Raising A Child Without A Father Quotes

He's a feral child. No mother, no father, no one to care for him or raise him or teach him how to be human. So he's existed much like an animal, without language. He thinks in images, not word." "How strange," Lanaya, sounding amazed. Ryter shakes his head sadly. "Not strange, I'm afaraid. His condition is all too common in the latches. And becoming more common every day.

I watched him as he lined up the ships in bottles on his deck, bringing them over from the shelves where they usually sat. He used an old shirt of my mother's that had been ripped into rags and began dusting the shelves. Under his desk there were empty bottles- rows and rows of them we had collected for our future shipbuilding. In the closet were more ships- the ships he had built with his own father, ships he had built alone, and then those we had made together. Some were perfect, but their sails browned; some had sagged or toppled over the years. Then there was the one that had burst into flames in the week before my death. He smashed that one first. My heart seized up. He turned and saw all the others, all the years they marked and the hands that had held them. His dead father's, his dead child's. I watched his as he smashed the rest. He christened the walls and wooden chair with the news of my death, and afterward he stood in the guest room/den surrounded by green glass. The bottle, all of them, lay broken on the floor, the sails and boat bodies strewn among them. He stood in the wreckage. It was then that, without knowing how, I revealed myself. In every piece of glass, in every shard and sliver, I cast my face. My father glanced down and around him, his eyes roving across the room. Wild. It was just for a second, and then I was gone. He was quiet for a moment, and then he laughed- a howl coming up from the bottom of his stomach. He laughed so loud and deep, I shook with it in my heaven. He left the room and went down two doors to my beadroom. The hallway was tiny, my door like all the others, hollow enough to easily punch a fist through. He was about to smash the mirror over my dresser, rip the wallpaper down with his nails, but instead he fell against my bed, sobbing, and balled the lavender sheets up in his hands. 'Daddy?' Buckley said. My brother held the doorknob with his hand. My father turned but was unable to stop his tears. He slid to the floor with his fists, and then he opened up his arms. He had to ask my brother twice, which he had never to do do before, but Buckley came to him. My father wrapped my brother inside the sheets that smelled of me. He remembered the day I'd begged him to paint and paper my room purple. Remembered moving in the old National Geographics to the bottom shelves of my bookcases. (I had wanted to steep myself in wildlife photography.) Remembered when there was just one child in the house for the briefest of time until Lindsey arrived. 'You are so special to me, little man,' my father said, clinging to him. Buckley drew back and stared at my father's creased face, the fine bright spots of tears at the corners of his eyes. He nodded seriously and kissed my father's cheek. Something so divine that no one up in heaven could have made it up; the care a child took with an adult. 'Hold still,' my father would say, while I held the ship in the bottle and he burned away the strings he'd raised the mast with and set the clipper ship free on its blue putty sea. And I would wait for him, recognizing the tension of that moment when the world in the bottle depended, solely, on me.

My little brother's greatest fear was that the one person who meant so much to him would go away. He loved Lindsey and Grandma Lynn and Samuel and Hal, but my father kept him stepping lightly, son gingerly monitoring father every morning and every evening as if, without such vigilance, he would lose him. We stood- the dead child and the living- on either side of my father, both wanting the same thing. To have him to ourselves forver. To please us both was an impossibility. ... 'Please don't let Daddy die, Susie,' he whispered. 'I need him.' When I left my brother, I walked out past the gazebo and under the lights hanging down like berries, and I saw the brick paths branching out as I advanced. I walked until the bricks turned to flat stones and then to small, sharp rocks and then to nothing but churned earth for miles adn miles around me. I stood there. I had been in heaven long enough to know that something would be revealed. And as the light began to fade and the sky to turn a dark, sweet blue as it had on the night of my death, I saw something walking into view, so far away I could not at first make out if it was man or woman, child or adult. But as moonlight reached this figure I could make out a man and, frightened now, my breathing shallow, I raced just far enough to see. Was it my father? Was it what I had wanted all this time so deperately? 'Susie,' the man said as I approached and then stopped a few feet from where he stood. He raised his arms up toward me. 'Remember?' he said. I found myself small again, age six and in a living room in Illinois. Now, as I had done then, I placed my feet on top of his feet. 'Granddaddy,' I said. And because we were all alone and both in heaven, I was light enough to move as I had moved when I was six and in a living room in Illinois. Now, as I had done then, I placed my feet on top of his feet. 'Granddaddy,' I said. And because we were all alone and both in heaven, I was light enough to move as I had moved when I was six and he was fifty-six and my father had taken us to visit. We danced so slowly to a song that on Earth had always made my grandfather cry. 'Do you remember?' he asked. 'Barber!' 'Adagio for Strings,' he said. But as we danced and spun- none of the herky-jerky awkwardness of Earth- what I remembered was how I'd found him crying to this music and asked him why. 'Sometimes you cry,' Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.' He had held me against him then, just briefly, and then I had run outside to play again with Lindsey in what seemed like my grandfather's huge backyard. We didn't speak any more that night, but we danced for hours in that timeless blue light. I knew as we danced that something was happening on Earth and in heaven. A shifting. The sort of slow-to-sudden movement that we'd read about in science class one year. Seismic, impossible, a rending and tearing of time and space. I pressed myself into my grandfather's chest and smelled the old-man smell of him, the mothball version of my own father, the blood on Earth, the sky in heaven. The kumquat, skunk, grade-A tobacco. When the music stopped, it cold have been forever since we'd begun. My grandfateher took a step back, and the light grew yellow at his back. 'I'm going,' he said. 'Where?' I asked. 'Don't worry, sweetheart. You're so close.' He turned and walked away, disappearing rapidly into spots and dust. Infinity.

