What does the word family means to you

Family is one of Be Strong Families core values, beginning with respect for and appreciation of others no matter how old, how young, where they come from, what they’ve experienced, where they are, how capable they are, how healthy they are, who they love. It extends to individual’s choices of who they call family – what intentional, meaningful relationships they form. Our value of family extends to community and to sisterhood and brotherhood. Although we are united by this value, family means something different to each of us. Hear from our Board of Directors what family means to them:

“My family is and has been supportive in helping me raise my children. They represent the foundation of who I have become in life. It was my aunt and uncle who drove me around looking at colleges as a high school student and encouraging me for higher education. My grandparents financed my college education. My family has always been there for me, in good times and not so good times. If it wasn’t for my mother, I am not sure where I would be today. Since I got divorced 12 years ago, my mother has helped me financially to stay in my home and meet the needs of my growing kids.”

— Nina Aliprandi (Board Chair), Director of Program Services, Maryville Academy

“Family for me represents the foundation of self, and a unity of acceptance, unconditional sacrifices, joy, support and love that is built on a continuum of resilience, and journey in humility from the past, current and future generations.”

— Sandy Baba, Ph.D., Education Researcher

“I feel family goes beyond bloodlines, last names or obligations. To me, the word ‘family’ includes all the people in our lives who commit to love and support us unconditionally. It is not a passive birthright but a choice, a discipline of kindness that helps us thrive both as individuals and as a society.”

— Fernando Barcelona, President / Creative Director, Barcelona and Friends

“Holding on as one

Roots rich with stories of life

Ancestrally linked”

— Denise Boston, Ph.D., Dean of Diversity & Inclusion, California Institute of Integral Studies

“Family, broadly and inclusively defined, is the foundation for individual and community health, well-being and prosperity.  Let’s join together to strengthen families, nurture positive relationships, and promote resilience and hope.”

— Anne Douglass, Ph.D., Founding Executive Director, Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation and Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts

 “For me family is so much more than just the people I am related to, my family also consists of a supportive and caring group of friends who I can laugh and cry with. Without the strength of community, I feel that I would not have as much hope to be the parent and person that I strive to be.”

— Kassia Eide (Board Secretary), SPARK Family Engagement Coordinator, Fox Valley United Way

“I look at family as those who care about you the most and want to see you grow and flourish. Helpfulness, respect, health, integrity and cooperation are my core values; my family understands my values and I understand their values. Through understanding of each other’s values, we arrive at a mutual respect and support. People with open hearts and a willingness to accept you for the human that you are. Even when things go wrong and crisis faces you, you can always depend on family. Family brings you back to your values and helps you make good decisions.”

— Kenneth Krantz, CFP® APMA®, Financial Advisor, Grezlik, Krantz, and Associates Ameriprise Financial

 “To me a family is whoever I can depend on for support, to laugh with, to play with, and to share the challenges and rewards of life with.”

— Beth Lakier, Chief Operating Officer, Chicago Commons

“Family means having someone to love you unconditionally in spite of you and your shortcomings. Family is loving and supporting one another even when it’s not easy to do so. It’s being the best person you could be so that you may inspire your love ones. Family doesn’t see color, race, creed not culture it sees heart. Family isn’t always about being connected biologically, because understands that other things and influences bind us. Family is unrelenting, it’s secure and reliable. Family isn’t just important, it’s what is most important!”

— Marvin Lazenbury, MHS, Associated Director of Housing, Bucks & Montgomery County Valley Youth House

 “I used to tell this to my kids when they were younger, ‘Our family is like Noah’s ark. The outside world may sometimes feel chaotic or harsh or overwhelming, like a flood. In our family, we want to create an ark for each other — where we’re safe and protected and feel a sense of belonging, loved, cared about, taken care of and protected.’ They got it and that’s the world our family is.”

— Naomi Mark, LCSW, Director of Educational Programs for the Office of Workforce Development at NYC’s Department of Social Services

 “My love for my family, my desire for them to be proud of me and my decisions, is my life’s compass. I hope to advance the organization’s mission through my time and judgment. I consider serving on this board as something of a civic duty, in addition to a challenging and enjoyable experience.”

