I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on how a family environment can shape emotional expression, often leading to complex coping mechanisms.
Flannery O'Connor's quote illustrates the impact of familial expectations on emotional expression. In her family, expressing irritation was seen as the only acceptable emotion, which can lead to various personal reactions. For her, this duality manifests in physical symptoms like hives, as well as creative expression through literature—a way to process and cope with restricted emotions.
In practice
This quote can be used during a family therapy session to illustrate how family dynamics affect emotional health.
Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.
If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.
Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are
He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery.
You stayed around your children as long as you could, inhaling the ambient gold shavings of their childhood, and at the last minute you tried to see them off into life and hoped that the little piece of time you’d given them was enough to prevent them from one day feeling lonely and afraid and hopeless. You wouldn’t know the outcome for a long time.
If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.
World fertility surveys indicate that anywhere from one third to one half of the babies born in the Third World would not be if their mothers had access to cheap, reliable family planning, had enough personal empowerment to stand up to their husbands and relatives, and could choose their own family size.
Whenever I feel mom-guilt, or I feel pressure to be a better mom - to cook salmon on a bed of quinoa for my kids - I just think to myself, 'I... have... suffered... enough.' And then I feel fine about feeding my toddler a bag of chips for dinner.
It behooves a father to be blameless if he expects his child to be.
My mother never, ever told me about evilness. She only saw the beautiful things... she wanted to protect me from it.
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