What Is 'Found Family'? Support Beyond Blood Relatives

Picture a grief workshop that opens with one broad question written on the board for everyone to see:

What are you coping with?

A woman in the front row stood up, took the marker, and wrote beneath it: "The loss of my entire family." A few minutes later, the woman sitting next to her added her own line: "The loss of my father and the loss of my relationships with my mother and my children." Both women had lost their families. Both described feeling completely alone in the world.

Most people add friends and family throughout their lives, but it's just as common to lose people you once assumed would always be there. People you were close to. People who felt like family. People who were family.

There are a few common reasons someone loses a significant family member or close friend: distance, differences, and death. You can add ambiguous losses to that list too, things like injury, addiction, and illness. Each of these deserves its own discussion, but death in particular can make your support network feel like it's disappearing in real time. Some of the reasons why:

• People are irreplaceable, and losing someone you loved often brings a very specific kind of loneliness
• A death can fracture the wider family tree, costing you other relationships along with it
• Weak or unreliable support from the people around you
• Feeling alienated, judged, or misunderstood
• Social and emotional isolation
• Tension with friends and family who are grieving the same loss, differently than you

Some people can lean on blood relatives and lifelong friends and find all the love and support they need. Others look at that same list of people and think, "Them?????" If that's you, it's worth spending a few minutes on the idea of "found family."

Found family

It felt like a family reunion for the family I'd never really known, a homecoming at the place where I was always meant to be but hadn't known how to find." ~ David Levithan, Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story

Search around and you'll find a handful of different takes on what "found family" means, so here's a working definition. Found family describes people outside your blood relations with whom you build deep, meaningful bonds, connections grounded in shared values, mutual care, understanding, unconditional love, and genuine regard for one another. These relationships often form precisely because a person feels those qualities are missing from their existing relationships.

Building these connections isn't simple. Even when two people with strikingly similar losses end up sitting side by side in a grief group, reaching out to form family-like bonds with someone new can feel risky, even frightening, given the trust and vulnerability it asks of you. You can't force this kind of connection, but you can stay open to it. A few thoughts on how:

• Be honest about what the people in your life can and can't offer. Sometimes you have to accept that certain people won't change, or simply aren't capable of giving you the support you need. They may still stay in your life, but you may need to look elsewhere for what they can't provide.
• Look for people who understand. Many grieving people say it was only among found family that they felt their grief was truly accepted. If you're searching for people who get grief, try a support group or another setting where you can meet others who've lived through something similar.
• Stay open to support from unexpected places. Grieving people often say they were surprised by who showed up for them, and where that support came from.
• Get clear on your own idea of family. Many people discover that what they believe family should be doesn't match what they actually experienced. A major life event can also shift someone's values and worldview entirely. In either case, a person may find more comfort in the friends they've chosen than in their family of origin.
• Get out of the house. Isolation makes all of this harder.
• Stay open to the possibility. After a loss, especially one where your support system let you down, it's easy to think, "What's the use?", "People will just let me down," "I can't trust anyone," "I'm alone in the world." No one can talk you out of those thoughts entirely, but if you genuinely want new, meaningful connections, it helps to give people a chance.