Not all of us are lucky enough to immerse ourselves into the
bosom of blood relations who love us. And the feelings of loss and lack are
especially felt during family holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.
My husband, Herb, and I spent twelve days in Springfield,
Massachusetts, with our daughter and daughter-in-law, separately, because the
girls are in the process of getting a divorce. They split up in July, after
just one year of marriage, and are learning how to live apart after five years
of being together as a couple. The breakup is still so new that many in the
extended family haven’t yet heard the news. It’s not the sort of thing that
anyone finds joy in announcing. Our extended family was incredibly loving and supportive
when the girls married on July 4th a year ago, embracing the first openly gay
couple in our Chinese and Jewish families.
One of the best things I learned from 15+ years living in
Hawaii is that we can choose to adopt our own family, made up of persons who
need our love and whose love we can benefit from. Herb and I have been in the
practice of creating a hanai family
for the entire three decades that we have been together. It’s what we do, and
who we are, as a couple. There have been ex-secretaries escaping abusive
marriages, Vietnam vets escaping personal demons, undocumented aliens seeking
better lives for their families, and more. A hanai family is one that you choose, and foster and love into
being, and it is any shape that you create it to be, where the bonds are bonds
of love and choice, and desire to be together in mutual love and support.
When our daughter and daughter-in-law first got together, we
met a young woman, only a few months younger than our daughter, who had been
expelled from her family shortly after high school graduation, when she was
inadvertently outed, for being gay. She’d been living by her wits and whatever
kindnesses people were willing to extend to her in the interim. Her family of
birth consisted of divorces, alcohol and drug abuse, and so many lies that it
was difficult for any of her family to distinguish truth from lies anymore. And
for her family of birth, judgmental and irrational attitudes trumped love, with
the exception of one grandmother, who has since passed away.
We found in our daughter-in-law, just as our daughter found
in her, a delightful young woman full of gifts and potential and an indomitable
will to survive and do well; she only needed a family who believed in her and
who were willing to be a supportive, present, loving and embracing family. We
became that family for her, and we promised her, with our daughter’s
concurrence and support, that we would be her family even if the girls broke up
and were no longer in a relationship. That day has arrived.
Being loving and supportive is easy in the context of
ourselves being an intact, wholesome and loving family that isn’t currently
facing a lot of stressors like terminal illness, financial instability or bad
behavior within the family. We are blessed, and we know it. We rely on our
faith, and we rely on each other. But, and it’s a big “but,” maintaining family
relationships in the context of a divorce and in the context of societal norms
is not easy, because it’s not the norm and what’s expected.
Figuring out how to split one’s time between two households
for things like a holiday meal is actually relatively simple. You negotiate
what’s convenient for everyone. Figuring out how to tell each girl that you
love her for who she is, and that your love for the other girl doesn’t diminish
your love for her, is much harder, because it’s not just your feelings,
thoughts and actions that you must account for. You also have to account for
each girl’s feelings and thoughts. And as much as each girl wants to be her best
self, expressing love even when she’s also expressing independence and
separation from the other spouse, they can’t help but feel the pain of loss and
all the things done and said that are now so much water under the bridge.
I wonder, a bit, if this isn’t something of what families
with adopted children might encounter occasionally. I do not say that to
denigrate or in any way take away from adoptive families, whom I admire deeply
and profoundly. We are a form of adoptive family as a hanai family, having chosen to incorporate others who weren’t born
or married into our family as part of our family, with access to love, support,
and inclusion in birthday and holiday celebrations and all the other activities
that families do together as family.
This holiday season, as I read my Facebook feed and see,
again, my young friends who are estranged from their actual parents and
families, I want to reassure them that they can have the family that they’ve
dreamt of. It’s theirs to choose, to form and foster, in the configuration and
shape that will meet their needs and buoy their dreams. And, if they choose, I
am willing to be included, as a hanai
mom or hanai sister or hanai Godmother. They can take their
pick, and I will be there, online or in person, to cheer their joys and
successes, to soothe their hurts and losses, and to lend strength to their
journeys so that they know they’re not alone, not separate, but a part of a hanai family.
