Tell Me Something About Family...

This is my sister Andrea and I with our gorgeous cousin Sarah, meeting for a swim in the sea at Greve de la Ville, off the island of Sark in the Channel Islands. We’re all women of the same family line, our fathers were brothers whose parents moved to the Channel Islands when they were in their teens; we three women share a significant proportion of genes. A lineage of so many strong, determined and capable women going back generations. Some of us, certainly in the past more often than not as women, gave up our family name of birth to assume a new name in marriage. I did too. But a name in itself doesn’t carry legacy.

With each generation going back, the web of recorded names becomes more complex – and sadly a few generations ago a number of the women in our web did not have their birth surnames recorded, suns not even their first name. Yet the legacy of those women of old is in remembered stories, in facial features and mannerisms, and is still part of all that makes us strong and capable women. And indeed the mitochondrial energy of our own cells is our inheritance for our female line.

It’s good for me to remember that I belong to such lineage, even after 20 years of marriage, motherhood and challenges of identity as a women in midlife. I can stand strong with all the women, on both branches and twigs of my family tree. Even when I myself feel weak.

My sister and brother and I went through an abusive childhood living in a cult. I know other families in the cult who don’t speak to their siblings now, but I can honestly say I don’t know where I’d be without them both.

We finally left the cult in 1989, when I was 14, my sister was 12 and my brother was 9. We’ve always been incredibly close, but the next few years were so hard (coming out of a cult with no exit counselling or help of any kind, particularly not from our parents) that we became incredibly close. The bond I have with them now, 37 years later, is still really strong, even though we’re scattered around the country.

My sister is my heroine. She suffered a serious spinal injury in 2017 and lives with constant, excruciating pain. Despite this, she’s always there when I need her support and “mothering”. We’ve been each other’s mum all our lives, as our Mum was so damaged by the cult that she couldn’t really be a mother. She died almost a year ago, she we’re all dealing with complex grief. My siblings are the only ones who really get how I’m grieving, because it’s the same for them. I love them both so much. Sibling power!!

For the first 30 years of my life my whole family unit consisted of 4 people. My mother, a half brother and sister as well as myself.
My mother had a difficult childhood and encountered abuse throughout until she left the family home and moved away. Later trauma in her life and being a single mother of 3 children led to her becoming an alcoholic.
This meant me and my siblings were in and out of the care system throughout our childhood. Sometimes together but mostly, separated. We loved each other but were damaged by our experiences during this time.
I became an adult and settled down and started my own family and have 3 marvellous children with a wonderful, loving woman but I wasn’t mature enough to realise what gifts I had been given.
I never knew my father nor even his name and had no interest in attempting to find out until recently. I completed a DNA test through one of the online services and have been on a voyage of discovery ever since. I came across Lemn’s work during this journey, with people who have been in state care and had the opportunity to meet with him and thank him for his inspiration.
My journey has led me to discover my whole family in my 60th year. One which has accepted me with open arms, without reservation only acceptance and love. I am one of 66 grandchildren to my paternal grandparents and although I sometimes wish I had taken this journey earlier I am appreciative of the discovery now. Not just for myself but also for my children and hope that in the future they will reap the benefits of having an extended family. Something I wasn’t able to provide for them before.
My maternal grandparents I have found shunned my mother and want nothing to do with any of her offspring.

My maternal grandfather was born some time in the 1890s. His daughter born in 1939 had me, her third child, in 1979, aged 39.(but I didn’t know this until i found out she’d lied to us as kids, saying she was a year younger than dad in order to conform to expectation, and not the 8 years older she was)
I made her a grandma when she was 59, and this week the prospect of my pan sexual trans child and their non-binary partner beoming parents was raised and felled.
Im not writing about the loss of that potential grandchild, but rather i am experiencing the tangible, vertiginous sensation of the scale of change and progress witnessed within the time span of my mother’s life before she left us a few years ago.

There’s a sinew of influence from my Victorian grandfather’s neglect (and worse) that still connects us and impacts this moment, that requires processing, but wont touch the next in the line of succession.

They will get a sniff of what the the 22nd century will mean for ‘being human’ – and this, for me, is the very definition of the ‘mind-blown’ emoji.

I was adopted at 5 weeks old. My adopted family were wonderful, absolutely no complaints on them. I got a home, a family, a great life, so much love. I was, still am, 100%, part of that family.

But this isn’t about them. All my life I knew I was adopted, it was never hidden: mum told me I was special ‘cos I’d been chosen. So we always wondered about my birth parents, and I knew one day when it felt right I’d go looking for them.

I finally did about 10 years ago. I had a copy of my original birth certificate which gave me a head start. Coincidentally I was now living in the town I’d been born in and used to joke that I could bump into my birth mum in Tesco’s. Then during a chance conversation at the doctor’s it turned out the nurse was my auntie!

My birth mum and I started corresponding, first by letter then by email. Slowly at first – of course I was eager to ask and learn so much but she was understandably more reticent. She’d had me young and been forced to give me up, and of course I can only imagine how hard it must have been to bury the trauma of that for the rest of your life, never speaking of it even to her own family? But we got on well, we chatted, we told each other about our families, our lives. Eventually I summoned the courage to ask about my birth dad. Turns out he was an America soldier stationed here in the 1960s. It hadn’t been anything serious just a fling, at least until I came along! US Army policy shipped him back to Idaho, and she never heard from him again.

With his name I started searching for him. Thankfully Americans seem to put EVERYTHING online, so it proved surprisingly easy – sadly he’d died a couple of years previously, but the obituary page gave me everything I wanted to know about the wife he’d married, the life he’d lived, all the half sisters I had!

Thanks to Facebook I tracked them down, ‘stalked’ their profiles, the photos, curious about their lives. I was nervous to make contact in case my dad had never mentioned me, and who knows I could be lobbing a hand grenade into their precious memories of their father?!

Then one day I clicked like on a picture of him, and within an hour his eldest sister had messaged me politely asking how I knew him?! I was blown! Within an hour we’d called and had a chat, and wow it was so easy: so friendly, funny, cool! Turns out her dad had let slip something about a son many years ago and she’d always suspected there was someone out there somewhere… Which there was – me!

My birth mum died a couple of years ago. I got to meet her just the once which was wonderful. The rest of her family know of me but aren’t interested in getting in touch. Their choice.

I’m in fairly regular contact with my birth dad’s family (there’s a lot of them!). One day I’m sure I’ll head out there to meet them properly.

The photo is from an album which my birth dad had kept: a few photos of him and my birth mum together. They show them having fun and being happy. I like to think I came from a happy place.

So this is my family story. On the whole a good one I think; yes there’s some sadness but also way more happiness, and lots of love to chase away the heartache. Not all adoption stories are as happy as mine. I’ve been lucky, and I’m grateful for that.

When my parents divorced they sold their huge house and bought a smaller house each. My siblings and I spent time in both on a sort of rota system. I loved both houses they had their individual atmosphere and charm and if my brothers annoyed me I could seek the quiet of my room or go to a friends house. My fathers house had a greater nostalgic/family and community element. Firstly his mothers grandfather had been a master builder who built many great buildings in the city. Secondly, whilst noted builder (technically my great, great grandad) did not build the street my dad lived in, he did know the buolder who did, and the original Victorian tiles in the doorway to the houses, a sort of green tile with a yellow flower, were named after my fathers mother. In addition to that, there was a Jewish cemetry at the end of the street and my fathers, fathers parents were burried in there.

My father sold me his house slighly cheaper when I had kids so that his grandkids could have a nice place to grow up in. Sadly some difficult and traumatic life events occured and I was unable to get the support I needed, at the same time my father died after a decade battle with leukemia. I ended up moving to be nearer to family in another city at the time. I relied on advice given to me by bodies been told I needed to trust more. The mortgage manager as my new flat had a small mortgage, told me when I sell the new flat I should see how much my former house is valued at as I was sold the new flat as like for like. I struggled to get employment in new city and struggled to make friends being an unemployed single parent. There were new costs to living in new flat and city that no one had warned me about. I did as best I could to raise my kids in, frankly, extreme poverty. After nearly two decades unemployed I learn my former house, my childhood home, the home my father sold to me so his grandkids could have a nice place to grow up in, is apparently worth about 100k more than the place I was seemingly misguided into. My kids are not stupid, one of my kids hates Hull with every ounce of their soul, I hear the pain in their voice when Hull is mentioned. I cannot descibe the pain of fraud and betrayal from those I trusted at a vulnerable time in my life, how they stole from my kids as much as from me. I miss my dad like you wouldn’t believe yet I also think, thank secular christ he’s not alive to see how we were exploited by selfish pigs, if he had known what happened to my kids and I it would have broken his heart completely. I am not religious or spiritual but how many times I have wishes that my great grandparents ghosts would go haunt the woman who land grabbed my family home, the convayancing solicitors who faiked to act with due dilligence and the estate agents who mismarketed it as a much smaller (2 bedroom rather than 3 plus loft) house thus selling it significantly below market value at a time I was a single mum with very young beautiful toddlers whilst my dad died. It is very difficult coming from a good ethical family to come to terms with the fact that there are some very unethical evil pigs out there passing themselves off as humans.

My mum and I, had always been close, with ups and downs at times, but had such a close bond. We saw each other now and then but spoke everyday. She was my rock and I was her world. She was the most kindest person I have ever known, with such a big heart, full of wisdom and knowledge. She would get talking with strangers on a bus or in the supermarket in which I always found funny, but that is who my mum was, she had an open heart and never judged anyone no matter who they were or where they came from. 11,5 months ago I became a mum myself to my little boy. My mum had been there since day one throughout. 3 days ago she passed away in hospital after an unexpected illness. In her very last days, while she was still awake she held my hand tight, remembered who I was and told me how much she loved me. I knew she was saying “goodbye” to me in her own way. Now I know why my baby boy was sent to me. To keep me going. I love you mum. And miss you so much, more than you could ever imagined.

We helped our adopted son reconnect with his birth family. They met at a carvery car park. They hugged. They starred at each other. They hugged again. They starred at each other. We joined in the hug.
Then, we had a carvery, whilst starring at each other.

My grandmother died 6 weeks after having my mum, her third and last child. The death certificate said malnutrition. Born in the East End in 1937, my mum was eventually brought up by her Victorian great aunt. Aged 3, on her first night there she remembered being told, “We don’t kiss in this house.” It was austere and there was no love or affection. In later life, when dementia started to overtake her, she would stand there wringing her hands and crying, “Nobody wanted me.” She told me that when I was born, her first child, she forced herself to sit me on her lap at 5pm every evening. She admitted it did not feel natural but she knew you were supposed to do it. I thank her from the bottom of my heart for her persistence in acting out affection, something she had never received and that felt alien, for I had no difficulty showing my two children love and affection. Somehow, through sheer determination, she changed the story for the generations that followed.

When I was 15, my Dad (Peter Bleasdale) took me to an Everton game when he was home on leave from working in Nigeria. I asked to get a season ticket. Almost three decades of routines filled with love followed: calling him if we didn’t lose, reading out Teletext match reports of away games, comparing superstitions. When he died of a brain tumour in 2021, he left me those superstitions (lucky sweets, clothes, turnstile, matchday loo, and on…and on), and a footballing family. Over the years, they have saved me programmes, looked out for me when I was a teenager going the game alone, given me blankets when one of my kids was cold, and made me laugh (often despite events on the pitch).

One superstition I developed during our recent relegation fights was giving one of the stewards at Goodison a Wispa Gold. I hadn’t seen him for the whole of this season, until the last game. There he was, on the stairs we now use in our new ground. What are the chances! And his name? Peter.

This is my Great Grandma and Grandad Ester and William Orrett on their Golden Wedding Day May 25th 1949.
William was brought up in Salford Union Workhouse Manchester along with his brother Thomas.
Their Mother Emma Orrett found herself destitute after the death of her husband. She became the children’s senior nurse and remained in the workhouse until her death.
William was taken in by Ester’s family and given a good education, he later married Ester.
It was said to Ester “ tha married tha brother!”
They had a very happy marriage and lived at Dettington Street On “the Height” Salford.
William became a son of temperance and they ran the post Office at Irlam of the Height.
They had two children Jessie and Wilfred.
Great Grandma Ester was a beautiful lady, my memories of her are of cheeky humbug sweets under the blanket, when visiting her at Ladywell Hospital and pushing her fast in the wheelchair.
She lived until the ripe old age of 94 and blessed me with my dear Grandma Jessie who lived until age 99. Jessie’s favourite saying was,
“Say aww” and she always sang “ we come to greet you on the 1st of May” the day of my birth.

I spent a lot of my childhood at my grandma’s house. I got on with her really well. She was from Italy but during ww2 she had both worked with the Italian resistance and also she worked as an interpretor for the British intelligence in Milan. My grandad was a mechanical engineer and when conscripted he was posted in Milan for a while, hence they met.

She was fantastically versatile, she would stand in the shop counting /calculating quietly in Italian and then blurt out the answer in English. Another time she ordered some meat at butchers and when he told her the price (price hikes 1980s) she said a very Yorkshire saying in a very shocked Italian voice “Ow much!” But sort of like, “Owa much” the butcher was blaming the taxman so she said “No I’m not paying those prices send the taxman round to my house, I’ll ava word with him!”

She was a teacher and an owl with an injured wing landed in her garden so she took it in, fed it, helped heal its wing and then took it into school to show the children. As a teenager running on errands with her we often bumped into former students of hers on Holderness road and many of them told me the story of the owl.

When I was 5 and we’d gone round to visit her after she’d returned from a few weeks in Italy, she handed me a bowl of sorbet. It was the first time I’d ever tasted sorbet and it was so delicious I asked where she got it from and she said it was Italian snow, and she had taken empty ice cream boxes on the plane and as they flew over the dolomites she leaned out of the window with the boxes to scoop up the best quality snow from the tops of the dolomites. Of course that was it I wanted to go to Italy, I wanted to go to the dolomites and begged my mum to take me to the dolomites until she told me my grandma had got the sorbet from the grandways supermarket on Holderness Road (East Hull).

Her name was Mary Benson, nee Rovelli. When I was 3 years old I told my parents I wanted to change my middle name (which was Mary) to Granny, after my grandma because I liked her so much I wanted to be named after her. My parents tried to reason with me that my middle name Mary was my granny’s actual name and I was, therefore, actually named after her. I didn’t believe them and pleaded for them to change my middle name to Granny. They phoned my grandma and put me on the phone who told me I was named after her so my next question then was, if I was named after her why couldn’t I go live with her then. I suspect I was as much a character as she was.

