The Light is on “Family” at Our Little House

My #YearofLight continues. I wrote back in Januaryhow I am keeping the Christmas lights up all year to symbolically help light my new path in this single life. I changed the lights out last week from Valentine’s Day pink to St. Patrick’s Day green.

It has been a long, hard and dark winter at Our Little House, as it has been in much of the nation. The seemingly endless gray days have not done a whole lot to lift my mood.

One thing that has are the visitors I’ve had to Our Little House. One exciting visit was from my Australian sister, Angela. She lives in the Netherlands now and came for 12 days back in the grayest, cold of January. Angela lived with my parents and I as an exchange student in 1979-80, the year I was a sophomore in high school.

She also arrived just a couple months after I met and started dating Dale, so she was there from the beginning. I’d like to say we were close then and that I was a good exchange sister, but young love took up much of my energy and time. Thank heavens, we maintained the foundation we’d formed that year and built upon that. Having her here in my time of need was awesome.

I’ve also had a lot of support from my BFF, sister in law and my “god brother,” a moniker I gave to a good friend whose parents were my godparents. He and his wife have been down three times in the months since Dale’s passing, helping make the property safer and more secure.  My BFF, Kathy, brought me home from KC after the funeral and spent the week with me. My sister in law came at the end of December. I’ve had so much other support, it’s just too numerous to mention.

The lesson I’ve taken so far in my early journey on this #YearofLight is “family” doesn’t have to be related to you by DNA. There are a lot of good people all over the world. If you’re lucky, they are in your life and will be there when you need them the most.

Who is not related to you by blood, but you know you could count on?