4. How Chosen Family can be a source of enrichment and an act of resistance

Samantha Cooper 0:05

Hello, and welcome to There's Nothing Wrong With You, the podcast that examines and challenges the assumptions, stories, and beliefs that lead so many of us to ask ourselves the age old question, "what's wrong with me?" I'm Sam, your host, and a professional coach. I'll teach you how to shed the bullshit behind the belief that you are broken and need to be fixed. Together, we'll move beyond blame and shame, learn to accept our full humanity, and embrace this bizarre, joyful experience of being alive...and human. Let's dive in!

Hello, lovelies, welcome back to part two of my conversation with my friend and colleague, Lindsay Tauscher. This time we're going to talk about chosen family, because we actually want to talk about that in the last episode, but we really didn't have enough time. And we could just talk forever, so we decided to do a separate episode about it.

Welcome back, Lindsay.

Lindsay Tauscher 1:09

Thanks so much for having me.

Samantha Cooper 1:10

How are you doing today?

Lindsay Tauscher 1:11

You know, it's been a long day, the sun's going down. I'm ready to, like, get cozy for the evening. Very, very winter vibes happening right now for be over here in DC.

Samantha Cooper 1:26

Yeah, I know the feeling. I mean, it's funny, because we're talking like this is just the beginning of our conversation... But we've been talking for at least an hour now. And I've just gotta warn everyone, we're a bit, we're both a bit loopy. So this might be an interesting/hilarious episode.

We wanted to start off by, you know, addressing the question of: "why would we even want to talk about chosen family?" So we, as humans, can significantly enrich and expand our experience of life and our relationships, if we are open to developing and maintaining chosen family. So many of the clients who Lindsay and I work with in our individual coaching practices have non-normative or unconventional identities or life experiences. And often, that can mean that they are marginalized in wider society and have ruptures to varying extents in degrees with members of their family of origin. Both of us are passionate about subverting the norms and expectations that are associated with the quote unquote, nuclear family, as well. It may be interesting to note (for our audience) that we - both Lindsay and I - regard one another as members and part of our Chosen Families.

Lindsay Tauscher 2:46

Yeah, you know, it's funny, because we were just discussing, we're trying to figure out, like, exactly how long ago did we meet and it's been some time. I think it's been close to six years now. We, like, met through a mutual friend, and really hit it off - more [so] than our relationships, respectively, with that mutual friend, in fact - we realized we had a lot in common, and you know, kept in touch. And then when you were looking to move back to the US, having lived abroad and looking to put down roots, as chance would have it, I had a, you know, an open bedroom in my house and invited you to live with me. And we didn't actually know each other that well, at that point.

Samantha Cooper 3:26

We definitely didn't! [chuckling]

Lindsay Tauscher 3:28

I had visited you once, but I just had really, really good vibes about you and about the kind of person that you were. And yeah, we really developed a deep friendship that I think just naturally progressed to a sense of like, shared connection and chosen family between all of the overlap that we've had, you know, professionally, personally, and otherwise, it's really brought us together over the years.

Samantha Cooper 3:53

Yeah, that sounds about right. It was an unexpected, deep connection that, you know, took me by surprise at the time, but I really have grown to deeply value, our connection, and how it's progressed over the years and the various iterations of it, and expect that I'll value it for a very, very long time. I think that our connection just really exemplifies why it's so worthwhile to explore the options with having a chosen family, and knowing that our significant relationships don't need to be restricted or limited to just those people with whom we have what I'll call bio legal ties, and our chosen family. It can include any relationship that we invest in with our time, energy, emotional intimacy and commitment over the months or years. And specifically, I think there's such value in connecting with people and CO creating our relationships with them that include these elements of umemotional intimacy and commitment.

Lindsay Tauscher 5:01

Yeah, so this is exactly why we wanted to discuss chosen family. And we want to start by defining like what exactly chosen family is, and share a little bit about the history of the concept of chosen family. I feel like it's been popularized the term the notion has been popularized quite a bit in recent years, particularly among queer community, polyamorous community and other marginalized demographics. But there is a specific history to the term. And so I think it'd be great if we shared a little bit about that to begin.