My grandma did take me to Italy and the dolomites, every visit was always better and more magical than I imagined. I am 50 now and sorbet will always be Italian snow to me and the best quality sorbet from the very tops of the dolomites.

Many years ago, m sister and I were talking future baby names. She said she really liked double first names that star with Maria, because she likes the nicknames you can form. After some research, she was set on Maria Augusta, since she loved the nickname Magu. It was not such a serious conversation, just sisters having fun, and my sister hadn’t even met her husband yet. But when we told our mother, she immediately got teary eyed and said that was the name of her father’s mom, a grandmother she never got to meet. Nowadays, over 7 years later, my sister is pregnant with our dearest Maria Augusta <3

This is me and my lovely mum.
Both photos taken in our early 20s.
Mum died of cancer when she was 61 and I was 25.
I’m older now than she ever got to be.
I’ve lived my adult life without her.
Two marriages. Three children and a stepchild. Two grandchildren.
All without her guidance and her love and her support, other than in my head.
I know with every fibre of my being that she would be so proud of my family, and my life and who I am.
But I miss her.

My first experience of unconditional love was the first time I heard my sons cry as he was cut out of me. I hadn’t even laid eyes on him & I felt the love surge through me like an adrenaline rush. I’ll never forget the feeling! I spent a lot of time in foster care as a child, never feeling love from anybody that was supposed to care for me, not cared for by my birth family. So when I found out I was pregnant at 17, after the shock subsided I knew I was going to love my baby and protect him. But the surge of love I felt just from hearing his little cry is an experience I will never ever forget. He’s 10 now & nearly as tall as me & saved me in way he will never know.

I grew up in a nuclear family with love, support and security. As a young child and teenager myself and my sister lived through some difficult times when our parents had a health challenges. Looking back, in the background generational trauma was lurking, which undoubtedly had an impact on us as a family but the over riding sense was one of being loved and protected and important to our parents and our wider family, ourcsafety net, our security.
I have been working with children and young people who are in care or are care leavers for 10 years and feel that the system is so broken. The focus seems to be on independence and making kids resilient (a word I loathe). It’s as if the system expects/ wants professionals to ‘fix ‘ kids for our convenience. Make a 16 year old independent so we can feel comfortable about pushing them off a cliff at 18. How many parents parent positively and with love in this way?
We give kids who need MORE – less and then we pathologise them or blame them when they struggle. Shame on us.
I often feel like a cog in a failing system that re-traumatises our most vulnerable children and young people. It is heart breaking. Sometimes it feels like you can predict a childs’ journey years ahead because there is a pattern, it is visible and it is predictable and we watch it happen. It is political and it is societal. Family can be the bedrock, or it can be the crumbling sand that either lays a strong foundation or disintegrates and disappears. It is luck that determines how our lives begin.
I would love the care ststem to focus on providing love, belonging, safety and security until at least 25. Give more, not less in recognition of a childs basic need to belong and be nurtured. That would be my wish for the future for those who have not have the good fortune to be born into a safe and loving family.

My mum and dad knew each other for 81 years. Mary, was 9 the first time she met my dad. Dick was 11 and Mary’s brother John’s best friend. Mum was very shy and used to hide under the table when John and Dick played Monopoly. She slipped money to Dick from her hiding place. She thought he was a funny looking boy.

Ten years later Dick suddenly realised that Mary had become an attractive young woman. As he was leaving John’s house one day, he turned and looked at Mary. He was about to say something when she waved goodbye and shut the door. Dick went home and wrote a letter* to Mary.

That was the beginning of a 71 year romance.

When dad died suddenly at the age of 92, mum didn’t cry. She was in total shock for about a year. It was the first time she’d lived alone, and, even for my strong, capable mum, this was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do.

Five years later, mum left the house she’d lived in for sixty years, and moved 200 miles to a Care Home near me, her only daughter. We’ve always been close, but had never lived near each other as adults. For the past four years mum has lived her best life by the sea, near me, and near my children and grandchildren. Her other children and grandchildren visit regularly. Mum is happy in the care home overlooking the sea, and, at the age of 97, still talks about my dad, her first and only love.

*I now have this letter, it’s so poignant.
Below is mum and dad’s wedding 1949.

Trigger warning for loss of a baby

Unbaby

You tore at me like opening red and white plastic
packaging, and I had no idea you were there. I squeezed
out ribbony elastic shreds whenever I went to pee.

It was too confined a space, you’d lodged somewhere
trapped in a bottleneck of scarring, contraceptive devices
let in infection at the same time as flushing out unwanted yous.

Meanwhile, I took antibiotics for an ovarian cyst
that wasn’t there, and rehydrated, while they thought about
what might cause unexplained explosive diarrhoea

and eventually, barely six and a half stone, torn humble
with pain and leaking clots like an amputee,
I went home to die. I slept on the floor.

There was no bedroom for me. My mother had
moved house, moved on, wanted to demonstrate
that her needs were more important, after all

if I wasn’t delivering the required quota of familial
attention, couldn’t be bothered to come home
before my finals, why should she?

I was glad of the camp bed, although I felt guilty
at taking up my parents’ dining room, and hated
the smell of cigarettes. This was her smoking room.

I continued to bleed.

My mother’s GP had second thoughts and picked up
the batphone before leaving work. A consultant was waiting
outside my parents’ house before I’d got off the bus.

You can either get a taxi, come into hospital now
or leave it ’til tomorrow when you’re dead.
My mother wasn’t home, my father, mystified.

I didn’t tell her about you. It would have made things
worse, the shame would have been a lifelong debt.
But she was kind and helped me buy some kit

– nightie, dressing gown, washbag – she paid
for the taxi too. On the ward I made them promise
not to tell the truth. Ectopic cyst you were, Unbaby,

and nobody the worse.

Family doesn’t always involve a bloodline. This is me with my English Grandma, Annie.

Annie was born in 1920 and through WW2 she raised her two sons while working as a conductor on the trams and in the munitions factories in Sheffield.
My parents arrived in Sheffield in 1960. Annie helped to raise me and my brother while mum and dad worked hard building their Chinese takeaway business. She treated us as her own and our families became an extension of each others. Her son and his wife became our godparents.

A resourceful, funny, fair minded and generous woman. Gran gave me an early lesson about being enough when (as a result of playground teasing) I came home from infant school one day thinking it was ok to ask for an operation on my eyes. She went to give the school what for the next day!

We remember her often and smile in gratitude at the way she shaped us, remembering things she used to say: it’s ok to cry, you’ll pee less!; and as a child if we were being particularly fidgety being asked if we’d got the St Vitus Dance!

No family. I am my own family.Went into care at birth,my brother also. As a young adult my brother took his own life so I am without family or roots. I hate it when askedmabout nextmof kin for official purposes like medical .When going to the Dr. I’m always asked about family history. They know it upsets me yet they still do it. It’s like the story of my life,my identity.

We are three children who grew up mostly in a two bedroom apartment. So every school break and sometimes weekends we would be sent to our maternal grandmother’s home because she had a large garden and a house bigger than ours. One of us would sleep with her and two in the extra bedroom. Grandma, whom we called Emaye/Mother, being old school and in any case a busy businesswoman, was not an overly affectionate person. Sharing her bed, which because she was tall and stout was very wide and high, was one of the ways she made memories and shared her love equally with all of us. For years I didn’t know that the little piece of candy or biscuits I found under the pillow or gave me was something she did for all of us. Sunday evenings were particularly special because we went to bed just in time to listen to a serialized book reading session on Ethiopia Radio called From the World of Books. If we fell asleep before the hour long session ended we would sleep in slightly longer than usual for the early morning repeat. Books then became woven not just with the memory of watching her read books but also with the way she smelled, the sheets of her bed and the way her side of the bed always had to be propped up with extra sponge. She made books feel like home.

Family doesn’t always involve a bloodline. This is me with my English Grandma, Annie.

Annie was born in 1920 and through WW2 she raised her two sons while working as a conductor on the trams and in the munitions factories in Sheffield.
My parents arrived in Sheffield in 1960. Annie helped to raise me and my brother while mum and dad worked hard building their Chinese takeaway business. She treated us as her own and our families became an extension of each others. Her son and his wife became our godparents.

A resourceful, funny, fair minded and generous woman. Gran gave me an early lesson about being enough when (as a result of playground teasing) I came home from infant school one day thinking it was ok to ask for an operation on my eyes. She went to give the school what for the next day!

We remember her often and smile in gratitude at the way she shaped us, remembering things she used to say: it’s ok to cry, you’ll pee less!; and as a child if we were being particularly fidgety being asked if we’d got the St Vitus Dance!

My family is not close in proximity but oh so emotionally closed. Sometimes too close for comfort but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My Auntie Velma makes me feel so special, she makes me feel loved.

I am a grandchild of the Windrush generation. I identify as half Scouse, half Jamaican.
One set of grandparents crossed the Atlantic, one set of great grandparents crossed the Irish sea. I am the result of migration.

If we talk about family, it’s hard to express in just a few words what it can mean to a person. In my case, I’d say that this “concept” often evokes a feeling of immense loneliness, sadness, and frustration. The reason for this lies in the following story, which at first glance might seem like something out of a movie, but the reality isn’t quite that glamorous.

My mum met my Ethiopian dad while she was studying at university. He came to the Czech Republic through a programme for African students, and since he found true love here (along with new experiences and a job), he decided to stay. A few years later, they got married and started a family—they had two daughters, my younger sister and me. Honestly, growing up as the daughter of a foreigner wasn’t always easy. Insults, bullying, loneliness—just because I looked different from everyone else. The situation improved over time, but that didn’t stop me from wondering how I would be accepted in my “second home”, Ethiopia. And here lies the problem: I’m 27 years old and haven’t yet had the chance to visit Ethiopia, get to know my entire extended family, and perhaps find a cure for what could be called an identity crisis. Over the years, my dad has visited his homeland a few times for short stays, but he never took me with him. He has almost no contact with the other members of my Ethiopian family; in fact, I know only a little about them, which makes me really sad. I’ve begged him several times for us to visit them together, but there was always a reason why it couldn’t happen: lack of time, transportation issues, illness, or war.

Is there anything wrong with my longing to get to know my relatives and the country where I partly come from? I could go on and on, but I’ll conclude it with your words: “To bloom is to know your roots”. Hopefully, I’ll achieve that someday…

Maman Duchesse

From times immemorial
I’ve kept away from your image
So I’ve avoided mirrors
Even considered the scalpel
But each scar on my skin is eternal

Since I moved to Faraway
I’ve grown proud
Of some genes we share
And all you’ve done
For others

Hé Maman Duchesse
If you were not my mum
I wouldn’t be your Sauvageonne
You and I would be
Best mates

So many things I’d like to add
If only you could read English
I’m forgetting my mother tongue

When he first climbed onto my lap, placed his weary head against my shoulder, wrapping his tiny legs around my waist, my heart swelled ‘You’re so cute’… moments later the foster carer in me recognised the tightening of his grip, tucking his face into my neck, hugging me with desperation to not let him go. The swelling of my heart stopped and grieved for him. As he fell asleep on my chest I held him tight… and ignored the urge to pee for the 3 hour nap. A child deprived of contact, neglected, unable to talk or make eye contact, and this time the parent wasn’t a stranger. Kinship care.
A few months later he would reach out and hold my hand in both of his, watching TV before bed. I caught a picture for when he’s older.
After 6 years of going backwards and forwards to court we finally have the special guardianship. He is a very special boy, still can’t talk but tries every day. I may have had to give up my career to become his full-time carer but I wouldn’t change it for the world. He is a blessing.

I adored my maternal grandparents, Joe and Hilda, and spent many a summer with them from a young age up till University.
My grandfather was a steam engine driver for Consett Iron Company and a hard man. He lost a leg in an accident at work in the 50s. He suffered badly from phantom pains.
However, he was the kindest, loving person you could wish to meet. When I stayed with them, at night I would hear his false leg hit the floor as he put it under the bed, then I would hear him give my Nana a big slobbery kiss and say ‘I love you pet’. Every night. And he did.

There is a dysfunction peculiar to privileged middle-class English families, where the outward appearance is not matched by what is happening within. But privilege does mean that even if we weren’t as happy as my mum insisted we were, we have happy memories: our boundary lines fell in pleasant places.

The disconnect was at its smallest at Christmas, when we all got to be ourselves at our best. They linked us back to childhood before Dad’s job fell apart and we had to move back to the UK and forward into teenage years, and all the tension that brings. So I’m going to tell you about Christmas even though I know it’s a cliche and almost everyone will talk about Christmas.

Dad would be up until 3am making an enormous quantity of rich port and sausage meat stuffing for the turkey, and wrapping presents with Mum. We’d wake in the morning to crackling stockings that every other day of the year were Dad’s old woollen walking socks: year by year the holes in the heels got bigger. The very last item in each was a tangerine in the toe. Then the rush to be up, get the huge turkey in the oven, and out for church. The normally small congregation was expanded to bursting, everyone dressed in winter best and singing carols at the top of our voices.

Then home for the main presents while dinner finished cooking. One year we got back to find the oven hadn’t come on. After that the routine changed slightly. We’d open presents over champagne and smoked salmon on brown bread, then go for a walk with the dogs, a black Labrador-cross with her yellow daughter and a recalcitrant Jack Russell, all full of Good Boy Choc Drops. Then home out of the cold into the warm where Dad laid a fire and mum finished the food, and then sitting at the gleaming dining table which it was my job to lay, with the best cutlery and china and crystal, and dishes full of sweet things down the middle, and pulling crackers and wearing hats and everyone themselves at their best for one happy day. And afterwards, replete by the fire, enjoying our presents (I would be reading with hyper-focus), lounging around warm, people and dogs, connected. I don’t remember us squabbling at Christmas. That was the idea of family that kept us going year by year.

Dad is now gone and we miss him, he was the heart of our family and without him, we splintered into our disparate alliances. But when we reminisce about the winter days when he lit the fire and settled back wrapped in his beloved children and dogs, then we can once again connect to what it is to be family and happy together.

