Relationships grounded in mutual love, trust, caring and forgiveness. In all the ups and all the downs of life. Look closely, – who is really your family, and who in truth are just strangers in...

Putting labels on others creates a black hole of disregard where judgment thrives and schisms deepen.

How’s my mom? My mother’s well, like a painting—a Motherwell.

This is what I’m supposed to be doing this summer. This is how I’m supposed to be passing my days. Figuring out the secret to how she was the most joyful person when she was...

There is no home as comfortable as your father’s arms and no bed as soft as your mother’s lap.

My girlfriend just had a baby. We’ve known each other for six months, so I’m pretty stunned to find myself becoming a father so soon. I hope the baby looks like me!

I asked if she wanted kids. She said her clock is ticking. I said, That’s because I set it five minutes ahead when you weren’t looking.

Extended family is great. If you want to know how extended your family is, just go out and win the lottery. Your phone will be ringing nonstop. And you know I’ll call you too, because...

My uncle’s a big drinker. In fact, he just got a liver transplant. They replaced it with a bottle of whiskey.

A band should be more famous than an individual, because all else being equal, the band has more mothers and fathers to lend support.

I possess an object that reminds me of your stepdad’s bowel movements. It’s brown and squishy and smells like yesterday.

A godly mother loves God with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength, and teaches her children to do the same.

You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.

We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle.

Mapleshade: “Your punishment is complete now, Crookedstar. You have lost everything.” Crookedstar: “No, Mapleshade. You’re wrong. I still have a clan that I love and am proud to lead. And now… …now everything precious to...

Hazel, you deserve a life.

Do not expect too much from your child and she will grow in your love… But if you push her too much, you will push her away. A child is not yours to own but...

I had always liked staying the night with other families, having your own room with a freshly made bed, full of unfamiliar objects, with a towel and a washcloth nicely laid out, and from there...

You don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a mother who never said a positive thing in her life, not about her children or the world, who was always suspicious, always tearing you...

Taylor, what about the Brigadier who came searching for you that day? Whatever became of him?” I try to explain that the Brigadier is of no importance to my story, but he always shakes his...

Animals are precious gifts offering unconditional love.

We hit and we kept on hitting; we were allowed to be what we were, frightened and vengeful — little animals, clawing at what we needed.

I flopped on the overstuffed kitchen couch and watched him go. I wondered what would happen to all his films and photographs in the upstairs closet – the documentaries on homelessness and drug addiction, the...

Her visits to her former hometown were infrequent and often painful. Pilgrimages fueled by the tepid oxygen of family duty, unease, guilt. The more Esther loved her parents, the more helpless she felt, as they...

Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see your siblings as the people they’ve become. Maybe that’s why we all stay away from each other as a matter of course.

We all have days when we say that we are gown-ups, that we are mature, have a lot of experience and don’t need advise from others.But it is our mom and dad we turn to...

Soul SisterEvoking all my inner goodnesswith bastions of timeI cradle your heartsisterly into mine…

Loneliness struck again, its force doubled by how much she wished it was her family there instead. Then oddly enough, she met the boy’s stare and that feeling came again, that this was her family.

I learned the joke at the core of American self-improvement: knowledge was so much junk to be processed one way or another at great universities. The real treasure the great universities offered was a lifelong...

[Clayton] Christensen had seen dozens of companies falter by going for immediate payoffs rather than long-term growth, and he saw people do the same thing. In three hours at work, you could get something substantial...

Dying is a very solitary thing. The only thing we can do it be there when she wants us there.

Grandma Donna passed the oyster stuffing and asked my father straight out what he was working on, it being so obvious his thoughts were not with us. She meant it as a reprimand. He was...

Everyone is moving at the same speed toward the future. But your children are moving at that same speed with their eyes closed. So you’re the ones who’ve got to steer.

In what world did you think you could get away with this?” Jalal seethed. “To my cousin? To my family?” His gleaming hilt continued its punishing onslaught.

Being a ‘good’ parent is more about the parent, and, less about the ‘supposedly-could-have-been-bad’ child.

A portion of guilt is standard issue for southern boys; our whole lives are convoluted, egregious apologies to our mothers because our fathers have made us such flawed husbands.

Siblings: children of the same parents, each of whom is perfectly normal until they get together.

Jill had three basic statements about life,1. It is your life, usually with some added social commentary.2. What you want and what you get are usually two entirely different things.3. No one ever said that...

Elias revved the engine menacingly. I put my hand on the steering wheel. “That’s my mom! Don’t even think about it.” “How about I just back over the ones behind us?” ” Or the ones...

It is the harmony, peace and mutual love between men and women that brings happiness and peace to the family. People want happiness in the family, but they do not lead exemplary lives. The fault...

She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas (soon to be entered into the annual Flower Show), she was Veena’s love of music, Pran’s asthma, Maan’s generosity, the survival of some refugees four...

(I think Rowdy might be the most important person in my life. maybe more important than my family.) Can your best friend be more importamt than your family? (24)

The most important parts of building a family are “God’s Love” and “Meaningful Friendships.

Parents often ask – how do I get my child interested in books and reading? One tried and true way that my late husband and I used was paying them to read. For each book...

And Kate thought about a time, long ago, when she had witnessed an ongoing romance between two mental patients. As a teenager watching their unlikely relationship unfold in front of her, she had understood that...

I have scars. No one alive today doesn’t. But Alex’s scars have to be much deeper than mine.

Just as verbally and physically abused children internalize blame, so do incest victims. However, in incest, the blame is compounded by the shame. The belief that ‘it’s all my fault’ is never more intense than...

At length, when I considered it, I realized that the best of my actions were small things. Picking flowers and cooking food for my mother when she had been unwell, spending an afternoon with the...

Eby wanted to say so much to her. She wanted to say that waking up is the most important part of grieving, that so many women in their family failed to do it, and she...

Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can’t go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside. Then, depending on how...