Her mother was Jewish, but her father had insisted that she and Anne be raised Catholic. So she went to mass every Sunday as a child, received communion, went to confession, and was confirmed, but because her mother never participated in any of this, Alice began questioning the validity of these beliefs at a young age. And without a satisfying answer from either her father or the Catholic Church, she never developed a true faith.

Any one above or below the prescribed ages who takes part in the public hymeneals shall be said to have done an unholy and unrighteous thing; the child of which he is the father, if it steals into life, will have been conceived under auspices very unlike the sacrifices and prayers, which at each hymeneal priestesses and priest and the whole city will offer, that the new generation may be better and more useful than their good and useful parents, whereas his child will be the offspring of darkness and strange lust. Very true, he replied. And the same law will apply to any one of those within the prescribed age who forms a connection with any woman in the prime of life without the sanction of the rulers; for we shall say that he is raising up a bastard to the State, uncertified and unconsecrated. Very

That peace did not come easily. I spent two years enumerating my father's flaws, constantly updating the tally as if reciting every resentment, every real and imagined act of cruelty, of neglect, would justify my decision to cut him from my life. Once justified I thought the strangling guilt would release me, and I could catch my breath. But vindication has no power over guilt. No amount of anger or rage directed at others can subdue it, because guilt is never about them. Guilt is the fear of ones own retchedness. It has nothing to do with other people. I shed my guilt when I accepted my decision on my own terms, without endlessly prosecuting old greviences, without weighing his sins against mine. Without thinking of my father at all. I learned to accept my decision for my own sake. Because of me, not because of him. Because I needed it, not because he deserved it. It was the only way I could love him. When my father was in my life, wrestling me for control of that life, I percieved him with the eyes of a soldier, through a fog of conflict. I could not make out his tender qualities. When he was before me towering, indignant, I could not remember how when I was young his laugh used to shake his gut and make his glasses shine. In his stern presence I could never recall the pleasant way his lips used to twitch, before they were burned away, when a memory tugged tears from his eyes. I can only remember those things now, with a span of miles and years between us. But what has come between me and my father is more than time or distance. It is a change in the self. I am not the child my father raised but he is the father who raised her.

I have a great deal of self-knowledge. In everything I do, I can watch myself as if I were a stranger. I can stand across from the everyday Anne and, without being biased or making excuses, watch what she's doing, both the good and the bad. This self-awareness never leaves me, and every time I open my mouth, I think, "You should have said that differently" or "That's fine the way it is." I condemn myself in so many ways that I'm beginning to realize the truth of Father's adage: "Every child has to raise itself." Parents can only advise their children or point them in the right direction. Ultimately, people shape their own characters.

In the land of Uz, there lived a man, righteous and God-fearing, and he had great wealth, so many camels, so many sheep and asses, and his children feasted, and he loved them very much and prayed for them. 'It may be that my sons have sinned in their feasting.' Now the devil came before the Lord together with the sons of God, and said to the Lord that he had gone up and down the earth and under the earth. 'And hast thou considered my servant Job?' God asked of him. And God boasted to the devil, pointing to his great and holy servant. And the devil laughed at God's words. 'Give him over to me and Thou wilt see that Thy servant will murmur against Thee and curse Thy name.' And God gave up the just man He loved so, to the devil. And the devil smote his children and his cattle and scattered his wealth, all of a sudden like a thunderbolt from heaven. And Job rent his mantel and fell down upon the ground and cried aloud, 'Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return into the earth; the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever and ever.' Fathers and teachers, forgive my tears now, for all my childhood rises up again before me, and I breathe now as I breathed then, with the breast of a little child of eight, and I feel as I did then, awe and wonder and gladness. The camels at that time caught my imagination, and Satan, who talked like that with God, and God who gave His servant up to destruction, and His servant crying out: 'Blessed be Thy name although Thou dost punish me,' and then the soft and sweet singing in the church: 'Let my prayer rise up before Thee,' and again incense from the priest's censer and the kneeling and the prayer. Ever since then - only yesterday I took it up - I've never been able to read that sacred tale without tears. And how much that is great, mysterious and unfathomable there is in it! Afterwards I heard the words of mockery and blame, proud words, 'How could God give up the most loved of His saints for the diversion of the devil, take from him his children, smite him with sore boils so that he cleansed the corruption from his sores with a pot-sherd - and for no object except to board to the devil! 'See what My saint can suffer for My Sake.' ' But the greatness of it lies just in the fact that it is a mystery - that the passing earthly show and the eternal verity are brought together in it. In the face of the earthly truth, the eternal truth is accomplished. The Creator, just as on the first days of creation He ended each day with praise: 'That is good that I have created,' looks upon Job and again praises His creation. And Job, praising the Lord, serves not only Him but all His creation for generations and generations, and for ever and ever, since for that he was ordained. Good heavens, what a book it is, and what lessons there are in it! What a book the Bible is, what a miracle, what strength is given with it to man! It is like a mold cast of the world and man and human nature, everything is there, and a law for everything for all the ages. And what mysteries are solved and revealed! God raises Job again, gives him wealth again. Many years pass by, and he has other children and loves them. But how could he love those new ones when those first children are no more, when he has lost them? Remembering them, how could he be fully happy with those new ones, however dear the new ones might be? But he could, he could. It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising such each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life - and over all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving!