Samantha Cooper 5:36

th Weston published a book in: 1991

So, I think it's interesting to note that this term (Chosen Family) came out of a time period where in the United States, we were pretty deep into the AIDS crisis, and a lot of queer people were dying. So many queer people were dying at that point from AIDS, and AIDS-related illnesses, and that generation of people were often more likely to be disowned by their family of origin than younger generations, and of course, still needed end-of-life care and financial and emotional support. And so they really relied on ties with, with people who are not from their family of origin, who were in their queer community. And you can see that this "chosen family" concept is also exemplified in ball culture, which originated in New York City, where families were referred to as houses. And each house had a mother or father, who functioned as a parent to people who were members of that house.

e AIDS crisis that we were in: 1991

A definition I think is really clear, and that I really liked - and I will put this in the show notes - is from someone named Bahia maroon (I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly). But that person says, "A chosen family is made up of people who have intentionally chosen to embrace, nurture, love and support each other, regardless of blood or marriage."

Lindsay Tauscher 8:57

Yeah, and I love that description. It feels really clear. And it really emphasizes intentional choice and choosing intimacy, choosing commitment and relationships. And so you know, while there is this very specific queer history to the term, chosen family thought it is situated in a particular timeframe and a few different and related times and places. I think it's just as relevant today across different identities across different demographics. And, you know, we'll probably talk about this a little bit later. Because, you know, I think we would all say that we have friends, for the vast majority of us, but conceiving of certain close relationships as chosen family has a slightly different energy or slightly different quality to it. And I think that sometimes, you know, becoming chosen family can feel like the natural progression of a relationship. It's just the intimacy grows over time that connection grows over time and you realize like, oh, we are we're like in this you know, like we are in this for probably life or for are very long time together in this relationship in this connection. And then in other cases, friends, partners or community members may experience a shared hardship or perhaps like a shared joy or shared celebration, or some other significant life event that serves to strengthen their bond and may lead even to like explicit commitments being made explicit agreements to participate in each other's lives and to commit to the relationship on a higher level.

Samantha Cooper: 10:29

So I think one thing that's not like explicitly acknowledged and the definitions I've seen, I've chosen family that is really important for me. And my approach to this concept, and this practice and my own life is that the people who are in my chosen family, I am committed to them as people that my commitment and dedication as to the those specific humans, as opposed to a commitment to a specific form of relationship with those people, I might be committed to a specific form of relationship, but for me, the priority is always going to be a commitment to that person. And having that person in my life as opposed to our relationship, always having a particular format.

Lindsay Tauscher: 11:16

I totally agree with that. It feels like a very queer thing to in a way. I mean, there's a reason why there's like, tons of running jokes about queers being friends with their exes and running into the same people in, you know, the same places and all that stuff. Because I do think that there is a way and, you know, there's a higher tendency in queer community to prioritize maintaining a relationship with a person that matters to you, over needing to maintain a particular relationship structure, I think it's much more common in the overall culture to like, if you get married, and then you get divorced, like, you're probably not going to stay friends, unless maybe you have kids, and then the children are keeping you in relationship, and then maybe the relationship will sort of transition and transform to something that is friendly. By otherwise, I think culturally, there can be an expectation that like, either someone's a partner, or their friend, or they're an x, there can be these very regimented. delineations. Whereas in chosen family, I do, you know, I really do personally relate to this notion that like, this person, they matter, they are a significant person in my life, no matter how the structure of the relationship may mutate, or change over time. For me, one of my most significant people in my life is also an ex. There was a bit of a transition there, when the relationship structure changed. But what was really clear to both of us was that just because the structure of the relationship changed didn't mean that we could no longer be in relationship anymore. And in fact, it was really important for us to stay in relationship, even as the format transition to something new.

And so, I do think that that kind of -not, not to be like overly "queer stereotyping" about it, and all of that - but I do think that there's something culturally, there. And for me, chosen family is all about an abiding commitment to those that we choose to love, choose to care about, and choose to invest our energy or resources, and our care in - because they matter. And like, it's okay for relationships to change form. It's healthy for relationships, to deepen, and to sometimes find more space between the people involved, as life and circumstances change. But we don't let the space that comes between us geographically, or maybe practically, inhibit the depth of connection. And I think that really speaks to this. It's very similar to how some people do experience their family of origin, right? It's an abiding and ongoing emotional connection, intimacy, and commitment. And I think the beautiful thing about all of this is that that can be chosen, that can be selected, and that can be something we opt into, and co-create together with anyone that we want to.

