I come from a pretty big family. Between my mom's side and my dad's side, there are just too many people to count. When I was younger, we all lived about two or three hours away from each other in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, with the exception of my uncle who lived in California with my aunt and cousins. Being so close made family gatherings pretty easy. I saw my family pretty often.
As I got older, my family that once lived so close to each other became more spread out across the country and even across the globe. It was hard to say goodbye, but with the family I have, not much changed in terms of the relationships we had with one another. Being so close to my family and then having to adjust to many of them moving farther away has taught me so much of what being a family is really all about.
Family supports each other. This is one of the most important lessons I've learned. Of course, when you're that close you don't want your cousin or your aunt or your brother moving so far away, but it's already hard enough on them. While you're going to miss a few people, they'll be missing everyone. My family has always been good about understanding that moving far away isn't selfish. Instead, it could be because this new place is cheaper to live, or it might be better to raise a family, or it could be for work, or this is simply where someone feels happier. My family has always done a great job in being excited for a move, seeing it as an adventure and a new place to visit for a vacation.
Being supportive of one another has also taught me a lot about being committed. Some people might think that moving away from someone would mean giving up on that relationship, or at least putting in less of an effort. This may be true for some people, but not in my family. In my family, having people so far away from each other has taught me that you have to put in even more of an effort to maintain relationships. It requires more phone calls, more video chats, more planning for visits. It requires more effort to proving that you are committed to family while being just as committed to whatever it is you moved for. This has made "Lilo and Stitch" more relevant than ever. "Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind, or forgotten."
One of my favorite things in my family is that family doesn't necessarily mean blood-related. I have an aunt who isn't related to me. She grew up with my mom, my aunts, and my uncle. Now she is around for everything. She might not be related by blood, but she is family in every other way. I feel weird calling my sibling's spouses my brother-in-law and my sister-in-law, because to me, they just feel like a brother and a sister. My older siblings' friends have been around for as long as I remember. They have watched me grow up. Now, they are family to me and my own friends are starting to feel more like family.
Having family being so far away from each other has taught me a lot. They have given me the courage to move 3,000 miles away from home for school, and the confidence to know that our relationships won't change because of that. It hasn't been easy, but the greatest lesson of all that I've been taught by my family is that no matter the distance, we can still be as close as we have always been.