How could the Revisers choose this last reading, 'an heir through God,' and keep the word adoption? From the passage it is as plain as St. Paul could make it, that, by the word translated adoption, he means the raising of a father's own child from the condition of tutelage and subjection to others, a state which, he says, is no better than that of a slave, to the position and rights of a son. None but a child could become a son; the idea is—a spiritual coming of age; only when the child is a man is he really and fully a son. The thing holds in the earthly relation. How many children of good parents—good children in the main too—never know those parents, never feel towards them as children might, until, grown up, they have left the house—until, perhaps, they are parents themselves, or are parted from them by death! To be a child is not necessarily to be a son or daughter. The childship is the lower condition of the upward process towards the sonship, the soil out of which the true sonship shall grow, the former without which the latter were impossible. God can no more than an earthly parent be content to have only children: he must have sons and daughters—children of his soul, of his spirit, of his love—not merely in the sense that he loves them, or even that they love him, but in the sense that they love like him, love as he loves.

She thought she was getting out of the Water Rising clean, because she didn’t see her father anywhere around: there was only Ash and Lillian sitting at a table, and a few other patrons at as much of a distance from Ash and Lillian as they could get. She made for the door, at which point Lillian caught her arm. “Where are you going?” “Uh,” said Kami, eyeballing her wildly. “I’m going to buy some drugs.” Lillian stared. “I beg your pardon?” “This is a really stressful time for everyone,” said Kami. “So I thought maybe I could buy a little weed, take the edge off. I might be a while. This is a very clean-living town, apart from all the murders, so I don’t actually know any drug dealers. I realize Jared kind of looks like one, but he’s not, which is a shame because I think the drug dealer’s girlfriend gets her drugs free.” “I realize you are attempting to be humorous,” said Lillian, after a pause during which she stared some more. “I don’t understand it.” “Hey, you’re not the only family with a legacy. ‘Glass’ rhymes with ‘sass.’ Have you met my dad?” “I have had that dubious pleasure,” said Lillian. “He is, in fact, meant to be meeting me in order to, and I quote, ‘teach me to integrate better with society, display leadership skills, win over the populace, and stop acting like a robot princess from space.’ I admit that the humor in his humor escapes me as well.” She paused and suddenly looked determined. “I’m going to start without him.” She climbed off the stool and headed toward the group of people in the corner. Kami and Ash watched as they collectively shrank away. “Come on, quick,” said Kami, and as if summoned by some spirit warning him of his child’s intended reckless behavior, her dad appeared through the inn doors. He looked distracted. “Where’s Lillian?’ Kami checked over her shoulder. “Appears to be trying to wrest a screaming baby from the arms of her frightened mother in order to kiss it.” “Oh no no no,” murmured Jon, and raised his voice as he made his way over. “Libba, we’ve talked about this!” “The good news is the grown-ups are distracted by politics,” said Kami. You mean that your poor father is distracted by my awful mother, said Ash, who was far too polite to say such a thing out loud and looked vaguely embarrassed to be thinking it. Kami grinned. “Why quibble when we have the results we want!” I wish I could ask you what you’re planning, but I know what you’re planning, said Ash. Lucky me. I know this is important information, but going to Aurimere at all is a huge risk. “See, the thing is, if I ran a business it would probably be called Risky Business,

Just like a dependent child, he's fully dependent on the father. So father knows how to raise him to be a perfect man. He knows what is his necessities. Similarly, we have to give up to the care of Kṛṣṇa, without any condition. That is perfection of life. That is perfection of life. So sometimes Kṛṣṇa favors a devotee when He is in doubts, "Whether this or that? This or that?" So sometimes He takes away the sources of his material opulence and gives him shelter under His own lotus feet.

When We Need to Remember the Purpose of Family Did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. MALACHI 2:15 THE PURPOSE OF A FAMILY—a husband, wife, and children—is to glorify God. For those of you who do not have children, for whatever reason, I am not mentioning this to make you feel bad or self-conscious about that. Paul did not have children or a wife because God had another plan for him. Perhaps He has another plan for you. He used Paul in a powerful way that would not have been possible if he was a husband and a father. He is surely using you in that same way. If you have peace about not having children, then God has something else for you to do. If you don’t have peace, then ask God to either give you a child or else give you the peace you need about not having a child. He will do that. With that said, the simple truth about the purpose of marriage is to have “godly offspring” who will grow up to glorify Him. The message in this section of Scripture is that the husband is not to “deal treacherously” with his wife and treat her badly, because the Lord sees all that goes on in your marriage (Malachi 2:13-14). He knows how your husband treats you, as well as how you treat him. But God lays the responsibility right in the husband’s lap. He expects the husband to honor the covenant of marriage by treating his wife well. You both made a covenant before God when you married, and now you are one in His sight. And it is your husband’s responsibility to love you as he loves himself because you are part of him and he is part of you. When he does that, you can glorify God by having godly children—or raising up spiritual children—and not ending up in divorce court. Family is a great calling and a high purpose, and God wants you both to never forget it. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would help both my husband and me to remember that the purpose of our marriage, and any children we may have, is to glorify You. I know we are one in Your sight, but help us to truly become one in our hearts toward each other. Help us not to live in separate worlds, but to grow closer together with each passing year. Where we have already grown apart, I pray You would stop that drift between us and reverse our course so we are headed in the same direction. Teach us how to glorify You in the way we treat each other and in the way we raise our children—or raise up spiritual children—to follow You. Help us to “take heed” to our spirit so that we are always controlled by Your Spirit and no other. Even though I know that the purpose of our marriage and our family is always to glorify You, I know we cannot do that without Your help. Enable each of us to rise above our own selfishness and put renewed desire in our hearts to serve You only. In Jesus’ name I pray.