My parents were involved in the peace movement. When I was a kid my mother occasionally visited Greenham common peace camp and took one or two of her kids with her, for a day or a couple of days. She never told us before hand, otherwise we’d all want to go and she’d never hear the end of it. The first time she took me, I awoke to her helping me dress, it was still dark outside and I asked what was happening, she said, “We’re going to the peace camp but be quiet not to wake anyone.” I asked, “What time is it?” She said, “It’s 4 O’clock in the morning, we can sleep on the bus.” It was awesome, all of it, being woken at that time, getting the bus with other kids and mothers, arriving to peaceful protests and a full day or couple of days of activities, including a creche run by University graduates who had degrees in playwork and suchlike. I remember discussing with my siblings and we all agreed, that magical feeling of being woken up in the middle of the night to go to the peace camp to protest weapons and demand better healthcare, education, jobs etc was such a great feeling, like Christmas. I’m 50 years old now, but if I’m woken in the wee small hours I still get a bit of that magical feeling.

My great grandfather, Thomas Bolding, came from a humble background, born in 1871 in Finchley, London. Most of his ancestors were agricultural labourers. He joined the RMLI (historic branch of Royal Marines) aged 18. He was on board HMS Victoria, with HMS Camperdown and other ships during naval exercises off the coast of Lebanon in 1875. Vice Admiral Tryon issued orders for the two lead ships to approach the port together but they collided with one another and HMS Victoria sank within 15 minutes. 358 members of the crew were drowned, including Tryon, who was heard to declare “it’s all my fault”. The site where the ship sank has been declared a naval cemetery, and it is the only ship which stands vertically. My grandfather William also joined the Royal Navy, as did my father Frederick George who served from 1925-1954.

My beloved Grandmother Hilda Mary was such fun!
Despite her elder brother Edward Pearson dying in France in the ‘Great’ War at aged nineteen (days before Armistice), she always had a smile for us. She was a great seamstress and baker.
After marrying my Grandad, more sadness ensued when their firstborn, two year old daughter sadly died from meningitis. By the time the Second World War started my dad, Edward, their firstborn son was born in Sheffield minutes before my Uncle Trevor. Both weighed 7lb! There were eight children in total, three boys and five girls. The seven remaining all had the best sense of humour, just like Granny ♥️ The war meant the family had evacuated to Corney Fell, Cumberland and later moved to Millom. My Dad had some tales to tell.
My grandmother had twenty nine grandchildren. I like to think we all inherited her humour gene?!
Poignantly though, her second born, my lovely Auntie Rita’s firstborn son, Leslie, died tragically by drowning. She had also named a son Edward.

Photo shows my dear youngest Auntie, Hilary with Uncle Arthur and families on their Wedding Day in 1969 with Granny being the one holding the hand of my younger cousin Susan.

When I was preparing to adopt my son, I learned about how important it is for adopted children to know about their origins. Since he was adopted we have regular meet ups with his birth sisters and grandparents. He looks forward to these meetings so much. It is helping us to tell him his life story and for the development of his identity. We all get along so well and enjoy each others company. We consider ourselves extended family. His grandmother once texted me “Families are so important. Thank you for letting us be part of yours.”

Family changes shape. When you start your own you try and shape it the way you want it to be. Then they start to take on their own shape, regular- irregular.
What I ended up with looks a lot like this now as we’re all spread out around the world. I love them all so much, they’re the best, and should be shared. It makes our time together appreciated and chosen. In between times we seek times with our ‘found family,’ people who make us feel as special as we are at home.

I am blessed to have two children. They are clever, kind and compassionate and I am very proud of them. From the ages of 6 and 8 it was just the three of us and although times were sometimes difficult we got through them and enjoyed many wonderful memories together. Two and a half years my son Jack started to struggle and in September last year he took his own life. The loss is unbearable. He was only 23 with so much life ahead of him but the pain was too much.

My brother died of a brain tumour when he was 35. We grew up in a small family with just me, him and my mum. We were typical siblings with times we were close and times when we wanted to kill each other. It’s weird when the only other person you grew up with dies. The only person with your understanding of the world, with the same understanding of your parents, who knows most about what makes you who you are. I lost so much the day he died. But I’m so grateful I knew it was coming so we could say everything that was needed. We were never as close as we were at the end.

I wanted to join in and didn’t know what to write about my family. Here’s an overview! I grew up in the Black Country, West Midlands, part of a big family of grafters, surrounded by love.
Dad’s family originally came from Smethwick. Mom’s father was Irish, a spirited man who ran away to sea at 16 to avoid the priesthood. Her mom was from the North East. The family was hated and abused in the Midlands to start with as ‘strangers’ but there they stayed.
My family is now spread far and wide. One uncle emigrated to Australia with his family in the sixties, and one went to Canada. My sisters and I were fortunate to have maternal aunties as inspiring role models, living interesting and independent lives given that they grew up in the fifties and sixties.
I lived in London for twenty years before reluctantly moving back aged 39 with my own kids, now grown and following their own dreams. Not how I expected things to go but that really is life!
We’ve our share of wonderful ups and dreadful downs. On reflection I feel lucky to have had the safe and loving start in life I had. Maybe I see it through rose coloured glasses…yet, wherever we are in the world we share a history and identity, with our own precious early memories of things like playing in our park and walking by the Dudley canals. Happy days!

My mum and dad divorced when I was 2. Mum married again and my sister was born when I was 4, my brother 6. For 9 years we were a happy family. Then mum died, us kids went to live with our dads and it was harder to stay in touch. My sister cut off all contact with me and my brother in the last few years, saying “we were never really close”. But we were.

My middle brother was the heart and soul of us he left us suddenly we kiss him daily he was class clown 🤡 with a heat of gold our mark Anthony

Family is like a cave that you hide when you face some danger or sometimes it is like dozens of nails that are sticked on your back when you take responsibilities. But after all family is the world in someone’s life.

I always had a distant relationship with my mother. She wasn’t an emotionally intelligent or warm person and I always felt tolerated more than loved by her.

When I was 14 my parents separated, and I was thrown into a new blender family with my Dad’s new partner. I just wanted to fit in, but I was struggling with the change. This lady was more a mother to me in six months than I’d had in 14 years. She listened to me, she dried my tears, she cheered me on and she kicked me up the rear when I needed it- and I often did.

When I had my children, she was there with me and was first to hold them after me.

When we lost her after a year of battling lung cancer in 2019, she left a void in our lives nobody can fill. But she left her children with strength, unity, love and humour that borders on the gallows more often than not.

My family is her creation, and we feel and hear her every day. We were so lucky to have her at our heart.

“You need to come, the baby’s not well”

Someone asked me today what had happened all those years ago, and I thought about telling them, and I thought, and I said: “No, I can’t today, it’s making my throat feel tight and sore. But maybe another day.”

Then my mum and dad texted me about something blah and something bleh and we popped back and forward. “We’re going to Turkey next week!”
“You just went to Greece two weeks ago!”
“We got a package deal!” Lol.

And I thought again back to that time all those years ago and before that day and the management of feelings and fights and fights and feelings between my parents. And how, on that day, when the baby was not well, there was no fighting. No cross words, no hate, no division, no one-ups. The pettiness and nastiness disappeared away because the baby was not well.

The baby was not well for a while. I, the baby’s mother, was eternally grateful for everyone and to my parents, who put themselves aside to help when the baby was not well.

Whenever I visited my Grandma, and moaned about my parents she would respond with “you are lucky, they love you”. Aged 12 she had been put into a Dr Barnardos home by her unmarried mother , as her husband- to – be did not want the hassle of having a child around. My Grandma was then sent to Canada by Dr Barnados, as a Home Child, where she worked as a maid for a couple of familys. We believe, but cannot prove , that she was abused, and eventually came back to England where she worked as a barmaid in her mother and step father’s public house. After meeting my Grandad in the pub, she went on to have a happy fulfilled life. No wonder she said “ you are lucky, they love you”

She is dying now, my Ma, and it recently dawned on me that I’m never gonna get to ask her the questions I need answering. Like ‘Why did you behave that way?’ & ‘Why did you say those things?’ & ‘Why did you treat ______ like that?’. And instead I’ll just continue doing what I always have, which is to convince myself with the tired, well-worn excuse of ‘…but it was a different time then’.

But I NEED to know y’see…

I NEED the answers in order I go on with my own family. I NEED to understand. But what would be the point now, at this stage, when the only benefit would be to me. And even that is questionable. Elsewhere, within my circle, my asking would only cause hurt. And then the Ma’s life – probably – would end with us not talking. Family wise, – my wife & kids aside – she is all I have. The old man is dead, there are no siblings. So I guess I’ll just go on loving her in my own way, and looking after her as best I can…whilst carrying the weight of hating her for what she did & the way she was for all time. Maybe the lesson here & the outcome will be forgiveness, perhaps – in time – that’ll come.

Perhaps it won’t.

My family are my heartbeats, Many hard emotionally challenging days I have only got up and got through for and because of them. I create memories with them to carry them in their dark days even though at the time they dont realise it. Life can pin you against the ring or put on the canvas floor, but ya gotta get back up, keep fighting spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, you must get back up, keep treading water despite the waves..I’m so proud of you my beautiful children. ILoveYouMore; Dominique, Marcellus, Jakobii, Sasha. .Forevermore..and more.xxxx

When I saw this basket for the first time, I broke down in tears. I hugged it tightly and didn’t want to let it go, since my grandma’s hands meticulously had worked on it before she suddenly died. She made it for me but never could give it to me in person.

Before her death, we used to count the days until we should have met in December after not having seen each other for six years. Should have. The weight of those two words are too much to handle sometimes and I try to find peace by talking to God and trying to understand why she had to go.
My grandma was my heroine, the glue that kept us together, the bridge that connected us from abroad to Ethiopia. In my grandma’s house, time stood still – suddenly the fading away of the Ethiopia I knew as a child was less painful.

One of my favorite memories of her is, my siblings and I coming back from school and her greeting all of us with a warm smile and enormous hug, telling us to eat lunch and then study. I miss being able to have a cup of coffee with her, listening to her wisdom and hilarious stories. I miss her advice and how she taught me to be resilient, even when life has dealt you difficult cards. And when we moved abroad – I miss her voice on the other side of the telephone line and her poetically adding ” If I were a bird, I would fly over to you”.

In Amharic you say “ቤቱን ጭር አደረገችው” meaning she left the house silent or desolate. She was the soul, the pillar of our family in Ethiopia. The word spice (ቅመም) is used as a word of endearment in Amharic. She was our spice and with her, life tasted better.
Until we see each other again, miss you more than words can express.

My son Remi recently took his first steps at my foster parent’s house. I suspect this wasn’t a coincidence. Perhaps he, sensing how at ease his mother felt in this new environment, felt safe in turn. It seemed symbolic, in a way, of how they once supported me to take many meaningful steps in my own life. He was, quite literally, following in my footsteps (wearing tiny vans which would have made teenage emo-Bekah rather proud). How I wish I could have told her this. To say ‘These people will not walk out on you. In fact, they’ll be around long enough to see your child walk for the first time!”’.

I am the shortest now in my beautiful family. The worst decision I ever made in my life I confess was when they were growing up and it was truly terrible. At the time it felt like the least worst decision that also felt like it was in the best interest of the child and the other children but NOTHING justifies it.
How I wish I had a crystal ball and I might have made a better decision.
Under extremely pressurised conditions of coercive control I sent one of the children to live with my sister to get them away from the murderous homophobia of their stepfather. Of course the stepfather also thought what he did was right.
It was a rupture of the family the effects of which we all live with to this day. The wrong rupture. I am sorry.
We are mending.
The decision took place in Jamaica so the pin could be in Jamaica: it’s a family story of the tangled and toxic tendrils of Empire.

My brother is getting married today

I have one beautiful daughter, a lovely son-in-law and two wonderful grandchildren. They mean more than life itself to me. I had a very fractious relationship with my Mother which I promised myself I would not repeat with my daughter. I loved my Dad dearly and was shattered when he passed away, something I am still trying to come to terms with after 9 years. Love doesn’t die though. Your loved ones remain alive in your heart.

My beautiful Mum is the heart of our family. Despite having dementia and, to be honest, more often than not, not knowing who we are – she still shows us, in her own ways, how very much she loves us and still holds that position of ‘Mother’. Her own Mum was a warrior. A kind and compassionate get on with it type of human. Life made her so when she was little and her own Mum walked into the water with her youngest baby thinking her baby had already died. She had already lost children to poverty, hunger, and disease. Her husband drank following service in the First World War. Our Mum and our Granny brought us up knowing love and compassion and empathy. We are who we are because of them and what they endured. ALWAYS smiling x

My late Mum used to say ‘ I’m the richest woman in the world’ when talking about her family . She and Dad didn’t have much money throughout their lives but the legacy they left behind is deep within the photo of us all here at our annual weekend away in the Cotswolds . They had 7 kids who have gone onto value family just as they did and our latest addition takes our total to 102!
We are very close always there for each other and enjoy getting together as much as possible .
We are truly grateful for the values of ‘ family life’ they instilled in each of us and agree winning the Lottery would not have made her any better off !

My youngest sister was the most loving and caring person I have ever known in my entire life. Even after 25 years since her passing, the pain of losing her still lives in my heart every single day. Time has moved on, but my love for her has never faded.
Her absence left a wound that never truly healed.

My mum and dad have woven a bright and strong thread throughout my life which has anchored me. Their unfailing presence and support has steadied me in times of uncertainty and stress. I like to to think I’ve passed this feeling of stability onto my daughter and that she will be able to continue to share it with her children. I have nothing but gratitude to my mum and dad.

This is my Mum and Dad on their wedding day on 1st January 1966. They met on my Dad’s 2nd day at Birmingham University when they were both 19- he was lodging with my Nan’s best friend and my Mum had called round, as she always did, to walk the friend’s dog. It was love at first sight!

My Dad was from Peckham and received a scholarship to go to grammar school when he was 11. He was one of only a handful of working class boys at the school and Dad said they were bullied by some of the teachers there. However, Dad loved learning and saw being educated as an act of revenge on the teachers. He was the 1st in his family to go to university and went on to complete a PHD in chemistry with Mum working and supporting him financially. He discovered a love of lecturing through working at the Open University and eventually become a professor of lifelong learning. He was passionate in championing and supporting people of all ages and diverse backgrounds to access university and post graduate education. This included Mum, who studied for 7 years with 2 small children and a part-time job at a time when ‘people like me didn’t go to university.’
Only a year after fully retiring he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer at age 69. He planned his own Humanist funeral and told me he wanted everyone to sing the protest song ‘We Shall Overcome.’ The funeral was packed and at the end of the service one of his old mates came up to my Mum, sister and me and said ‘your Dad was a clever old sod- even at the end he got everyone up singing a song for equality.’ We were and are so proud of our Dad and what he achieved, but as he always acknowledged, he couldn’t have done it without Mum supporting him in every way.

