing my family

I celebrated my birthday this past weekend, and there was a thought lingering silently in my mind, family. Not just because it was any birthday, but the big 3-0. The birthday I’d always imagined I’d have in a private area of a lively London bar with close friends and family. Instead, I had to resort to a virtual gathering of my people, and ‘my people’ is precisely the right word. While there was a considerable absence of my family, there was also a powerful presence. The presence of people that have held me helped me and healed me over the last few years. They are what I call my ‘chosen family'. When you experience family estrangement, which I talked about in my blog ‘breaking up with my family', there is naturally a void to fill. The craziest thing is all the people that I call family; I actually met… on LinkedIn. I’m not talking about people I’m just connected to; I’m talking about people who I’ve met on here and then have built friendships with over the years. Who have been there in some of my most challenging moments, and I’ve been there for theirs. That is what I call, family.

What kind of family do I want?

Whether we’re talking tribe, family… it’s the same thing. Figuring out what I wanted in my family was the only way to find them. A quick and easy way to figure out what I wanted was to think about what I didn’t want, which came from my own experience. For me, there was one thing that was right at the top of my list, and that was a family that didn’t judge. Now I know this is nearly impossible to be absolutely 100% non-judgemental. However, anything was better than the actual experience I grew up with. Following on from that, I wanted non-conditional love. Again, something I didn’t really grow up with. I can hand on heart say that I absolutely love my chosen family. I know they love me too because I can feel it, but more importantly I don’t need to hand something over in return.

What kind of values does my chosen family have?

This might seem very similar to what I talked about above, but it’s different. My values are about vulnerability, courage, growth, and authenticity. Again, growing up, I wasn’t allowed to show vulnerability as I had the ethos of ‘being strong’ etched in me. There were so many rules around how to be in the world that I never truly got to be myself. So, when I picked my chosen family, I wanted to be around people that not only have the same values as me, but that encouraged me to really live those values and lean into them. Not just that, but I wanted them to actively call me out when they could see that those values were being compromised or when I felt they weren’t in alignment with theirs. It’s not about always hearing what you want to hear but knowing that there are people that are willing to say, “Hey, that’s not okay.”

What do I need from my family?

In the past year, I’ve needed my chosen family more than ever, with a lot of change I’ve gone through personally. I’ve needed them in different ways, sometimes emotionally, other times practically. Sometimes for small things and other times for bigger things, and every single time, they’ve shown up. They’ve shown up with hearts full and arms out. Sometimes they’ve even known what I needed before I even know or ask. Like the time that one of them wouldn’t leave a zoom call until they saw me book a health check-up that I had been avoiding. Or the time that one of them suggested they’d sort out a car and would pick me up from the airport when I move back to London. Or the person that drove hours to help me pack 30 years of belongings into boxes and then drove a few more times to put everything in storage when I’d already left London.

What I’ve learned from choosing my family 

While I’ve had great things to say about choosing my family, that’s not to say it’s all peachy and perfect. Family estrangement leaves a large void; at least for me, it did. You’re choosing to cut out people that have been a large part of your life. It’s a type of grief we don’t really talk about and one that I’m learning to acknowledge and live with. Does it make me change my mind about my decision? No, not at all. I’ve lived a much more peaceful life and a life where I feel the support, care, and love from my chosen family. It is, however, not an easy choice. At the core of who I am, I’m a very family-oriented person. I used to absolutely love spending time with my family but when when the pain outweighed the brief moments of joy, it took me a while to realise that it did more damage than good.

So when I turned 30 this weekend and I looked at the zoom screen, I realised it wasn’t about who wasn’t there. It was about who was there and who has always been there full of unconditional love.

Who is your chosen family?

With love and care,

#AuthenticAlex

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Hi there, I'm Alex. If we haven't met before, nice to meet you, and thank you for taking the time out to read my newsletter. If you enjoyed it, you could hit subscribe to be notified and if you liked it, feel free to like, share or add a comment. I'm running a six-week story marketing course where I teach you how to find your voice and share your story, you can find out more and book here. If you want to connect with me in other ways, you can find me on Instagram here, or you can also sign up for my Authentic Alex newsletter that covers topics such as creativity, purpose, presence, leadership, and storytelling.

About Alex: At the age of 24 Alex found herself employed as the Head of Training and Development for a Foreign Exchange Company in The City. After experiencing her very own quarter-life crisis, she decided to leave the corporate world and create her own definition of success. On the day she left that job she wrote a post that went viral on LinkedIn.

Since then she’s been named LinkedIn Top Voice UK twice for her mental health and personal growth content and has become an official LinkedIn Learning Instructor. She's also the co-founder of #LinkedInLocal, a global movement creating communities in over 100 countries and 1,000 cities.

She’s best known for blogging under the hashtag #AuhtenticAlex where she smashes one stigma at a time and writes about her therapy journey with the aim of inspiring others to transform their traumas into triumphs.

She now helps individuals and businesses grow their presence on LinkedIn, find their sense of purpose, awaken their creativity and tell their stories. You can find out more about her and the brand here: www.fromtraumatotriumph.co.