Sireana Arti is a 30-year-old originally from South India now living in Philadelphia.

She was adopted into an all-white family.

Growing up, I experienced not only a ton of white saviourism, but a ton of, like, briminical

saviourism from the uppercast South Asian community where I grew up.

Sireana had a very rigid concept of family.

I have this view of family as I should be, like, not only completely loyal to the family

that raised me, but that was it.

That was family.

She says that view started to evolve when her adoptive parents didn't believe her when

she said she'd been abused by a family member.

She reached her breaking point right before going off to college.

That's when she turned to her older sister.

She was, like, alright, moving with me, and so I, like, left my house and moved in with

her, and then three months later I started college, and that really started the path

that I eventually found myself in now.

Sireana isn't related to her older sister biologically, nor were they in the same adoptive family.

She's her chosen sister.

And over the years, Sireana's chosen family has grown bigger.

She became friends with two girls who lived in the house next door growing up.

The two of them and their parents and their partners, they all had a conversation without

me where they all sat down and they were basically, like, alright, Sireana is our family, so

when we refer to her, we want to refer to her as, like, our sister.

...