siblings

Siblings are the only enemy you can't live without.

St. Patrick's Day
When I was a child, I really thought our family was Irish. We always celebrated St. Patrick's Day with a chocolate cake with green frosting, and it was pretty common to wear green and to have corned beef, cabbage, and boiled potatoes for dinner that day.
By Denise E Lindquist8 months ago in Families
My Cousin, Who We Adopted Into Our Family As A Brother
What happens to get into recovery? Some people are in recovery from drinking alcohol and taking drugs, while others consider recovery as they are no longer spinning around an alcoholic or drug addict, a loved one.
By Denise E Lindquist8 months ago in Families
The king of pop Jackson Family Legacy (2009–2026)
Introduction For more than five decades, the Jackson family has been one of the most influential dynasties in entertainment history. From the rise of The Jackson 5 in the late 1960s to global solo careers, their cultural impact spans music, film, modeling, and philanthropy. Following the passing of Michael Jackson in 2009, the family entered a new era focused on preserving its legacy while embracing generational growth. As of 2026, the Jackson lineage spans four generations, with careers and public contributions continuing across the globe. First Generation: The Jackson Siblings Rebbie Jackson (b. 1950) Rebbie Jackson, the eldest of the siblings, has remained closely connected to family milestones while pursuing her music career. She has three children: Stacee Brown (b. 1971), Yashi Brown (b. 1973), and Austin Brown (b. 1985), and one grandchild, London Blue Salas (b. 2003). Rebbie has balanced public appearances with a largely private family life. Jackie Jackson (b. 1951) Jackie Jackson has maintained a presence in music and occasional public appearances while raising four children: Sigmund “Siggy” Jackson Jr. (b. 1977), Brandi Jackson (b. 1982), Jaylen Jackson (b. 1987), and River Jackson (b. 1992). He is also a grandfather to Jared Jackson (b. 2005), Kai-Ari Jackson (b. 2008), and Skyy Jackson (b. 2010), reflecting his continued role in supporting the family’s younger generations. Tito Jackson (1953–2024) Tito Jackson, who passed away in 2024, left behind a strong musical and familial legacy. His children include Taj Jackson (b. 1973), Taryll Jackson (b. 1975), TJ Jackson (b. 1978), and three younger children born between the 1980s and 1990s. Tito’s grandchildren include Royal Jackson (b. 2000), Bryce Connor Jackson (b. 2003), Dee Dee Jackson (b. 2005), Jordan “JoJo” Jackson (b. 2007), Adren Michael Jackson (b. 2010), and Rio Tito Joe Jackson (b. 2012). Tito’s influence continues through 3T and their extended families. Jermaine Jackson (b. 1954) Jermaine Jackson has one of the largest second-generation families in the Jackson lineage. His eight children are Jermaine Jackson Jr. (b. 1977), Autumn Jackson (b. 1978), Jaimy Jackson (b. 1987), Jeremy Jackson (b. 1996), Jourdynn Michael Jackson (b. 1998), Jaafar Jackson (b. 1996), Jermajesty Jackson (b. 2002), and Tahkyah Brings Plenty Jackson (b. 2008). Many of his children pursue acting, modeling, and music while focusing on education. Jaafar Jackson has gained attention for portraying his uncle Michael Jackson in the upcoming biographical film Michael, and Tahkyah Brings Plenty Jackson is active in acting, modeling, and activism, representing the family’s emerging fourth generation. La Toya Jackson (b. 1956) La Toya Jackson has remained engaged in media and television work. She has no children, but she continues to participate in public appearances and family events. Marlon Jackson (b. 1957) Marlon Jackson balances family life with nonprofit work and philanthropy. He has three children: Valencia Jackson (b. 1980), Brittany Jackson (b. 1982), and Marlon Jackson Jr. (b. 1984). His grandchildren include Noah Laniak (b. 2005), Sophia Laniak (b. 2007), Phoenix Sanchez (b. 2008), Savanna Bella Sanchez (b. 2010), and Summer Blue Sanchez (b. 2012). Randy Jackson (b. 1961) Randy Jackson maintains a private profile while raising three children: Genevieve Jackson (b. 1983), Steven Randall Jackson Jr. (b. 1985), and Stevanna Jackson (b. 1988). He continues to participate in family events while keeping much of his personal life out of the spotlight. Janet Jackson (b. 1966) Janet Jackson has balanced a highly successful global music career with motherhood. She has one child, Eissa Al Mana (b. 2017), and continues to influence music, acting, and advocacy projects worldwide. Michael Jackson (1958–2009) Michael Jackson’s children — Prince Michael Jackson (b. 1997), Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson (b. 1998), and Prince Michael Jackson II “Bigi” (b. 2002) — have gradually stepped into public life. They are involved in philanthropy, music, modeling, and film while maintaining privacy in their personal lives. The Third & Fourth Generations (2026) By 2026, the Jackson family spans over 20 children of the original siblings, dozens of grandchildren, and a growing fourth generation. The family’s influence continues across music, film, modeling, activism, and private business, maintaining recognition worldwide while nurturing the next generation of talent. The Jackson Family Today Seventeen years after Michael Jackson’s passing, the Jackson family remains a global cultural presence. While earlier decades were defined by intense media exposure, today’s family blends public careers with private development. Each sibling branch contributes to a multigenerational legacy, from Motown origins to modern film projects, demonstrating resilience, creativity, and unity across four generations.
