If you feel like your family’s collapsing right in front of you, check out these broken family quotes we’ve collected.
Many people say that your family is the one that will be there for you, come what may. For family, it doesn’t matter if you’re at your lowest of lows; they will just stick by you.
However, though this statement is true for some, it’s definitely not all-encompassing. No matter how hard they try to stick together, some families end up broken.
Broken families are rampant all across the globe, and they’re broken for many different reasons. It’s sad and heartbreaking, but should we really dwell on the pain?
After all, some things aren’t worth mending. If your family or any family member is hurting you by sticking together, then you might be better off separated.
People usually just think of the cons of a broken family, but remember that, at times, there are pros, too. Read on to learn more about a broken family; maybe you’ll find some words of encouragement to keep going as well!
And make sure to check out these toxic family quotes and unsupportive family quotes.
Best Broken Family Quotes
1. “Family is supposed to be our safe haven. Very often, it’s the place where we find the deepest heartache.” – Iyanla Vanzant
2. “Sometimes the people closest to you betray you, and your home isn’t a place you can be happy anymore. It’s hard, but it’s true.” – Anonymous
3. “Don’t waste your energy worrying about a family that doesn’t worry about you. It’s their fault if they make the choice to miss out on the beauty of your children and the love your family could share. Focus on those who show you they care through both their words and actions. Those are the people worth your energy.” – Anonymous
4. “There is no such thing as a ‘broken family.’ Family is family and is not determined by marriage certificates, divorce papers, and adoption documents. Families are made in the heart. The only time family becomes null is when those ties in the heart are cut. If you cut those ties, those people are not your family. If you make those ties, those people are your family. And if you hate those ties, those people will still be your family because whatever you hate will always be with you.” – C. JoyBell C.
5. “Families and their problems go on and on, and they aren’t solved; they’re dealt with.” – Roger Ebert
6. “My family doesn’t do happy endings. We do sad endings, or frustrating endings, or no endings at all. We are hardwired to expect the next interruption or disappearance or broken promise.” – Hope Solo
7. “Broken relationships are a source of heavy heartbreak that seem to affect every family.” – Jerry B. Jenkins
8. “Sometimes it’s the ones closest to us who can destroy us the most. Sometimes it’s friends—family. It’s not always a romantic relationship that can leave us with a broken heart.” – Shanora Williams
9. “Breaking up with a friend, boyfriend, or girlfriend is one thing, and there’s a lot of advice out there for doing it, but what about a family break-up?” – Anonymous
10. “I hate the term ‘broken family’ to describe divorces. When my parents divorced, they didn’t ‘break’ the family. They fixed it. Their marriage was what was broken.” – Anonymous
Encouraging Broken Family Quotes to Help You Heal
11. “Letting go hurts, but it’s part of the healing process.” – Anonymous
12. “Breaking up is hard to do, but staying in a toxic relationship is much harder.” – Anonymous
13. “Life is upside down right now, but eventually it will bob back upright, and you’ll be okay.” – Anonymous
14. “Someday, you’ll look back on this and see it as a blessing. Just not today.” – Anonymous
15. “Sometimes, when something breaks, it is better not to mend it.” – Anonymous
16. “It may not be the life you envisioned, but you’ll survive this heartache and grow stronger for it.” – Anonymous
17. “When your old life falls apart, forget picking up the pieces! Create something new.” – Anonymous
18. “Relationships are living things, and some have short lifespans, while others have long ones. Guess this one was a shortie and not a longie.” – Anonymous
19. “Sometimes, you have to accept the fact that certain things will never go back to how they used to be.” – Anonymous
Sad Quotes About a Broken Family
20. “Too many children have suffered. Too many families have been broken. Too many girls have grown up alone. Or not at all. I won’t let them ruin anyone else.” – K.A. Wiggins
21. “Family tragedies had a way of smashing everything apart and then gluing it all back together. The problem was no one ever knew how long the glue would hold.” – Sarah Ockler
22. “Sometimes it makes me sad that I didn’t get to have one family for my entire life.” – Isabel Gillies
23. “Absolutely no one can screw you over quite as well as members of your own family.” – Anonymous
24. “Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
25. “We all come from dysfunctional families, and these days, I guess that’s pretty normal.” – Carnie Wilson
26. “In our family portrait, we look pretty happy. We look pretty normal. Let’s go back to that. In our family portrait, we look pretty happy. Let’s play pretend, act like it goes naturally.” – Anonymous
27. “You can’t teach a son to be loyal if the father is not loyal. The same applies with the mother and her daughter.” – Mercy Pheona
28. “It’s so sad that even people closely related by blood can betray each other.” – Anonymous
Quotes for Everyone Who Suffered From a Broken Family
29. “When you inherit a broken family, you can’t throw it away and get a new one. What you can do is find people and situations that provide for you what your family cannot.” – Iyanla Yanzat
30. “No family is a perfect family. We have to understand each other, accept each other, and move on together.” – Anonymous
31. “I have always been very family-oriented. I came from a dysfunctional, broken family growing up, and it’s probably instilled in me the need and the want to have a strong family and a great foundation. So, I think that is something that I naturally gravitate toward.” – Octavia Spencer
32. “Holding a family together in the wake of a breakup requires tenacity and a lot of love.” – Anonymous
33. “I know every family has its problems, but I admire those that stick together.” – Anonymous
34. “Sometimes, the best families are the ones God builds using unexpected pieces of our hearts.” – Melanie Shankle
35. “It’s very sad when members of the same family do not talk with each other. The children suffer from the adult ego. Cousins miss the wonderful opportunity to be together, and all due to a bruised adult ego. Stop getting offended. Reunite with your family members. One day, your imaginary conflict will all come to an end, with or without you. Don’t wait until it’s too late.” – Anonymous
