Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Families.
More Work lays ahead
I was watching a reaction video today. The lady reacting to the video/song by Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge over troubled water. I started crying with the woman. This was her first time hearing the song. I thought back to the first time I heard the song and times were different back then. I was at my boyfriends house and had been bullied yet another day at school. I was also effeminate and didn't really stand up for myself because I was always smaller. I was an easy target for bullies. My boyfriend found this song on his new record, he came over to his bed, laid down beside me and held me as I cried. This was a new song and he started singing the words of the song to me, and softly kissed my tears away. He told me he would protect me forever. Being that I was a gay youth in the late 1960's and 1970's we had no positive role models to look up too back then. The gay youth didn't know that the father from the Brady Bunch was gay and many others. If we mentioned to our parents we were gay or attracted to other boys we were sent away for conversion therapy or sent to live with an aunt somewhere else. As I look back to this time in our history and to today, I see there has been much progress. But much work still lays ahead. While we are now to freely marry our boyfriends not all is well. I believe we have the right to marry, adopt and foster children. I don't feel we have the right to force a business to provide services to us. If it violates their religious beliefs, why should they have to serve us? Should we sue that business? I don't think so, because he does after all, have the right to refuse service. Does suing the business really do anything? The Supreme court ruled they can refuse service.
By Lawrence Edward Hinchee5 years ago in Families
Just Keep Walking!
My Courage Through Life In the beginning of everyone's life, everyone has what they wish to be the best of memories with their families and friends. My earliest memory seems to bring only one kind of feeling, sadness. Only because after my latest sibling was born my parents decided that they no longer had feelings for each other and it was time for them to move on. The problem being I was the oldest witnessing this process unfold before me in a way that was more than confusing for my 5 year old mind to process. My earliest memory of my family was my parents on the couch arguing, not 100% over what, just that they weren’t happy. All while I sat there and watched from the sidelines confused. So to put plainly my earliest memories weren’t of the best times, but of some of the hardest I've had with my family.
By Jamie Castle5 years ago in Families
For you mom
At sixteen years old, I begged my father for my very first tattoo. I wanted to pick something so special and very sentimental to me. I thought about it long and hard, but I knew I wanted something about my dear mother that past away when I was only nine years old.
By Sara Bevins5 years ago in Families
A Picture's Worth 1000 Words
My first tattoo, it's fair to say, was a mistake of epic proportions. I fell into the same trap as many before me and saw my wrist encumbered with the name of a lover, whose enchantment was already beginning to break.
By Clara Elizabeth Hamilton Orr Burns5 years ago in Families
Overcoming
Stage four. As those dreaded words reverberated in my ears, I knew that my life was possibly going to change forever. I was entering finals season of my master’s program when my father got the diagnosis. Stage four Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma was the name. The name of the beast that seemed to claw at my very core. Dad hadn’t been feeling well and was in and out of the hospital. He was burdened with violent pain and trembling hands. At first, the doctors couldn’t quite pinpoint the issue. I boarded a bus to Detroit from Chicago to visit my dad in the hospital. As I was in commute, a wave of relief enveloped my body as I was told the doctors identified it as mono. How he got it, unknown, but we were just happy to know that it was something that he could fight off. My dad was so happy to see me home, the family was together and we just knew that everything would be ok. In reality, all of our lives were about to take a turn for the worse.
By SHELBY N. CHANEY5 years ago in Families
I'm Friends With My Kids.
I am friends with my kids. That is right, I am their mother, and I’m also their friend. You know why? Because all too often I hear that that is a bad thing. That being their friend somehow negates the fact that I am also their mother, or that it implies I will not be looking out for their best interests if I’m “just their friend.”
By Chrystelle Armstrong5 years ago in Families