By Allie Jackson 8 months ago in Families
The Power of Presence
When “Good Parenting” Became a Feeling In modern parenting conversations, “good” has increasingly come to mean emotionally warm, verbally affirming, and immediately comforting. A good parent is expected to soothe distress quickly, validate feelings consistently, and minimize discomfort whenever possible. These traits are treated as obvious indicators of healthy parenting, reinforced by cultural messaging, therapeutic language, and social reward structures. When a child feels better in the moment, the parenting decision is assumed to have been correct, and when discomfort persists, the decision is often framed as a failure of care rather than a necessary part of development.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast8 months ago in Families
Six Things Women like More In Men Than Good looks
Physical attraction may spark interest, but it rarely sustains a meaningful relationship. While good looks can draw attention, they are not what build trust, emotional security, or long-term happiness. Many women value deeper qualities that make a man reliable, emotionally safe, and inspiring to be with. Here are six things women often like more in men than physical appearance.
By Ibrahim Shah 8 months ago in Families
Six Things Men like More In Women Than Good looks
Physical attraction often gets most of the attention in conversations about relationships, but in reality, long-term connection is built on much deeper qualities. While good looks may catch someone’s eye, they rarely hold someone’s heart. Here are six things many men value in women even more than physical beauty.
By Ibrahim Shah 8 months ago in Families
What My Parents Got Wrong — And What They Got Right
For a long time, I thought my parents got almost everything wrong. That’s dramatic, I know. But when you’re twenty-two, broke, and trying to figure out who you are, it’s easy to turn your childhood into a courtroom. Every rule becomes evidence. Every “because I said so” becomes a scar.
By John Smith8 months ago in Families
The Night Everything Fell Apart
The Night Everything Fell Apart Ubaid I used to believe that life collapses slowly—like a building with cracks that warn you before it falls. I was wrong. Sometimes, everything shatters in a single night. It was a Thursday evening when the sky looked strangely heavy, as if it knew something I didn’t. I remember sitting at my desk, pretending to work while my mind wandered through unfinished conversations and silent disappointments. My phone lay beside me, face down, as if hiding from the truth it was about to deliver. At 9:17 p.m., it rang. I almost didn’t answer. It was my younger sister, Areeba. She rarely called me at night. Her voice trembled when I picked up. “Bhai… you need to come home.” There are certain tones in a person’s voice that freeze your blood. This was one of them. “What happened?” I asked, already standing up, my heart racing. “Just come. Please.” The drive home felt endless. Every red light felt personal, as though the universe had chosen to delay me. My mind ran through a hundred possibilities—none of them good. By the time I reached the house, my hands were shaking. The front door was open. That was the first sign that something was wrong. Inside, the living room lights were on, but the house felt darker than ever. My mother sat on the couch, her face pale, her hands wrapped tightly around her scarf. Areeba stood beside her, eyes red from crying. “Where’s Abbu?” I asked. No one answered. That silence said more than words ever could. “He left,” my mother finally whispered. Left. The word didn’t make sense. My father wasn’t the kind of man who “left.” He was the quiet pillar of our home—the one who paid the bills, fixed broken taps, and watched the news every night at exactly 10 p.m. “He said he couldn’t do this anymore,” Areeba said, her voice cracking. “He packed a bag and walked out.” It felt like the floor shifted beneath me. For years, I had noticed the tension. The late-night arguments behind closed doors. The cold silences at dinner. The forced smiles during family gatherings. But I had convinced myself it was temporary. Every family has problems, I thought. We’ll get through it. That night, I realized denial can be a dangerous comfort. “Did he say where he’s going?” I asked. My mother shook her head. “He just said he needs peace.” Peace. The word echoed bitterly in my mind. What about us? What about the peace of the family he was leaving behind? I walked into my parents’ bedroom. The cupboard door was slightly open. Half his clothes were gone. His watch box was empty. On the bedside table, there was a folded piece of paper. It wasn’t addressed to anyone. Just a few lines in his familiar handwriting: I tried. I really did. But sometimes staying hurts more than leaving. Forgive me. I read it three times, hoping the meaning would change. It didn’t. Anger rose inside me like fire. How could he walk away? How could he leave my mother to explain this to relatives, to neighbors, to a society that thrives on whispers? How could he leave Areeba, who still needed him to check