Sudanese dead beat fathers, single or divorced, with children involved from marriages, learn from your shortcomings without blaming ex-wives for all mistakes, unkept promises. Spend on your children without reminder instead of girlfriends, because a real man fears not child support, will never self-harm nor hide himself as a route to quite responsiblities, but rather takes care of his children regardless of the status quo with the mother, and Is aware enough that he is not a father until he raises a complete human being".

Don't let truth and grace forsake one another. If you raise your child with only truth (or your laws), they will never live up to your rules or expectations. No one can fulfill all of the law. On the other hand , if you only give grace to your children, they will run wild without restraint.

As we will see in the following chapters, Rank was the one who showed that the true genius has an immense problem that other men do not. He has to earn his value as a person from his work, which means that his work has to carry the burden of justifying him. What does "justifying" mean for man? It means transcending death by qualifying for immortality. The genius repeats the narcissistic inflation of the child; he lives the fantasy of the control of life and death, of destiny, in the "body" of his work. The uniqueness of the genius also cuts off his roots. He is a phenomenon that was not foreshadowed; he doesn't seem to have any traceable debts to the qualities of others; he seems to have sprung self-generated out of nature. We might say that he has the "purest" causa-sui project. He is truly without a family, the father of himself. As Roazen points out, Freud had soared so far beyond his natural family that it is no surprise that he should indulge in fantasies of self-creation: "Freud came back again and again to the fantasy of being raised father-less." Now, you cannot become your own father until you can have your own sons, as Roazen so well says; and natural-born sons would not do, because they do not have "the qualities of immortality associated with genius." This formulation is perfect. Ergo, Freud had to create a whole new family-the psychoanalytic movement-that would be his distinctive immortality-vehicle. When he died the genius of the movement would assure his eternal remembrance and hence an eternal identity in the minds of men and in the effects of his work on earth.

Amy, I want you to listen to me.  To be practical here.  You may, even as we speak, be carrying a child that will be a bastard if I do not wed you and give it its proper name.  Perhaps I, with both my physical and moral shortcomings, am not fit to marry you, perhaps I am repeating my previous mistake, but damn it, I cannot bear the thought of your raising a baby without a husband, a child without a father.  I cannot bear the thought that I have taken your virginity and left you a ruined woman.  And I cannot bear any more weight upon my conscience.  I swear, I cannot." "But Charles, isn't that the same reason why you wanted to marry Juliet?  Because she, too, was with child?  It was a mistake then, Charles, and it would be a mistake now, because you're not sure you loved her, and we know that you do not love me!" "Amy —" "Besides that, it would never work because you're Quality, and I'm —" "Don't say it," he warned, growing angry. "Not Quality," she finished.  "You're the son of a duke, I'm the daughter of an Indian, and besides, I can't marry you anyhow because if I did, then there'd be no one here to take care of my family.  There'd be no one to watch over Sylvanus and make sure he had proper meals and clean clothing, no one to find his spectacles when he misplaces them, no one to help him with his sermons." "Amy, your family does not appreciate you!  They do not appreciate you one iota as much as I would!" "Charles, I can't do it!" she cried forlornly.  "It just wouldn't be right!" She

If you had been born as your parents, you would have made the same choices that they did and had been as stuck as they were. Forgive them for being born into a time of relative darkness without the resources and consciousness that you have today.

Due to falling birth rates and a desire to promote Nazi eugenics, it became evident that Germany had to implement programs to increase the population of pure Aryan children. In 1936, Heinrich Himmler built homes where women of acceptable bloodlines were to be bred with SS officers. These homes were called Homes for the Lebensborn. Women who became pregnant out of wedlock could go to one of these establishments and receive the finest of food and care during their pregnancies, with no stigma attached. In fact, they were honored because they were bearing a child for Hitler, for the Fatherland. There was only one stipulation. Once the child was born, if the father was unwilling to raise it, it must be given over to the Home for the Lebensborn. When a woman entered the home, she signed papers to this effect, and the policy forbade mothers from taking their children without marriage to an SS officer. These breeding farms were created in the hopes of repopulating the world with a perfect Aryan race once the Nazis had cleared out all of the undesirables, such as: Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, the physically or mentally handicapped, and anyone else Hitler saw fit to destroy.

I know your given name is Katherine. So why does everyone call you Kitty?” He pulled a bag of dried apple slices from his medical bag. With a few pieces in his hand, he gestured to Kitty but she shook her head to decline.  She sat straight. “Do you not know?” Holding a piece of apple up to his mouth, Nathaniel prepared for a bite. “I’m waiting.” He flicked the morsel in his mouth and began to chew. She grinned and played with the printed floral fabric of her skirt. “Father was in his study reviewing materials one evening, when Peter—” Nathaniel raised his hand, his expression tender. “You mean your older brother... the one you lost.” “Aye.” The pain of her brother’s death, though always fresh, receded as she prepared to share how her dear sibling had given her such a name. She brushed a blade of grass from her knee. “Peter must have been about two and a half years old, perhaps older. Father said Peter came rushing in babbling something about a kitty and pointing vigorously in the direction of the kitchen.”  Kitty imitated the motion, making Nathaniel’s handsome smile widen. “I’m intrigued. Continue.” “Father followed Peter toward the kitchen where, inside the barrel of flour and covered from top to toe was none other than the baby of the family. So, from that moment on Peter, Father, Mother and Liza all called me Kitty.” Nathaniel pelted the air with that buoyant laugh Kitty loved. “How did you get into the barrel without your mother’s notice?” “’Tis a mystery.” He leaned back onto the grass and rested against his elbow, nodding with mock disapproval. “So you were a wily child then?” “Am I not wily now?” “I should say so. And you’ve enjoyed getting your fingers messy in the kitchen ever since.” “Aye, I have.” He

