family-relationships

You are blood. You are sisters. No man can break that bond.

John was still making comments regarding violent things that he shouldn't, but I hoped he was just being a big mouth. Nobody was going to listen to me anyway.

No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn't even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them?

Family is the only why of life

He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it

It is not a single crime when a child is photographed while sexually assaulted (raped.) It is a life time crime that should have life time punishments attached to it. If the surviving child is, more often than not, going to suffer for life for the crime(s) committed against them, shouldn't the pedophiles suffer just as long? If it often takes decades for survivors to come to terms with exactly how much damage was caused to them, why are there time limits for prosecution?

No one said parenting was easy,but NO good parent has any right to give up.It is one labyrinth you can never quit because it seems too hard.

Renunciation is not rejecting the family but accepting the whole world as family. Renunciation is not changing the name or dress. It is changing the attitude towards life. Renunciation is not removing the hairs form the head. It is eliminating the negative thoughts from the mind. Renunciation is not running away from responsibility, doership or fruits of action but it is focusing on the fruits and actions that will bring happiness to the whole world. Renunciation is the ultimate compassion and ultimate forgiveness.

A carpenter is hired- a roof repaired, a porch built. Everything that can be fixed. June, July, August. Everyday we hear their laughter. I think of the painting by van Gogh, the man in the chair. Everything wrong, and nowhere to go. His hands over his eyes.

The story of my birth that my mother told me went like this: "When you were coming out I wasn't ready yet and neither was the nurse. The nurse tried to push you back in, but I shit on the table and when you came out, you landed in my shit."If there ever was a way to sum things up, the story of my birth was it.

A sweet kiss on her head made her little heart swell; she had pancakes, her dog. She had love. All was well.

Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.

Being alone is easier than having a family. When you have a family, you are responsible to each other. It__ easier to navigate the world without that burden.

That's how birthdays were in our house. All hateful charades of pretty clothes, expensive presents, and ugly words . . .

In Sri Lanka, when two strangers meet, they ask a series of questions that reveal family, ancestral village, and blood ties until they arrive at a common friend or relative. Then they say, "Those are our people, so you are our people." It's a small place. Everyone knows everyone."But in America, there are no such namings; it is possible to slip and slide here. It is possible to get lost in the nameless multitudes. There are no ropes binding one, holding one to the earth. Unbound by place or name, one is aware that it is possible to drift out into the atmosphere and beyond that, into the solitary darkness where there is no oxygen.

It__ fascinating, really, when you think about it. How a person can slip into a new life as one would a new pair of shoes. At first there__ a keen awareness of the fit: a stiffness at the heel, the binding of the width, the curve pressed to the arch. But with time and enough steps, the feel becomes so natural you almost forget you__e wearing them at all.

Oh, how terribly backwards, and yet sadly common, it is to sit scowling at family all the day long and then quickly put on a smile for strangers who drop by.

If we wish to have a beautiful, peaceful and safe home, we need healthy expanding roots that go deep into the ground. These roots are our Routine, our Stability, our Structure.