family-relationships

A theatrical spectacle is inherent whenever family members congregate and reacquaint themselves with powerful universal themes educed from homecomings including hugs, food, drink, conversation, politics, games, music, conflict, terror, mercy, smiles, tears, prayers, misfortune, and self-discovery.

They say family's first, but family is the first to get you hurt

Family is always a mirror. You can hide from other people, you can even hide from yourself, but your family is going to reflect what you__e doing right back at you.

Never lose sight of the people who are the foundation of the future you are working to build.

There are family mysteries I cannot solve. There are family mysteries I am unwilling to solve.

Whatever form they take, families are our most time-honoured settings for giving and receiving love, understanding and nurturing. They can connect us with our past and be the ground for the future through our children. They are places where we stand the best chance of being understood for who we truly are, not what we possess or the power we wield. They can give us meaning in life and hope when the outside world fails us and when we fail.

There is no better way to crush someone__ self-confidence than to tell this person that her / his choice was wrong, and that she / he should have listened to us (parents). Because, obviously, we know how to make the right choices and she / he does not.

Never sacrifice your children for the bigger house, fancier car or the 'better life'. The price you pay is hefty and non-refundable in the end.

You don__ choose these people and in the not choosing you learn tolerance. You learn to forgive.

What makes a family is neither the absence of tragedy nor the ability to hide from misfortune, but the courage to overcome it and, from that broken past, write a new beginning.

Large families are communities unto their own.

Maybe we would grow apart, he would develop a personality that I would know nothing about, we would start our families, have children of our own, and there would come a point when in thinking about 'family' we would think of the ones we made, not the ones we were from.

Mother was anchor. Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land.

Only the family, society's smallest unit, can change and yet maintain enough continuity to rear children who will not be "strangers in a strange land," who will be rooted firmly enough to grow and adapt.

Scorned and torn, former love mates aim and shoot childish devastating daggers that penetrate beyond target to pierce the heart of their offspring.

I've remembered that most of life is about small, essential connections, so unobtrusive, so elastic, that you scarcely realize they're actually holding you together. The big ones-the great, grand emotional bonds-those are the ones that break, the ones that fail you, the ones that give way and send you careening toward the foot of the bleak and jagged canyon. It's the tough, gnarled, unadorned ties that really do bind, that never let you fall all the way down into darkness.

We didn__ want to admit it then, but we were friends. Best friends.

If a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relative to do the business.