her math homework? And how could he leave me—with the sudden weight of being “the man of the house”? That night, everything fell apart—not just our family structure, but the illusions I had built around it. Around midnight, the power went out. Normally, we would joke about the timing. That night, no one said a word. The house sank into darkness, lit only by the faint glow of streetlights filtering through the curtains. I sat on the floor beside my mother. For the first time in my life, she looked small. “I failed,” she murmured. “You didn’t,” I said quickly, though I wasn’t sure what I believed. “This isn’t your fault.” But blame has a way of creeping into broken spaces. It fills the gaps with questions that have no answers. Around 2 a.m., my phone buzzed. A message from Abbu. Take care of them. That was it. No explanation. No location. No promise to return. Just a responsibility handed over like an inheritance. I stared at the screen, my chest tight. I wanted to call him, to shout, to demand answers. Instead, I turned the phone off. Because deep down, I knew this wasn’t just about one fight or one bad day. This was years of unspoken pain finally spilling over. As the night stretched on, reality settled in. Tomorrow, I would have to face relatives asking uncomfortable questions. I would have to manage finances I barely understood. I would have to be strong for my sister when I felt like collapsing myself. But in that darkness, something unexpected happened. We talked. For the first time in years, my mother opened up about her loneliness. About how silence had replaced partnership. About how pride had stopped both of them from seeking help. Areeba admitted she had heard more arguments than we realized. And I confessed that I had seen the cracks but chose to ignore them because it was easier than confronting the truth. The night that broke us also stripped us of pretenses. By dawn, the sky softened into pale blue. Birds began to chirp as if nothing had changed. But everything had. Our family would never look the same again. There would be judgment, financial strain, and emotional wounds that wouldn’t heal overnight. There would be moments of anger and days of deep sadness. Yet, as sunlight slowly filled the room, I understood something important: Falling apart doesn’t always mean the end. Sometimes, it’s the beginning of rebuilding—without lies, without forced smiles, without pretending everything is fine. That night, I lost the version of my family I thought I had. But I gained something else. Clarity. Strength I didn’t know I possessed. And the painful, necessary understanding that love cannot survive where honesty is absent. The night everything fell apart was the worst night of my life.
By Ubaid 9 months ago in Families
Wait, is it okay not to go home for the Holidays?
Kids these days are choosing to stay home rather than see their parents or their other family members for the holidays. I found it a bit absurd and tried to explain that it is important to bond with family, because you don’t know when you'll see them again, until someone called me out for not having visited my family in over 20 years.
By stephanie borges9 months ago in Families
What Fathers Uniquely Provide
The Error of Treating Parenting Roles as Functionally Identical Modern parenting theory often begins with the assumption that mothers and fathers are largely interchangeable, differing only in style or temperament. From this view, any deficits in one parent can be compensated for by the other through increased emotional effort, sensitivity, or presence. Parenting becomes a question of intention and quantity rather than function and role. This assumption is appealing because it aligns with cultural preferences for symmetry and fairness, but it collapses under closer examination of developmental outcomes.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast9 months ago in Families
The Day We Terrorized the Grocery Store (With Laughter)
My brother and I are not allowed to go to the grocery store together unsupervised. I’m convinced of this. There should be a sign at the entrance that says: “Warning: If These Two Enter Together, Productivity Will Drop and Laughter Will Increase.” Today proved it. I needed to go to the grocery store — Price Chopper — and not for snacks, not for nonsense, not for “ooh that looks good.” I needed real groceries. Actual food. Ingredients. Responsible adult decisions. The kind of groceries that say, Yes, I have my life together, even if that is a bold-faced lie. Now normally, I go by myself and move with purpose. But today my brother was with me, and when me and my brother get together, purpose leaves the building and foolishness clocks in for a full shift with overtime. Our personalities are way too similar. We are what I call “friendly instigators.” We talk to random people, but it’s not mean — it’s conversational nonsense, observational comedy, aisle-by-aisle commentary. We don’t start trouble — trouble just pulls up a chair and joins us. From the moment we walked in, it was already over. We weren’t even ten steps inside the store before we started narrating our own