My family is where my heart is. I feel very lucky to have their love and laughter. I became a mum in my teens and now, at 71, I have grandchildren and a lot of love in my life. Some friends are also ‘family’ – friends who’ve been here for many years and shared adventures, joys and sorrows. Thank you all.

My Nan got pregnant in 1943 to a black American GI and then ran away from home because she was scared, she was 21.
She went to Grantham where the US base was but they’d gone.
By all accounts the American family sent my Nan money and food over but it was still hard for my Nan to shake the stigma of having a black baby and being a single mother in 1944.
She did go home though and kept my dad, later marrying someone else who took my dad on.

Family isn’t always defined by blood. It’s also the people who choose you — the ones who welcome you into their lives, accept you without conditions, and stand beside you through every rise and fall.

For more than 24 years, I’ve had the privilege of working in fostering and adoption services and now an amazing children’s charity, helping finding individuals, couples and families who embody that kind of love. They step forward when they’re needed most, opening their homes and their hearts to vulnerable children and young people. Having their own lives prodded and poked to make sure they are suitable.

I was lucky to have a happy childhood and I’ve also become a parent myself (pic of me by my daughter!), which has only deepened my understanding of how powerful and life‑changing a safe, loving family can be.

Fostering and adoptive families rarely see themselves as remarkable. They shy away from praise, insisting they’re “just doing what anyone would do.” But the truth is different. What they give — stability, compassion, belonging — is extraordinary. And the impact they make lasts a lifetime.

My father was 66 when I was born. When all of my older siblings had moved out and he was in his late 70s, early 80s we would play draughts/chequers every evening and he would talk about ideas. He did what he liked, in art, in writing, in life, and as we sat opposite each other, taking each others pieces one night he said “You’ve got a lucky face”.

I don’t remember if he or my mum ever said “I love you”, and maybe they didn’t need to because
that is the sentence that gets me through when I feel lost.
“Lucky face”.

This is me and my beautiful son, Charlie. Together with his dad , Kev, we are family.
In 2006 i was told it was very unlikely that i would be able to have a child. In that moment my whole world was turned upside down. I had done everything right – studied ,worked hard , owned a home, found my soul mate , all in readiness to have a child.
I hit rock bottom but managed to get myself out of the darkest of places.
My miracle happened in 2010 when Charlie was born and completed our family.
He has just turned 16 and we have just enjoyed our first gig together. The picture is from that gig – The Prodigy, Wembley Arena.
Family is not giving up. Family is loving others with your entire being. Family is messy, but beautiful ❤️

My mom passed away when I was 22. I once heard the saying “grief is unexpressed love” and I believe it to be true. There was a time when I thought I couldn’t make it to the end of the day without her, and now it’s been 17 years. My grief is rooted in that she hasn’t seen me travel the world, fall deeper in love with my husband, adopt a dog, make so many beautiful friendships, move to a place as wonderful as Asheville, near where she went to college so many years before. I love so much unexpressed love for all she brought to my life, and grief for all she has missed.

My Grandma, Catherine Hamlin, moved to Ethiopia in 1959 and spent the rest of her life transforming the lives of more than 60,000 women through the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. She was inspirational to so many around the world. My siblings and I treasured our childhood visits to her and we continued to visit into adulthood. I took my firstborn son to meet her when he was 9 months old, to celebrate her 96th birthday. She passed away only 2 months later. He won’t remember it but I’m so grateful we made that trip. Now 7, he’s very proud he met his great-grandma.

My Mum was a superstar. When she died, my brother said of her “she never met a stranger” because for my Mum, everyone was a potential friend. When she was in her 70s, I took her to Majorca for a short holiday in the sun. One day we were walking past a little bar and an A-board outside advertised the entertainment due on that evening. It was to be ‘Leapy Lee’, her absolutely favourite 1960s singer! She was beside herself with excitement and made me promise to go back later that evening. We did. She loved it, singing along to all the songs she knew so well – the best one being ‘Little Arrows’. Afterwards she met her hero and got a kiss. I took photos to remember the event. Unfortunately, they were lost at the developers (no mobile phone cameras back then)! Fast forward 5 years and the developers phoned me to say they had found the photos! My Mum was so delighted at re-living the memories. That holiday was the best gift I ever gave her.

We met at Uni, the connection was instant. A year later and graduated we moved 150 miles to new jobs, a new town and a shared life together. 4 years later we married, it took yet another 4 to make and keep a baby. Two rounds of IVF, too many losses, a lot of hope.

She was born different. Our lives changed over night and not in the way we expected. We had brought a genetic unicorn into the world, and no one knew how to teach us how to cope, so she did and we learned together.

We are 16 years on from that day now, and about to celebrate 25 years since we got together. A quarter of a century and a lifetime of learning, adapting, coping and growing.

Our unicorn shines her light so brightly that she shows others the joy of being connected in each moment with pure energy. She has taught us as her parents how to live life more meaningfully.

She informed my career and in turn I used that to influence change. The UK Museum sector now understand disabled children’s needs and welcome them, because of the work I do which was shaped directly from the lived loved experience of being her mum.

Eventually, I wrote my memoir of our journey. ‘The Phoenix and the Unicorn’ tells it all in the hope of inspiring others.

I am so proud of her, of us and of the family we became. We moved from surviving to thriving and that was all down to love. Family is what you craft out of the clay you get given. Mine is an artwork I am eternally grateful for.

50 years ago this month, I discovered I was pregnant with my first child. A couple of months later my wonderful dad was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He died a horrible drawn out death when my beautiful baby was just four months old. I still miss him every day and am so sad that he didn’t live to see his two grandchildren grow up. He would have been so proud and such a wonderful grandfather. I am now a grandmother and realise what he missed and what love he would have given. His name was George and he was my dad.

My great uncle Joe, together with several of his 9 brothers died in the first world war when he was scarcely in his 20s…the family were immigrants from Lithuania to Cardiff (my father always said they were the ones who got cheated …they thought they had bought tickets to NY but ended up in Cardiff bay.
I’d never even heard of great uncle Joe until I saw a strange little ‘weeblie wobblie’ wooden doll with a photo of him dressed in leopard skin and Roman sandals at my parents and asked my dad about it….’oh that’s my uncle Joe’ he said, almost like I should have known’ …he was a strong man in the circus in South Wales and died in the first world war. So many unknowable lives, so much sorrow and most potential. The photo speaks to me and I’m glad to be related to him.

Our family is myself and Liz, different ages, class, height- different most things but the same ideas about life, justice, equality, integrity and peace.
We now have Socks, our 18 year old daughter and we are navigating her being autistic and trans with love. Lots of love.
Life isn’t often straight forward, there are sharp turns and some cul-de-sacs, you just keep on learning and loving.

Family is everything and nothing. I grew up just me mum and dad. With joyful moments spent with family who lived far away. My heart ached for them and broke every time we left them. The rest of the time was waiting. Quietly waiting so as to not upset the boat. Dad’s relationship with his family was complicated. He loved hard but didn’t know how. His temper was always close. Now I have two children. We don’t live near family and we have friends but I haven’t managed to give them what I always wanted. I look at other families. Auntys and Uncles and cousins, Granny’s and Granddads and my heart hurts, for myself and them. For the life I never knew but always wanted. Does that life I want even exist for many or is the subject of one too many movies I’ve watched? I’m not sure anymore, but family is….. complicated

I am the eldest of 3 children, the first born and only daughter to parents Mary and Vincent.
My dad Vincent was in the military and we moved from country to country until I was aged 11. We had lived in countries through Asia and Europe, finally settling in Merseyside where both my parent’s are from.
I had probably been to 4 primary schools by age 11 and found humour as a way to make friends and then leaving and off to the next place, not really settled. I am unsure if that is why now at 43 I have remained single, unsure how to navigate a steady relationship possibly, who knows. I have a daughter whom I have made sure had a constant place, stability as even though my childhood I feel was happy, cultured and had loving parent’s, I just wanted as a single parent to make sure my own child would feel her childhood was happy also. She does have her dad in her life so I am happy that has been a good relationship for her. My mum was a psychiatric nurse and was very fun and generous and we always enjoyed spending time with her. She now has dementia but her past memories remain and they are always about family, her own parents, siblings, us 3 and my dad. My dad cares for her full time and as the only unmarried child and only daughter he relys on me for his respite, sometimes I feel guilty for not wanting to spend my weekend there or take time off work, my brothers are never asked to give up their time. But then I tell myself we are only here for a short while on this earth and I would forever regret not spending the time there now when they are gone. I feel a sense of loyalty and commitment to them.

Our family is the story of how World War 2 made us what we are. There were two brothers in Lancashire, UK, in the 1940s. Peter (on the left) was my dad . He interrupted his law degree to sign up for the RAF. He was stationed in Nassau, Bahamas where he met my mum, a local girl who was a secretary for the Duke Of Windsor. They married after the war and settled in Nassau where they brought up their family. Sadly dad died in a car accident when I was 10, and my siblings only 3 and 4. The other brother stepped in and looked after me when I moved to England. I now have a sister, cousins and grand nieces in Nassau as well as my own children and grandchildren in the UK. We are truly a product of WW2!

I realise that every family is unique, and ours is perhaps a bit more unusual than most. My husband and I adopted our three children while living overseas, creating a mixed-race family that, over the years, has faced many questions from others. Looking back over the past 28 years, I don’t think we could ever have imagined the emotional journey we would experience as our children grew older and began questioning their origins, identity, and sense of belonging. At times, I have carried guilt and wondered whether we were enough as parents, acknowledging that we have made mistakes along the way. However, the saying “it takes a village to raise a child” has brought me some reassurance. I believe my children have found guidance, inspiration, and support from other important adults during their lives, and through those experiences they have learnt to embrace and love the family that we are.

A ‘lightbulb’ moment

Dec 9, 2023

During a recent personal therapy session, I was attempting to process my thoughts regarding visiting my elderly father in hospital. I really struggle visiting him on the ward. I mirror his agitation and restlessness. Although mine is internal; outwardly I appear calm. I struggle to sleep at night after spending time with him as my mind is far too ‘busy’.

I wondered if his injuries unnerved me. One wound in particular captures my focus every time. It looks like a burn. I wonder what caused it. He is covered in bruises but this is definitely not a bruise.

As I sat in my chair, a shuddering shockwave ran up my spine from my lower back, through my neck and my whole head shook. I crumpled into a heap of distress and tears. At first my therapist did not realise what was happening so she filled the empty space with words. I was silent. I could not speak. She stopped and took a good long look at me.

….

The image that was staring me in the face was of a young, frail girl lying in her bed, face down roaring her silent screams into her pillow. A man, her father, switching off the light as he walked out of her bedroom whilst slamming the door loudly behind him. The young lass had red weals and purple bruises erupting on her lower back as the stinging pain crescendoed around the room.

She would lie there in wet sheets until the house was silent and she was certain he had gone to sleep. The stress of another beating had been all too much for her little body and she had wet the bed once again. It was a regular occurrence, a trauma response. As she shed silent tears from her eyes, she flooded the bed too. But she would dare not make a fuss as that would result in another hiding.

Her mind was whirling and blank simultaneously – if that is possible. What did she do to cause that beating? The amount of pain in her little body was disproportionate to its size.

Her practical mind kicked in. She needed to get up and change her bedding. Her Mum had hidden clean bedding in her wardrobe for just such times and she would quietly change her bedding, praying that the ancient, wobbly bed frame would not squeakily creak too much to wake the house up. She would hide the wet bedding under her bed until the morning when her Mum could camouflage it with the other washing.

No one would come to comfort her. Her Mum was also in the house but would be too scared and numb with shock to intervene. Her dog lived in a kennel in the back garden. She was on her own.

She would wipe away her tears, climb back onto her bed and lie there in a daze until morning.

….

Once I was able to speak, I explained that I had just had a ‘lightbulb’ moment – a major realisation. When I was younger another relative used to burn me with cigarettes and my father’s ‘burn’ mark had reminded me of that difficult time in my life.

So when I walk into the hospital ward and see a frail, small distressed, bruised body lying in the bed…. am I witnessing my elderly father or my younger self?

One major difference.

Others are there to care for him.

I only properly understood the failings of my mum when I became a mum myself. I hold no anger and have built my family with her in it. She did the best she could with what she had. Even tho that included her being unkind, critical and avoidant. She’s old and not well, and in real time I’m seeing her lose parts of herself. I sometimes hope she dies before she disappears completely. At other times I cling on to the parts that are still left.

Ever since I was a little girl I dreamed of being a mummy. When I realised I was attracted to women, I thought I’d have to choose between love and being a mum.

I met my wife in 2021 and was sure to tell her that having a baby was something really important to me. In 2024 we began our IVF journey and welcomed our precious daughter in December 2025. She is the light of our lives and every time I look at her I am overwhelmed with love for her. She is truly my dream come true. Being her mummy is the best gift I could ever wish for. I am so grateful for the medical professionals and the kindness of a stranger that helped us bring her into existence. She’ll always know how loved she is.

During covid my daughter was pregnant with her first child but birthing partners werent allowed under NHS rules at that time. I feft concerned for her as I recalled my personal experience of giving birth to her older brother which was a very painful and prolonged labour. However, as the due date arrived NHS conditions relaxed and one person was allowed to be at the birth. On the day, her partner escorted her to the maternity centre and I waited very anxiously at home. Suddenly, he rang and asked me to bring my TENS machine (pain relief) to the maternity hospital as they didn’t have one available for her to use. I didn’t hesitate for a moment, no breakfast or shower etc, I jumped into the car and drove to the hospital carpark to hand it over BUT very unexpectedly he said “you can come in to see her”. That changed my life because a few hours later I saw my grandson enter the world and it was love at first sight. We didn’t question why staff allowed me to stay because it seemed entirely natural and now I love him like my own child. We have a theory its because my grandson is one of my eggs ❤️

My first family never stopped loving me but 70s society was not in their side. Married and Parents at 18
Separated a year later. A year later they were persuaded to give me up for adoption. They never stopped being my parents. When I first met my birth parent 25 years later, we didn’t know whether to hug or not. I remember him saying “you’re a complete stranger but you’re my daughter.” My mother didn’t tell many people about me including her children from her second marriage. I find these words like mother and father difficult to navigate when I talk about my first family.