Short Broken Family Captions
36. “A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.” – Mary Karr
37. “Not a broken family but still a broken home.” – Anonymous
38. “The human race is one big dysfunctional family.” – Robert Barron
39. “Parents kill more dreams than anybody.” – Spike Lee
40. “Family problems kill your happiness.” – Anonymous
41. “A torn family can knit back together with a little love.” – Anonymous
42. “Sadness is having a dysfunctional family.” – Anonymous
43. “It hurts the most when your own family betrays you.” – Anonymous
44. “No one can break my heart like my father did.” – Anonymous
45. “Being family is determined more by behavior than blood.” – Anonymous
Heartbreaking Broken Family Quotes You Can Relate To
46. “Sometimes blood isn’t thicker than water, and family will cross you quicker than strangers.” – Anonymous
47. “Getting a divorce is always horrible because you feel you’ve failed. Everyone hates to give up on a marriage. You think your family’s broken up.” – Jerry Hall
48. “Isn’t it sad when even your own family doesn’t really know who you are?” – Anonymous
49. “Sometimes, I’d rather hang out with my friends than my family because I feel more loved and understood.” – Anonymous
50. “Just because someone is ‘family’ doesn’t mean you have to tolerate lies, chaos, drama, manipulation, and disrespect.” – Anonymous
Deep Broken Family Quotes to Ponder On
51. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy
52. “In a broken nest, there are whole eggs.” – Proverb
53. “Any woodsman can tell you that in a broken and sundered nest, one can hardly find more than a precious few whole eggs. So it is with the family.” – Thomas Jefferson
54. “Even as a little seed, I could see his plan for me. Stranded on welfare, another broken family.” – Tupac Shakur
55. “I watched as my family tree crumbled apart, leaving me as its only branch.” – Anonymous
Broken Family Quotes on Surviving the Pain and Heartache
56. “How many solutions are found to family problems if we take time to reflect? If we think of a husband or wife and we dream about the good qualities that they have? Don’t ever lose the illusion of when you were boyfriend and girlfriend!” – Pope Francis
57. “This is my family. I found it, all on my own. It’s little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good.” – Lilo & Stitch
58. “What makes a family is neither the absence of tragedy nor the ability to hide from misfortune, but the courage to overcome it and, from that broken past, write a new beginning.” – Steve Pemberton
59. “I willingly devoted myself to my children and to my husband. I come from a broken home, and I decided a long time ago that I would put my family ahead of everything.” – Andie MacDowell
60. “I wish that I could move away from my broken family where love ceases to exist, so I don’t turn out like one of them.” – Anonymous
61. “Burdens and opposition will always be there. What is really needed is a clear solid path toward problem resolution and then being mutually encouraged as a family.” – Anonymous
Broken Family Quotes That Zoom in on How It Affects a Child
62. “Deep inside us, we know what every family therapist knows: the problems between the parents become the problems within the children.” – Roger Gould
63. “As your kids grow, they may forget what you said, but won’t forget how you made them feel.” – Kevin Heath
64. “Here’s to the kids who are tired of going through the same family problems over and over again.” – Anonymous
65. “When you’re in a broken family, and your role model is a violent male, boys grow up believing that’s the way they’re supposed to act. And girls think that’s an accepted way men will treat them.” – Jim Costa
66. “I turn to a life of crime ‘cause I came from a broken family.” – Tupac Shakur
67. “One of the problems of our youth is that the family unit is broken up. When we’d sit down to dinner together as a family, we’d learn about each other. We had something people don’t get today.” – Paul Prudhomme
68. “I was always the new kid in school. I’m the kid from a broken family. I’m the kid who had no dad showing up at the father-son stuff. I’m the kid that was using food stamps at the grocery store.” – Dave Mustaine
69. “A child that’s being abused by its parents doesn’t stop loving its parents. It stops loving itself.” – Anonymous
70. “I think my family might actually be happy if I wasn’t here. Or at least, hate each other a little less. I think I’m the reason my family is broken.” – Anonymous
More Broken Family Quotes That Probe Into One’s Problems
71. “Any problem—big or small—within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn’t listening.” – Anonymous
72. “I don’t think a female running a house is a problem—a broken family. It’s perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.” – Toni Morrison
73. “Family problems come in all shapes and sizes. Some are short-lived and easily managed, while others are more chronic and difficult to handle.” – Anonymous
74. “Running away from your family’s problems will not provide solutions. What you really want are solid solutions and a reasonable plan to address family conflict and pain.” – Anonymous
75. “If we’re sitting at dinner and there’s no conversation going on because everybody’s got their head someplace else on their iPhone, that’s a family problem that needs to be solved.” – Ross W. Greene
Do You Know Anyone From a Broken Family?
Our family makes or breaks us. They are our pillar, foundation, and the very thing that shaped us into who we are today.
Because of this, when a family breaks up or separates, we feel lost. We feel all the pain and heartache of having a broken family.
Sometimes, we can fix our problems and glue our families back together. Sadly, more often than not, we are unfixable, and it would just hurt us more to stay in our dysfunctional or toxic family.
So, learn how to cope with the pain and find the courage to move on. Yes, the thought of having a broken family is sad, but it’s much more painful to stay in a relationship that doesn’t work.
Coming from a broken family doesn’t mean you’re broken as an individual, too. You only need to heal and get back up!
Then, when you grow up and build a family of your own, remember what not to do so you don’t end up in a broken family. As you’ve learned from this collection, care, love, and communicate with each other with all your might!