Family has never been a matter of blood. Not truly. The phrase is old and worn, like great-grandmother’s quilt passed down so many generations it has lost its stitching. We say blood is thicker than water as though the body’s chemistry somehow trumps the soul’s loyalty, as though proximity at birth ensures protection in crisis. But anyone who has made it long enough through this life knows that family, real family, is not always made in the womb; but in the trenches.
There is a moment in the show The Originals, not particularly high art perhaps, but occasionally these shows sneak truth into their scripts the way children smuggle frogs into their pockets. A character says, Family is not determined by blood, but rather by who you will fight for, and who will fight for you. The line came not with a flourish or sermon, just a passing assertion, a bone tossed into the arena. And yet it rang louder than much of the noise we call wisdom.
What makes a family is not always just a shared lineage, but a shared willingness to shoulder one another’s burdens. You find them, or they find you, sometimes in unlikely places. In a café after a bad break. In a warzone of someone else’s making. In an apartment hallway where a neighbor brings you soup for no reason. Or maybe they find you when everyone else has turned away and they stay, which is a rare kind of magic.
This isn’t to say that blood doesn’t matter. It can. It often does. But it is not owed reverence simply for being first. The accident of being born to someone should not carry more weight than the decision to stand beside someone. The former happens once, without your choosing. The latter happens every day, often with some cost. And the cost is what makes it sacred.
We live in a time that is so interconnected it becomes isolating. We scroll through lives we will never touch, watching as if through glass. And in that glass we sometimes confuse recognition with belonging. But belonging requires risk. It requires effort. It requires presence.
Family is forged in the mundane acts of loyalty that accumulate like sediment; quiet and heavy. The ones who show up not just when you’re shining but when you’re flailing. The ones who call you out and call you back. The ones who don’t walk away, even when walking away would be easier.
You might find these people in your kin. You might not. You might find them in a grief group or a book club or on the other end of a crisis hotline. Wherever they come from, what matters is the commitment. Not the ceremony. Not the surname. Not the strand of DNA that maps where you come from but says nothing of where you’re going or who will go there with you.
In a better world, we would teach this to our young. That love is not proved by sentiment but by standing your ground when the wind picks up. That those who fight for you without needing to understand everything are often the ones who understand the most. That family is less about who you resemble and more about who remembers you when you forget yourself.
There is no perfect version of this. No formula. It is messy and shifting and often heartbreaking. Sometimes the people we would fight for will not fight for us. Sometimes they will leave. Sometimes they will betray. But even in the breaking, the idea remains true: family is forged in mutual defense. In choosing again and again to stand in each other’s corners, even when the fight isn’t fair or the cause is flawed.
And perhaps that is the highest form of love. Not romance or obligation. Not sentiment, not nostalgia. But commitment to the shared survival of those we hold dear. A stubborn, necessary, unglamorous devotion.
That is also family.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers friends.