I can’t begin to count how many times a hellhound has lifted my spirits or has sent me words of encouragement. How many times I would get drawn into stimulating discussions, allowing me to keep my mind off the pain that was in my life. The endless supports of my friends here have been one of the brighter points. For that I thank all of you. To my friend family, you know who you are and I have to say, I have never had truer and more supportive friends than you guys. I won’t do embarrassing listing you out by name, but I thank you for the hours of laughter and venting you have done with me, the tears you let me spill on your shoulders countless times and yet through it all, you’ve been my little voice saying “you can get through this.”

Now, comes the time you wonder why I am writing about this? I’ve just been sitting back and watching my newly bought A-Team Season 1, it reminded me of my friend family. It brought back fun times from childhood and made me realize, not only that they cast Dirk Benedict after the pilot, but that also how far I have come and namely how important it is to have families. Before my friend family, I had work and biological families. They encouraged me to do my best and set high expectations that they knew I could reach. I went to graduate school, in part because of that. I never thought I could do it. See, I have the “Self-confidence of a flea” as I told my beloved friend recently in regard to him. Now with the Hellhound and friend family, I now write columns. Something that I wanted to do, but I thought that my soon-to-be-ex was the writer in the family. I cannot tell you how pleased I was when I got asked to do this. I found that I love doing it. I always loved writing, but was terrified for people to read it. The HMC is home to me, and my fears were quickly quelled.

I will now attempt to draw this into some sort of Buffy/Angel concept, so that I can feel better about this article if it relates in some way to the JossVerse. The episode entitled “Family” showed Tara becoming an official Scooby. We saw the importance of Dawn feeling like family in season five as well. After the death of Buffy’s mother, the Scooby’s became a tighter family. All of this was important through out BTVS. Her ties to the world were her biological and friend families. We also see family theme in Angel. He needed a tie to the world, to keep him in touch with humanity so that he would not lose the mission. We all saw what happened when he lost his family. Throughout Angel a common theme is to form a family, break it up and then rebuild it. All families have problems and days that you have disagreements and make mistakes, but In the end, it is your family so it usually cools down after a while. However, I still think that Wesley was sent to his death by Angel because Angel could never let what happened to Connor go and still held Wesley responsible. But, in any case, like all families, that can be settled down the road. I did like the last look between the two. It was interestingly subtle. Wes knew he would not be coming back from this fight, I believe. Some part of him knew, even though he told Illyria that he did not expect to die that night.

Families come in all shapes and sizes. To me there is no traditional family. My parents celebrate 39 years together in two weeks and I count myself as a lucky one. Not many children can say that and it makes me proud, however there are the days that when they argue and yell about divorce, I smile, because they could not live without each other now. I have also learned that if you don’t have that, it is fine. There is nothing wrong with the type family I have, even though they are numerous, I know that anytime I am in need or want to share a laugh, I have someone I can turn to that values me for who I am and will always be there.

Take this moment to look at your families. Even though we all argue and bicker on the board, we are one large family. If you don’t believe it, check out the threads where one of us get sick or some tragedy has struck. I am proud to say HMC is not only my homepage, but my family.