What are you blathering on about, Westhaven? I rather liked your Elise. Seemed a practical woman, if you know what I mean.” “Meaning she took your bribe, or your dare,” the earl concluded. “Then she turned around and offered her favors elsewhere, to at least one other tall, green-eyed lordling that I know of, and perhaps several others, as well.” “She’s a bit of a strumpet, Westhaven, though passably discreet. What would you expect?” The duke finished his drink with a satisfied smack of his lips. “She’s Renfrew’s intended, if your baiting inspired her to get with child, Your Grace,” the earl replied. “You put her up to trying to get a child, and the only way she could do that was to pass somebody else’s off as mine.” “Good God, Westhaven.” The duke rose, looking pained. “You aren’t telling me you can’t bed a damned woman, are you?” “Were that the case, I would not tell you, as such matters are supposed to be private. What I am telling you is if you attempt to manipulate one more woman into my bed, I will not marry. Back off, Your Grace, or you will wish you had.” “Are you threatening your own father, Westhaven?” The duke thumped his glass down, hard. “I am assuring him,” the earl replied softly, “if he attempts even once more to violate my privacy, I will make him regret it for all of his remaining days.” “Violate your…? Oh, for the love of God, boy.” The duke turned to go, hand on the door latch. “I did not come here to argue with you, for once. I came to tell you it was well done, getting your brother to Fairly’s, reminding him what… Never mind. I came with only good intentions, and here you are threatening me. What would your dear mama think of such disrespect? Of course I am concerned; you are past thirty, and you have neither bride nor heir nor promise thereof. You think you can live forever, but you and your brother are proof that even when a man has decades to raise up his sons, sometimes the task is yet incomplete and badly done. You aren’t without sense, Westhaven, and you at least show some regard for the Moreland consequence. All I want is to see the succession secured before I die, and to see your mother has some grandchildren to spoil and love. Good day.” He

Loh-rhett-ah, you will be silent and let him say the God words.” “He can say the God words until snowballs melt in--” She broke off and blushed. “I’m the one who has to say the words, Hunter, and I won’t. Do you understand?” “My dear child,” the priest inserted, “it’s not often one of these”--he threw a meaningful glance at Hunter--“gentlemen offers to make an honorable woman of a captive. Wouldn’t it be wise to accept?” “I’m in no need of matrimony, Father. I still have my honor.” Hunter jerked her to his side and, in an ominously even voice, said, “Your honor will soon go the way of the wind, Blue Eyes. You made a God promise. You are my woman! Now I say you will be my wife!” Loretta wet her lips, trying to meet his gaze without wavering. “I brought you a Black Robe, yes? So this will be a marriage in your heart. If you do not say your God words to make it so, I will sure enough marry you my way.” He swept his hand in a wide arc. “Your honor will fly away on the wind. Suvate, it is finished. You choose.” Her voice hoarse with frustration, Loretta cried, “But I don’t want to marry you. If I do, it’s for forever! Don’t you understand?” “For forever is very much good.” “No, it’s very much bad. I’ll never be able to leave you!” Hunter threw up his hands. “No Black Robe, no marriage for your God. I am sure enough happy with a marriage my way.” With a determined glint in his eyes, he turned toward the crowd, raising his arms, and shouted something. Then he shrugged. “There. Suvate, it is finished. I have said my words. We are married.” Seizing her by the arm, he growled, “Keemah, come, wife.

A ‘good’ father will tenderly cultivate his children. But a ‘good’ father who is also a ‘brave’ father will let the children without cultivate the child within.

Society readily accepts that a father can’t be expected to raise a child alone, without help; yet a mother is completely different. For a mother to claim she couldn’t do it, well, that’s unacceptable.

Sharing a meal as a family without electronic devices, doing a group activity such as a walk or a weekly excursion is paramount to establish connection.

If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing—missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all African-American children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled—doubled—since we were children. We know the statistics—that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it… But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child—it’s the courage to raise one.30

Besides bonding, sex is also designed by God as the way we procreate and have children. Again, this is a very good part of God’s design; without it our species would cease to exist. However, kids are healthiest, happiest, safest, and most secure when they are raised by both a mother and a father within a committed, stable, God-honoring marriage. Children raised in any type of family other than with their married parents—in other words, single parents, divorced parents, stepparents, or cohabitating couples—are more likely to be poor, more likely to have behavioral or psychological problems, more likely to be abused, and less likely to graduate from high school.11 Children are a natural outcome of sex, at least part of the time. That’s true even if you try to prevent it using birth control, since no form of contraception is 100 percent effective.12 If you have sex outside of marriage, you are running the risk of having a child outside of marriage, which can be hard for you and for the innocent child. It’s important to note that all of these statistically negative outcomes for children are still far preferable to their death, which is why abortion is not the answer to pregnancy outside of marriage (or inside marriage). But many people decide that abortion is the answer when faced with those circumstances, and the tragedy of having tens of millions of children killed before birth is directly related to the modern prevalence of sex outside of marriage. It’s sick that we’ve twisted something as beautiful and wonderful as pregnancy, where new life is created, and turned it into a negative consequence to be avoided (or “terminated” if we can’t avoid it). But that’s what happens when we go against God’s design. There are consequences, for ourselves and for the people we love. “No strings attached”? There are always strings. So many strings. But let me clearly say this: I’ve been very honest about my own poor choices, and I can say from my own experience that God loves you no matter what choices you’ve made. He is not mad at you. He desires a relationship with you. You do not need to be overwhelmed with shame. You need to receive his grace and forgiveness.

