Quotes & Sayings About Belonging To A Family

Nothing in our daily life offers more of the comfort of continuity, the generational connection of belonging to a vast and complicated American family, the powerful sense of home, the freedom from time's constraints, and the great gift of accumulated memory than does our National Pastime. — Ken Burns

Who has earned the right to hear my story?" If we have one or two people in our lives who can sit with us and hold space for our shame stories, and love us for our strengths and struggles, we are incredibly lucky. If we have a friend, or a small group of friends, or family who embraces our imperfections, vulnerabilities, and power, and fills us with a sense of belonging, we are incredible lucky. — Brene Brown

Our stories are not meant for everyone. Hearing them is a privilege, and we should always ask ourselves this before we share: "Who has earned the right to hear my story?" If we have one or two people in our lives who can sit with us and hold space for our shame stories, and love us for our strengths and struggles, we are incredibly lucky. If we have a friend, or small group of friends, or family who embraces our imperfections, vulnerabilities, and power, and fills us with a sense of belonging, we are incredibly lucky. — Brene Brown

I swear it's true. If I lie to you, may I be changed into a sofa belonging to a fat family addicted to daytime TV and baked beans." (Fred to Jess) — Sue Limb

Being an American is a state of mind, and to be in a family is to feel the power of belonging, the power of your roots. Family is a tree, the strength of a tree, the roots, the leaves, the past and the present, the future, the fruits, the seeds. — Esai Morales

There are obvious psychological stresses on a person in a group, but there may be even greater stresses on a person in isolation. Most higher primates, including humans, are intensely social, and there are few examples of individuals surviving outside of a group. A modern soldier returning from combat goes from the kind of close-knit situation that humans evolved for into a society where most people work outside the home, children are educated by strangers, families are isolated from wider communities, personal gain almost completely eclipses collective good, and people sleep alone or with a partner. Even if he or she is in a family, that is not the same as belonging to a large, self-sufficient group that shares and experiences almost everything collectively. Whatever the technological advances of modern society - and they're nearly miraculous - the individual lifestyles that those technologies spawn may be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit. — Jonathan Franzen

I think the story is our best chance for asylum. We claim persecution based on belonging to a particular social group, We weave a story about how you're afraid of going back home because you're afraid your girlfriend's family wants to kill you so you two don't get married.'
'That sounds like something that would happen in India," Winston said, "No one does anything like that in Cameroon. — Imbolo Mbue

What a wonderful life; to be blessed with many sacred brothers and sisters? — Lailah Gifty Akita

The number one need in all people is the need for acceptance, the need to experience a sense of belonging to something and someone. The need for acceptance is more powerful in your family than anywhere else ... If that need is not met by your family, trust me, your kids will go elsewhere to seek it in order to find approval and acceptance. — Phil McGraw

It's rare that anyone says what this medical study does, even if in the driest way possible "Being male has been identified as a risk factor for violent criminal behavior in several studies, as have exposure to tobacco smoke before birth, having antisocial parents, and belonging to a poor family". It's not that I want to pick on men. I just think that if we noticed that women are, on the whole, radically less violent, we might be able to theorize where violence come from and what we can do about it a lot more productively. Clearly the ready availability of guns is a huge problem for United States, but despite this availability to everyone, murder is still a crime committed by men 90 percent of the time. — Rebecca Solnit

The sea is intriguing and exciting. It always reinforces in me a sense of belonging. The waves bring with them a strange kind of peace and calm. The sea has been a silent spectator to many major incidents in my life. The many outings with friends and family; the long walks on the shore with dad, my hero and philosopher; the moments spent with my love, the memories are endless. — Jagdish Joghee

Unity is a spiritual quality. It's the sweet feelings of peace and purpose that come from belonging to a family ... It's wanting the best for others as much as you want it for yourself ... It's knowing that no one is out to harm you. It means you will never be lonely. — Mary N. Cook

I used to cry to the stars in the sky and begged them to have mercy on me cause I longed for the moment when the amount of pain I felt would be unbearable and I would simply go numb. Numb. The very taste of that word was a sweet symphony to me. A relief. An alleviation in my unendurable existence. A cure. I ached because of more reasons than I could contain. My mother's cancer, my unrequited love, my worn body. The absence of my dignity and innocence. The utter feeling of abandonment. My yearning for love and family. My beloved father who left me. My freakiness and lack of belonging somewhere. My bisexuality and faith deprivation. My poverty, being insolvent most of my life, having no money to my name since forever. My shack of a house, cold and loathed from the very first days. My sorrow and grief caused by my weaknesses and deficiencies... — Magdalena Ganowska

The desire to ascend in the social scale does not make itself felt until the intellect awakens. Up to the tenth, and often up to the fifteenth year, almost every child belonging to a well-to-do family envies its proletarian schoolmates, to whom so many things are permissible which for the "respectable" are placed under taboo. — Stefan Zweig