My adoptive family have always loved and nurtured me. There’s never been any difference in treatment or othering me. Once I was part of the family I was part of the family: safe secure and loved.

Both families are important in their own different ways. The rupture and separation from one family is not negated by the loving embrace of another.

We need to avoid being constrained by narrow concepts of family and embrace the widest notion of family and community. After all, we are all family.

I thought the name mummy was a name meant for other people. Not for me.
I am many things. A teacher, a sister, an aunty, a friend and a daughter.
I’ve always cared for other people’s children. From a very young age I knew that I wanted to be a mum. But as time passed it seemed that chance would never be mine.

I had a dream of a baby boy. I held him close. I woke up crying thinking it would never be true.

But one day. Unexpectedly. I was preganat with a son. A boy. The best thing to ever have happened to me.

We are a team. Team noodle. Him and I together forever. he arrived early.. Like his mum, can’t miss out on the fun. I couldn’t hold him for the first 6 days of his life.

But here I am. Holding my son. For the first time. The boy I dreamed of and thought would never come.
He chose me to be his mummy. Dreams really do come true.

My mum was 15 when she got pregnant. We were poor. She has 6 children and I was number 5 and born when she was 23. I was on free school meals and hated it. I got music lessons at school. Played the trombone. Nobody ever came to watch me. My dad become an alcoholic. I became an opera singer singing in top opera houses despite being told I was nothing special. One of my brothers commit suicide. I had to always be strong but singing saved me. I followed my heart and forged my own path. Proud of myself. I run Opera for the People now, telling my story whilst singing for ‘the people’.

This is about the strength and determination of a foster mother’s love for her baby . I adopted a baby girl from China in 2004. A foundling abandoned due to the China One Child policy . We flew over there and picked up our babies delivered by orphanage staff . At this point I believed my daughter had been in the orphanage since her finding .As I changed her nappy in the hotel a note fell out that was hidden inside it in Chinese with a mailing address sticker with an American woman’s name on it . I didn’t know what it all meant . I couldn’t read Chinese also why was there an American woman’s address in my baby’s nappy?I didn’t want to get anybody into trouble so I waited until we got home to Nashville and I had the waitress in the local Chinese restaurant translate . It said very simple things like “she is a good girl please feed her and be kind to her and she loves toys and she poops once a day “. The US mailing label still made no sense . So I wrote to the woman on the label and said “ well I adopted a baby from China and your name & address was in her diaper . I provided my phone number . A few days later I got a call from the lady telling me that her daughter had been adopted from China also but had been fostered by a lady in the village that was close to the orphanage . She had managed to leave a note on her baby also telling this lady that her baby was never in the orphanage but in her home from day one and she provided her address . This American lady then wrote to the foster mom and sent a few mailing labels so that this foster mother could then let ALL her future foster babies ,that were adopted , know she wanted a way to stay in touch with them . They were never in the orphanage they were truly loved every day by her in her home until adoption day .Some were with her 9 months others for years..I got the foster mothers address off the American lady and I too started corresponding and sending photos and also put my mailing labels in the letters and started receiving calls from adoptive American moms who had my address so I too could tell them who their daughters foster mother had been and how she wanted to stay in touch and get updates . So we kept the connection going . This would have all been frowned upon by the government but that foster mother’s love was so strong for her foster babies .Her letters over the years have been a joy . She told me how sad she was the day she brought my 9 month old baby into the city for the adoption and how they let her watch from a window as we all loaded onto the bus with our daughters from China to go back to the hotel then home to America .Now we email the foster mothers son with photo updates so his mother can see how her now 23 year old foster daughter is doing . Mothers love will always find a way . Maybe one day we may even hear from the birth mother which would be wonderful . I’m SO grateful I got to raise this beautiful child and I hope birth mother feels peace and a sense of knowing that her child is ok . I truly hope so .

I got married when I was ‘older’ Lemn.

I enjoyed my twenties and thirties a little too selfishly, and having lost my Mum at 22 I’d lost the feeling of what family was. My Dad was mean and I wasn’t ending up like him, so had subconsciously decided family life wasn’t for me.

In my forties, being just about as pasty white as anyone can be, I met a first generation Indian lady and things just clicked.

We got married when I was 41.

We tried for kids and things didn’t really work out, so we applied to foster or adopt.

In 2018, we adopted a little girl who no one wanted, she is a diabetic.

We did lots of looking together, but could never agree, and then went to an adoption event, paper profiles only.

We decided to go individually and then pool thoughts.

There were hundreds of kids looking for families and we picked out our preferences ( I know it sounds awful but that’s the reality of adoption).

We sat down and got a brew, and had picked one little girl.

Just one.

Out of all those children that were looking for a Mummy and Daddy, we finally found someone that we had some mutual interest in.

18 months later, the little girl became out daughter.

She’s half Romanian and half Tanzanian.

She’s not pasty white or Indian looking, but she is now a fabulous diabetic teenager who is our world and she’s adjusted fabulously.

Family doesn’t have to be biological, we’ve got three little jigsaw pieces that fit together perfectly.

My Dad was a deep sea fisherman in a town where the industry was dying. Sometimes my Dad would go to sea and come home owing the company money for his food and drinks aboard the ship – known as ‘landing in debt’. Like many families in our town, my Mam & Dad had families relatively young and now in my middle age I can’t believe how young they look here. My Dad went back to college and became a Master Mariner, working for supply vessels and the merchant navy to make sure we had enough money. My Mam, like so many Grimsby women, stayed at home and managed everything else with broad shoulders, a matter of fact attitude, and lots of love.
My Mam and Dad both passed in their very early 70s and I think about them every day, many times a day. Hard lives, big hearts, never forgotten.

Family to me is the weight of things passed down and the warmth of things left behind. In this picture, I am celebrating my third birthday in Gondar, Ethiopia in the early 2000s. My story is one familiar to many African communities, the story of a village stepping in when life demands a sacrifice. My parents were out in the world, fighting the hard battles of life, both within and without , and while they fought, family took over.

My grandparents were the two steady candles in my life, and I was the third, a new flame catching their light to make our circle complete. Eight souls lived in this tiny house, breathing the same air, carrying the same days on their backs. You can see me here, dressed in clothes that had already known another child’s shoulders, an outfit passed down from one of my older cousins. It hung on me wrong with sleeves speaking a language my arms had not yet learned and hems wandering where my legs had not grown to meet them.

But I was still clothed. Covered. Held.

My mother was more of a shadow then, someone I wouldn’t truly know and deeply appreciate until I was a teenager, but she wasn’t gone. She had lived in this house before, and she left her mark in the things she made. That tablecloth I’m standing next to and the matching set in the back? She handmade that. Even while she was absent, her crafts stayed behind, serving as a silent, floral witness to my childhood.

To me, family is the memory in a stitch and the endurance of a flame. It’s the many ways we are held together, even when the pieces seem far apart.

My family is so special – it’s myself, my daughter, and my husband. I grew up in an environment that caused me trauma and to live in survival mode because of unmet emotional needs. All I wanted was a family that loved one another. Because of my trauma, it was quite difficult adjusting to parenthood. I had a need to always be control. Through time, reflection and forgiveness – for myself as well as others – I’ve got the family I always wanted. We make mistakes, but we repair and love unconditionally. For me, that is family.

This picture shows myself and my brother, being escorted on board the Pendennis Castle by my grandad(who stayed behind)to emigrate to South Africa in 1972. Dad got a job with a 3 year contract, so mum, dad and three kids left, and life went a very different way. 33 years later I returned to the UK, and in many ways I think we were better off growing up there. But those extended family connections suffered

We are a family of five, my husband and I have three children, two teenage daughters- aged 17 & 13 and and a son aged 6
We have two dogs – Mabel a fox terrier and Ted a boisterous working spaniel.
We live out in the country and enjoy spending time gardening and walking the dogs on the beach.

After his service in WWII, my grandad moved his family to Rhodesia in 1955. He was working at the Hull Daily Mail as a linotype operator when he saw a job advertised to work on the newspaper in Bulawayo. After a successful interview in London, he travelled out alone to ‘suss’ it out. He was followed a few months later by my grandma, my mum, and her sister. They sailed there on the Union-Castle Line, and the journey took three weeks. I have loved watching cine films of them and the wildlife! There are so many stories; a personal favourite was them entrusting someone to bring cash back to England and deposit it into the bank for them—I love the level of trust back then compared to now. My grandma talked about the years out in Africa as the happiest time of her life. The contrast between post-war Britain and the sunshine and open spaces must have felt like moving to a different planet! They were part of that brave wave of post-war pioneers, and I have massive admiration for them both.

A recent cancer diagnosis has made me even more appreciative of my family. Families can be at times crazy, surprising and infuriating but if we’re lucky they are also what props us up and keeps us smiling x

I went through multiple steps to become a mum, tried with a partner, tried with a friend, tried adoption and wasnt chosen and tried IVF. Every day working as a social worker in child protection got a little bit harder. At 42 time was running out, i was single and disabled. I just wanted to be a mum. So I changed my life dramatically and the universe alienged. I fostered a week old little girl, I loved her the first time i held her. I am her adopted mum coming up to 5 years. We saved each other, we are a team. I am proud to be her mum.

Lilian, and twins Simon (my father) and Louis were home for lunch when a V1 bomb fell on their house on 19th June 1944. Lilian, age 11, was killed and the boys were buried alive and badly injured. As my father aged he would think more and more about his sister who never grew up and he had an uncertain hope that they would be reunited after death. The three siblings are together on my father’s grave stone. I think of how their mother must have felt when she came home from the shop to find her world smashed to pieces.

I think, at almost 51, i am still defining family. My parents were variously cruel, absent, demeaning, violent, narcissistic and so on. The fracture in their love for each other (if that existed at all) fractured us all. Both have now passed, both maintaining their traits until the end and taking with them all hope of ‘family’ Fracturing sibling relationships with carefully crafted parting ‘gifts’
Cruelly I struggled to conceive and suffered losses and so desperately wanted to break the intergenerational cycle of relational trauma.
But today i am Mum to two incredible young people via the gift of IVF, the incredible expertise of newborn intensive care practitioners when my eldest was born 15 weeks premature and weighing 510g. My first 4mths as a mum were spent back and forth to hospital. She came home on 24hr oxygen that was fitted to our house. Not how i imagined our life as a family would begin.
4yrs later a little sister followed and my incredible husband and 2 young adult children are my world. My family. I’m hypervigilant, hard on myself, a ‘helicopter mum’ – the one that has the school email saved to favourites. I know my faults. But…. I know I am breaking that bloody cycle and my children and then, i hope, their children know love. We finish every phonecall “love you” Every time someone gets out of the car “love you” even when friends are listening, even when it’s not cool.
My little family full of big personalities are showing the world that family is safe, is accepting, is love.

My family is my greatest achievement. Three thriving children (two of them young adults) and a partner that I risked it all for, and never looked back. I married young, to the first person that offered me safety (a great man) and as we aged, we grew into different people. Better people. I fell in love with someone else and walked away from my marriage because I knew I’d never get a chance to choose someone so right for me, again. Some days, the only thing I had was the truth in my heart, and I clung to it. That was 15 years ago. We have traversed some dark times, dismantling generational trauma and breaking apart old patterns all while intentionally raising humans to be the best versions of themselves. As I approach 50 the joy I feel at observing my children taking the world for themselves is something I’ll never take for granted.

There are 3 of us with 4 and a half years between me the oldest and my youngest sister we had a well boundaried loving upbringing until disaster struck when we were 13,11 and 9 and our mum developed a brain tumour and became physically and psychologically disabled for the last 3and half years of her life our Dad did his best but struggled with alcohol addiction we were also supported by our grandma
Despite this horrible chaotic time we are all ok and inly I the oldest have had addiction issues which im happy to say im in recovery now but always mindful life is good

Poems about the family I came from and the one I’m lucky to have found

1. ODE TO FAMILY DYSFUNCTION

I don’t know how it feels to you
The tie that binds between us two.
To me it seems you’re unaware
of all the layers of pain and care
That cause me hurt and grief each day, and everywhere, in every way.

I hope you meant more than you gave
(to me), If not to her, and he.
For me the pain will always be
The twist, the slant, that alters me
For you, and all this family.

What was it that you came to see?
That made you label us, all three?
Assigned from birth, that couldn’t be –
still, all the good reserved for her
And little left for him, or me.

And as the days pass by, each one
Marked by the rise and fall of sun
I see the marks, the pattern clear,
The damage caused through every year.
Invisible it seems, to some; particularly you, my Mum.

So scarred we are, and cursed it seems
Despite our brightest hopes and dreams.
We’re what you’ve made us all, all three,
Forged in the fire of family
The haven that it should have been,
long gone, along with childish schemes.

Despite the fact her ‘bad’ is ‘good’,
The favourite still feels the rub
Despite the elevated place
Still bitterness fills too much space –
In all of us. No needs are ever truly met,
and nothing soothes our mother’s pet.

No gift, no spotlight, no applause
(despite the talk behind closed doors)
Can fill the empty gaping hole
That seems to linger in her soul,
And no amount of being ‘good’
By me, at least, can dam the flood.

Of tears and blood
Of lies and pain
Of nought to lose or much to gain
When truth is lies and lies are true
How much of me must die for you?

I know there is another view
So clear to me, obscure to you.
But how can things be seen anew
When emperors are clearly nude
But mentioning it is ‘too rude’.

The worst is if this carries on –
The mordant verse, discordant song
The course is set for those to come,
worse yet, I fear it has begun.
I see the signs. I want to run.

Time heals they say, but I can’t see
an end to all this misery
It’s in your hands they say to me
But how when I can’t stop the noise,
that leads me closer to the void.

You say you care and love but show
Few outward signs. Through deeds. I know
I seem the same, and so it goes
Around again, like Dante’s hell
The cycle, dark, established well.

And in the end it seems to me
The outcome of this legacy
Is not how you’d envisioned things.
But how to break the hard forged rings?
The ties that wound, the sufferings?

