Creating Family by Kira Kenley

1  Kira Kenley shares her creative dilemmas and decisions every Friday. You can read her ‘story’ here

It is only recently that I have come to really appreciate what this thing called ‘family’ means. Sure, I was born into a family but my family was broken before I recognised what I held in my hand. My mother died at a time when it felt like I needed her most. Then my father fell into a depressed existence and eventually passed away from us too. It was a long seven years. My body did that thing it is so well versed in doing, it adapted and closed down the parts that needed to close down so that I could function in ‘normal’ every day life. The pain was extraordinary and impossible to feel there and then, so it was parked for a future date.

When I eventually began to feel this pain it was many years later and to merely function was no longer possible. My body was literally beginning to shut down under the great weight of carrying this burden of unexpressed grief. I got ill and stayed ill for a time. My eventual recovery has led me down the creative path, as instinctively my body knew that to heal I needed to start expressing what was going on, for only by expressing it could I set myself free.

Recently, I have watched as a member of my family lost her soulmate to cancer and I have spent precious moments with her, just keeping her company while she tried to get her head around this massive thing that had happened to her. Understandably, her head couldn’t make the leap, for how do you rationalise the situation when your life partner is missing and you are expected to live on, even though in the present moment it feels like your life has stopped.

As I sat with her, I came to realise something. This woman, my flesh and blood, felt as close to me as it is possible for another person to feel and as I saw her stripped bare and vulnerable a tremendous energy passed between us. We were family and I felt my own parents there with us, in addition to her soulmate. I can’t quite explain it but we weren’t alone. The ones who loved us, although unseen, were there helping us when we needed them the most.

Last June, I married after a lifetime of professing that I would never marry because I didn’t ‘get it’. A short four months on, which feels already like another lifetime in the best possible way, I get it. Finally. Family is a bond that links people together. It is something we create so that we can allow love to flourish despite all the odds. In a society that practises ‘survival of the fittest’ and encourages its component parts to ‘fight for a corner’, there is this haven. A place where we are loved, as if it were the most natural thing, because it is natural and independent of any other thing. It is unconditional.

Family is the space where I meet my nearest and dearest, whatever. I love the people in my circle, and this love comes to life in the action I take. As much as anything else, family is my own creation. It is whatever I wish it to be. And as I sit and consider this, I wish it to be a place where my loved ones feel valued and know that I am here for them. No matter what. Not to judge them. Nor tell them how to be. But to simply love them. As they simply love me.