Every time you feel anxious, sad or afraid, imagine yourself as a child. How would you comfort that child? By ignoring, judging, criticizing for screaming at it like your father did, or by making it feel safe, giving it consolation, and unconditional affection? Re-parenting yourself includes taking a step back from how you were raised, taking on and reversing the role of your dysfunctional father and giving yourself everything you needed from him, be it acceptance, love or kindness. This will include becoming visible to yourself, and treating yourself the way you wanted to be treated. This will not only make you feel safer in your own skin, but it will allow you to accept yourself the way you are, without imposing self-criticism and unrealistic expectations on yourself.

I married Chris because he was the father of my child, and I wanted to make it work. I did love him,” I add. “And I’ll always love Jenny too. But you’re the first and only person in this world I’ve ever loved without some reasoning or justification behind it. I just love you because I can’t help it, and it feels good to love you. The idea of getting to raise Elijah with you makes me happy. And I know before we made love for the first time, I told you I’d regret it, but I’ve never been more wrong. I didn’t regret it that night, and I don’t regret it now. I’m confident that I’ll never spend a single second of my life regretting you.

I bite down on my lip, preventing hurtful words escaping. Losing a parent is completely different to losing a child but I don’t want to dismiss Adrian’s feelings. I know that after my father died my grief scraped my skin red raw and I felt like I was exposed to the world and without protection. But as the months passed that faded and I was able to remember the wonderful lessons he taught me and the compassion he’d always shown me. He went too soon but he’d lived a life where he’d had children and grandchildren, found time for retirement and travel. He helped raise me and sent me out into the world so I could live my own life, but always know he was there for me. But this, this grief is different. My body is changed. I listen to my breath going in and out and it doesn’t sound the same, it doesn’t feel the same. I don’t remember the woman I was before Mia’s screams and I don’t recognise the woman I see in the mirror now. My life will be forever divided into two distinct parts. My heart aches and my soul aches but I don’t know how to explain this to Adrian, who has never had children of his own.

The entire scene served as a reminder that the city was, at all times, on the verge of implosion. That we build endlessly without much foresight. That New York was bursting at the seams with money, but everything was done on the cheap. That it was the worst and best place to raise children. That the dangling construction worker who bore an uncanny resemblance to my father probably wasn’t part of a union and probably wasn’t from this country and probably had a child who would one day grow up to be middle class and queer and wary of doctors and playgrounds and any place where intentions might be suspect and that, despite his disposable income, he’d never truly enjoy his luxuries because even on planes he’d fear being trapped and he’d also fear the antiterrorism vigilantes that his distress and skin color might inspirit, and that no matter how much the experiences of father and son diverged, they would always be united by their outsider status.

The Son of a vacuum Among the tall trees he sat lost, broken, alone again, among a number of illegal immigrants, he raised his head to him without fear, as nothing in this world is worth attention. -He said: I am not a hero; I am nothing but a child looking for Eid. The Turkmen of Iraq, are the descendants of Turkish immigrants to Mesopotamia through successive eras of history. Before and after the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, countries crossed from here, and empires that were born and disappeared, and still, preserve their Turkish identity. Although, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the division of the Arab world, they now live in one of its countries. Kirkuk, one of the heavens of God on earth, is one of the northern governorates of Iraq in which they live. The Kurdish race is shared with them, a race out of many in Iraq. Two children of two different ethnicities, playing in a village square in Kirkuk province when the news came from Baghdad, of a new military coup. Without delay, Saddam Hussein took over the reins of power, and faster than that, Iraq was plunged into successive wars that began in 1980 with its neighbor Iran, a war that lasted eight years. Iraq barely rested for two years, and in the third, a new war in Kuwait, which did not end in the best condition as the leader had hoped, as he was expelled from it after the establishment of an international coalition to liberate it, led by the United States of America. Iraq entered a new phase of suffering, a siege that lasted more than ten years, and ended up with the removal of Saddam Hussein from his power followed by the US occupation of it in 2003. As the father goes, he returns from this road, there is no way back but from it. As the date approaches, the son stands on the back of that hill waiting for him to return. From far away he waved a longing, with a bag of dreams in his hands, a bag of candy in his pocket, and a poem of longing by a Turkmen poet who absorb Arabic, whose words danced on his lips, in his heart. -When will you come back, dad? -On the Eid, wait for me on the hill, you will see me coming from the road, waving, carrying your gifts. The father bid his son farewell to the Arab Shiite city of Basra, on the border with Iran, after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, as the homeland is calling its men, or perhaps the leader is calling his subjects. In Iraq, as in many countries of the Arab world, the homeland is the leader, and the leader is the homeland. Months passed, the child eagerly anticipating the coming of the feast, but the father hurried to return without an appointment, loaded on the shoulders, the passion reached its extent in the martyr’s chest, with a sheet of paper in his pocket on which he wrote: Every morning takes me nostalgic for you, to the jasmine flower, oh, melody in the heart, oh balm I sip every while, To you, I extend a hand and a fire that ignites in the soul a buried love, night shakes me with tears in my eyes, my longing for you has shaped me into dreams, stretching footsteps to the left and to the right, gleam, calling out for me, you scream, waking me up to the glimpse of the light of life in your face, a thousand sparkles, in your eyes, a meaning of survival, a smile, and a glace, Eid comes to you as a companion, without, life yet has no trace, for roses, necklaces of love, so that you amaze. -Where is Ruslan? On the morning of the feast day, at the door of his house, the kids asked his mother, -with tears in her eyes: He went to meet his father. A moment of silence fell over the children, -Raman, with a little gut: Aunt, do you mean he went to the cemetery? -Mother: He went to meet him at those hills.

