To the Editor,
Re: Most people relate to nuclear family, Letters, Oct. 9.
My now-ex wife and I married in 2001.
We were separated for two years before divorcing and she remarried in 2011.
I do not consider the arrangement we now live in to be a failed, destroyed nuclear family, but rather a loving, supportive and extended family.
My daughter has three sets of loving grandparents, aunts and uncles, all of whom I respect and appreciate.
We all do what we can to nurture her and help her experience the world in all its diversity. While very few of us are related in any way, we all respect one another as members of my daughter’s family.
It is because of all the people who have had a hand in her upbringing, not despite it, that she is the flexible, loyal, patient, imaginitive, energized and inspired young lady she has become.
By the way, the person my ex-wife is married to now is female. Please notice how little that changes anything I’ve mentioned above.
What the last few years have taught me is that love comes to people in different ways – sometimes when they’re already in love.
When two people in love are male and female, they can make babies together and be a family. And, when two people in love are male or female, they have to find other ways.
Nothing about my daughter’s life concerns me in the least. I am simply glad that we were all mature enough to accept and adapt to the changes life brings.
Steve Calder
Nanaimo