immediate family

Blood makes you related, loyalty makes you family.

PREDICTABILITY WAS NEVER HER FORTE
PREDICTABILITY WAS NEVER HER FORTE But surprises were +++++?????+++++ One of my earliest memories of my mom happened on a cool summer afternoon when she took my brother and me to Winthrop Park. I was four years old and my brother was six.
By Margaret Brennan5 months ago in Families
The Weight of Silence . Content Warning.
Author’s Note: This piece is an intimate excerpt from my upcoming trauma memoir. Through prose and poetry, it explores the enduring weight of childhood betrayal, the silence that followed, and the writing process that ultimately allowed me to reclaim my voice. *** When I was nine, my brother, two years older, contracted rheumatic fever. Well, that’s what the doctor said. The local clinic, a mile away, didn’t know what it was. Most days, he would journey through it with a weighted happiness. But as the sun slipped away and night came, a look of terror would creep across his face. The pain. His joints would ache so badly, twisting him into a screaming mess of swollen limbs and frantic shivers. We all waited in agony. Sleeping arrangements changed. He needed our mother next to him to get through the night. His eleven-year-old bravery disappeared with the dip in temperature at six o'clock. They bunked together, my sisters shared another bed, and I took my mother's spot, separate. My father had a bedroom all to himself. It was strange, yet normal; we had never seen anything different to know there was another way. Yet, it arrived one night and hasn't left. I still don't know what came first: the presence of him hovering over me, or the hand on my small chest. Cloying. Probing. Stilled, I lay there quietly, unbelief freezing me. My breath was held. A few minutes later, he lifted his hand and left the room. At some point, I know that I went back to sleep. I was the last to meet them in the kitchen the following morning. I remember entering quietly—a little more withdrawn than before. I eased down into the nearest chair, unsure of what had occurred. Did it happen? I felt unease, but I wondered if it was truly mine. Then he spoke, matter-of-factly, like he was mentioning the paper thrown on the front porch. "Atty, I thought you were Jay last night." He finished with a calm smile. I looked from him to my mother. She smiled at me, but the smile held something controlling. It said: keep the ugly out of sight. I looked back to him, and then to her. She had already turned away, back to preparing breakfast for my brother. No more words. Averted gazes shifted to more important things: his breakfast, my brother's, mine. I sat there watching it all. Silent. The plate placed before me did something to me. I looked down. Over time—I think it was about three months later—my brother healed. There were no more shattering bolts of pain, no more cries of agony. His suffering stopped. He returned to school, braver than before because he had a story to tell. He couldn’t wait for everyone to know how he had faced it and conquered the evil attacking him. Then, he moved on. Sometimes, I'd sit alone, lost in children's stories, dancing across the page. Of family vacations, playing at the seaside and with a dog called Spot. Sometimes, I still remember. So I write. *** *Excerpt: Excavation Holds Creation* I write my poetry for comfort. Only I know the weight of every word sitting on the page. It feeds me, keeps me centered— treading time, slipping through the cracks of relevance and apathy. Simple words threaded like cords raise sentiment between anecdote and evidence: Each letter rests with purpose, dedicated to the art of construction. Tales evolve— unhurried, then suddenly not— in their own time. They fill spaces, recorded for lifetimes, from lifetimes. And the cycle begins again: thumbs binding text, threaded like cords, words sitting on the page— emerging from my centre.
By Ms Jade 5 months ago in Families
Daddy's Girl
My Dad started his cognitive decline about 13 years ago. He worked until he was 80, but it became too much for him. He was too tired. He began to have a few falls. He quit drinking wine in an effort to help his brain at the advice of a neurologist. He began walking daily a few years later. He and my mom moved to a small town about 3 hours away, where a unit had opened in a building my cousin owned. They seemed to be managing, with a little help from a neighbor to get groceries. My Aunt would take them to doctor appointments.
