When you hear the term “family,” the first thing that comes to someone’s mind is their blood relations. Those who are their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and grandparents, but never those who are considered family but not really related.
Family can be a lot of things to someone. It can be a person who’s a family friend, someone who they have grown a connection with or just someone that belongs to the same groups as them.
Sometimes these family members are widely accepted into these families because of the bond that they have made that is similar to that of another position of a family role, whether it be like a sister or brother or grandparent or uncle.
Sometimes other families members are accepting of this individual, other times they are not. It all depends upon the relationship with the rest of the family they have and what kind of position they hold in that individuals family.
For me, I was blessed with a man who was not only a family friend but a man who became my grandpa. He was my papaw and to this day will always be my papaw. He came into my life when I only had one living grandfather who was not in the best of health, and the other had passed before my birth.
This man treated me like his grandchild when he did not have to, and he gave me the opportunity to know what it was like to have a loving grandfather who allowed me to know what it was like to play outside with my papaw.
The takeaway from this is that family does not have to be someone who is related by blood, they can be a family friend, an acquaintance or someone you just met whether they be young or old.