To mend us all would be my choice
I speak but no one hears my voice.
Your filters turn my words to dust
But still I try, I try, I must?
I’ll try again? But fear. No trust.
——————————
I LOVE YOU

I have no real perspective on quite how we came to be
Forever it had just been me, but yearning to be we
I knew somehow what you’d be like but never thought I’d find
My missing piece, my soul mate; loving, generous and kind

You recognised me instantly – as if we both could see
That everything that came before was somehow meant to be
The steps that brought us close at times but then sent us away
Until the very moment when the time was right, to stay

I barely can remember quite what life was like before,
but lonely comes to mind, and sad, and sorry; much too raw
To contemplate at length. I feel sometimes it’s hard to bear
The wasted years before we met, but wished the other there

I know through days and months of late it seems I may have lost my way
But I know that in the darkest times you’ll still be my mainstay
My trust in you is absolute. I know you understand
And even in the blackest hours you’ll take me by the hand.

You take the worst I have to give as well as all the good
You know my heart and soul and that I’d change it if I could
I promise I will never stop until the pain is gone
And thank you for the strength support and comfort you have shown

I dare to show and trust you with my weakness and my flaws
Because I know you love me and that my pain feels like yours
And what I see reflected back is what I mean to you
And what you mean to me, the same, is everything; that’s true

It’s hard to find words adequate to tell you how I feel
The complex layers of being us are sometimes quite surreal
And language, though I love it, just tangles in my mind
Although it helps to concentrate the workings of my mind

I don’t know how we dared to hope that things would be ok
When we took that massive leap into the unknown, ran away
But we were right to take that risk, I’m sure, as I was from the start
I love you, always, endlessly. My love. My soul. My heart.

This is a picture of my nana from Leigh. She’s in the centre in white. She was the kindest, quietest woman. Every Saturday we’d have her plate apple pie and thinly cut bread from an unsliced white loaf.
She and her siblings lost their mother early, her father remarried an alcoholic who was cruel to them. Then a beloved brother died at Etaples WW1. She kept his picture on the mantelpiece till she died in the 80s.

This is me and my brother and my sister is the baby – with our Mum, at our house in Wolverhampton. I”m the middle child. Mum is sitting on what we called he Basket Chair. We used to play a particular vinyl record – it was Greek music that got faster and faster, we would start with a slow walk and then run round it faster and faster til we were dizzy and would fall over.

Our son was extremely poorly as a newborn and we almost lost him, I also miscarried his twin at six week gestation. Along with other issues, he contracted meningitis and we were told he would likely never walk or talk, and would almost certainly be deaf. He is now a strapping nine year old miracle, and you would never know that he was was ill at all. He has other non-visible disabilities, along with a chronic kidney condition, but he is amazing. He is defined by his love of theatre, making things and his brilliant sense of humour; not by the label ‘disabled’. It has been difficult to navigate the constant anxiety about his health as he has grown, and we are trying to gently ease the apron strings and allow him some freedom, but I think I’ll always see him as that tiny poorly newborn in some way.

My dad used to drop me off at the station, after a weekend at home from uni.
He insisted on staying till the train disappeared out of sight, before leaving.
Here he is in his trilby, slipping a fiver through the train window.
“Buy yourself a grapefruit” he’d shout, as the train pulled me elsewhere. Me, hiding behind my Jane Austen.

I think of him often.
I would wave back now.

My Nan was an avid knitter. I found this cardigan – knitted in the 1960’s – when I was tidying the loft. The small photo is her wearing it on a family day out rambling…
She was taken way too soon, aged 67, the result of a 20 a day woodbine habit. No-one knew how dangerous it was when she took it up and it was too late when she eventually gave up.
She gave me my lifelong love of all things knitted, crocheted and generally handmade and I still wish I could talk to her more, particularly when I am stuck with a tricky pattern. My children would have loved her…

I grew up surrounded by people. The ninth of twelve children. A quiet child in a noisy house. We lived in a big cold Victorian house in a poor mill town halfway to Manchester. This is me with one of my brothers. He was two years older than me. He would have been 58 this week but 8 years ago he lost himself and died by suicide. I think about him every day. When you have lots of siblings people think losing one won’t matter as much. They are wrong.

It’s always been just us. For all of her eighteen years. Four years ago we lost my mum, the closest thing to a co/second parent she had. In and amongst the grief was the fear of it all being down to me now, with no back up. We got through it, like we got through the horror of school for all of those years, which felt like a war zone to my beautiful kind funny amazing daughter.
And then I fell. Broke one ankle badly and hurt the other. Two weeks in hospital then home: plated and pinned with no weight bearing for six weeks.
Here is what she did:
Came to visit me in hospital: she hates and fears hospitals.
Walked the dog: she hates communicating with strangers and our (gorgeous) dog is a people magnet.
Rearranged the flat so I could get home: cleared the hall and half of my bedroom for the commode to get in.
Practiced moving around on the commode: so she could show me how best to navigate it.
Lived alone for 2 weeks.
Here’s what she’s doing every day now:
The washing: doesn’t like touching dirty or wet clothes.
The dishes: feels sick removing food from plates.
The food prep: we like different foods.
Tolerates the home helps and visitors coming in daily to her safe haven.
Empties the commode.
She’s going to be ok in the world.
Mum would be so proud.

My parents never explained why they moved here, but my guess is that it was because here they had no history.

To me and my siblings however, this place has history! I haven’t lived here for over a quarter of a century, but in my dreams I still navigate the streets and twittens with deep knowledge of how they all connect. I see people complaining that everything is changed and for the worse, but when I visit, it’s like stepping back in time to being a teenager, roaming around, looking for fun, and it is all so deeply familiar.

My dad was a bit of a town “character”, well known in all the pubs, and when he died far too young his funeral filled the church. My mum just didn’t know how to be in this place without him and so soon afterwards she left for somewhere far away and difficult to find, to once again be anonymous.

When she died, we siblings decided that the only place to mourn her that made any sense was here. We let people know we were returning, opened the church and hoped people might join us. And they did. The people who came knew exactly who they were coming for, even though they hadn’t seen her for years and years. They missed her, they cared about her, they loved her. And their presence helped us tell mum’s story (which is another entry all of its own!).

Some people don’t realise quite how many people they have influenced until they leave a community and then return. How much a family can grow through connections and friendships. I’m sad my mum never saw her return and just how large her influence was, how proud everyone was of her, and how much they loved having her around. But in the years since her passing, I’ve been much comforted by this knowledge.

I am one of four siblings. Dad was violent so we cut him out of our lives and so my children only have peace and love in theirs.

My brother became unwell when he was young. We didn’t see him for 10 years (his choice). Reconnecting with him after so long has been all kinds of emotions, but mostly gratitude. Having a photo of him with me, smiling next to me, has been as beautiful as a lotus in the mud. This has taught me what gratitude is.

My mum is slowly fading with dementia and we are trying to keep what is left of her alive by reminding her of who she’s used to be and reminding others who meet her of this also.

My husband is my rock, who will always listen. My eldest son my creative kind hearted soul. My youngest is my brightest spark who will be noticed in any room she enters. My children remind me to keep trying to be the person I want to be. Children are your greatest teachers, mirrors who reflect yourself back to you.

My adopted son ran away two days ago. I love him but that is not enough.

Family… always there, even when you sometimes wish they weren’t… 😊
Now we’re on the other end with intelligent & opinionated children & grandchildren of our own…
All we can do is remain in the background while they re-invent everything, in their own way.
We’ll be here, because you are there; and one day you’ll be here & we won’t be ❤️ (Pass it on…)

When I was 7 my family moved to live in Northern Ireland. This was because of my father ‘s work.

But we had to remember where we were from. Each week the local paper The Huddersfield Examiner was sent from my Aunt.

In it was a column called ‘Old Josh’.
This was written in the local dialect and my father would read it to us..

It was a way of reminding us who we were and where we were from.

‘Ee by gum them wa t’days “

I grew up in inner city Manchester , me , 1 sister and 2 brothers , mum and Dad . Life revolved around church outings, whit walks, brownies, guides, cubs , Scouts . We all played out on the street, in and out of each others houses. We didn’t have a lot of money , but we never felt poor. Saturdays was going to the market in town with my mum coming back with bags full of oranges, apples and potatoes . I slept in the attic with my sister which I loved , we played card games in bed. My Granny and Grandad lived in Wales we were lucky to spend so much time there . Love wasn’t just from my family but from friends and neighbours . I’m still in touch with friends I grew up with we are like family .

This is a photo of my parents and my brother, Simon. Simon was a vicar, he died in 1995, aged 40. He had AIDS. For the final three years of his life people in his church, including my mother, trained to support Simon so he could have IV feeding at home, which meant he could continue with his work as an Anglican priest. Simon inspired all of us with his strength, his love and his deep faith.

I was adopted as a tiny baby and sent up north. Mum was a tough gig, dad was lovely. No money, poor work but had help out relatives. I struggled to fit in, at school bullied. Always wondered what was wrong with me, struggled with poor choices and wrong men. Late ADHD diagnosis now. Searched for birth mother, not the happy ending. Granny now and finally happy in myself despite my quirks. Miss that lovely Dad very much.

Growing up, my family was dysfunctional, to put it mildly. My husband and I have now been together (and happy) almost 50 years, have two adult children who still love us, and four grandchildren. I feel so lucky.

Family is everything to me. Almost too much at times, but as I get older I cherish them more and more. I’m from North Wales and had the privilege of growing up in a street where doors were rarely locked and neighbours were “auntie” and “uncle”. My cousins are like my brother and sister and I love them all to bits. I’m glad I moved away but love going back and still call it home. London isn’t. We lost my Dad during Covid but we had nothing left unsaid although I’d give anything for one last conversation.

I sometimes feel that there is no such thing as a family that is not, in some way, dysfunctional. That it’s just part of the human condition for things to be that way.

That said, I know for sure that happy families exist – of course they do – and that is a beautiful thing, but I still feel that they are, sadly, in the minority.

There are millions of people out there, who don’t know what the warmth and security of a “real” family (whatever that means) feels like, and for them, the concept of “family” can take on an almost mythical quality- like something out of a Ladybird children’s book from the 1960s – something almost cartoonish and far away – somehow untouchable – an unreachable fantasy world of security and contentment.

For some, to look back on childhood is a nostalgic recollection of carefree, halcyon days – like wearing a warm jumper made out of stuff that you did years ago.

For others, that backwards look can be a more lonely experience, where the sense of abandonment never really goes away.

Either way, we all ultimately have to forgive our parents for their transgressions, their lack of presence or duty of care, or refusal or inability to take the responsibility of parenthood seriously.

Ironically, nurturing of the self can lead to the ability to care for others, for all others around us in the wider world, as well as our biological families – and to be merciful to ourselves, and to the stranger.

Kindness creates families – and the kinder we can be – the stronger the family will become.

Be kind. x

I remember the joy of the Welsh Aunty (or Uncle). People who had no blood ties to you, but who loved you, and fed you, and made you welcome in thier home. They were such a vital part of a working class Welsh childhood. When Mam and Dad were late home, they were always there for you. My Welsh Aunty Doreen looked after me, and then my son, in times of crisis. True evidence that community is the best support for raising children.

My Father was and will remain my hero and advocate. He used to call me “whizz bang” because I had so much energy and vim. He never once felt the need to squash me into being like the other kids, indeed he was that safe space for a lot of kids in our village who were “too much” or experiencing chaos in their home often giving them jobs to do to keep them out of trouble.

My Dad was a farmer, a long heritage of them, but his real passion was art, books, classical music and he passed on all those loves to me… My daughters, one sings in Cathedral choir and I often sit with tears in my eyes because I know he would have loved to be there, holding my hand in his massive farmer hand. My other daughter has his stillness, quietness, kindness,. Children especially ones who are neurodiverse, and animals go to her and it is her gift as it was his.

I miss him everyday.

my grandpa is the family member i’m closest to. he’s taught me to love and care for the world around me and to appreciate nature. every summer, we go to an island off the upper peninsula of michigan. every time him and i go into town, we go to a little cafe and get breakfast. i get a sausage breakfast bowl and an iced chai, he gets a chorizo breakfast burrito with a coffee. it’s such a small ritual but it holds so much meaning for me. on the boat ride into town, we keep an eye out for bald eagles. if we’re going fast enough, we don’t even have to breathe. the wind moves through our lungs. the water looks like glass in the morning. i don’t know what i’ll do when he’s gone.

Secure attachment with birth family 0 to 13 years ✅ Fostered 13 to 17 ✅ Foster Carer for over 10 years ✅

As a care experienced individual I know what #belonging and #mattering looks like but more importantly feels like.

In my paid work I am privileged to lead a community – Brays School, part of Forward Education Trust.

Not everyone has a ‘family’ where they can flourish. For some that ‘family’ will be their employer.

At Brays I intentionally sought to strive for a sense of #belonging

This is me with my mum and dad last summer sitting on a table on the seafront at Largs having enjoyed some fish a chips together watching the ferry leave and come.

Mum had dementia and dad was almost blind and yet somehow we managed to enjoy the sunshine and the mellowness of the sea air.

Mum and dad both died within 4 months of each other and although they had been separated for 35 years I still shared time with them both.

Mum and dad lived in Nigeria Abuja state 1960-1964 as my dad taught art to teachers training at college. My mum later trained under anthropologist dr Christopher Fyfe in Edinburgh and later became a lecturer at SOAS U of London

Their spirits keep motivating me along. Maybe one day I’ll visit Abuja and see for myself what inspired their lifetimes work.

