Over the past few months I’ve talked a lot about my parents and how fortunate I am that I have four parents and not just two.  This week that sentiment was reiterated as we laid one of my grandfathers (my step-dad’s father) to rest.  He passed away six months ago but due to lockdowns we couldn’t gather then.  Because so much time had passed I thought this memorial would be a little easier than a funeral – less shock, a wound that’s a little more healed – but I didn’t actually find that at all, seeing family I hadn’t seen since December of 2019 and realizing again that I did not get to say goodbye due to the pandemic just opened it all right back up.

But the other thing it did was remind me of how important our relationships are to who we become. 

I don’t necessarily believe in luck – I think everyone has their things that they have to go through and that those are the struggles you know and are what shapes you and your perceptions of what is difficult – I also think that those things seem more or less difficult from the outside based on who is looking in on them and what their “things” have been.  For most of my life people have felt I didn’t have great luck because my health issues seemed to plague me…but if I was going to make an argument for me being lucky then it would be an easy case to make that in the family department, I hit the jackpot.

I don’t mean that I’m super warm and fuzzy close with every single person in those families (there are a lot of people).  I don’t mean that it’s all perfect all the time, families disagree and fight and even hurt each other sometimes.  I don’t mean there was never a time when having four parents instead of just two was damned inconvenient (just when you think they’re all on board with something one makes a ‘valid point’ against your case and then they all back down…damned inconvenient). And I don’t mean that it was easy when on a holiday weekend you had to choose which event(s) you missed because you just couldn’t make it to all of them.  But still, if we’re talking about luck, then I am lucky.

The first time I met Brian’s family, his parents and siblings had birthday presents for my sister and I.  Stuff we actually liked even!  And from that day forward, we were just one of the kids.  They never made us feel different from their other grandkids.  

Same went for my step-mom’s family; the first time I met my Gramma Rita, her mother, at 5 years old I pulled my dad aside and asked if I could call her Gramma.  I knew I loved her from that first day I met her, and I knew she loved me too; I had an extremely close relationship with her throughout my childhood and even more so as an adult. Her sister and her family embraced us completely as well; I always felt special to them.  

I don’t know if you’re a child of divorce or a blended family but I am telling you that that is tough to do. Hell, I know people who, if they didn’t like the conditions in which they were born, struggle to accept their actual grandkids, nevermind making the random kids that belong to the person your kid is dating feel unconditionally loved.  But those families opened their arms and pulled us in wholeheartedly.

And they’re influences have been enormous for me; I wouldn’t be who I am without them.

The title of this week’s post is from an Eric Church song “Those I’ve Loved” and while of course the song talks about the familial influences and how important they are to who we become, it also talks about the friends we lost touch with and the exes, because even when things go badly, those people shape who we are too and those things are just as important; every time I think about how grateful I am for having gotten these bonus families, I end up also thinking back to friends I don’t talk to anymore, guys I dated who, obviously, it didn’t work out with for one reason or another, teachers I had that left an impression, bosses (both good and bad), regular customers I had in the bar…hell I even got some advice from an old guy while I was a customer in a bar one night that has substantially impacted the direction I’ve gone in life, and I don’t even know his name…all those people who were not meant to stay forever but without whom I would not be who I am today.

So, if you’re the more literal sort, you may be wondering what the heck this has to do with my health and fitness journey? Short answer: EVERYTHING.  Long answer:

Without my “bonus families” I’m not sure I would have come to terms with not being able to have my own children – being loved unconditionally, by people who didn’t HAVE to do it, taught me to love others the same way and left space for me to want to take care of my body for myself – not so it could grow someone else.

Without the past friends who aren’t around anymore I may not have come through some very tough situations the same way – trying new things I might never have thought of by being around different people helped me to discover parts of myself I may never have uncovered and going through the loss of friends taught me to value the ones that stuck – and they’ve been some of the biggest supporters on my journey.

Without the boyfriends who I thought irreparably broke my heart I wouldn’t have learned how to put myself back together – and I wouldn’t have discovered that I do believe that I’m worthy or learned to stand up for myself.

Without the teachers and bosses – the authority figures I strived to impress – I wouldn’t have figured out my strengths and weaknesses and how to use them…I also wouldn’t have discovered what I DON’T want to do, and it seems to me knowing that is as important as knowing what you WANT to do.

Without the regulars – the customers when I worked in the bar that I often saw more than my own family – I would have missed out on a lot of lessons; some extremely practical, like customer service skills, and some a little less so, like the start of learning how to set boundaries.

And without the random old guy that I’d never met, who I sat beside at the bar one night and asked me what had me drinking alone and then proceeded to listen to my litany of 25 year old problems as though they were the most important thing in the world, for the next several hours – and then paid my tab – I might never have admitted that I was making excuses for not moving forward in my life (nor is it likely that I would have admitted that pride was getting in the way of being with the person I love.)

I don’t know what my life would look like without those people – I do think life is what you make it, so I’d like to think I would have just adapted differently, but without those influences maybe I wouldn’t have gotten the ability to see things from that perspective, to go with the flow and play the game with what I was dealt, so I could have ended up miserable.  I gotta say, I’m pretty freakin happy it has worked out like it has.

You can put it a lot of ways, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ or ‘live and learn’.  Countless songs have covered being better off because of having been through something tough, from Christina Aguleira with “Fighter”, to Britney Spears with “Stronger”; from Aerosmith with “Amazing”, or Kelly Clarkson with “I Don’t Think About You” but when it comes down to looking back on those more hurtful things I think about them like this – you can get bitter, or you can get better. Either use what you are given to fuel your anger and resentment, or use it to build on.

Because life is hard.  It’s frustrating and stressful at times. The rules constantly change so that it’s almost never fair and it’s often pretty lonely, even when you have giant, loving families.  It blindsides you when you think things are great with the toughest things imaginable, and then in the middle of the tough things it’ll give you miracles just to keep you hanging on. It’s unpredictable, volatile, and, honestly, it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense most of the time.

But what’s the alternative?  If we spend our lives only seeking the good, we’re missing out on half of what we’re being given.  Without my poor health for so long, I wouldn’t have the wondrous appreciation for the work I’ve put in for better health now; without night, there is no day.  Without the lessons of the times we fail or lose or are hurt, we don’t get better, we don’t grow, we don’t find our strength.

So this week while I think of my Grampa, and feel inordinately grateful for having gotten to have him in my life for nearly 30 years, I’m also thinking about a lot of other people who have passed through and shaped this journey for me.  Not with anger or bitterness or a wish that anything was any different than it is – just with a whole lot of appreciation for their hand in my life to get me to this moment, right now.

I couldn’t say it better than Eric Church:

I don’t regret the day they became one of those I loved along the way.

Because I wouldn’t be who I am today, if not for those I’ve loved along the way.