On my mom’s desk there is a photo album, styled after an antique book, with “The Dysfunctional Family” written on the binding, it is full of joyous family photos. George Bernard Shaw writes, “If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.” This will be the first of a number of posts that will all try to explain why my family is crazy, dysfunctional, disturbed, and profoundly blessed.

I tried to write my first post about my family a few years ago while I was a Fellow at the Jane Goodall Institute. After a few tries I gave up. If we were simply happy it would be a much easier post to write. What makes it difficult is that we are happy against all odds. In total I have 12 aunts/uncles, 17 cousins, 5 grandparents, 2 parents, 2 siblings, and a whole lot of pets. In that mix we deal with addiction, mental illness, physical illness, multiple divorces, and a good spattering of sibling rivalry. On paper we should not be able to have more than 5 people in a room together without it spontaneously bursting into flames.

Somehow in this mayhem my family has built, and I say built because it took planning and forethought, a system in which every person no matter their relation is welcome. I didn’t realize how rare this is until my mom hosted the wedding party for my aunt margot’s second marriage at our house. Margot is my mother’s brother’s ex-wife. In many families that would mean that she would be out of the picture. In our family blood is secondary. As I looked around the room I saw my grandfather and grandmother chatting (they have been divorced for more than 30 years), his 2nd wife (also an ex) helping my mom cook, my insanely conservative and religious housekeeper talking to my very liberal teenage cousins, and Margot’s new husband Stephen talking animatedly with my mom’s twin brother Revell. Key: No one was fighting. It finally sunk in that we love with wild abandon, cook like fiends, celebrate even the smallest accomplishments, fight like dogs, and are there for each other no matter what.

Clearly, I haven’t really figured out how to write about my family yet in a clear and concise way. Perhaps trying regularly will get me there. I do want to close with a quote that I disagree with strongly. My family is very happy. We are also very very weird.

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina