Do I have the right to call these people my family, too?

It’s an odd situation. As many of you know I adopted my oldest daughter. She was the product of my ex’s first marriage. We’ll call her Jen. She’s been in my life, I’ve been her mother, since she was 18 months old. Long, long, long story short, her mother, who we’ll call Diane, was sporadic about being in her life. There was a 4 year battle where I pulled no punches in pushing for her to allow me to adopt.
She finally did. And about a year after that she disappeared for the last time and we never saw her again. Jenny was 6 at the time.

And the years went by. There were times that Jen had to wrestle with her feelings about her biological mother’s abandonment. When my ex and I divorced, he started playing head games with 12 year old Jenny, telling her she didn’t have to do what I said because I wasn’t her “real” mother. What an asshole. But we got through it all.

About a month ago Jen called me…she has 3 half brothers….and they tracked her down through Facebook! Her cousin, Jane, is the one who found me first (I use all 3 of my last names in my FB name, for this very reason) and from there she got into my pictures. She knew it was Jenny the moment she saw her picture, because she was old enough to remember her. They even had a picture of them with her.

They had been looking for Jen for years. Diane died recently, and that caused them to redouble their efforts.

And..we met them in St. Louis this past week! They were going to dinner. I wasn’t sure if I’d be welcome, but I asked Jen if she wanted me to come. She said, “Of course!”
I was nervous. I didn’t know what they might have heard about me.

It turns out that they didn’t even know they had a sister until the oldest brother was 13. Diane got drunk and started crying and talking about it. He thought she was making it all up, at first. But then, through cousin Jane, they learned that they did, indeed, have a sister! I guess nobody was really willing to talk about it.

We had a wonderful time. It was just like magic. I just fell in love with them all! It was SO exciting.

But…can I call them “family” too? What is family?