shopping trip like a documentary. “Here we observe the rare Grocery Store Sibling Duo,” my brother says quietly, like a wildlife narrator. “Notice how they pretend they know exactly what they came for.” I said, “Sir, please don’t spook them. They’re easily distracted and will buy cookies instead of vegetables.” A lady walking past us snorted laughing and said, “Too late for that.” See? We hadn’t even picked up a basket yet. We get to the popcorn aisle because I’m trying to decide what kind of popcorn I want. Not need. Want. This is an emotional decision, not a nutritional one. My brother is standing there reading labels like he’s studying for a final exam he never signed up for. Then he says, dead serious: “Girl, they got popcorn with chocolate drizzled all over it. It’s good.” Now let me explain something. My brother does not really mess with sweets like that. So when he recommends a sweet item, I take it under advisement — but with suspicion. I looked at him and said, “Chocolate… on popcorn? I don’t know. I can eat popcorn that tastes like chocolate, but chocolate actually on popcorn feels like a trust issue.” He says, “You scared of flavor.” I said, “No, I’m cautious of betrayal.” The woman stocking popcorn behind us started laughing so hard she had to lean on the shelf. That turned into a five-minute debate about snack boundaries, popcorn integrity, and whether drizzle counts as a topping or a crime. We hadn’t put a single thing in the cart yet. Next stop: the meat counter. We’re ordering hamburger meat and catfish nuggets, and somehow we turned that into a full stand-up routine with the butcher. Not on purpose — it just happens. My brother asked questions like he was interviewing the meat personally. “Which one of these got the best personality?” he asked. The butcher blinked. “Sir… it’s ground beef.” “Yeah but which one woke up motivated this morning?” By the time we finished, that man told us — and I quote — that he deals with a lot of people every day, but we were his favorite customers in a long time. That right there made my whole day. Because making people laugh when they’re just trying to survive a shift? That’s top-tier community service. As we kept moving through the store, it turned into a rolling conversation cloud. Me and my brother weren’t exactly starting conversations with people — we were talking to each other — but people kept joining in like audience participation was mandatory. Comment here. Joke there. One-liners flying. Reactions everywhere. Then we get to checkout. This little older lady opens up her lane and calls me over. I ask, “You ready for me?” She says yes — confidently — then sees my brother coming around the corner with the cart and screams, “AHH!” — but in the funniest, most playful way possible. Not fear — just dramatic shock. We had her laughing, the bagger laughing, the next customer laughing — it turned into Checkout Comedy Hour. We finally load everything into the car, and I’m thinking we’re done. We are not done. My brother says, “I want some deli meat.” I just stared at him. “We have been in this store for an hour and a half,” I said. “You are just now discovering the concept of deli meat?” He goes inside, gets it, comes back out, and tells me there was a sign: buy one pound of meat, get one pound of cheese free — but nobody offered him the cheese. Now listen. My brother is focused. When he sees a posted deal, that deal is now law. The moment he told me that, something in my spirit said, Well now I want deli meat too. So back in the store we go. As we walk past customer service, the manager sees us and says, “Not you two back in my store again!” Everybody around started laughing — cashiers, security, customers — like we were recurring characters in a sitcom called As The Grocery Cart Turns. At the deli counter, it’s the same man who helped my brother. He recognizes us instantly. “Oh — you’re with him,” he says to me. “Yes,” I said. “We’re a package deal. No returns.” He had that look like he expected attitude. Instead he got sarcasm and jokes. We went back and forth like we were in a comedy sketch about lunch meat negotiations. All I wanted was my deli meat and my pepper jack cheese so I could go home — but apparently the universe wanted character development first. We finally leave — again — and on the way out I see the manager and point at her and say, “I promise you we are not coming back again today. We will see y’all next month.” She laughed so hard she had to grab the counter. And that’s when it hit me. Some people go to the grocery store to shop. Me and my brother go to the grocery store to accidentally host a live comedy tour with produce. We didn’t plan it. We didn’t rehearse it. That’s just how we are together — chaos, humor, commentary, and community — aisle by aisle. I swear we could turn a trip for bread into a three-act play. And honestly? Best grocery trip I’ve had in a long time.
By Dakota Denise 9 months ago in Families
Money ego
Hello everyone, today I'm going to share my story with poverty and how I clung to it. What? Does anyone in their right mind cling to poverty?
By Ashrakat Elnagy9 months ago in Families