Somebody to Love
While watching an episode of Undercover Boss, I saw two hard working people talk about being disowned by their family. One for being gay, one for being a trans woman. I wanted to just hug them and invite them to my house for dinner. I turned to my husband and said we should adopt "kids" disowned for such a ridiculous reason. Thus was "born" the Somebody to Love project.
While no one "disowned" me, I definitely felt abandoned virtually from day one. Mom left me with sister who left me to get married and then my parents divorced and mom left me again to daddy. Then daddy got talked into leaving me to a cruel abusive babysitter, then back to mom, then back to sister, then mom. I feel like a ping pong ball and I'm not even nine years old yet!
When I finally left my family chaos and started adulting in my own world, my sister who took care of me when I was little, sent all these judgmental messages. She didn't approve of my man friend so she wouldn't call me at his house. *I* was supposed to call her.
Oh my gosh, I just realized why I called my other sister all the time. I was following the pattern THAT sister insisted upon. Wow. I hadn't thought of that. Anyway, my mom and oldest sister wanted to hear from me not because they wanted me to have contact and be safe. They just had an idea of what they were SUPPOSED to do. How they were SUPPOSED to act.
In my adult life, strangers often treated me with much more consistent kindness than anyone biologically related to me. Well, my dad loved me. I had that. Only he had his own troubles and flaked entirely too much.
So for lots of reasons, that include not wanting to pass along flawed genetics and flawed experiences, I chose not to have kids. Now that I'm "gramma " age, I feel the urge to have people in my life. Someone to call on their birthday, someone to bake turkey for on thanksgiving and someone to have as a kind sibling to laugh with and share that camaraderie that I've heard other families have.
So I started a group. Come check us out: Somebody to Love
Kind comments encouraged.