Samantha Cooper: 14:11

Yeah, I love the emphasis there on people that we choose to have in our lives, and we'll get into this more in a bit... But I just want to point out that chosen family does not exclude members of our family of origin. Like, members of our family of origin, and people who we are married to can be part of our chosen family, actually. And I think that it's really important to acknowledge that all relationships change over time. Even if you have a parent who's a member of your chosen family, your relationship with that person inherently changes over time. I think everyone experiences that. And again, that just emphasizes, you know, this commitment to the actual person, as opposed to the relationship looking a particular way. And also, while we've talked a lot about the queer origins of this term, and how important it is been to queer community... I remember my father using the term "logical family," which is kind of in opposition to "biological family." I remember him using that term, back in the day, when I was a child, and so I was actually quite surprised to hear that this term was not older than this. Obviously, the concept is older than us. But the fact that we needed a particular term for it, it makes sense that it originated in the queer community when it did.

Lindsay Tauscher: 15:40

I feel like this brings us to a discussion that we wanted to have about the origins of the nuclear family structure, which is really presumed, I think, at least here in American culture in the United States, and in the West, we have certain notions of family that are really connected to nuclear family - to parents, children, immediate grandparents, maybe close aunts and uncles, at most - and that really emphasizes that nuclear family structure to the exclusion of more extended family, other forms of relationships as well. And I think that it is as normal as it feels really, truly our entire society in many ways to be structured around parenting, coupledom marriage, and that format of the family. as normal as that feels, it actually is a construct, and it's a construct that has been emphasized in order to serve specific purposes. And I think that it is useful to break that down a little bit. And contextualize, why is it that we even have to have a term like chosen family, right? Like, then that's an opposition to the dominant culture and the dominant socially normative family structures that we all assume are normal and natural, but maybe are not so much.

Samantha Cooper: 17:06

Thank you, Lindsay. That is a great point. And I also just want to add explicitly that the concept of nuclear family is actually the relative newcomer here. If we look at the sort of, like, whole of human history, there are elements of chosen family that have been around for far longer than the nuclear family.

Lindsay Tauscher: 17:27

Yeah, totally. You know, as we know, like, the way that we relate to the notions of family and community in the West, are quite different than a lot of other parts of the world. And many indigenous cultures, both historically, and those that are around and thriving today, have much stronger notions of community, which are closer to what we would maybe label chosen family coming from a Western paradigm, that is to say, people who aren't married or related biologically to a family that maybe don't have any legal ties or marital ties, may still be regarded as a really high priority. You know, obviously, there's plenty of contemporary culture today where the notions of like aunties and uncles and like folks who are not necessarily biologically related, but are given titles, and given the regard in the consideration of family, but there are, in fact, non biologically related community members, you know, I grew up very, very close with a Muslim friend, and everyone was like an auntie, and that, for me, you know, growing up in white waspy suburbia, that was a totally different notion of family and community than what I was being raised with. And so, of course, lots of places in the world with their more expanded definitions of family, and this approach to community as people that we are in some sort of abiding relationship with and that we have a sense of responsibility for and to, and accountability to, this is not a new thing. It's a very ancient concept. And as far as we know, from what we have been able to learn about evolutionary biology and all of that this sort of more communal sense of abiding connections across non family members, throughout community is was the norm across cultures and across geographies before the agricultural revolution and widespread industrialization.

Samantha Cooper: 19:32

Yeah, I mean, those are those are all excellent points. And it just brings to mind that this notion and approach to that privileges the nuclear family over all else is specifically I don't, I don't feel comfortable calling an American although a lot of sources out there do call it like an American or Western approach to family. It is specifically like a colonial construct, it's something that you specifically see used a lot more among white people, I see it as, you know, part of structures of, of white supremacy in America today. And then the rest of the West as well, you brought up some important points that like there are plenty of people who live in the United States, a few do actually have elements of what we would call chairs and family like they haven't. It's not like they lost those ever. They've kept them. And the people who, I guess lost them, if I can frame it that way, are actually like, white people. And people, you know, European origin, who came from colonial powers. And those colonial powers really tried to enforce this construct of nuclear family, on other people in the world.

