It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the great American landscape is in the midst of sweeping change and we are more reliant on our families now than we have been in a very long time.
Twenty years ago I wrote a column where I pointed out the obvious: We have families we are born into and families we grow into. When it was written, I had two healthy parents, two healthy siblings, two young and entirely dependent children and a formidable collection of close friends. Not a day passed where we weren’t all in each other’s pockets in one way or another. I was on the tail-end of an extremely tight blood-family bond and was surrounded with aunts and uncles and cousins who all had known me since birth. My association with them helped define me in all the fundamentally important ways; they allowed me a strong foundation built of love and trust and the blind faith that accompanies youth. I established my expectations from the world I knew within these bonds.
Many years have passed since then and I find myself in a unique position to revisit this piece and marvel at the truths that remain and the circumstances that have transpired to make it even more timely now than it was 20 years ago. My blood family has turned to vapor and my family of choice has transformed into a small, but extremely dependable pool of souls who have my back. I was not born into them but I choose them and built this family.
I am now one of many. You can’t open a paper or current magazine without finding an article about how our economy has changed the playing field dramatically. Adult children are returning home after finishing college having been unable to find gainful employment. The number of homeless families continues to grow and there is no sign of change on the horizon. You would have to be living in an underground bunker with no access to media or other humans to not have noticed this trend.
Our hands have been forced into marshaling our resources. Through foreclosures and staggering unemployment rates, we appear to be reverting back to a way of way of life that is reminiscent of the post-war period. It’s sad that it took a financial crisis for our society to realize that the family we choose is the most important family we have. We are sharing our homes and adopting our friends. It is not at all uncommon to find more than one family living in previously single-family homes. We all know someone who has had their life impacted by this new American reality.
Coco Chanel said "There are people who have money and people who are rich." And, the Beatles said that "money can’t buy you love." Having had both money and love at different times, and rarely simultaneously, I am inclined to agree. All the money in the world can’t buy you a good heart-felt hug but a good heart-felt hug can make you forget that you have no money.
I am thankful for the families who have helped me know this from birth and for the ones who have been with me through the battlefield of survival. Those of us who are lucky enough to know this are, indeed, the richest ones. We are not engineered to navigate these waters alone and the families we build and the relationships we nurture and cultivate are the greatest sources of wealth any of us will ever get.