Nietzsche's 'On the Genealogy of Morality' and especially its third essay 'What do ascetic ideals mean' is to my mind, not only an abstract discussion of an issue but also a memoir, a description of his family's home ambiance and pedagogical practices. In one section, describing the defeatist, self-righteous outlook on life, Nietzsche has the word 'poison' appear four times. Going into details of glances and sighs typical locutions, makes the reader almost visualize Nietzsche's windowed mother and unmarried aunts, economically dependent on the goodwill of his grandmother, using their weakness to tyrannize the child, trying to make him a well-behaved, disciplined, adult-like boy — 'the little pastor', as he was called by his school friends. 'They wander around among us like personifications of reproach, like warnings to us — as if health, success, strength, pride, and a feeling of power were already inherently depraved things, for which people must atone some day, atone bitterly. How they thirst to be hangmen! Among them there are plenty of people disguised as judges seeking revenge. They always have the word 'Justice' in their mouths, like poisonous saliva, with their mouths always pursed, always ready to spit at anything which does not look discontented and goes on its way in good spirits. [ . . .] The sick woman, in particular: no one outdoes her in refined ways to rule others, to exert pressure, to tyrannize.' The mother-poison connection is also supported by a passage, mentioned before in trying to solve Nietzsche's riddle 'as my own father I am already dead, as my own mother I still live and grow old'. In it, he described the horrible treatment he received from his sister and mother, who were described as canaille (rabble), hellish machine and a poisonous viper. What is the nature of poisoning? It consists of exposing a victim, imperceptibly, to a harmful material, sometimes camouflaged as beneficial (when mixed with food or drink), without the possibility of resisting or avoiding it, resulting in diminished strength, health, and energy, or even death. In fact, the psychologist Alice Miller used the term 'poisonous pedagogy' to describe emotionally damaging child-raising practices, intended to manipulate the character of children though force, deception, and hypocrisy. Nietzsche was sensitized to such poison in his childhood and could smell it anytime he felt pressure to conform, or experienced disrespect for his separateness and individuality.

Separation haunts the affected long after the actual incident. It is a perpetual act of violation. You know that the missing are there, just a few hours away, but you cannot see them or write to them or call them. It could be your mother trapped on the other side of the border. It could be your lover whom you will long for the rest of your life. It could be your child whom you cannot get to, although he calls out your name and cries himself to sleep every night. From Seoul, Pyongyang looms like a shadow, about 120 miles away, so close but impossible to touch. Decades of such longing sicken a nation. The loss is remembered, and remembered, like an illness, a heartbreak from which there is no healing, and you are left to wonder what happened to the life you were supposed to have together. For those of us raised by mothers and fathers who experienced such trauma firsthand, it is impossible not to continue this remembering.

Most expectations of children are unrealistic and ridiculous. Children are just learning how to ‘be’ in this world. To expect them to know what to do, or to expect them do things in a specific way, is a type of insane cruelty inflicted upon the child. Permit children to make mistakes and to explore life without criticism.

When blue-collar, white workers in middle America look at Donald Trump in his fill-fitting suit and baseball cap, with a physical image that is perhaps more like their own, they see a possibility that they could be him. Aside from his skin colour, Barack Obama, with his lean physique, good looks and charisma, hanging out with rock stars and movie stars, his life and what he stands for seems at a far remove. Except the reality is that he was raised without his father, cared for by his grandparents and moved around a lot as a child, meaning he has potentially much more in common with the Appalachian voters than Donald Trump. He lived and achieved the American Dream in arguably a more fundamental way than Trump did.

however, the situation is reversed: a child can only achieve true happiness when she has successfully secured the happiness of her parents. And this has always been my ma’s position as a parent. It was also her position when she was a child. Ma’s parents weren’t particularly responsible or loving. They compromised her repeatedly. They were neglectful and unsupportive. And worse still, they showed no remorse. By Western standards, it would have been well within Ma’s rights to turn her back on her parents. To forsake them and not forgive. To abandon them without regret. But while Ma survived her ordeal and became stronger for it, finding her squawking chicken voice because of it, she continued to observe the principles of Filial Piety. She never spoke ill of her parents outside the home. She continued to play the part of dutiful first daughter. She continued to look after her five brothers and sisters without complaint. She handed over a majority of her earnings to her parents without resentment. When she married my father, she kneeled humbly before the village, in the presence of her ancestors, to thank her parents for raising her. And she kept bailing them out of trouble, over and over and over again, often at her own expense.