Lindsay Tauscher: 20:58

Definitely, yeah, there's this insistence on prioritizing the nuclear family at all costs to the exclusion of other relationships, that is really normalized in our culture. And, you know, as you said, like this is a tool of colonial capitalism, it's a way to create separation, where there may have otherwise been mutual support, it's a way to reduce a sense of community, increase the sense of personal responsibility, so that individuals and only immediate family members are somehow responsible for all of their own outcome, it reduces the responsibility of community and the government to ensure that people's basic and fundamental needs are taken care of. And without strong community ties. As you know, we don't tend to have strong community ties, if you are a white American, if you've grown up in like a waspy culture like I did, like you sort of did as well increases our reliance on paid labor, it increases our reliance on having jobs being employed, staying employed, hoarding resources, keeping them in the family, right, like, there's a sense of it's like, we take care of only those who are really close to us, because we don't have the communal structures of mutual shared and like the networks of support, that may exist in other cultures around the world. And that would have been a part of our ancestral cultures as well, that we're now so divorced from because we have been, you know, as the descendants of colonists, like we're not on our ancestral lands, either. We're not in our ancestral cultural context, where there once may have been the stronger community ties. And so there's this lack of distribution of care and support across communities in the West. And that makes us reliant on a very few people. There's nothing wrong with your immediate family of origin, like, there may be depending on your family. But I mean, the idea of like, we care about our parents, we care about our siblings, we care about our children. Of course, of course we do. But it also has a very insular quality, this hyper focusing on the nuclear family, it's a way also of, you know, let's say othering, or demonizing people who don't conform, right? Suddenly, it makes outsiders of queer folks at certainly, historically, of queer folks have trans and gender non conforming folks of people who can't or won't, or folks who are neurodivergent, or who deal with mental illness, who do not easily operate within the confines of the nuclear family structure and the nine to five job and the, you know, some like a breadwinning parent, usually a man and a homekeeping, at home making parent, usually woman, right, like, when we operate outside of these norms, historically, and still, in many places, today, people are ostracized. And so it makes certain people right, and normative and normal and correct and healthy or what have you. And it makes other people wrong, bad deviant, and so on and so forth. And it also creates a sense of competition, this sort of zero sum like everyone's in it for themselves, or only their immediate family. And that just reinforces this over reliance on and over prioritization of nuclear family at the expense of so many potentially rich, nourishing and sustaining relationships that could otherwise be available to us under other cultural systems.

Samantha Cooper: 24:40

I love what you said there about, like the zero sum game that comes with this like sense of competition. It's just so... it's just so, so true. And it's, it brings to mind that the construct of a nuclear family is one that's socially enforced by colonial capitalism and keeps us bound in a, uh, truly limiting and limited form of relating. All of us individually have to work harder, make more money, and so on... so that we can afford to pay to receive the things that under a different system would be shared amongst community members, like wider community members, not just immediate biological relatives.

Lindsay Tauscher: 25:21

Yeah, I think about child care, and how somehow, a set of parents or even a single parent is expected to be solely responsible for raising children in this culture. And we still have, you know, we have the phrase, it takes a village, but we're not living in a village structure anymore. And so I really think that kind of speaks to something, just for example, that is so essential as child rearing, like bringing children up in the world, helping them to be nourished and cared for, and have their needs met, and how we have to outsource childcare in this culture, because we don't have the communal connections, or the time the energy very often to step up for each other, right? Because capitalism keeps us hyper focused on productivity, and meeting our basic needs. And there's this real sense of alienation, I think that can come this is the flip side of the nuclear family, as something that is like socially enforced, is that it keeps us alienated from systems of wider support.

Samantha Cooper: 26:34

Totally. And, like, with your point about childcare, childcare these days is so expensive, and yet it is seen as like really essential for people as like, especially mothers, too, be able to have a like, a thriving or even semi functional career, which, I mean, capitalism reinforces this by telling us that our jobs and our careers are a truly like core part of our identity. So really, in a big way, like being able to pay for child care is seen as an essential to like, keep your sense of identity intact, essentially, in this system of colonial capitalism.

Lindsay Tauscher: 27:23

Now, it becomes a matter of personal responsibility when we can look toward history, and we can look toward other cultures and see that there's much, much more effective ways to construct a society than what we've done here.

Samantha Cooper: 27:36

Totally. I mean, it's interesting, I think we we talked about this recently, that the very fact that these, we have these vacuums and our communities of like healers and grief supporters that are a result of this over prayer, or atomization, of the nuclear family in capitalism, like we as coaches and and practitioners, our career exists to fill that vacuum. And so I don't know, I find it is particularly relevant for us, as those types of practitioners to acknowledge, essentially like that we are filling that vacuum that we are part of this system.