When we have sampled much and have wandered far and have seen how fleeting and sometimes superficial a lot of the world is, our gratitude grows for the privilege of being part of something we can count on-home and family and the loyalty of loved ones. We come to know what it means to be bound together by duty, by respect, by belonging. We learn that nothing can fully take the place of the blessed relationship of family life. — Thomas S. Monson

And as if he had read her thoughts, the old man murmured, 'What a blessing it is to die in your own bed, under your own roof, with your family surrounding you, full of the knowledge that you have lived as thoroughly as you wanted to. — Anita Rau Badami

At a time when most of my peers were struggling to find an identity, I knew exactly who I was: the church girl, the girl who always had a place in her youth group family, the girl on fire for God. I'm not sure I can ever calculate the value of that community, that sense of belonging and of being loved. It never even occurred to me that such a fire could be washed out. — Rachel Held Evans

But I also knew that if he turned away from me at this moment, somehow I would survive that, and I would find a way to flourish like the yard that still bloomed and grew around my family home.
I'm Sookie Stackhouse. I belong here. — Charlaine Harris

And he loved my mother. I saw him on the last days of his life lift that oil-scented right hand and enter its fingers into her ordered hair and rustle it free of its pins as if he had been offered velvet or the fur of a rare animal. Forever I hold that gesture. For me it was perhaps the last remembered pleasure belonging to him. It is the unspoiled core of whatever I know of love and family (and I have not been successful at the craft of it). Our shyness at embracing each other - it rarely happened - did not matter. I felt safe and comforted in his house. — Michael Ondaatje

Hate and anger were what had kept him alive. He had fed on them for so long, they were the only emotions he recognized, the only ones he still knew how to feel.
And yet, right now, surrounded by the warmth of the three precious girls who were using him as a pillow, hate seemed very far away, crowded out by things unknown and yet familiar, impossible things. Love. A feeling of belonging. A sense of peace.
He closed his eyes. It was all an illusion. He didn't belong anywhere. He didn't know what love was anymore. And peace ... Christ, what was that? So Conor sat listening to the rain and stealing a few moments of trust and affection he did not deserve from three wee girls who were not his. And he reminded himself at least twice that night that he was not a family man. — Laura Lee Guhrke

The word Familia did not originally signify the ideal of our modern philistine, which is a compound of sentimentality and domestic discord. Among the Romans, in the beginning, it did not even refer to the married couple and their children, but to the slaves alone. Famulus means a household slave and familia signifies the totality of slaves belonging to one individual. The expression was invented by the romans to describe a new social organism, the head of which had under him wife and children and a number of slaves, under Roman paternal power, with power of life and death over them all. — Friedrich Engels

The idea of the family as a protective haven is a myth, the family unit cannot provide the haven it promises. On the contrary, we can never isolate ourselves from social and political relationships in the world. The places we choose to hide are alawys inseparably connected to the real world, the world they actually might encounter in school, and for some, in neighborhoods. It is not the failure, or the breakdown, of the family which causes our alienation, but the ever-disappointed hopes instilled in us as children. These hopes are false dreams of being cocooned and of belonging. — Nicola Field

I've also never written about home in this way before. I guess a lot of it is subconscious and I am intuitively making these decisions when I'm writing. I wanted to communicate in the book that on one hand, being at home - both in our homes and in DeLisle - gives us a sense of belonging and family and safety, but at the same time, being in those places makes us less safe. — Jesmyn Ward

As with Dutchy and Carmine on the train, this little cluster of women has become a kind of family to me. Like an abandoned foal that nestles against cows in the barnyard, maybe I just need to feel the warmth of belonging. And if I'm not going to find that with the Byrnes, I will find it, however partial and illusory, with the women in the sewing room. — Christina Baker Kline

But beyond a basic minimum, the relationship between income and happiness is slight. Research bears out Maslow's analysis that the higher needs are love and belonging, esteem and self-actualisation. The most significant determinants of happiness are strong and rewarding personal relationships, a sense of belonging to a community, being valued by others and living a meaningful life. These are precisely the things in which religion specialises: sanctifying marriage, etching family life with the charisma of holiness, creating and sustaining strong communities in which people are valued for what they are, not for what they earn or own, and providing a framework within which our lives take on meaning, purpose, even blessedness. — Jonathan Sacks

Community as belonging ...
In many groups of people and clubs of all sorts (political, sports, leisure, liberal professions, etc.) people find a sense of security. They are happy to find others like themselves. They receive comfort one from another, and they encourage one another in their ways. But frequently there is a certain elitism. They are convinced that they are better than others. And, of course, not everyone can join the club; people have to qualify. Frequently these groups give security and a sense of belonging but they do not encourage personal growth. Belonging in such groups is not for becoming.
You can often tell the people who belong to a particular club, group or community by what they wear, especially on feast days, or by their hairstyle, their jargon or accent or by badges and colours of some sort. Grouping seems to need symbols which express the fact that they are one tribe, one family, one group. — Jean Vanier