— Scott Reinglass, JD (Board Treasurer), Assistant Managing Attorney, Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.

 “Family always feels nearby. The closeness is never determined by distance or time. Frequent gatherings develop into mutual support. And occasional visits enrich lives with gratitude. Family is comfort; it is home. What is most important: I refuse to limit family to a group or place. I am passionate about strengthen all communities. I believe, the foundation is respect and commitment and creating cherished moments.”

— Antoinette Rice-White, Community Parent Leader, Foster Parent, and Child Care Provider

 “Building strong families is a self-preservation strategy for any rational and sane society. An enlightened society is one which supports all of its members in reaching their full potential as human beings. I believe we can become true architects of our destinies rather than mere captives of our fate, of our past. This liberating model allows for true freedom as each segment of society takes responsibility for itself and for our extended human family. It is a strengths-based and wellness model which leads to evolutionary growth, resilience, and development towards the higher reaches of human nature. It is a vision of hope, based on the most powerful force in all of nature: love.”

— Carl Totton, Psy.D., Professor of Psychology, Phillips Graduate University

 “We are family.»

— Katthe Wolf, MA (President), Founding Partner, and CEO of Be Strong Families

Family. It’s not just any other word lost in the pages of a vast dictionary. ‘Family’ is an emotion. Just the mere mention of this word can invoke the most innate feelings of love and belonging in you. Love and belonging is a true family definition. Everyone, even the most solitary soul needs someone they can call a family because family is the one humane aspect that makes a house a home.  And that’s why we must know the true meaning of family.

A family doesn’t necessarily mean your parents, your siblings or your immediate blood relatives. Family can mean your best friends, your classmates, your teachers, your pet, or even that one person you always wave to at your local coffee shop.

In fact, a family can mean anyone who gives you that comforting feeling of familiarity. Family is the group of people who you know accepts you for you. You feel comfortable, safe, special, that you matter and that your voice matters. Family is that which can make you happy as soon as you see them. They are the ones who stand by you through thick and thin. They are your entire support system. Moreover, keep you going forward in life.

Family Definition – How Do You Define Your Family?

To be a part of a family is a beautiful phenomenon. It gives us a sense of belonging and love we all crave. But your family isn’t always limited to just your parents, grandparents or siblings. Your family can also be your closest friends, your teachers or your mentors -your chosen family. The true definition of family lies not in blood relations, but it is measured in the amount of love and respect people hold for each other.

The definition of a true family is just this. A group of people who have each other’s back and are willing to go to the ends of the earth to bring a smile to the others’ face. Call it a true family or a real family—the true family definition is the sense of loyalty, selflessness, love, and genuine care and concern for others.

Strengthen Your Ties

It is difficult to find people who want the best for you without any ulterior motives. However, once you do, make sure you fight for them to stay no matter what. There will be hurdles along the way, and huge fights where your relationship may seem too fragile to hold on to. But remember this, overcoming these hurdles together will only strengthen your ties. After all, at the end of the day, the true meaning and definition of family lies in how much you care for one another.

Sometimes your chosen family, vis-a-vis your friends, co-workers, mentors, or teachers may seem more helpful in rising above yourself but never forget your family too. After all, they have known you your entire life and have loved and cared for you since the very beginning, no matter what. 

So go out there into the real world and find your chosen family. Those who will stand by you no matter what, and will always support you no matter what. But make sure you never forget where you came from because that is where you will always truly belong.

The Importance Of A Family

When we talk about the basic necessities required to sustain life, we focus mainly on food, clothing, and shelter. However, we forget to talk about human interaction. Believe it or not, all human beings require some sort of human association. Without it, we cannot survive. We slip into extreme depression or resort to suicide as a cure to the loneliness we feel due to the lack of this human feeling. Therefore, we require exposure to our own species. Man cannot survive in a solitary unit.