Lindsay Tauscher: 28:26

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's just another way in which built in community support that may have existed in other places, at other times and do exist in other places are so sorely lacking in Western colonial cultures. And I think that this is a whole other conversation. But those are real lack of ritual space and ritual containment and expression through community rituals, coming of age and all of that. And there are many, many other ritual experiences in cultures that we don't experience so much. I would say particularly in Christian influenced Western cultures, I feel like Judaism does a pretty good job actually, around communal, shared ritual experiences and less so I find in Christian cultures, those of us who are, you know, come from a Christian background or upbringing or descended in that way. And I think that it kind of brings us back to like the holiday topic and the the theme of the holidays that sort of led us to have these couple of conversations at this time, which is to say there's so much pressure put on our, you know, official holidays on things like Christmas and in the United States Thanksgiving. And it's like, we don't get a lot of opportunities, where we come together as a community or a culture and acknowledge significant events, acknowledge significant experiences or developments among people are can immunities. And so we really put a lot of weight on things like Christmas Thanksgiving, right? So those holidays, and as well on marriage and weddings, it's one of the only other available expressions for communal connection and a shared sense of witnessing developments in community members lives. And then we see this in funerals as well. But again, funeral, funerary practices in the West are not nearly as robust as in a lot of other parts of the world. So you know, it is a way in which we can put so much weight on like, how are we going to spend our holidays? What does it mean? Who's allowed in who's not allowed? And like, what traditions do we engage with, because we really don't have a whole lot of continuity throughout the community throughout the year in other forms of communal celebration. So we'll be talking a little bit more later in this conversation about how we can start to get really intentional and really creative about integrating chosen family, and generally just more choice into how we celebrate the holidays. But first, I think we ought to talk a little bit more about the relationship between chosen family expectations and family of origin expectations, and how we might conceive of chosen family in the aforementioned context.

Samantha Cooper: 31:24

Yeah, so I think maybe it's useful to delineate maybe a little bit between a family of origin versus nuclear family. So I sort of think of family of origin as a relatively neutral term, it just refers to the people who, who raised us who we grew up with, whereas the nuclear family is like, refers to a very particular construct and context. And it's fairly limiting in terms of the people it refers to the specific people it refers to, and how we prioritize them in practice. So, you know, I think that there probably a few people out there have questions about, you know, can you have both a family of origin and a chosen family are? And is the existence of both types of family and our life? Like, are they in conflict? Are they mutually exclusive? And I want to say right off the bat that like, yes, you can have both. And I think I alluded to this earlier, to some extent, near the beginning of the episode, but they actually can overlap, like people who are part of your family of origin, like you can integrate them into your chosen family, they can actually be members of your chosen family. There are people out there who would say that their their mother is part of their chosen family, they have a relationship with that person that is so abiding, and caring that they would choose to have them in their life, regardless of their family of origin relationship.

Lindsay Tauscher: 33:04

Yeah, I think what the notion of chosen family speaks to is a little bit less about like, existing an exclusion to family of origin. And it's more about creating relationships with intentionality. And we can really take an intentional approach to how we co create relationships together, right? There's an arbitrariness to being born a someone's child, a certain person's child, right? We didn't choose that. But we can be intentional about how we co create a relationship with a parent, or how we co create a relationship with a cousin or a friend or a community member, or a co worker, whatever these relationships can take on a level of significance and intimacy and connection, because we are choosing it intentionally and we're putting the energy in and we're showing up, and we're contributing our presence, our commitment and our ongoing support. And I think that for me, this kind of, you know, brings up the notion of a distinction that I really like to make between the sense or the idea of obligation versus commitment. And you could argue that, you know, obligations are a form of commitment, that's fine. But I think that in our vocabulary here, as we have this conversation, there's a difference that's worth making. And I find that one of the this kind of takes us back to the estrangement conversation from the previous episode, because there's this notion, especially with this hyper emphasis on the nuclear family, and all of the political, you know, purposes and social purposes that it serves is this notion that like we are obligated to our biological family in particular, and that it is inherently wrong to not honor those obligations. And I see obligation insofar as we're talking about relationships, as being based in a lack of choice, and as we use the word commitment here, we're really referring to a form of commitment that is rooted in agency and rooted in choice. And we're kind of holding purposeful, intentional, deliberate commitment in opposition to presumed, socially mandated obligation. So we can have a commitment to our family of origin that is coming from a place of choice and the desire to be in relationship. And that's really different than being on the hook to obligation that we know it's normally socially normative, it's expected, we don't feel like we can get out of it. And that's where a lot of folks who don't have healthy family relationships can really, really suffer, because they don't realize that they have choice, they don't realize that they can actually set boundaries, create distance, and so on and so forth. And so we want to kind of critique the notion that family is about obligation, and instead, shift the thinking around it to creating a family, with intention, deliberately from a place of choice and the actual desire to be in authentic, deep relationship with one another.

