One of the most detrimental lies we are taught, which for most of our families probably finds its roots in the story of Adam and Eve, is that blood relation gives some sort of special significance to other people. An obvious example of the damage this falsehood causes is those who stay with abusive family members, or let psychic vampires leech off them simply because “they are blood, so they are family.” People will bend over backwards and put themselves through all kinds of unneeded trauma just because someone is blood-related. Another example, you learn through ancestry that some random person you have never met is biologically related to you, this should mean literally nothing. This is not to say our family cannot also be a blood relation, but that the blood has nothing to do with it.
Ironically, this whole “blood makes family/kin/tribe” boils down to biological essentialism, that icky materialistic ideology that our being and identity reduces to our biology. It has been used to genocide entire groups of people, to perpetuate racism and segregation, gender roles/norms, and everything else. Rejecting this biological essentialism is called out as early as the story of Cain and Abel, where Cain questions if he should be the keeper of his brother. It should be no surprise, then, that biological essentialism also leads to horrible outcomes when it comes to “blood = family.”
What DOES make a family? This is likely going to vary from group to group, but “blood” is an unacceptable property to focus on. For example, I have both blood and non-blood relations which I consider family because we are there for each other, talk often, enjoy each other's company, respect each other, and would protect each other… None of this is impacted in any way by their blood or genes though. True family is the one thing, the few people, for which the wanderer of the Left Hand Path will set the Self aside for when needed, those who manage to journey through the deserts to the oasis.
I bring this up after having seen my own family traumatized for years because they labor under this delusion of blood = family. It likely doesn’t even need illustration, I’d bet anyone reading this can think of a blood relation who fits the bill of psychic vampire, if not worse. No amount of reason can convince them that someone with a blood relation can be nothing more than a useless, awful, piece of shit. Blood somehow gives things a “good essence” in our culture, which if you think about it for even a moment ranges from vampire levels of creepy to Nazi levels of creepy. This is UTTER NONSENSE. As Lord Byron’s Lucifer said, things are good and evil in-and-of themselves, not made so by the person committing the act or preaching the idea.
Sadly there is not much you can do, “blood = family” may as well be a written law. There is no law against cutting off toxic blood relatives just as there is no law that you cannot stop being friends with someone, or helping your actual family learn to do the same. Cut these people out like the cancer they are, and what an apt metaphor, for they do to the soul what cancer does to the body, and the treatment can be just as hard to survive. But one must survive or perish. In old times we could have easily exiled someone or sent them on an impossible journey, but what cannot be oppressed by law is magic. And there is no stopping the wrath of gods and spirits one has befriended, or the punishments of one’s next life.
“When the true king's murderers are allowed to roam free, a thousand magicians rise in the land.” - Jim Morrison
A curse upon these leeches who sustain themselves on blood as essence.