There are two kinds of growing up: the one where you outgrow your childhood home, and the one where you learn to build a new one.
I had to do both.
In the house where I grew up, love came with rules. It came dressed in conditions and wrapped in silence. “We love you,” they’d say, but only if I stayed quiet, only if I stayed straight, and only if I didn’t question what “family” was supposed to look like. I learned to measure my words carefully, to read the emotional weather in every sigh.
But queerness has a way of spilling out, even when you try to hold it in.
By the time I was sixteen, I could feel the air closing in around me. Every dinner table conversation became a minefield. Every church sermon was a warning. I stopped bringing friends home. I stopped speaking freely. I stopped being myself.
When I finally came out, the distance arrived fast. Phone calls became shorter. Doors closed. There were no screaming matches or slammed doors, just a quiet withdrawal, the kind that leaves you aching for noise.
And so I left. Not dramatically, not in the middle of the night, just a quiet packing of bags, one folded shirt at a time. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I couldn’t stay.
The First House That Saved Me
The first place that felt like home was a creaky old apartment above a used bookstore.
I’d been crashing on a friend’s couch when someone, an older queer woman named Leigh, who ran a tiny mutual aid group, offered me a spare room for a while. “It’s not much,” she warned, “but it’s safe.”
It was more than safe. It was alive.
The walls were covered in photos of marches and drag shows, the shelves stacked with queer anthologies and mismatched mugs. There was always someone cooking soup or stew, the smell of garlic and onions filling the air. People came and went at all hours: artists, students, trans elders, baby gays just starting out.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to explain myself. No one flinched at my pronouns. No one corrected my clothes. No one asked if I was sure.
In that house, love wasn’t conditional, it was communal. When someone got sick, we cooked for them. When someone’s partner left them, we sat on the floor with ice cream and tissues. When rent was due, we pooled what little we had.
I learned quickly that a chosen family isn’t made through blood or paperwork. It’s built in the small moments of showing up for the text that says “I’m outside, come downstairs” when you can’t face the world, the extra blanket left folded on the couch, the person who walks you home at night because they know what it’s like to be afraid.
What It Means to Be Raised Twice
Being raised is something I have generally understood to be about our upbringing with childhood parents, school, discipline. But I was raised twice. The second time, it was by queers, misfits, survivors, and dreamers.
They raised me in kitchens and living rooms, in late-night diners and protest lines. They taught me things I’d never learned in my first home:
That tenderness can be radical.
That caring for someone is not a transaction.
That love doesn’t need to be earned, it can simply be.
When I was broke, they handed me groceries without a word. When I failed a class, they said, “You’re still worthy.” When I came home crying after a date that turned sour, someone handed me a cup of tea and said, “You don’t need to be anyone’s lesson.”
Through them, I learned that care is not a luxury. It’s a form of survival.
Queer communities have always known this when systems fail us, when healthcare denies us, when families reject us, when policies erase networks of care that keep us alive.
These networks are often invisible: a friend’s couch that becomes a shelter, a potluck that becomes therapy, a group chat that becomes a lifeline.
We raise each other not by enforcing rules, but by offering possibilities.
The Language of Care
There’s a rhythm to community care. It doesn’t sound like “let me fix you.” It sounds like “I’m here.”
Care is the friend who knows your triggers without you saying a word. It’s the older trans man who teaches you how to shave safely. It’s the group of queer aunties who show up at Pride every year with sunscreen and snacks because they remember the years you couldn’t go.
Care is practical, too. It isn’t just hugs and kind words, it’s spreadsheets and bus fare and cooking for someone who’s too depressed to get out of bed. It’s sitting in waiting rooms for medical appointments, watching someone’s kid so they can rest, or lending your spare room to a friend who just got out of a bad situation.
We care not because we have excess, but because we know what it feels like to have nothing.
When I once told Leigh, “I don’t know how to thank you,” she smiled and said, “You don’t. You pass it on.”
That’s how chosen families work. Gratitude circulates like blood.
The Lessons We Carry
Not everything was perfect. Sometimes, care got complicated. We argued. We misunderstood. We projected our pain onto each other. When you grow up learning that love is scarce, it’s easy to believe that every slight is a loss.
But my community taught me something else: that conflict doesn’t mean failure. It means we’re still learning how to love.
We started doing what we called repair nights: little gatherings where we’d sit and talk through hurts; no shouting, just honesty. Sometimes we cried, sometimes we laughed. Sometimes we didn’t reach a resolution, but we did come to a quiet understanding.
That’s another thing about choosing a family: it gives you the space to grow without punishment. The space to be wrong, and still be worthy.
Through that, I grew up again, not into perfection, but into presence.
How to Build a Chosen Family
If you’re reading this and wondering where to start, how to find or create that kind of care, know this: chosen family isn’t found. It’s made. Slowly. Intentionally.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
- Start with curiosity. Who makes you feel seen? Who listens without judgment? These are your seeds.
- Be honest about your needs. It’s okay to say, “I need help,” or “I’m lonely.” Vulnerability isn’tweakness, it’s an invitation.
- Make rituals. Sunday dinners, monthly movie nights, mutual aid circles. Rituals are what turn friendship into family.
- Respect capacity. Care doesn’t mean self-sacrifice. Let people rest. Let yourself rest.
- Give without keeping score. Sometimes you’ll give more. Sometimes you’ll receive more. The balance is trust.
- Be patient. Families, even chosen ones, take time to form. Let it unfold.
- Care is a living practice that grows as we do.
Grief and Gratitude
There are still moments when I grieve the family of origin that I lost. I see people posting childhood photos and family reunions, and for a second, I ache for that kind of belonging. But then I look at my life now, the people who text me “made soup, come over,” the friends who show up to celebrate every small victory, the ones who call just to say “you good?” and I realize: I am loved beyond measure.
Sometimes, grief and gratitude coexist. The trick is learning to hold both gently.
My chosen family didn’t erase my wounds, they helped me live with them. They made the pain less lonely, and in doing so, they taught me the most profound truth: that healing isn’t something you do alone.
The Family I’m Still Building
Now, years later, I find myself becoming the kind of person who once saved me. When younger queer folks reach out for advice or crash on my couch, I see my younger self in their eyes.
So I make them tea. I listen. I remind them they don’t have to be perfect to be loved.
Sometimes I laugh, thinking how cyclical it all is, how the care I once received now flows through me into others. Leigh was right: gratitude circulates.
Family, I’ve learned, is not a noun. It’s a verb. It’s not something we are, so much as it is something we do.
Love That Doesn’t End
The other night, my chosen family gathered for dinner and ten of us squeezed around a tiny table. Someone burned the rice, someone forgot the forks, someone’s kid fell asleep mid-bite. It was loud, chaotic, imperfect.
It was holy.
We held hands before eating not in prayer, but in gratitude. For surviving. For finding each other. For love that isn’t limited by blood, legality, or convention.
Looking around that table, I realized that I had been raised not by rules, but by care. Not by duty, but by choice.
That’s what a chosen family is: a promise that says, “Even when the world doesn’t see you, I do.”
Because in the end, my queer community didn’t just teach me how to survive.
They taught me how to live loudly, tenderly, and unapologetically.
They raised me to believe that love is infinite. That care is revolutionary. And that even when home fails you, you can always build another one with your own two hands, and the hands of those who choose you back.