Samantha Cooper: 36:23

You know, this is a little bit of a shift in that conversation. But I think our relationship, our friendship, really brings to mind how important it is, I think, to both of us individually, to break down these hierarchies of, I guess, bio legal family, which is biological and adoptive family, and, you know, romantic partners being prioritized over chosen platonic relationships, which I think for most people, immediately recognizable form of that relationship is friendship.

Lindsay Tauscher: 37:00

Yeah, and it's not that friendships can be really significant, and really important on their own. But I think that it's really worth acknowledging that in the dominant culture, there's a pretty clear hierarchy of biological family, and romantic partners, especially if they're married, being prioritized over friendships as a way that friends can kind of get de prioritized, because there is a lack of clarity around what the commitment is within those relationships. And so I would posit that, you know, chosen family might not look that different than a friendship in some ways, right? Like, I consider you a friend, Sam, I wouldn't say that you are my chosen family. And you're not my friend, like you were, of course, my brand. But there is a sense of like, oh, this is a friendship that has weight, it has the gravity, it has a significance. And it is treated with the level of respect that I would give to a romantic partner that I would give to a biological family member as well. And I think that, you know, we can have a whole conversation about how tricky friendship is in our culture, I think, because it occupies a somewhat liminal space, that doesn't tend to be a priority relationship for many people, especially folks who get married and have kids and have to get really focused on some of their, like, immediate family responsibilities. But I think that chosen family, we can kind of hold it as a deeper, more committed and abiding form of friendship, in some cases. And, you know, I think that this is also maybe a good time to talk about what non monogamy can teach us about breaking down the hierarchies between bio legal family and other forms of relationships, platonic or otherwise. Yeah,

Samantha Cooper: 38:50

totally. I don't know MIP relevant for those of you listening to know that both Lindsay and I individually, before we met came into our friendship, practicing non monogamy and in various forms and iterations throughout our lives and relationship histories. And so I know a number of my clients are also practicing non monogamy or polyamory whatever. There are various terms for this, but I have plenty of clients who don't or might be adjacent to people who practice non monogamy. But I know there's a term that I think some people love and others hates or others love hate it. But the the concept of the poly kewl, I think is like really evokes this connection to the concept of a chosen family. For those of you who've never heard this term before, I don't remember what it means. And the term being poly cool. It is a blending of the words polyamory and molecule and reflects relationship configuration needs that resemble the chemical structure of molecules?

Lindsay Tauscher: 40:03

Yeah, so it's a way of speaking to the network of relationships that is created among non monogamous folks. And I think it has a lot to teach us. A non monogamy has a lot to teach us because it more closely resembles the community structures that have existed historically and do exist outside of Western culture, but often don't get prioritized or played out as much in more normative cultures here in the United States. But within non monogamy, we can kind of see the way that relationships can develop as a connection between one person, another person, another person, and there's a whole sort of network of folks who are invested in and care about each other in different ways and at different levels according to two different degrees according to their proximity. But there really is the sort of shared communal system occurring when we're talking about, you know, polycules and some configurations of polyamory and non monogamy.

Samantha Cooper: 41:02

Yeah, totally. And I think just to be clear, as far as I know, the term polycule refers to the, the system of relationships that includes not only romantic and maybe sexual connections between people, and those relationships themselves can take different forms. But also, it refers to the connection between people who, who have a partner or a romantic partner in common who may or, you know, may or may not be, like, best buddies or whatever. But it's an acknowledgment that actually that connection, of like, sharing a sense of care about a particular person is, in itself, significant.

Lindsay Tauscher: 41:47

Definitely. And I think that it sort of contributes to this shared sense of connection and mutual commitment. Even if your partner's partner -- the word for that is your metamour -- even if your partner's partner is not, like, your personal friend, and maybe they are (or maybe they are your own partner -- though they could be), there's a shared interest in the health of the relationship that you each have with this one person and it creates a network, and it creates a community amongst you and, and then, you know, developing out from there, among other relationships, romantic or otherwise other forms of connection.

