As I was driving away from a week, and a place, I've come to call home, all I could think of was how I wished I didn't have to say goodbye. Goodbyes are often the hardest words to choke out, when all you want to do is pull others close.
Camping with a group of others affected by SMA I've called family for 15 years now feels like the most important, carefree week of my life. Each and every year, it is a place of freedom, a place of safety and of love.
I've never agreed with the Dictionary's definition of family as only those who share your DNA. No, family is truly so much more than that. Family are those you choose. The ones who stick by you through the thick, thin, and thickest yet of a messy life. They're the most imperfect people you could possibly come across, and you love them for all of it, never in spite of it.
We share so much of the good and the bad, the stuff that no one else could pretend to comprehend or understand despite the best of intentions.
For us, for that one week, we are inescapably whole and complete. Definitions which the world often forgets to bestow upon us. For that week, eyes do not longer over each other's struggles, other than to define each other's set of strengths. Because, for that one week, those strengths are not measured on a scale of weakness. For one week, we are not alone. We see that, in the glint of each set of eyes. From that short period of time, we carry in our hearts the strengths of each other throughout the year, until we meet again.
