Growing up my family was broken into tiny pieces. This isn’t a new concept for most and certainly my story might not be as traumatising as others. However, I took the blame for most of it. So from age 5, pain is all I knew. That being said, from an early age, my only goal was to keep my family together, the thought was: if I could fight hard enough, we would love each other again and it would be fine. I couldn’t see that some weren’t concerned about this, and as people often do, they let their ego take over situations. I am not better. My ego, my identity and everything I was, was trapped inside being part of a family. I can’t tell you how much I bled for this idea. An idea that was probably formed from the Cosby Show and Animaniacs. But an idea that I felt in my soul.
Yet, there was a thought that I had very young, maybe the family isn’t only what you are born into. I mean Captain Planet and his Planeteers were a family. Captain Planet and Gaia were the dad and mom and then there were the kids and of course the monkey (we shan't explore the dark undertones of 90s cartoons). Facetious in this reference because I always felt like the family did not have to look like me, or sound like me but just be respectful and honest. So I went searching.
I came from a broken family, but now, as I am surfxploring and connecting, it feels like my family are all around me.
These last two weeks, I have been in Indonesia for my best friend’s wedding. I know her husband too, as we all did our PhDs together in the same building. But I know her more (obvs. best friend). She is from Indonesia and he is from a small city in Sweden. When their families got together it was like they were one. They've had some other trips together, but honestly, from what I felt, there's just a lot of respect and love for each other. There was more emotion than most because they were having the proper Javanese wedding. A wedding of dreams, a wedding that was meant for them and their family. Just us on a beach listening to music the groom put together for his wife. Queue tears!
When I was still searching for a family, I would be welcomed into families but I would feel strange. I would keep reminding myself that I am not born into this family so I am not really part of this. I now know where this core belief came from, and the last year I have been dealing with it honestly. The process... loads of tears, loads of internal pain, loads of anxiety and panic attacks and a few fears manifesting in random things (like Nat Geo images of snakes drove me wild.)
However, I am more grateful than ever for having put myself through the hell of figuring out what core beliefs were the basis for the rules and assumptions I lived by, and how that triggered or caused a lot of pain. I wanted a family so much that I lived in a cracked pressure cooker. It might have been the surf trip to Fuerteventura, where I finally just cracked… and all the steam was let out on that one green wave. Or it could have been the moment I was bawling my eyes out in my boss’ office saying bye to science. But I know the last bit of steam and cooked meat came out in Aarhus, when I looked over to someone I consider my big brother now, whom I met just a year ago surfing, and I was talking to my best friend about this trip to Indo, and texting my family in every corner of the world (not at the same time).
After spending 14 days with the IndoSwede family (they are one, remember), my faith in the family came to be. It exists! I knew it. So now I know: one might come from a broken family, but you can always rebuild. #STEM Bottom up or top down (science reference). It doesn’t matter. You can always build.
Contented as I am, I am grateful every day for every person I have met, connected to and those who brought me into their families.
This moment here sitting in the Labuan Bajo airport feeling free and full, planning my next trip to see the family here in Indo and Sweden, talking to my family home in Cali and New York. This moment, is everything I was fighting for.
xoxox