Samantha Cooper: 42:25

I think this is probably a good time to talk about, you know, putting all of what we've talked about today around chosen family and intentionality, and all of that, into practice during the holidays. Lots of non monogamous and polyamorous folks have to get creative about how to celebrate the holidays, when not everyone can or wants to be at the same events together. Perhaps there are people in one's polycule, who need to go spend time with their family of origin during the holidays, but they cannot be "out" to them as poly or non monogamous, then perhaps those people will have, you know, they will have a celebration of holidays together before one of those partners goes and celebrates the holidays with their family of origin, or they will have, you know, several different family celebrations of for example, Christmas, across the holiday season and all are considered significant. It's not that their celebration with their polycule is any less significant than their celebration with their family of origin. It is just different.

Lindsay Tauscher: 43:31

Yeah, and we see those in divorced families as well, right? You know, it's not a totally foreign concept, the idea of splitting the holidays amongst different parents, for example, or different parts of the family. Even in a more normative family arrangement, you might spend, you know, alternate which year you spend a significant holiday with which set of in-laws, for example. So I think that there's plenty of precedence for this, but there's just this additional layer of care, consideration, and outside the box thinking that non-monogamy requires of us that I think is a really great source of inspiration for how anyone might choose to get more creative and more intentional about how they spend their holidays...so that they can actually enjoy holidays from the place of, as much as possible, by building intentional commitments and traditions together rather than simply defaulting to family norms and obligations.

Samantha Cooper: 44:31

Some people may even have the ability to be creative in such a way that they can actually bring together members of their chosen family and their family of origin to celebrate the holidays together. I have been part of Christmas celebrations before where it was primarily, like, people of similar age - like, peers - but that they brought, you know, one or both of their parents or siblings - or multiple people in their nuclear family - they brought them along to this bigger Christmas celebration. And it was, it was really interesting and fun to be able to meld those different people in their lives together to celebrate. And, you know, not everyone has the ability to do that. But when I've seen it happen, it's really beautiful, sometimes awkward, but cool. Nonetheless,

Lindsay Tauscher: 45:27

I have to say that one of my most memorable holidays, was when I was living in France, and it was Thanksgiving. And you know, the French don't exactly.... American Thanksgiving. Exactly. There are a lot of expats there in this community. Many were American, but loads of them were from other parts of the world, throughout Europe, South America, Asia, and so on. And about 20 of us came together as a community, and decided that we wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving together. And the terms of the celebration were pretty simple. It was that we were each asked to bring a dish that is significant to us, whether it is from our traditional family, Thanksgiving celebrations back home, or whether it's just a dish that we love that's culturally significant for us. And I have to say it was like the most fun we were eating like pie, Aya and tamales and like, quiche and pie. And you know,

Samantha Cooper: 46:34

I want to come to that American Thanksgiving celebration! (laughing)

Lindsay Tauscher: 46:38

Yeah, oh my god. Well, there's there's a rabbit hole of a story there. Because one of my traditional family desserts - which you've had Sam, as recently as this past Thanksgiving - is a Kentucky Derby pie. It has a bourbon in it; and it is not easy to find bourbon in France, let me tell you. (both Sam and Lindsay laugh) I was, like... it was a wild goose chase, for me attempting... even pecans are hard to come across... And, uh, just try to find what would be very, very ordinary ingredients in the United States. There are some key ingredients that were kind of hard to track down living in Europe at that time, and it created a challenge for me - one that I will never forget - and I was so proud of that pie by the time I brought it to the potluck and was able to share it with all of these people. And just, like, the joy of the cultural exchange that came from not making Thanksgiving about whatever the associations were that we had with it at home, but really co creating an event together that was something uniquely its own. And I will never forget that I'll never experienced it in the same way again, but I will never forget how special that particular cocreation of that event was.

Samantha Cooper: 47:49

Yeah, that sounds amazing. And while I don't have, you know, an exactly similar experience, I did celebrate at various points... During my time living in the UK, I did have American Thanksgiving celebrations that I hosted, and some that I took part in, but mostly hosted. And it was really cool, because, you know, we didn't try to stick to the sort of, like, normative American Thanksgiving - traditional American Thanksgiving - methods of celebration and the foods. And anyone who would come to these [celebrations] would usually bring a dish that was significant to them in some way, or they would just bring something, you know. I would supply... some years I supplied Turkey, because that's, like, a big thing to ask someone to bring, so I did it. But it was really cool, you know, to have this, sort of like... this potluck, and, and co-create it, as you said.

