Family is not just about bloodlines; it’s about “love-lines”
As we head into cooler weather and shorter days, we are facing an onslaught of holidays, including the frolicking fun and fanfare of Halloween, where even some of the quietest quirks in our queer communities can become big and bombastic, delightfully so. Halloween can be a wonderful way for some to express their inner freak or their outer joy in costumes and garments that allow them to walk — freely and fully — in their hometown or in other public spaces.
They get to move in a modularity that shows the big gym rat who wants to rock pumps and a dress because he’s tired of being identified as “alpha male” when he’s really working out to fight age or push back on an older version of himself. They get to be the elf or the Elphaba, the warlock or the member of their favorite K-Pop group, and they get to have JOY! That’s what Halloween can represent for our community, but it’s not all of who we are. It may be THE national holiday for many in the alphabet family of love; however, it’s only the precursor to the holidays that can cause some members of our chosen families to feel disconnected.
Holiday expectations
Right after the happy-go-lucky costume cover day of Halloween, come back-to-back holidays that, by American standards, are the mainstream family’s mantle to hold. Thanksgiving and Christmas are touted as “no matter where you are, you all come home for these holidays!”
That’s the expectation and the energy — FAMILY! But inside the houses where we don’t air our dirty laundry, they loudly exclaimed “but don’t bring THAT into our house.” The THAT is the gender expression or identity that comes into the room still rocking something that someone in that room might call Halloween or who brings something or someone with them — a partner, a position, a voice or a visual — that makes someone else in the room reminded that there is queerness in the room with them.
Hair color or rainbow ribbons proudly push back on policies that come up around the table, or an empowered intolerance for the intolerance that was previously proudly expressed at the table without recourse. And instead of sulking and being alone or surrendering and taking off our truths just to go “back home” so we can say we have family, we did what we are supposed to do — we created our own!
While many movies and TV series have adapted the idea of gathering the nomadic friends who can’t get home for a one-day event that happens on a Thursday, the LGBTQ+ community was doing this decades ago. The ballroom establishment of houses that truly are chosen families, identified and living life together, include unaccompanied young adults, still finding their way, and seasoned tribe members who had the space and sanctuary.
Other homes include those who welcome others who don’t go home to be with their families because they chose not to or because they want to build their own and celebrate their own lives and legacy. They are accomplished and own their homes, or they are friendly and love cramming as many people as possible into their studio apartment or that artist loft because they love the electric energy of people vibing and tribing in their space.
From adversity to something beautiful
We have absolutely become experts at adapting to adversity AND turning it into something beautiful. We have practiced that mastery of LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND, and when we do so with the kind of grace we wished we had experienced ourselves, we can build some really beautiful new traditions.
It is beautiful to watch people open up their lives to others, from my queer-affirming church in Newark, where we serve Thanksgiving breakfast, not only to the community of those who love like us, but to those who look like us as well. Imagine a room where the pastor has a table that includes the unhoused family of father and mother and two children and the older lesbian who has plans for the entire day now because dinner will be at yet another space where she knows she is welcome.
It is divine to have people from other countries who join our families at the table because the purpose isn’t simply to ignore the origin of the holiday that includes the mistreatment of the people who were already on the land. It is about pulling out the good plates and putting the leaf in the table so that it’s made larger and makes room for all.
I’ve witnessed the welcoming of people who just didn’t want people to be alone on a day that was about giving thanks for everything they have, and the potluck begins. The dismantling of those antiquated traditions was brought about by Asian, African and African American cultures at the table, with a fried turkey and a vegan casserole that rivals the macaroni and cheese and a marsala so good that it’s gone before the mushroom dish that looks like pepper steak.
We laugh as we watch someone grab a simple forkful of something to be nice and then watch them take a surprise plateful because they’d never tried it before and wouldn’t have it any other way were it not for this particular table. Friendsgiving isn’t just a play on the day of Thanksgiving but also an opportunity to shape and say who we can be as a collective: A GROUP OF FRIENDS, GIVING — to each other and being community.
When we see how big we are together, we don’t have to assemble to distribute gifts on the last holiday of the year, either commercially Christmas or feeling obligated to exchange gifts. We exchange energy. We exchange dishes. We exchange moments where movies are shared and moments are created. And that’s what I want us to consider — EACH OTHER. When I adopted my son, his mother and her partner were still in his life. But I needed my son, and my son needed me. But so did his siblings, who have since lost their father but they borrow his when they need. We adopt and adapt in ways that make “auntie” a common title and “family” a word that’s not just about bloodlines, but rather “love-lines.”
It’s YOUR table
On National Coming Out Day, I am reminded that a renowned therapist authored it, but various organizations and activists (I first heard it from Karamo Brown) have embraced the idea of INVITING IN — welcoming in your space.
As we prepare for the pageantry of Halloween and revelry and the immediacy thereafter of “can I deal with my family?” is recalibrated by the idea of who you purpose to invite in, to your celebration, to your kitchen to help prep, to the table. Be clear and be confident about who you are inviting in and remind yourself that IT IS YOUR TABLE! Who is at your table and why? When you can breathe through the idea that letting go of people who don’t lift or love you is only making room for more people who do, you can walk in the space and grace that heals and hoists you and then, maybe during some down time or with some breathing room, there can be space for new conversations with those who have perhaps been missing from your table but who didn’t know how to pull up a seat.
Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, is a major depression caused by the changing of seasons marked by diminished sunlight. But it isn’t lost on me that around this same time, members of the LGBTQ+ communities are dealing with the stark and cold reality that huge public family celebrations are about to happen in the calendar year and some feel — or know for sure — that they are not welcomed at the tables of their birth families.
I pray and implore you to build your own table! My family includes a son who wasn’t born of seed, but who is the most beautiful blossom in my garden. That son has a wife and three children, and she has a sister who has a child, and they all call me “Dad” or “Papa.” My neighbors are a beautiful lesbian couple named Chrystal and Renee “Sunny.” They’ve been together for 31 years, and they treat me like family and listen for my footsteps, and if they get quiet, they make their way into my unlocked apartment.
When church members called during the pandemic to check on me, I would say, “Well come over for dinner.” I had enough space for us to keep our loving distance and enough masks to wear while we hugged, and I was reminded that people only feel as welcome as you welcome them.
Watching people marvel at being in their pastor’s home for the first time was beautiful because what good is the house if it isn’t also HOME? I curate the home I’ve always wanted to live in and invite people in because that’s what home is for and why I work so hard to create SANCTUARY, not just on Sundays but daily!
We have earned every plank of wood and nail and needed conversation to determine who gets to dine with, delight with and dance to our own musical, magical holidays. And for us, some holidays are just Fridays, after work, where we gather with the food in the fridge and the leftovers from our respective houses, and we come together to set a beautiful table, where we welcome those who need welcoming and redefine family and the tables at which we sit.
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