Don't you have parents?

We get asked this sometimes - not on the blog yet, but by people we know. Do we have parents? Why do we call the person we live with our guardian instead? Is our living situation permanent?

The answer to the first part is that yes, we all have biological parents, obviously, just like everyone else. Some of us have or had good relationships with them - like Josefina, whose mother died - and some of us don't. We don't live with them, though. For different reasons, none of our original families remained intact. Now we live with our guardian.

Why don't we call our guardian our mother? There are several reasons. For one thing, we were all old enough when we came here that we had strong memories of our biological parents - and for some of us, bad associations with all things parental - and we didn't necessarily want new ones. She gave us a choice, and this is what we chose, knowing she would love us either way. For another, our guardian isn't that much older than us. She's an adult and we're minors, but the age difference isn't huge - she was not even a teenager yet when the oldest of us were born. Lastly, the four of us who came here first (Kirsten, Felicity, Molly, and Charissa) already knew her as a relative rather than a mother long before we moved in, and the girls who came later just kind of followed suit.

Is our living situation permanent? Yes. All of us are here as legal adoptions or permanent legal guardianships. Our home is as permanent as someone who lives with a parent. We just choose to call our guardian by her first name instead. This isn't what would work for everyone, but it does for us.

Sometimes it sets us apart or makes people think we're weird. But if it wasn't this, it would be something else that made us odd. No one - and no family - is exactly like another. Our family isn't conventional, but that's OK. We are a family, no matter what.

Love,
The Green Girls