An example of friends who become family would be my Ultimate series with MMA fighters. The men practice together, support each other in friendly rivalry (which is how rivalry should be!) fall in love, with heckling – and sometimes unwanted guidance – from their friends, and they face trouble together.
Forging bond with like-minded people, friends who understand you, share your concerns and have similar motivations, is a very natural process and can create a closeness that surpasses actual blood relationships.
In my newest book, Sisters Of Summer’s End, Maris and Joy each have difficult backgrounds that centered around their natural families. For them, family was the problem – and that made it difficult to cope. There’s so much emotional conflict that comes from issues with people who should love you – but don’t; who should accept you – but don’t. Maris and Joy needed that unrelated but special person in their lives, someone who understood their situation, who got their issues, and through acceptance helped balance out the hardships and enhanced the good times.
I’ve always believed that family is what you make of it, it’s where you find it, and sharing a gene pool isn’t necessary at all.
In my books, I hope readers see that encouraging each other is far more important than virtue-signaling. Telling someone else that they’re a bad person, does not make you a good person. You have to do something – and I don’t mean anything ugly or mean. Kindness, caring and consideration adds value to the lives of others.
This world has enough critical people.
We all need more love and light.