Family is your primary exposure to the same species as you. It is the most basic level of human recognition. A child begins to develop a sense of self-concept by comparing himself to his family. Therefore, a family is essential for the very building of your personality. Family teaches you your first lessons in everything, be it responsibility, forgiveness, letting go of petty fights or caring about others. One cannot stress the importance of having a family anymore. And this is the true meaning of family.

Family Bond Matters

Man is a social animal. Ever since the beginning of time, man has required an association with emotional make-up designed similarly to their own. Basically, we all have an innate need to connect with our own species. Family is one of the major factors that fulfill this necessity.

The need for love and validation is literally a human necessity. Family is that one body that will willingly fulfil those needs. A family with an unbreakable bond can be challenged but never severed. No matter how bad the times are, your true family will be within a mere arm’s reach. They’ll stand ready to help you fight your battles and guide you on the long path of life. After all, a family is what helps a person make their life worth living, and we should value the true meaning of family. For many people, the best approach to life when it comes to the importance of family is a family approach or being family-oriented. So what is family oriented meaning? 

Family Oriented Meaning

A family-oriented person thinks profoundly about each family member and cares for them; besides ensuring that his family holds importance in his life, they make them feel seen and heard and accept them for who they are. In other words, family-oriented means putting your family first. In a family-oriented system, you value your family’s feelings, decisions, and, most importantly, thoughts. Always appreciate your bond with them and put them first on your priority list. Moreover, a family-oriented approach is important for personal well-being. It helps to grow professionally, spiritually, physically, and emotionally. So when you make a decision, you ensure that you made your decision while considering your parents’ and families’ feelings. A family-oriented system teaches respect and cares toward family members; it provides support in difficult times. Again, it is a positive trait that enhances personal beliefs and morals.

What Does It Mean To Be “Family-Oriented” In Today’s World?

The traditional concept of family-oriented work has evolved as both men and women work and devote time to their families. The family-oriented concept was different a few decades ago than it is now. Women at the time had strong family ties and preferred not to work, stay at home, looking after all household chores; their primary objective was to take care of their family. In contrast, family-oriented men worked to support their families. However, with time, the family-oriented concept has changed; now, both men and women work to support their families, sharing the load equally. Today’s men have surpassed the socially perceived meaning of family-oriented; they work, look after their kids when needed, and treat their partners equally. Women are balancing both home and work, maintaining their work-life balance, and proving that their professional life will not affect their values towards the family. 

Are You Family-Oriented? What Does It Mean To Be Family-Oriented To You?

The family-oriented concept may vary depending on a person’s values, ideas, and way of thinking. A family-oriented person places their family and close relationships first and foremost. They strongly rely on the family to make decisions, and they prioritize their family’s needs over their own. Furthermore, these people emphasize family values and morals more than anything else. In my opinion, it’s good to be family-oriented. Prioritizing your family first is nothing to be ashamed of, so always prioritize your family. For this reason, always consider ways to become more family-oriented. If your family has grown estranged from you, express your love and appreciation to them before it’s too late.

How To Build A Strong Relationship Within Your Family

Every relationship blossoms on the basis of trust. If your child begins to trust you fully and completely at an early stage, the odds are, they’ll still be that connected to you in their teenage stage.

Build Trust

Getting someone as pure as a little child to trust you is easy. What makes it hard is to maintain that trust as they grow up. That means their secrets should remain secrets, no matter how silly they may seem. That means you should be able to make time to hear them out, no matter how bad the work is. This also means being able to trust your child to tell the truth, no matter how fishy things may seem.

Trust is like a spider’s web. You invest all your time and effort trying to build it up, and one small mistake may ruin it all. Trust is fragile and complicated and when you try to build it up again, it won’t ever be the same. Something as delicate and exquisite as trust must be protected and treasured. Apart from this, there are certain things you should do as parents in order to create smooth compatibility within your family. All you need to do to set the gears going is to facilitate contact among the different members of your family.

Spend Time

Sit together and plan to spend quality time with your family; organize family get-togethers, family dinners, karaoke nights, and family game nights where you all sit and sing together or play a board game and whatnot. This will help the family get to know each other better.