By Kathleen Anderson 5 months ago in Families
The Field Guide to the Weird
THE FIELD GUIDE TO THE WEIRD (A Survival Manual for Kids) By Charles V. Sasser Jr. PART 1: THE HABITAT (Know Your Enemy)
By Charles V Sasser Jr5 months ago in Families
The Day I Opened My Father's Old Box---My Life Changed Forever
There are days in life that begin so quietly that you don't even notice their importance. They arrive like any other morning—ordinary, unremarkable, almost forgettable. No signs. No warnings. Nothing that tells you, this day will matter someday. And yet, hidden inside such days… there are moments that rewrite everything you thought you understood about your life. For me, that moment came on a rainy afternoon. It had been years since my father passed away. Long enough for grief to stop feeling sharp, and start feeling like background noise. His absence was no longer something I cried about—it had become something I lived with. It existed in the silence of rooms, in the emptiness of conversations, in the way certain memories suddenly felt heavier than others. That day, I decided to clean the old storage room. It was not planned. It was one of those decisions you make when the house feels too still, and your mind needs distraction. I had avoided that room for years—not because I was busy, but because I wasn’t ready to face what it held. Dust had taken over everything. The air itself felt forgotten. Old boxes were stacked unevenly, as if they had been waiting for someone who never came. Broken objects, faded papers, old clothes, and forgotten photographs—all of them like pieces of a life paused in time. And then I saw it. A small wooden box. Simple. Unremarkable. Almost invisible among everything else. No decoration, no special marking—just aged wood with slightly worn edges. But something about it felt strangely familiar… like it was waiting for me specifically. I picked it up. It was heavier than it looked. For a few seconds, I just stood there holding it. My hands didn’t move. My thoughts didn’t settle. It felt like I was holding not just a box—but a memory I had never been told about. I almost put it back. But curiosity has a way of gently overpowering fear. So I opened it. And everything changed. Inside were letters. Dozens of them. Carefully folded, tied together with an old, fragile thread that looked like it had survived years of silence. My heartbeat slowed without permission. My fingers hesitated, then slowly untied the bundle. The first letter opened like a door to another world. The handwriting was his. My father’s. But the words inside were not what I expected. They were not about routine. Not about responsibilities. Not about the everyday life I thought I knew. They were about me. Every letter was written at a different time. Some were dated years apart. Some had no clear purpose or occasion. It felt like he had written them not to inform the world—but to speak to something he never had the courage to say aloud. And each one carried the same quiet emotion. Love. Not the loud kind. Not the kind spoken easily in words. But the kind that lives in actions. In silence. In sacrifices that go unnoticed. In presence that never demands attention. I kept reading. In one letter, he described the day I was born. How he stood outside the hospital room, unable to breathe properly, terrified that he wouldn’t be enough. How hearing my first cry made him realize a new kind of responsibility he didn’t know how to carry—but accepted anyway. In another letter, he wrote about the first time I failed at something important. I remembered that day clearly. I had thought he was disappointed in me. I had convinced myself that his silence meant judgment. But in his words, I read something completely different: “I saw him that day… not as a failure, but as someone learning how to stand again. I wanted to tell him that mistakes are part of becoming strong. But I stayed quiet. Maybe I should have spoken.” My throat tightened. Because suddenly, my memories didn’t feel accurate anymore. They felt incomplete. Misunderstood. I opened another letter. This one was unfinished. The ink stopped mid-sentence, as if time had interrupted him. “If he ever reads these letters… I hope he knows I tried. I was never perfect. But I tried in every way I knew how to love him…” And that was the moment something inside me broke—not painfully, but deeply. Like a wall collapsing inside my chest. All those years, I thought I knew my father. I thought I understood his silence. His distance. His seriousness. But I had only ever seen the surface. Not the thoughts he never expressed. Not the emotions he never learned to show. Not the love he carried quietly in places no one looked. Now, sitting on that cold floor surrounded by dust and forgotten time, I felt like I was meeting him for the first time. Not the father I remembered. But the human being behind him. Tears came, but they were not heavy. They felt cleansing. As if something inside me had finally been allowed to breathe after years of holding still. I folded the letters slowly and placed them back into the box. But I was no longer the same person who had opened it. Something had shifted quietly within me. Not the world. Not the room. But the way I understood love, silence, and memory. That day taught me something I will never forget. We do not always know the people we love—not fully. Because the deepest emotions are often not spoken. They are written and hidden. They are carried in silence. They exist in places we never think to search. And sometimes… they wait patiently for years... just to be found.
By Fazalullah 5 months ago in Families
Slavery as a Teen
Slave as a teenager: Man speaks out after 50 years I left school at 15 in May 1973. I was never very good at my school work. I didn’t find the motivation to work hard at it because I was never sold on the benefits of doing well at school. To compound problems I was often sick.
By Robert Stewart5 months ago in Families
Why Comfort Fails and Discipline Endures
Modern culture increasingly treats comfort as a moral guide. Ease is framed as wisdom. Emotional smoothness is treated as maturity. Difficulty is often interpreted as a sign that something is wrong, unfair, or unnecessary. When a task feels heavy, when a conversation feels uncomfortable, or when effort feels draining, the instinct is often to stop and reconsider rather than persist.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast5 months ago in Families
When Custody Should Be Removed
Any argument that emphasizes the importance of parental presence, structure, and authority becomes dangerous if it does not also specify its limits. Advocating strongly for fathers, shared custody, parental authority, or outcome-based custody standards without defining when custody should be revoked invites a fatal misunderstanding: that parental involvement is always good, regardless of behavior. No serious child-centered framework can allow that ambiguity to stand.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast5 months ago in Families
The Weekday Parent
“I am the maker of rules Dealing with fools.” - Lyrics often quoted by my mother When stories start circulating as we eat dinner at family gatherings, my father has three advantages over my mother:
By Carl J. Petersen5 months ago in Families
Happy Selfish Mother’s Day, Mothers
Most mothers never learned to be Selfish. It’s like giving of ourselves twenty-four hours per day and three hundred and sixty-five or three hundred and sixty-six days per year is implanted in our DNA with Sacrifices. — Annelise Lords
By Annelise Lords 5 months ago in Families
Who They Once Were.
When your parent loses a parent you see them differently. You don't see them as the people who raised you. You see them as children who are missing a part of who they are.
By April Kirby.5 months ago in Families
Poverty Is Expensive Because Stability Is Missing
Poverty Is Not Only the Absence of Money Poverty is often described as a shortage of income, but that description is too small. Low income matters, obviously. A family cannot pay bills with explanations. But poverty is not only the absence of money. It is also the absence of the conditions that allow money to stretch. Stable housing, storage space, reliable transportation, clean water, working appliances, sleep, time, tools, privacy, credit, and emergency margin all affect what a dollar can actually do. Without those things, the same dollar buys less, solves less, and disappears faster.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast5 months ago in Families