How I built a community of people who understand me with no words needed
Lea Krusemeyer (She/Her) // Staff Writer
Cameron Skorulski (he/him) // Illustrator
Chosen family is a phrase used by many, and while it has a different meaning for almost everyone who uses it, the core of what it is stays the same. A chosen family is a group of people who understand you better than anyone else, a group of people with whom you do not always have blood relations but this does not change the fact that you view them as some of the most important people in your life. As many Queer kids do not have role models in their own families or towns, we grow up with a longing to find people like us.
For me, as a lesbian, finding like-minded people was a vital part of accepting who I was. I come from a family with a very loving mother who never made me feel any different even after I came out, but that did not change the fact that I knew something was missing. While my straight friends in high school would talk about who their most recent boy crush was, I just sat there and my mind wandered to Ellen DeGeneres.
Ellen DeGeneres was my first role model and I of course could not make her part of my chosen family because I have never met nor befriended Ellen. That did not stop me from building a community around her. Queer kids become resourceful and creative, especially when they grow up in small towns. For me, that meant utilizing the internet — I made an Instagram account that had “lesbian” and “Ellen” in the handle and started following every other page I could find that had “lesbian” in their name. That’s how I found my first queer community and was my first example of a chosen family. These people that I had met online were from everywhere in the world. We all came from vastly diverse backgrounds, but we all had one thing in common — we were Queer.
As I grew older and gained more freedom, one of my favorite activities was to take the train to the closest big city, sit at a café and people-watch. I found the one gay cafe in that city and I sat there for many many weekends of my teenage years, sipping on a coffee and doing homework or reading. Just by being around other queer people, I felt a sense of belonging that I never knew before. At that point, I had very few queer friends in real life and this was my first small step into changing that.
When I moved to Vancouver, I made a point of befriending Queer people. It was actually not much of an effort because building friendships with other Queer people came naturally to me. It is simply the community that I find the most interesting. Now looking at the people I consider my chosen family, it is a bunch of Queer people from all over the world. We are all different ages and have vastly different cultural backgrounds but we nevertheless bonded because we have a silent understanding of who we are.
It is refreshing not having to explain terms of gay lingo to others, it is refreshing not to be questioned for a specific choice of clothes or for some of your actions. This comes from surrounding yourself with people that use the same words or at least understand that the action is part of your identity. In my chosen family, the thing that makes me different from everyone else in the world is the thing that makes me belong the most, and that is a gift I wish on everyone — to be cherished and understood in every aspect of who you are.