Mar-y-el

“Rather than returning to the family in the face of its destruction under capitalism, we should seek to create a world where the haven of the family is not necessary. Rather than a society full of broken families, we need a society where someone without a family can thrive as well as someone with family intact. This is what “abolishing the family” truly means: to end the economic relations of dependence of wives and children on the patriarch so that kinship is based on voluntary relationships of genuine love and community. This would entail not ending the ability of parents to raise their children, but instead giving children the option to leave their families if they are abusive, while retaining support networks beyond the misery of foster care. It would mean ending the unpaid domestic labor of women that reproduces the nuclear family, by socializing this work and removing its gendered connotations.”

“But here’s a little secret for you: no one is ever the same thing again after anything. You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are. Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is. Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren’t that person anymore, and everything changes once again.”