I didn't set out to create Chosen Family. I think I found my way here.
Looking back, I realize I'd been doing this work long before I had the language for it.
If you know me, you know I've been bringing people together for years. Dinners, celebrations, game nights, gatherings — I've always found a reason to get people in the same room.
And if you've ever met me as a friend, you probably know we didn't just stay "friends" for very long. Somehow, somewhere along the way, you became family.
That's always been natural to me. I've never believed the people we're related to are the only people who can become deeply woven into our lives. Sometimes somebody starts as a friend, a coworker, or a person you happened to meet — and one day you realize they've become one of your people.
For a long time, I thought the answer was creating a space for people who didn't have family or who didn't have the kind of support system they needed.
But the more people I met and the more events I held, I realized that wasn't quite it.
Some people had great families. Some had complicated ones. Some had plenty of friends and still wanted deeper connections. Some were surrounded by people and somehow still felt like something was missing.
That's when my understanding of family started changing.
I realized people were never meant to get all of their connection from one place.
Your relatives can be your family.
And so can the friend who checks on you.
The person who shows up.
The neighbor who becomes part of your life.
The people you laugh with, travel with, celebrate with, learn from, build with or simply feel comfortable being yourself around.
Sometimes the people who become important to us are people we never could have predicted.
That's Chosen Family.
This idea started smaller. First there was OBRM, built around the belief that nobody should have to figure out life alone. Then came Thicker Than Water, where I started exploring what family could look like beyond blood.
But eventually I realized even that wasn't big enough.
Because I don't want to build a place exclusively for people who don't have something.
I want to build a place for people who want more from what they already have.
More meaningful conversations.
More intentional relationships.
More opportunities to meet someone new.
More ways to spend time with the people already in our lives.
More chances to actually know one another.
That's how Chosen Family was born.
We're creating experiences, conversations, traditions, opportunities and spaces — online and in real life — that help us get better at connecting with the people we already have while making room for new connections to happen naturally.
Not because everyone here is lonely.
Not because everyone has a broken relationship with their biological family.
And definitely not because we're trying to replace anybody.
We're here because life is better in community.
We're here because life is better in community.
I've watched people walk into something I hosted knowing only me and leave exchanging numbers with someone they had never met before. I've watched friendships form, people loosen up, conversations go somewhere unexpected and people simply have a really good time together.
Those moments taught me something:
You can't force connection. But you can create the conditions for it.
That's what I want Chosen Family to do.
I don't know who you'll meet here. I don't know which conversation will matter, which event you'll remember years from now, or which stranger might eventually become someone you can't imagine your life without.
And maybe you'll bring people you already love and discover something new about each other too.
That's kind of the point.
You don't have to know exactly what you're looking for before you walk through the door.
Just come in. We'll figure out the rest together.
DAY ONE, HONESTLY.
We're new. A few small meetups, a handful of people who kept showing up, and a first round of EL-EX workshops being built right now. That's the whole résumé.
We're still raising the start-up money it takes to run this the way it deserves to be run. If you come in now, you're not joining something finished — you're helping decide what it becomes.