You can also have daily talk sessions where you all leave everything aside and just talk to each other about any random thing for at least 15 minutes. This will help you think of the people in your family as individual people and not just members of a family. For example, kids think of their mothers only as mothers and they often fail to recognize that their mother is a separate entity, who has certain likes, dislikes, opinions, or problems. It helps family members to disengage from their own personal bubbles and step into others’ shoes.

How Does A Family Affect Teenagers?

Most teenagers stop feeling this sense of familiarity with their parents once they start growing up. They lose that confidence and trust that they once had in their parents and begin to search for a family amongst their peers. While this is healthy, “normal”, one might say, it does play a major role in a teenager’s life. Making friends that seem as close as a family is a great thing, but not when you begin to push away people who truly care about you.

All of us experienced that one stage in life, where your own family embarrassed or irritated you. Most of these experiences are direct results of parents attempting to connect with their children. While they mean well, the method they use to make this connection can often result in uncomfortable situations for teenagers.

Parents try to adhere to teenage trends thinking that by doing so, their children will be more receptive to their attention. Parents should try to dress, talk and behave in such a way that give a sense of belonging and understanding to the children. In an attempt to befriend their children, parents lose out on their primary goal: preparing their children for the tough future they have to face.

However, this usually has negative consequences, wherein children start to think of their parents as a source of embarrassment, rather than someone they look up to.

A strong connection can be maintained among parents and their children if there is an undisputed understanding within them. Parents and children can be the best of friends if they trust and understand each other, it should be the parents’ duty to rebuke as well as reform.

Also Read: For every single person in the world, a family is everything!. Celebrate your family love with these family quotes.

Throughout the month of December, Travelance celebrated the second anniversary of the Super Visa program. We invited you to share your Super Visa stories and what family means to you by visiting our website www.travelance.ca. We’d like to share some of the thoughts and stories you submitted.
This is the third blog post of a three part series.
Family – there is something special we feel when we are with them. We feel something even stronger when we are without them – when we long for them. When we hear the word family, most of us think about happy memories or remember the warm and comforting sights, sounds and smells that made our house a home. Perhaps we reminisce about the laughter and tears we’ve shared with our families over the years. For those of us who live far away from our families our hearts long for a warm embrace, a home cooked meal or simply to be in their presence.

Families provide guidance and love. They provide emotional support, care and encouragement. They take care of our well-being, add balance to our lives and ground us. ~ Lindsay, Ontario
Family is my support, my centre, my faith. ~ Madhuri, British Columbia
Family means joy. It gives you happiness whenever you hear about your family. It fills your heart with gladness whenever you hear stories from your family. And because of that, you are able to sustain the bond that you have, despite the distance that you have in between. ~ Elena, Ontario
Family means strength, because no matter what you and your family go through, you know that you will be able to surpass all, as long as you work together in one single goal. The success of one’s family is not about money or wealth. It is about the tight bond and relationship that you have with one another, making you all strong enough to face all challenges in life. ~Antonio, Alberta

Your Stories

For many of us the holidays are synonymous with family. While a growing number of families keep in touch online through chat services such as Skype using a webcam, human contact and physical presence cannot be replicated.
Diwata shares her story.
I want to share my personal story about my family. This Christmas, while I am excitedly wrapping gifts, I can’t help but think of my family back home, who are many miles away.
I was raised in Asia, but when I got married, my husband and I decided to migrate to Canada. It has been 15 years already, but I can still say that sometimes, I miss spending Christmas back home, with my parents and siblings. Because now, I only get to see them on my laptop’s webcam, and you can bet that tears fill my eyes whenever I see them. But those tears are not just sadness…it is longing for their embrace and the warm atmosphere back home. How I wish I could bring them to Canada so that we could be together again and celebrate Christmas Eve while drinking a nice glass of wine, and feasting on the delicious meals that I have prepared.
Family for me means everything. If I can bring them all in one place, that will really make me happy and complete. It is my wish this coming Christmas. I really hope that I can make this wish come true, so that we can all be together again, happily celebrating Christmas Eve, just like what I have been dreaming.
Raj shares a similar story.
I have to say the hardest thing for me was to make the decision to leave my family behind and move to Canada. I knew this move would help me to provide a better life for my loved ones. After careful consideration, I sought their advice and approval. With their support I decided to take my chances.
During the holidays, it’s the hardest. We are a big family, and every Diwali and New Year we would all gather together, eat, give each other presents and talk about our future. Seeing my mother, my father, my grandparents, and my brothers and sisters all together, laughing, having a good time – that’s what I miss the most. Of course, during the holidays we use Skype even more, but it’s not the same. I watch my child, nieces and nephews grow up from far. And I can’t wait to see all my dear ones and have them near me again.
But the good news is that I will be doing this soon, and I can’t wait for this coming year as my mother, father, wife and child will come visit me for the first time since I arrived in Canada four years ago!