Before she could speak again, he asked, “Is that my cloak?” “Yes.” She held it out to him, but he didn’t take it. “Why did you bring it back? I realize it is worn, but—” “No.” She almost gasped the word, and when she reached out to touch his chest, her hand brushed hardness. She snatched her hand back. “It isn’t that, sir. You were most generous to allow me to borrow it.” “It was a gift. Yours to keep.” His heartfelt statement shook her down to her boots. “I thank you. It kept me warm. I…it was on my bed and kept me comfortable during this last cold snap.” “Then why did you bring it back?” he asked, his voice gentle. “My parents insisted I return it.” His lips tightened, and muscles in his jaw worked. He turned away and stared out the window. “I see. Though I’m not surprised.” “I’m sorry, sir. I did not mean to offend.” “Offend?” Once more he turned towards her, and his hand came up. She flinched and drew back. He frowned, but his voice was soft. “Did you think I was going to hit you?” He clasped her shoulders and leaned in close. “Listen to me. I’d never raise a hand to you. I don’t hurt women or children. I’ve never beaten a woman or child, nor will I suffer anyone to do so.” Realizing that she trembled from head to toe, Adrenia closed her eyes and took a shivering breath. Her muscles, which had locked tight, eased. “Goddess.” He rubbed her shoulders. “I was only reaching to do this.” He lifted his left hand slowly and touched her uneven hairline. “Who did this to you, Adrenia?” When she wouldn’t answer, he continued. “Were your parents angry about this cloak?” His hand brushed over her hair, then her cheek in a touch that made her want to melt like a kitten under a caress. “They say it isn’t appropriate for an unmarried woman to take a gift from a soldier.” His eyebrows went up. “Even an officer?” “Not any man.” He sniffed. “It’s as I told your father. No daughter of mine, no woman who belonged to me would go without protection from the elements.

What did you learn, Little Father?” Cheobawn asked, catching her breath. The boy scowled at her. “It was not a fair fight. Your magic was stronger than mine.” Cheobawn snorted and jabbed him in the chest with the end of one of her sticks. The boy flinched. “Try again. You lost before you even raised your sticks. Do you know why?” she asked. The boy stared at her sullenly. “Because you forgot that without this black bead in my omeh, I am a Little Mother just like any other Little Mother, flesh and bone, just as you are. Fight the man, not the illusion.

Do you think he’s married, Gideon?” Trembling, she took a long drink from the jug before handing it back. “No. Even if he didn’t love you, which he does, he’s young. Seneca don’t marry young.” He stared into the fire, looking solemn. Livy lifted her hand for the pipe, and he passed it without a word. “How do you know he loves me?” It was strange how easily she could ask that question. Up to now, just using the word love had made her feel as if she’d gone naked to church. It was probably the darkness that made her bold. “I know my brother. He never stays here for more than a month. He’s always afraid I’ll ask him to help me with the farming. Something had to be keeping him. I never thought it might be you.” Livy stared into the fire a long while. He passed her the jug. “I blame myself,” he said. “For what?” “For everything. All of it. For you and Rising Hawk, for this,” he pointed to his eye patch. “For…Polly. I shouldn’t have beaten Eph. That’s what started the trouble. I wasn’t raised to it, and it felt wrong from start to finish. When it comes to figuring the right path, I’m a blind bear in the woods. Sometimes I think being educated by Father Clairemont was a curse. When all I knew was the Seneca way, I never had to make so many decisions. Now, looking at both sides of everything has got to be a habit, and it slows me down. The only good that came of it was Polly.” He took the jug from her hand and gulped. “Never, never, never do anything that goes against your gut, Deliverance.” “That doesn’t work. If I’d gone with inclination, I wouldn’t have stepped into that canoe. It was my head made me do it, to spite you.” She lifted her hand for a drink, but he shook his head. “You’ve had enough, child. You’re getting philosophical.” “T’aint fair. You’re just mad ’cause I’m right. When I first met you, I thought you were the lowest creature I ever saw, and I was sure Rising Hawk was evil incarnate. That was trained into me, but it felt like gut, and it turned out to be wrong.” “You were scared of everything then.” “Yes, I was,” she said, taking a deep draw on the pipe. “Only one thing scares me now.” “What’s that?” “That I’m crazy and will never get these thoughts of Rising Hawk out of my head.

All these years, he convinced himself of Harry’s arrogance, of his resemblance to James and not Lily, of flaws that Harry did and did not have, because he couldn’t endure the guilt of what he had taken from this child. Lily’s baby showed up at Hogwarts ten years later, abused and half-starved, prone to headaches, constantly aware that the mass murderer who attacked him would return to finish the job. Snape had been terrified to let himself feel the life he had really given Harry. Better to believe that Harry didn’t suffer. That Potter was so insulated by his arrogance, he could barely feel pain at all. That criticism would simply bounce off him without effect. The ordinary things in Lily’s letter, the garish bad taste of a godfather’s room, the quiet birthday teas . . .  these are the things that Snape took from Harry. By tearing the photo, he recreated what he had done to Harry’s family when he asked Voldemort for the mother’s life but not the father’s or child’s. There was no magic to this act, but it raised emotion and cast a spell nonetheless: a mundane spell for remorse. Snape showed Harry through the memory that he understood what he had done. This memory is an apology.

mediocre, arrogant as his father, a determined rule-breaker, delighted to find himself famous, attention-seeking and impertinent —” “You see what you expect to see, Severus,” said Dumbledore, without raising his eyes from a copy of Transfiguration Today. “Other teachers report that the boy is modest, likable, and reasonably talented. Personally, I find him an engaging child.

Most of the time we cannot help that child without getting ourselves messy too. Connecting ourselves to the vulnerable, the oppressed, the damaged and the suffering will connect us with their pain and trouble. Look at Jesus—he went to the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the outcasts, and it raised serious questions about his reputation. It raised questions about his theology! It should also force us to ask serious questions about his Father, whose truth and love his Son embodies. But Jesus remained unstained by taking to himself our chaos and sin. Paradoxically, his blood cleanses us.