In this sense, littering is an exceedingly petty version of claiming a billion-dollar bank bailout or fraudulently claiming disability payments. When you throw trash on the ground, you apparently don't see yourself as truly belonging to the world that you're walking around in. And when you fraudulently claim money from the government, you are ultimately stealing from your friends, family, and neighbors - or somebody else's friends, family, and neighbors. That diminishes you morally far more than it diminishes your country financially. — Sebastian Junger

Positive feelings come from being honest about yourself and accepting your personality, and physical characteristics, warts and all; and, from belonging to a family that accepts you without question. — Willard Scott

Adoption is outside. You act out what it feels like to be the one who doesn't belong. And you act it out by trying to do to others what has been done to you. It is impossible to believe anyone loves you for yourself.

I never believed that my parents loved me. I tried to love them but it didn't work. It has taken me a long time to learn how to love - both the giving and the receiving. I have written about love obsessively, forensically, and I know/knew it as the highest value.

I loved God of course, in the early days, and God loved me. That was something. And I loved animals and nature. And poetry. People were the problem. How do you love another person? How do you trust another person to love you?

I had no idea.
I thought that love was loss.
Why is the measure of love loss? — Jeanette Winterson

I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger. — August Wilson

I need the sun, sand and ocean to rejuvenate my spirit, the food to enliven my body and all of the familiar places, friends and family to revitalize my soul. I go for replenishment. For a kind of love that I truly know. For a place of belonging, always. — Grace Gealey

Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality - collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging and tried to make do with the way they found each other. — Toni Morrison

The patriarchal family was only the most recent in a string of 'primary' social organizations, all of which defined woman as a different species due to her unique childbearing capacity. The term family was first used by the Romans to denote a social unit the head of which ruled over wife, children, and slaves - under Roman law he was invested with the rights of life and death over them all; famulus means domestic slave, and familia is the total number of slaves belonging to one man. — Shulamith Firestone

Sometimes, what i see is a library in a rural community.
all the tall shelves in the big open room. and the pencils
in a cup at circulation, gnawed on by the entire population.
the books have lived here all along, belonging
for weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence
of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face,
a pair of eyes. the most remarkable lies. — Tracy K. Smith

We understand that a family is something you make. I grew up hearing 'blood is thicker than water,' and maybe it's true, but in the gay community we've got more than water between us. We've got something stamped onto our DNA, something that marks us as belonging to each other every bit as much as we belong to our birth families. I'm not sure people outside the circle can ever fully understand a connection they've never experienced. — Rachel Spangler

At the heart of this home is my family; where my family is, is home. If I lived by myself, home would be the place peopled with reminders of everyone I loved. My home is a place of unconditional belonging, which is part of its pleasure, part of its pain- as Robert Frost wrote, home is "something you somehow haven't to deserve." At home, I feel a greater sense of safety and acceptance, and also of responsibility and obligation. — Gretchen Rubin

Taggle, meanwhile, made himself popular, killing rats and bringing a rabbit into camp every evening, preening in the praise - silently, thank god, though at night, he recounted choice bits to Kate: "Rye Baro says I am a princeling; he split the leg bone for me so that I could eat the marrow. They love me. And I'm sure they'll keep you, too."
Mira, she thought, and treasured it each time she heard it, They must keep me. Family. — Erin Bow

Adoption has the dimension of connection - not only to your own tribe, but beyond, widening the scope of what constitutes love, ties and family. It is a larger embrace. By adopting, we stretch past our immediate circles and, by reaching out, find an unexpected sense of belonging with others. — Isabella Rossellini

Every family has in fact a sacred character belonging to it, which may indeed be forgotten or disdained; but the family is constituted, and ought therefore to be conducted, with the prospect of the rising generation following that which precedes it, not only to the grave, but to eternity"(Christopher Anderson). Every member of every household is an immortal creature; every one that leaves the circle by death, goes into an eternity of torment or bliss. And, since all the ordinances of God look to another world as their chief and ultimate reference, surely, surely, that institute which is the most powerful of all in the formation of character, must be considered as set up with a special intention to prepare the subjects of it for "glory, honour, immortality, and eternal life. — John Angell James

I have no sense of nationalism, only a cosmic consciousness of belonging to the human family. — Rosika Schwimmer

A group is the manifestation of this need to belong. A group can, however, close in on itself, believing that it is superior to others. But my vision is that belonging should be at the heart of a fundamental discovery: that we all belong to a common humanity, the human race. We may be rooted in a specific family and culture but we come to this earth to open up to others, to serve them and receive the gifts they bring to us, as well as to all of humanity. — Jean Vanier