My Crazy Family

Above is a kinship diagram of my extended family, if you look at the key I symbolized by the yellow circle. Although I live with my father, my diagram is heavily matriarch\ favored. I am much closer to my mother's family and have not met the majority of my father's biological family, partly due to them being deceased and partly due to unknown reasons to me. My mother's side of the family is 100% Belgian, I am in fact the part of the first generation to be born in the United States. I also decided to create a diagram of my fictive family.

I added a diagram of my fictive family because they are the family I grew up with, which is why I made the background pink. My fathers parents died when he was young so he was practically adopted by his best friend's family. I consider them my family and call them my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents.Before I came to college I had never lived more than 2 miles from any member of this family, which is why I am the closest to them. My father's best friends daughter is my best friend and sister, I even lived with her family off an on during middle school and high school. My fictive family is a giant stereotypical Italian family, and even though I don't have a drop of Italian blood I have a lot of Italian mannerisms and can make insanely good marinara sauce due to their secret family recipe.

I definitely do not have the typical American family. But I am lucky enough to have a big Italian family and a big Belgian family and I would not trade it for anything.