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Challenge: What Makes a Family?

Families come in all shapes and sizes

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If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me when I'm going to have another baby, I would buy the Today Show. I have one child. She is my everything and completes our family of three.

Brooker family

Three is a perfect number


Yet it feels like we are letting people down when I tell them she's an only child. "You aren't having any more kids?", random stranger asks.

"Won't she get lonely", well-meaning friend says.

Honestly those are questions I ask myself enough and I definitely do not need strangers asking me about it. I do worry that she will get lonely so I over compensate by planning lots of play dates with her friends. She doesn't seem lonely. In fact she seems like one of the most well-adjusted kids I've ever met.

Brooker family


So why the pressure, or need for more? I was an only child and as I look back I realize there was never a time where I felt lonely. I had more friends than you can shake a stick at (still do!). I know the bond between friends and siblings is different but you can't miss what you don't have, right?

My hope for my daughter is that she will learn to love her singleton status and surround herself with her own tribe or family as she grows up. In fact some of my closest friends feel like sisters to me because we share our joys, triumphs and heartbreaks. And that is what family is all about.

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