The full saying goes, ‘You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them’. However, as a lot of us know by now, that simply isn’t true (sorry Desmond Tutu).
Unfortunately, our biological families are not always good to us or healthy for us, let alone serve as gifts to us.
In fact, the people that we choose to enter and stay in our lives can often provide better love, comfort and care than the people we were born to and raised with.
For members of the LGBTQ+ community in particular, this reality can often be common. According to Stonewall UK’s ‘LGBT in Britain’ 2018 report, only 46% of lesbian, gay and bisexual people and 47% of transgender people feel comfortable opening up about their sexuality or gender identity to everyone in their family.