familyvalues

Similarly, I grew up calling *no one* "aunt" or "uncle," it just wasn't a word in our family. My mother's twin sister and brother-in-law, the only ones who'd get that name biologically, we called by their first names. But now, our close family-of-choice people are sort of naturally becoming "uncle" and "aunt" or "auntie," and some of my siblings I am not close enough to give that nym to. Indeed, they don't all know Owen exists, we don't communicate often enough to have gotten that far. I'm not hiding it, it's just that people that close to us, and people biologically related to us, aren't automatically the same, anymore.