Thank you all for coming to this graduation celebration. As you know, graduating seniors have been deprived of their commencement ceremonies this year. The significance of this milestone exists in its symbolism, but anyone who has previously attended a graduation ceremony can attest that traditionally they’re still boring as fuck.  So I have taken the liberty to write an 800 word speech in order to recreate some of that experience for you all. You’re welcome.

So let’s begin.

The beauty about being adopted is that I was never raised to believe that family is equivalent to biological relation. 

Instead, family has been defined by the distance you are willing to travel in order to bring someone home. Family is sacrifice, especially the ones that no one knows you’re making and it is forgiveness for all the things you can’t change even though you wish you could. Family is patience, waiting for apologies that never come and missed calls to be returned and makeup to finish being applied even when you’re already running late. Family is kindness and thoughtfulness and selflessness, asking nothing in return. It is Whoopie pies to cure broken hearts and “by the way I filled your car up with gas while I was checking your oil” and tweets sent via direct messages because “they reminded me of you.” It is late night phone calls that begin with tears but end with laughter and car rides with no destination while holding hands because sometimes words fail. Family is loyalty. Even when its hard and complicated and messy. It is never giving up. Family is peace. It is sweat pants and messy hair and bad singing and loud laughter. It is the acceptance and the celebration of the most authentic version of each other. Finally, family is love. 

Nothing sums up love better than one of my favorite quotes by Heidi Priebe, a psychology writer from Ontario, Canada. Priebe writes that:

“To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don’t recognize inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost. But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way.”

So in conclusion, thank you all for loving and honoring every version of myself, not only for these past four years, but all twenty-two of them. Thank you for loving the avid soccer player and the straight A student. Thank you for loving the sixteen year old battling depression and anorexia. Thank you for loving the seventeen year old who could not pass her fucking driving test and the twenty two year old who still can’t parallel park. Thank you for loving the dumb blonde and I do mean dumb because that shit ruined my hair and thank you for loving the broken hearted crybaby whose sadness consistently ruined parties and sleepovers and basically every conversation. Thank you for loving the EDM concert attendee who makes you take videos on her phone because she’s too short to see anything. Thank you for loving the trail hiker and the book worm and the designated driver trying her best. Thank you for loving the late night chocolate chip cookie baker who still can’t cook chicken and the Bdubs enthusiast who will endlessly defend boneless wings as being inherently different than chicken nuggets. Thank you for loving the stressed out over achiever and the enthusiastic intern and finally the terrified and ambitious and most importantly hopeful college graduate. I could not have done this without you all. 

Thank you guys for coming and sharing this moment with me. Thank you to all my friends for being such a large and wonderful part of my life. Thank you to your families who have welcomed me into your homes with open arms. Thank you Harrison for being the coolest little brother but also a fucking bro and for having such cool friends that so effortlessly merged with mine resulting in us all being able to hang out together. Finally thank you mom and thank you Mark for defining what a family is for me in this way and leading by example my whole life. 

I have always wanted to a big family. And as I look around now I know I finally have one. And you’re all here. And I can’t help but think that maybe the idiom “it’s a small world” also refers to when everyone you love is in one place.

Thank you.