I pretty much have no family anymore, but that's alright because I have my chosen family.

[KittyPink]

So, I have a chosen sister, who lives in Canada, but that's really all I have when everything's said and done, I haven't picked up "my mother's" phone calls in over several months, which I'm not proud of even though it's been a big relief. Although, should I move out, my grandmother I will never talk to again, my biological father's still mostly absent. I'm moving on, if they don't want to accept me as their daughter/granddaughter/niece/sister, then so be it, I don't accept them as my family. I mean even if it sounds petty, there's other reasons, the abuse, the manipulation, the yelling,the screaming, the gaslighting, the trauma I carry with me. I'm burning bridges and cutting the weight of "my family.", whatever it takes.

[Heather]

I'm sorry that you -- like so freaking many of us who are LGBTQ -- have found yourself unaccepted by your blood relatives. But I am so glad that -- also like many of us -- you are starting to find a way to make your own family, a family made of people who do accept you, and hopefully go even beyond that, who love and celebrate you.

I don't think it's petty to decide to stop trying to get acceptance from people who won't accept us, or to stop acknowledging people as family who refuse to BE family. I think that most of the time, rather, it's very necessary and vital self-care. It really, really wears us down to keep trying to make people be our family who say they are -- and often who keep up with the parts of it that benefit them -- but don't do the things people in a family are supposed to do, the most basic of which is acceptance and not abusing one another. This isn't about being petty. This is about self-love. That's a good thing, a healthy thing.