Before we wrap up this conversation, we want to offer some ideas and suggestions for how you might begin to integrate the people you might regard as your chosen family more into your tradition, celebrations and significant life events, both during the seasonal holidays and throughout the rest of the year. So for some of you, it might feel really intimidating to start doing this integration during the holidays. Like, it's kind of a big deal. I get it. While you can start there, you don't have to. There is the rest of the year... you can start doing this at other times. For example, you can bring a plus one who isn't your partner to a holiday or, or wedding - you can be the one who disrupts the status quo. I know, several years back, Lindsay and I did that; we disrupted the status quo. I brought Lindsay as a plus one to a wedding I attended, and it was a lot of fun. I'm really glad we did that.

Lindsay Tauscher: 49:41

Yeah, that's exactly what we did. And it was a lot of fun to show up as friends as significant others without it being a formal, sort of, dating relationship and we had just as much fun getting to know everyone and spending time together as if it had been a more conventional plus one.

So beyond that, you could also do something like what a friend of mine has done, which is you can create a totally new holiday that is designed especially to incorporate and integrate chosen family members, extended, you know, friendship relationships and multiple polyamorous partners into a single celebratory event. My friend co-hosts this event with her cousins in October, so before the holiday season really starts to kick off. And it's an opportunity for folks to just like bring in other significant relationships, celebrate with some family of origin, some family of choice, and partners who, yeah, might otherwise - especially within polyamorous relationships - may not be able to all celebrate together at, for example, Hanukkah or Christmas time because they'd be with their respective family of origin. It's just an opportunity to get everyone together and to really have a shared sense of community and a shared sense of celebration that doesn't compete with Christmas, Hanukkah, and the other major winter holidays. But if you are in the position of your winter holidays kind of competing with each other, you can always consider alternating spending the holidays with family of origin and chosen family. There is no law that says that you have to go home to your family of origin every time Christmas or Hanukkah rolls around. You could trade yours like you would perhaps if you were married more conventionally, you might trade which family, which in-laws you're going to be with every other year. You can do that with other significant chosen family relationships. You don't have to only make those alternating plans because someone is your spouse or because you're... they're your partner. You can handle holidays that way, just because there's someone else that you love, and you want to take turns celebrating with their extended families and their other connections.

Samantha Cooper: 51:51

Love that! I love everything you just said, Lindsay! Thank you.

Basically, the point that we're trying to make in a large part of this episode is that if you do not have a really conventional relationship with your family of origin, if you have significant relationships that don't fit within traditional "bio-legal" ties, you're not alone. And if you want to navigate the holiday season, and indeed the entire rest of the year to integrate more of these other significant relationships into your life and celebrations, you're not alone. There are already existing models and frameworks for how to do this. You don't have to start from scratch.

Lindsay, thank you so much for joining me again for yet another wonderful conversation. I've really, really valued everyone this conversation, these conversations with you. And I hope that you will come back at some point.

Lindsay Tauscher: 52:52

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been it's been great. I you know that these are some of my favorite topics to discuss. And it's great to sit down and have these chats with you and share some of our thoughts with your audience.

Samantha Cooper: 53:06

So, if people want to learn more about you and your work, Lindsay, where should they go?

Lindsay Tauscher: 53:12

You can find me online at work with lindsay.com : L-I-N-D-S-A-Y. And I'm also on Instagram at @workwithlindsay. As we may have mentioned at the top of the first episode, I'm a somatic resilience coach, I specialize in working with queer, gender expansive and neurodivergent leaders and visionaries who are ready to step more fully into their power, their authenticity, and their resilience. And part of that is being in authentic connection with the ones that we love and care about, and tapping into a sense of being more resourced in the ways that we've been discussing through community ties through these connections. And so I really think that it you know, segues beautifully from our conversation into deepening into this work together and I would love to support you if that's ever an interest. And otherwise, you can just you know, keep up with me online. And I'm always putting out new offers, working with folks one on one and in groups, and hopefully developing more courses in the new year.

Samantha Cooper: 54:13

Awesome. Thank you so very much, and listeners. Also, if you want to check out my social media, you'll see that Lindsay and I have collaborated previously on some Instagram lives and things like that. So you can learn more about Lindsay's work my work and how we operate together by checking out those posts on Instagram and elsewhere. Thank you so much.

Thank you for listening to there's nothing wrong with you. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share and subscribe to this podcast. If you know someone who would benefit from listening to this episode, please share it with them. To learn more about me and my work, please visit www.unconventionalmindscoaching.com. And please feel free to get in touch with me to share your thoughts and suggestions at contact@unconventionalmindscoaching.com. Thank you, and catch you next time!