how do you define family?

“The greatest gift we bear is our ability to grow in relationship with others”
Margaret Wheatly

How do you define family?
Does it include the Ryan-Valella bloodlines reaching far and wide into my very being inspiring dreams of travel to southern Italy in search of my maternal grandparents’ small mountainous village in the province of Calabria or journeying north to the island of Ireland to visit my father’s ancestral grounds in the Wexford County; journeying to reacquaint myself with the ancestors of our blood clans?

Does it also include the wide variety of friends i proudly call ‘Farm Family’ who embrace our yearly visits with open arms, beds to nest in, land to eat from, animals to tend to, memories to cultivate, tears of joy and sorrow to share and learn from?

Does it also include the gathering of new friends who welcome us into their lives through sacred fires, through ceremonies of peace and healing, of blessings and renewl; through the sharing of painful histories that include my ancestors and their intimate part of unforgivable pain; through developing new paths, new understandings to peace and friendship?

Does it also include friends who insist you come for dinner while passing through their small fishing village to find long extended hugs and people you know immediately even if you are meeting them for the first time, the priest from Kerala, India, the friends of friend’s daughters who we picked up hitchhiking on the side of the road; to the of sharing food, gathering stories, exchanging addresses?

Does it also include the Village kids that come and go from our home looking for simple connections of love and praise, for mangoes and grapefruits, for a piece of food from our daily pot, for paper and crayons, for cold glasses of water, for the basic ingredients of love, presence?

Does it also include village brethren sitting at the edge of get-togethers talking their talk, sharing their laughter; or sistren arms draped around one another waiting for the next piece of advice, suggestion, soft offerings of well thought out opinions?

Does it also include best friends from the beginning of childhood who throughout the years simply know your story, deeply entwined even with the passing of time and long stretches of distance, the sharing of daughters; a simple intuitive act of mothering one another’s tribe.

Does it also include definitions of family growing, expanding, blending, weaving into a kaleidoscope of meaning; embracing the word family in all its unique forms, in all its funny magnificent shapes spilling over into many worlds knowing we are all one world, one family.

How do you define family?