Family isn’t a word, It’s a sentence.

Family Isn't a Word—It's a Sentence

Family isn't a word; it's a sentence. Sometimes it's unfinished. Sometimes it's a life sentence. Sometimes it's the story we spend our lives trying to rewrite.

I'm the child of divorce. My parents divorced in 1980, the same year the divorce rate peaked in the United States. It was a cultural moment. Divorce seemed to become as socially acceptable as smoking cigarettes, growing a mustache, or buying an English roadster. The message felt almost celebratory: Go ahead. Leave your spouse. Leave your kids. A more exciting life is waiting.

My generation—the latchkey generation—knows that story all too well.

I'm not saying I grew up deprived. I was raised in an upper-middle-class home. I never lacked for food, shelter, or opportunity. The only thing I truly wanted was love.

My father once said, "I wish I didn't have the children from my first marriage."

I'm one of those three children.

Everyone in my family, including my siblings, knew I was his favorite. Imagine carrying both of those truths at the same time: being the favorite child he wished he'd never had.

My father and his second wife made an unspoken agreement that the children from their previous marriages would never interfere with their happiness. They succeeded. Over time, what could have been a family became a disconnected collection of strangers.

I've spent years trying to love my father. I have empathy for him, and I've always wanted him to find happiness. The sad truth is that I don't think he ever did. Life doesn't promise happiness, but every day it offers us the chance to choose how we'll respond to it.

I was an angry ten-year-old. By thirteen I was bullying other kids, drinking, and using drugs. I was feral in many ways, and my mother did everything she could to pull me back.

The flute helped save me.

I showed real promise as a musician. It gave me purpose, discipline, and opportunities I never imagined—including travel and the chance to attend the North Carolina School of the Arts during my junior year of high school.

That opportunity disappeared.

Only later did I learn that my great-grandmother had left me $17,000 for my education. Both of my parents knew about the money, and neither told me. I wasn't allowed to attend the school, and when that decision was made, I put the flute down for good.

I turned eighteen in September of my senior year. Legally, I was finally informed that the money existed. Three days after graduating from high school, I used $5,000 of it to leave my hometown and enroll at a small college in Vermont.

Many people in my generation raised themselves. I know I did.

My father simply wasn't there during the years I needed him most. Because of that, it took me a long time to become the man I wanted to be. At fifty-four, I'm still learning. I suspect I always will be.

You don't get to choose the family you're born into.

You do get to choose your family.

That's been the greatest lesson of my life.

I'm writing this as my father nears the end of his life with Parkinson's disease. I've forgiven my family—not because they earned it, but because carrying resentment became too heavy. Looking backward and living as a victim has never been who I wanted to be.

I still feel sadness. I still feel loss. That's part of being human.

But I also feel empathy.

Family, I've learned, isn't defined by blood. It's defined by the people who show up, who stay, who love you without conditions, and who make room for you exactly as you are.

Find those people.

Love them fiercely.

Hold them close.

Because in the end, family isn't a word.

It's the sentence you choose to write with your life.