About the Canadian Super Visa

As the years pass, we tend to remember the time we spent with loved ones while other experiences in our lives fade to the background. Programs like The Canadian Super Visa have made visiting with parents and grandparents in Canada easier than ever. Set to become a permanent program, the Super Visa offers a flexible option for parents and grandparents to visit their children and grandchildren in Canada. The Super Visa take an average of 8 weeks to process, it is valid for 10 years and visa holders can stay in Canada for up to 2 years at a time with each new re-entry.
For more information on the Canadian Super Visa program please visit: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/visit/supervisa.asp Travelance specializes in emergency medical travel insurance for Visitors to Canada! To find out more about Travelance and our ‘Super Visa’ plans, visit our website: www.travelance.ca.

Defining family can be a tough thing as the word “family” alone is a powerful word that conjures up multiple different meanings and emotions. How does one put into words all that define how they feel when it comes to what family is?  

Oftentimes people will say a family includes a mother, father, and children all living together under one roof. Some might say a family can be anything that involves love.

Webster’s dictionary defines family as “a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household.” This definition is a good starting point when trying to define what family consists of, however there are modern day definitions that redefine what family is today. Yet, do these definitions define what family means to you? What comes to mind when you think of what family means?  

Whether it is a mother and father together, a single mom or dad with kids, or possibly your friends that help to fill the void that your biological family wasn’t able to fulfill, the word family is a powerful word. These are people that surround you with care, concern, and love. These are the people who see you, who understand what you are going through and through it all, they stand by your side loving you through life.

But what if you don’t feel these warm feelings from your biological family or you don’t have that type of connection with your family? Where do you find that connection, love, support?

Many people today are using the phrases, “My close friends are my tribe”, or “They are my kind of people” when describing close relationships that feel like family. Sometimes our family of origin cannot meet the needs we so desire and that’s where our “tribe” comes in. People can often feel more closely understood by a family that they have chosen rather than the one they were born into. That is especially the case if their biological family is dysfunctional or toxic. A lot of times there are various reasons as to why someone would choose to call their friends more like family than their biological family. Reasons such as family dysfunction, abuse, addiction, lack of boundaries, etc.

In an article written by Michelle Blessing on the “Meaning of Family” she states, “Many people consider friends to be as close as or even closer than extended (or immediate) family. People who have lost close family members may create a family unit of friends with similar interests and goals to become replacements or enhancements to a lacking family structure. This type of family unit, while untraditional, can be just as close, if not closer, than a traditional structure. Friends are chosen by an individual; at times, these people may be more special or important than the family a person was born with. In addition, some people who have supportive families also have an extensive network of friends who they consider to be a second family or as additions to their blood or legal relatives.

Family isn’t always being related by blood or even being related at all. Family can be your church, your friends, your close co-workers who have now become dear friends, etc. Also, don’t forget about your relationship with God.  So whether family is with the family you were born into, adopted into, loved into, or you have chosen, the word “family” alone has significant and special meaning. They can evoke feelings of belonging, connectedness, love, respect, and support. As Michelle Blessing states, “Whether made of blood relatives, friends, or pets, or a combination of these, your family can offer you the support you need to thrive.”