Cultivating Nourishment

To my Great Aunt Maggie on her wedding day

Posted on May 2, 2014 Updated on May 2, 2014

I am lucky to be part of this family.

Some families you are born into and learn to live together. Some families are constructed, legally connecting people through marriage. For both these reasons, I am blessed in this way.

But there is another kind of family too. There is a family by choice, a family of heart that supersedes blood and law and circumstance.

I was connected to the woman you all know as Margaret distantly by law when she married my great-uncle Pete. But when people ask me how I am related to her these titles [Great-Aunt; Great-niece] don’t seem sufficient. Margaret has been my mother, my sister, my friend, my advisor, my mentor and my inspiration.

I am lucky to be part of this family of heart. Margaret is lucky twice (at least) to have found two remarkable men to love, my great-uncle Pete and her Charles. It has been my pleasure and my honor to get to know Charles these past few years and to watch these two people create and nurture a family. They make each other better.  They make each other happier. They make each other healthier, stronger, braver and safer. They drive each other crazy and the make each other laugh more.
They are lucky to have found each other. We are all lucky that they fought to make a life together, because now we all benefit from this family. A family by choice, a family of heart and now a family by law.