I’m too young to remember how old I was when this family tradition started. It’s Christmas morning, mum & dad are at the top of the stairs, us kids are ushered one by one to the toilet.
All done says mum to dad who’s now stood at the bottom of the stairs. Dad tells us, he’s just going to check, as us kids shout, has he been, has he been?
Dad opens the living room door, omg omg omg has he been dad?
Dad now echoing us kids, omg omg omg YES HE HAS, then the magic happens as we run into the living room to rip open what we thought was millions of presents while dad, calmly checked all the torn paper for toys before putting them in the black bin bag while, mum looks like she’s won the pools whenever one of us gets overexcited about another gift we thought we could never live without.
I grew up, I moved to Scotland but, I always came home for Christmas with my son so he could witness the magic & love of Christmas morning.
I’m 60 now, dad’s passed away. Mum, now has dementia & lives with me & my two grandchildren. My son is an adult but, every Christmas morning, we do exactly the same, only it’s now my son who checks if “he’s been” & I stand at the top of the stairs making sure everyone’s had a wee before we go down…………

Our baba (father) died when I was 7 years old. He was a loving, calm, respectful, respected, strong character. Everything changed that day. Suddenly we were protected by no one. My young ma (mum) was left to raise 4 children by herself, in a country that wasn’t her own. one day she quietly asked us to promise her that we would always be there for one another. We promised. 45 years on, we continue to protect one another. We are all now parents, of children from ages 7 to 37. All of them love the bones of their Didi (grandma) & also love the bones of one another. They also guide & protect one another. It is the biggest gift our ma has given us. To completely & absolutely understand the love of family.
– Picture of my dad & the bark of a tree (recently cut down) he planted many years ago, with all of his families names painted on it (wife, children, grandchildren) – painted by his granddaughter Elsa

My family. Mental health – secret and mean, generational clouded my mum. My dad, no mother did his kind, kind best – Friday tea with just him, and maybe my sister. Eat what we like, read at the table, no slaps round the head, happiness and laughs. Until she returned. Years later, she tried to make amends, she become a brilliant grandparent to the boys – not so much the girls – her wariness and jealousies too deep for love, but they were fabulous to the kids – who loved them. My beloved sisters husband killed, I gave 2 years to support- and have gradually pulled back to give her space to fill it. Going to the nursing home, where mum is, dad is dead. Exam troubles of my daughter had preoccupied me, mums sudden surfacing out of dementia to ask me, “Are you alright?” with tone, and comprehension shocked me, and comforted me. how complex family is. And how simple.

I’ve started writing about events in my life, and in the process have uncovered many disturbing instances where parents have been manipulated into keeping secrets and lies about the people who manipulated them, or have had to misrepresent what really happened. Parents who turned to a “friend” (who was in a position of trust in children’s services) for advice, were coerced into registering the birth of a baby as if it were their own child, when it was actually their under-aged daughter’s baby. They did this because they were threatened that their children would be taken into care if they didn’t comply.

This woman was in a position to alter official records, making it nigh on impossible for mothers and children to find one another in the future. In my family two such instances occurred but thankfully, against all the odds, these mothers and children have been reunited. Sadly the children were already adults when this happened, so they never had the joy of growing as a family from a young age. We are however thrilled to have these “babies” back in the fold and grateful to be able to publicly recognise them family once more. They are no longer deep, dark secrets.

Family is everything to me and to us.
We are luck to have 4 generations intertwined with love, stories, traditions and special memories.
Role modelled by my amazing parents right down to their great grandchildren.
Love and experiences in abundance.
We have special times together. Experiences that shape us to be who we are, food shared, new traditions alongside old ones. We are blessed.

My son was born on Valentines day, his due date was April 26th. He is the best present I’ve ever had. Now 37 and 6′ 2″ , we named him Alexander and his name suits him for many reasons.

Staying overnight at my grandmothers was liking entering heaven, after hell. She was a warm bowl of soup, the feel of fresh bed linen dried in the wind and the scent of freshly baked scones.

She saw my mother’s coldness and welcomed me to her warm embrace. When I look back, it’s hard to believe that she was the mother of such a violent man but my feeling now is she was also the victim of violent man – his father. Maybe that’s why she chose kindness, not cruelty.

She lifted the weight off my shoulders and surrounded me with feather-filled pillows. With her, I could be a child. I didn’t have to feel bad about myself, or on alert for the next drama. Here I could just be.

Besides being a kind fairy godmother, she was an incredible cook. If there had been a Bake Off in the 70’s, she would have won. She taught me to bake moist ginger cakes, perfect meringues filled with thick whipped cream, coconut ice and large fruit filled scones with lashings of butter. Her afternoon teas were sumptuous affairs at a time when cholesterol was not in the dictionary.

After tea, I had a warm bath all to myself. Not shared like at home, not in a queue. She’d gently wash my hair and then wrap me in warmed towels and clean nightdress, then tuck me up in a soft bed I could sink into. She’d make hot cocoa and settle me to sleep and I’d sleep the best and longest sleeps of my life at her house – away from fights, fists and fear.

One time she put so many rags in my hair overnight, I woke with an afro- type hairstyle. I loved it – I’d never had curls or thickness before. I felt happy – until my mother arrived to collect me, sneered and ridiculed my hair and washed it all out as soon as we got home.

My heart fell into a million pieces again, but I am so grateful that even for a few nights of my childhood I got to feel what a mother could be. That hugs and acceptance and love were real.

A few months before my 10th birthday, we escaped my step father with the help of a social worker and police – and my instant, new stepfather. I never saw my grandmother again. I never got to say goodbye. Kindness faded into a dream. From 10 to 25 I lived with an eating disorder – anorexia turned into compulsive eating and bulimia. I turned to food for comfort, for ‘love.’ A distortion of something beautiful I shared with her – but it’s interesting to see how the soul acts out, how it seeks the thing lost.

Now I’m in my 50’s and as I work to heal my childhood trauma, I remember my grandmother and my other nana with immense gratitude. They gave me glimpses of something my mother could not or would not give, and as I write I have a feeling my grandmother is here. She remembers me too. She loved me too. I can feel it in my tears.

Me and my first three brothers grew up in working family in the 1970s my parents had their own business, worked hard and we was worked as well from an early age . We had a brother and sister who were born in the 1980s who we all loved .me and my ol
der brother worked most days and weekends while studying and was hard sometimes . But it paid off as it set us up for what life would throw at us . My brothers and sisters are amazing , strong , intelligent, resilient and caring , everything my mum would have wanted , sadly she died in 1993 aged 45 . She left us but left her in us x

I never knew why my parents were together. Father worked all the time, provided a great life, trips to USA, driving round in the latest car, even a Rolls Royce, but they never had a loving relationship.

Mother was an alcoholic, I knew at 10 years old exactly how much water she had in her Bells whiskey, she hid bottles all around the house. Once opened a cupboard and a bottle fell out, tried to catch it before it hit the slate floor, it smashed and cut all my fingers on my right hand. No plasters, no bandages, ended up in hospital, I still have the scars 50 years later. Father threw himself into work, wife always drunk, kids that were needy.

To this day, I hate whiskey, my scars show up when I am cold or on the airport scanners, mother died a long time ago, people miss her, I don’t, not really

I grew up in a milk bottle white working-class family in an equally milk bottle white northern town on the outskirts of Wigan. Everywhere around me was white.
Every corner I looked people were white. Teachers, neighbours, shopkeepers, milkmen, binmen, the ice cream and lollypop man. Out of 1100 children in high school, 5 children were brown.
I was brown too.

I was born in January 1971 to a white British mother and an African American U.S. serviceman named Steve. Steve was stationed at Burtonwood, a large American airbase located on the outskirts of Warrington.
Steve left England in April 1971, not knowing he had fathered a child. Mums white husband, Stan, was the man I called Dad.
Stan brought me up as his own son, ignored his wife’s infidelity and treated me no differently than his own 2 biological children.
However, each time I asked Mum and Dad WHY I was brown, unlike the rest of my white family, I was hit with a wall of silence. My skin colour was ignored, and my mental health struggles went unaddressed. I became depressed and increasingly more curious about my roots and the reason for me sticking out like a sore thumb.
After 31 years I managed to track down my biological father in Atlanta, Georgia. He invited me to America to do a DNA test and the results stated:
The alleged father cannot be excluded as the biological father of the child, DAVID A. YEATES, since they share the same genetic markers. Using the DNA Analysis, the probability of paternity is 99.99%, as compared to an untested, unrelated man of the Black population.

Due to Mum and Dad both having no siblings, I’d never had a cousin, Aunt or Uncle, suddenly I had 8 first cousins, 4 aunts, 2 uncles and a sister!

Me and Dad remained close, and he finally acclimatised to the fact that I’d found my biological American dad. I never stopped calling him Dad, as he was the man who had raised me, loved me and called me his son. Dad was the one who fixed bicycle punctures, took me fishing and watching rugby league.
In 2021, Dad died, 6 months after his 80th birthday at his funeral I spoke and said the following words:
‘There was no biological connection between me and Stan Yeates, there was no genetic markers. The blood that courses through my veins right now is not the same blood as Stan Yeates. My Dad proved that you don’t need a biological connection to be a dad. Stan was happy being my dad, and I was happy to be his son.’

Steve died 18 months later.
For 22 years I’d walked around knowing I had 2 brilliant Dads in my corner, suddenly I had none.
During the summer when Steve was alive, I would look west, marvelling at the latest beautiful sunset and imagine what Steve was doing 4000 miles away. As my day drew to close, his was still bathed in the brutal Georgia sunshine.
Now sunsets feel cruel, painful, devoid of beauty.
When I look west and see deep reds, yellows and pink stretching across the sky, it’s now just a reminder that he’s no longer there.

@wiglanta

Growing up my ‘dad’ was always there for me, but there was always something between us, felt like resentment towards me. It wasn’t until as an adult I met them as how they wanted to be seen & subsequently fully transitioned that I realised how much they had sacrificed as I was growing up. My parent Janet is the BEST PARENT in the WORLD. Fully accepting them, our bond is stronger than ever. Three generations; my daughter, my parent & moi.

I was always a single mum, to 3 children. The first 2 born, then separation and divorce. The third was born during a passing relationship. Wanted nevertheless, and loved. All 3 wanted and loved. We lived in Italy with wonderful Nonnas who helped out so much with no judgement. At the time the stigma attached to single women bringing up kids was palpable. But I knew differently. We were a band of 4. A unit. No husband, no partner just us 4. A strong perfect unit that was just meant to be. I’d visualise us 4 holding hands in an unbreakable chain. We struggled terrible financial hardship, I did some jobs I’m not proud of, but we pulled together and made it to today. My children, incredible adults now, strong, resilient and loving with families of their own and I am now to become a Nonna for the second time.

Family is a front door, always open.

A shop window perfectly presented.

An abandoned backyard with broken promises and messy mistakes.

Family is somewhere to hide yet ruthlessly exposing.

Family is words said in hurt. Words said to hurt. Words said to heal.

Authentic memories and dishonest recollections.

Family is generations within one generation.

Family is good values honed and upheld. And harmful attitudes learned from and discarded.

Family is anger, is fear, is hope, is past and present, is built on trust and dreams, on dust and debris. It’s transparent yet tangible, touchable.

It’s both anchored ship and the choppy waters.

My family is rooted in blood ties, framed by forever friends found in the playground, my soul sisters, and strengthened by a central and special trinity of kindred spirits. It’s the unconditional bond of a mother and daughter. It’s multi-dimensional,
complicated love in every season and through every storm.

I have been on a cancer journey for 9 years. I receive the most fantastic support from my partner Gail and her extended family; my four siblings and their families; our huge network of cousins; my “adoptive sister” ; my friends who feel like family.

To my darling baby niece…

I’m imagining your squishy little body
being held close
in a loving embrace
by everyone around you
you are brand new in the world and
i hope you are feeling all the love
and joy of being born
of being warm, cherished
by every human around you.

And I am so sorry
I can’t be there for you
I want to be there so much
my heart and stomach ache
I can’t explain how much love i feel for
a little bundle that i have never met.

That I will not meet until
she is much older, probably
I will be a stranger to you and
you will hear of the selfish aunt
who didn’t want to know you
except that I do, but I cant.
Not without hiding
the best parts of myself,
not without being dehumanised
not without being used
as an emotional punching bag.

So forgive me, little one
for not being there
for not being the podi nandi
you need me to be.
For missing every birthday
every milestone you will have.
I will love you from afar.
One day I hope to meet you.
If I don’t, I will leave these words
so you know that this stranger
has loved you
since the day you were born.

Retired, mother of three.

My children are still of the age where we can have a group hug and fit on one sofa together. No matter what comes our way, I hope we always have love even if we can’t fit on the same sofa anymore.

My Dad died suddenly from a heart attack aged 58. We were all in shock, my sister, my Mum and me. Although I was an adult (28) at the time, I was still finding my way in the world and relied upon his advice and support. I felt lost without him. I had to grow up overnight, no longer the ‘child’ but now the ‘parent’ to ensure my Mum was OK. I am sad that he has missed witnessing my 2 boys growing up into adults. He would have been a wonderful Grandad. I’m really proud of this photo of my Dad. He worked for Bradford Council and was instrumental in organising a memorial sculpture for the people who sadly lost their lives in the dreadful Bradford City Stadium fire

This is my son, a tricky journey to get to him. He is the light of my life and brings me so much joy. I worry every day that he isnt spealkng yet.

Today I am sixty-five. I write a story-telling page and do little “treasure hunts” locally, for free. Living my best life ever although I am very poor by many standards.

Feel rich in the happiness I see happening in others with fun little searchers and reading uplifting tales.

Working backwards. I recovered from severe agoraphobia. Before that, decades of anxiety issues that saw me fail in relationships and have twenty-five different jobs in my working years. Never fired, would just suffer an anxiety attack and, leave.

Before that, I could handle the courses but not the crowds. Gave up on college.

Before that, let’s go to the beginning. I was fed well. That’s about it. I started going door to door just to find people who would spend time with me. Not many doors in, I was seven, when I definitely knocked on the wrong door.

And the result lasted three years. No one ever caught on.

Let me reiterate. Today I am sixty-five and living my best life. Good changes can occur; it is never too late.

My father wasn’t demonstrative towards his children, except when he was angry. Years after he died, my mother asked if I remembered when he had saved me from drowning. I didn’t as I had only been aged about 2. My parents were working in a paddock with a dam of water in it and, unsupervised for a moment, I walked in and was quickly out of my depth. My mother said all she could see was my red cardigan in the water – my father rushed over and grabbed it (and me) and pulled me back into the air. Doing the right thing exactly when it counted. You have to forgive the rest for something like that. Oh, and he was thrilled to get a granddaughter.

There is a rhododendron tree, still blooms every year. In the garden of the home I grew up in from 11yrs to 20yrs old. Those formative, life moulding years. I bought my mother as a 16yr old, on my youth training scheme at a garden centre. A simple gift. Its flowers remain, a reminder of that almost throwaway gift, 11 years have passed now since my mother left this world. This world that has never been the same since, this world that shines upon those flowers still, that bloom without my mothers gaze

On Motherhood

From the moment I wake,
I feel the need for a break,
From the juggling of plates,
Of what needs to be done as dictated by a host of deadlines and dates.

Scrolling through various school apps needed for each day is now part of the norm,
Wading through admim, endlessly filling in forms,
On medical conditions, dietary needs and ticking consents,
Whilst rummaging for boxes and bits for school projects from the recycling bin’s contents.

Calming fears about mocks,
Finding odd socks,
Making sure homework is complete,
On time, in full and relatively neat,
Dealing with squabbles, tears and meltdowns,
Cheering up grumps, sulks, strops and frowns,
Deciphering what the monosyllabic grunts or screechy squeaks mean,
Wondering where the hell that mouldering PE kit has been?
Pack lunches are made,
School trip invoices paid,
Helping search for a favourite toy or book that has been mislaid.

Talking through all their worries and woes….
And all in way that encourages their resilience and confidence to grow,
Teaching them to be caring, hardworking, tolerant and kind,
Standing up for what’s right and having an independent, strong mind.

As I send them off to bed with a hug at the end of the day,
I’m grateful for them both and their quirky, wee ways,
And now I can start to do wade through my long list of things that needs to be done,
Any regrets, I ponder, about being a mum?
No, not really.
Not even one.
Before I slump on the sofa with a big cup of tea,
And only then, take a breather, making some time to be me.

I was born into one version of family and found another by accident. The first taught me how to read a room before I could read a book, how to make myself smaller than the silence, how to survive what was never named. Years later, at twenty-seven, in a place that had nothing to do with home, I met two people through work. They were ordinary and kind, the sort of people you might not notice unless you needed them. Without ceremony, I became their accidental daughter. There were no papers or declarations, just cups of tea, open doors, and the slow, unfamiliar weight of being kept in mind. They live in Australia now, far enough that love has to travel, but close enough that my two boys call them Gran and Grumpy as if it has always been true. I never found my way back to the people I was born to, and perhaps that is its own kind of ending.

What I have instead is something I did not know to hope for. We are told that family is something fixed, something we inherit and carry, but I have learned it can also arrive sideways, quietly, without announcement. It can begin in a workplace, in a conversation that lasts a little longer than it should, in a kindness that does not ask to be repaid. It can grow where nothing was planted, take root in ground that has only known survival, and become something steady enough to stand in. I do not take it lightly, not after everything it took to survive, not after learning how rare it is to be held without condition. The love of two people who did not have to choose me, and did anyway, has given me a version of family I never imagined, and one I now know how to pass on.

Growing up not existing and not knowing it.
Growing up to comply.
Growing up not knowing that trauma was trauma.
Growing up in a different reality.
Growing up using drink and drugs to quell what is stirring.
Growing up without growing up.

Realising family members don’t always result in family units.

Finding chosen family.

Growing up finally, middle aged, with love, care, compassion, kindness.

Love.
Peace.

My past made me who I am.
Grateful the past ends with me.

I was down as a failure to thrive baby as they thought my patents were starving me. Age 2 Dr memtions a heart murmur I was born with, surgery followed. Now a fully thriving mum of 2 wonderful boys, with a wonderful husband and the richest lived life. I think of how my parents struggled with me, and how blessed I am with my lads even through the lowest lows as they bring me the highest highs. Living my best life.

I’ve always felt like a weirdo- that I didn’t fit in. As a kid I used to imagine I’d been switched into my family: alien, changeling, hospital admin error… I wasn’t sure but something fundamental felt off. Becoming a mother was the first time I felt connected: to my body, to a lineage, one day I’d be an ancestor and I finally felt I had a place in the thing we call time.
When I first held my daughter and looked into her eyes I felt evidence of reincarnation- because she was all there, her whole beingness. When she was a baby I had to practice saying “I love you.” I’d never heard it in my family, it felt uncomfortable- it’s still easier to say it to my dog than any human.
With my daughter, looking for community, I found myself in Glastonbury, which is a town full of weirdos. Here I’ve met people who feel like family. I’ve gained more acceptance for myself and as a result for the family I was born into. I trained in psychology and can see now why my family were uneasy and why they said and did the things they did/do. I can try to do something different so my daughter feels fully grounded in her self and the world. She is now 16, she unfurls more of herself every day. She seems pretty incredible, I think it’s all turning out ok.

I am an identical twin, born to young parents in the 70’s. When we were 18 months old our mother left us and we never saw her again. Despite his best efforts my dad struggled to cope alone with us so we moved in with his parents . I have no recollection of the pain she inflicted because we were so loved by our grandparents. My Nan (Dot) especially, she became the mother we needed. She was as recovering from a serious heart attack when we moved in, but she didn’t let that slow her down. She managed the home and also worked full time caring for people with severe mental illness – this was the 80’s and Thatchers ‘care in the community’ era. She was completely dedicated to her work and the people who needed her. We lost her 20 years ago now, but she remains my guiding light and inspiration. We all need that one person to show us unconditional love and it can be quite transformational.

My mum got pregnant with me, when she was 16, in 1973.

She met my dad, in a library in East London, when she was 14.

He asked her the infamous words “Do you come here often.”

There relationship was fraught with tension as the brokeness and loss that shaped their upbringing, played out in our chaotic and fractious homelife.

When I was 15, my dad wrote to me and my younger sister and said that he didn’t want to see us again.

When he died in 2019, I found a letter in his belongings, in my sister’s teenage handwriting, berating him for his letter and asking how he thought I would feel when I read it. I realised that my sister and my mum had opened the letter before I read it.

In the summer of 2026, my mum admitted to me that she had written to my dad before he wrote the farewell letter which said “He didnt want to be an interloper in our lives”.

My mum has a complex relationship with the truth. I will never know what she wrote in the letter that prompted his decimating response.

I do know that I am very grateful that my dad and I later reconciled; he died with no words left unsaid between us.

My experiernce of familial love is complicated but I am glad to say that my love for my own children is unequivocal. My sons are my alpha and omega: I love them endlessly, without end.

Family isn’t necessarily blood, it’s love, support, sharing, being there. I have two daughters.

One I gave birth to nearly 26 years ago. A surprise finding out I was pregnant and then giving birth 12 days later. Had given up my job at Contact, Manchester a month earlier due to health. Lemn, you were at my leaving party!
The other came into our lives 12 years ago through a lupus support group on FB. Her parents weren’t really in her life, so we absorbed her into our family. She’s now 42 and a mum herself to my gorgeous granddaughter. She’s not blood, she’s not officially adopted. But she is my eldest daughter.
All three of us have multiple chronic illnesses and are counted as disabled. Invisible illnesses are hard because so many go “But you don’t look ill”. Tell that to our bodies which often fail us. But we are there for each other. A family, found through illness but pulled together by love. With a big shout out to both my and my eldest’s husbands who have to also be our supports.

This summer I was lucky enough to travel back to Soweto, South Africa to see my old adoption home as well as meeting my biological family. I was lucky enough to be joined on the trip by my lovely adoptive parents. Who are absolutely wonderful! Selfishly, I had never realized the burden of adoption on my parents and my biological family. I woke up with 2 siblings one day and went to bed with 5 more + aunts and uncles. These words are just a small part of my story❤️

My experience of family is that sometimes it extends to include other people who haven’t been able to be with their loved ones due to circumstances beyond their control. My friend Odette from the DRC found sanctuary here and a version of family until she could be reunited with her children. I love how she calls me ‘her sister’.

My Dad died suddenly and my Mum 8 months later. I had never told my Mum that I loved her as our relationship was not really close but as I sat beside her before leaving for the night, I said, “Love You Mum. You really were a good Mum” and “see you soon”. She died that night. I hope she took it with her.

Hi I’m Victor I’m mixed race my biological parents where( Irish and Nigerian) and i was fostered into a white family in the late 60’s my foster parent’s weren’t the best, but they tried it was a difficult situation in those days in Glasgow. What struck me, and stayed with me my whole life was! (Firstly let me say my foster parents fostered around 5 of us unrelated and she had one biological son i was the youngest of the 5 and was like my foster mums shadow i followed her everywhere). How my foster mum held her head high when we where out people would whisper behind our backs on the bus, whenever we walked along the streets she would get stones thrown at her, kids yes kids would spit at her and me and shouted Nigger lover and the likes after us. She would look down at me and say ” just ignore them Victor hold your head up and keep walking” i was astounded here’s a woman with no relationship to myself blood or biological in any way, but she would take this abusive behaviour from strangers in the streets without engagement. I found that powerful.

Family is like water.
At least mine is like one.

It’s present, it holds, it floats, can be wavy and house layers of vibrations beneath its calm. It’s good, it’s vital, can be contaminated but it flows.
Seasons can affect it but it’s persistent in whatever way its presence becomes effective.

This is a photo I took of my husband and our two dads at Cambridge Botanical gardens in 2016. My father-in-law was unwell with Parkinson’s and couldn’t easily travel to visit us, so my dad would drive down from Lancashire to Wolverhampton to pick him up and bring him to us in Cambridge. We had many such visits, two dads for the price of one. On paper they had little in common, not even a language, but they were both lovely kind people who were great dads. Neither is with us anymore – both much missed.

This is my little family in 1968. I am the toddler. They divorced and I was sent to my grandparents in Ireland , then back to mother, then grandparents, then aunt, then mother, then grandmother, then aunt.
Set out into the world alone at 17. Then to Father, then found a husband. My beautiful son became my family in 1992. 🥰 the search for family never quite ends. I am 60 now.

I wrote this piece about my nana, she taught me a lot about life, most importantly about values and how to treat people.

You could tell, if you simply observed her, what kind of life she had had. I knew innately what kind of life she had had. Nana had told me bits and pieces as I was growing up but I did not put the pieces together until Iater.
She had been a tall woman, at least what could be considered tall for our family. Around 5 ‘6 I would say. But life had not been kind to her and she had developed a slight stoop as she aged and her back was beginning to round. She had naturally short dark curly hair which did fade to grey over the years.
Her eyes were sunken towards the end with dark patches underneath. Her body gave off the impression it was tired. Her bones were thin, and the skin now gathered in certain areas, you could tell she was once heavier. But she had never been overweight. Old pictures showed a shapely figure, from a woman that was once fashion conscious.
Her voice was distinctive, deep, which was maybe just as well as she had raised eight children of her own and then went on to care for various grandchildren. Most notably the three of us, me and my brothers. Hopefully we were not too much trouble to her.
Now that I am a mother, I can appreciate the qualities she had and the sacrifices she made. Right up until her last few years she had worked, often juggling a few part time cleaning jobs so she could provide. Her house went like a fair, there was always friends and family popping by and multiple kids on and off the doorstep. This meant the larder had to be stocked. She gave off a warmth and exuberance that even the kids in the street took to her and called her nana. She was never one to boast but I know she enjoyed this. Having the extra mouths to feed was a strain. Setting a place at the table for unexpected guests she would soon stretch the food to accommodate this. Rich tea biscuits and jam pieces (sandwiches) were the common requests. And in summer you were treated to ice lollies, biscuits that were seen on tv adverts such 5,4,3,2,1’s and melon. I was in heaven. I remember sitting sewing the seeds of the melon to make a necklace. She never wasted anything; life had not allowed that.
From the snippets she and her friend told me, she had gone into domestic service at 14, working for a doctor in a big house on the Perth road. Her mother had died when she was fairly young and she had, her whole life, been bothered with a bad chest. She also did a spell of squatting before she got a house in Fintry. Although she gave you a snippet, there was no further details. It was as if she had said too much. Nana died aged 66. I later learned that she never thought she would make it that long.

We have just welcomed our second child, Pippa, into our family after having our first baby, Rowan, 18 months ago. Life has been a whirlwind but I wouldn’t change anything for the world- these two have taught me more about life, love and family than the last 32 years on this planet have. We are so lucky.

I wrote a poem about my brother, Edward after he died in 2023. Here is it

The boy that never grew up

You often hear them say, he was taken too young. But you really were, you were 52 in human years but like Peter Pan, you were the boy that never grew up

You resisted Responsibility, with the exception of Marley, man’s best friend. Choosing to be as carefree as you could, the boy that never grew up

I recall your presence, your eyes, your efforts. You left this world just as you experienced it, with trauma and pain and uncertainty and struggles. With a longing to belong, for the boy that never grew up

You did well, your photography made it all the way to exhibitions in America. You travelled far my brother, not bad for the boy that never grew up

You were a ball of energy, everyone felt your warmth and appreciated your charm. Reminiscent of the boy that never grew up

To live in the hearts of those we love is not to die, cherished forever, for the boy that never grew up

My heart aches with the grief and loss. I struggle to breathe as you did, struggle to navigate my compass as you did, the boy that never grew up

There is a space now, under my wing. How do I fill this void and this absence. A challenge for the Presence that was, from the boy that never grew up

At junior school and infant school I loved to captivate people with a story.  If the story worked I would tell it again to someone else. I  hone the story. At the day’s end I run home barely able to carry it.  Then I choose the moment to tell it to my brother, sister, father or mother.  The joy!

When I was twelve my parents – as i knew them to be – put me into children’s homes. They said they would never visit me & never did. I stopped being hugged or touched. I remember the visceral feeling that I was losing story  because there was no one who cared enough to hear it & hold it,  that my  sentences would seize up  through lack of use. It was the end of my confidence to tell a story in writing or in person. Who would believe me & why? Today I tell stories on stages all over the world & in books. It does not replace what is not there.

My parents had me when they were 44 (mum) and 43 (dad). They’d got 4 adult children between them from previous marriages, mum had 2 sons and a daughter and dad had a son. They both wanted a little girl, and I turned up.
It was almost like having 4 extra parents. I was absolutely spoiled but incredibly loved. I’d be lost without my siblings.

The photo is of me as a toddler, my mum got it done for my second birthday.

My Grandad chatted up my Granny as she posted a letter at the postbox, bottom of Park Street, Bristol, WW2 was about to start. He didn’t know she was engaged to someone else, quickly that changed! She was beautiful.

When they signed the wedding certificate he realised she was 10 years older than him. Ladies did not speak of their age back then. She was quite a woman.

They had a beautiful marriage of 50 years + two children.
When my husband and I got married, we and all the guests walked up Park Street, past the post box, to our wedding lunch. To include them. Long gone but not forgotten.

Here’s to chance meetings. Taking a risk. A moment that change everything.

Next to me in this picture are my treasures in life. Life has changed since losing my Dad and I will never be the same again. I have seen my Dad in my dreams; last time I felt how I did when he was alive and as incredible as it was, I am reminded that I will not feel like this again ( unless in a dream). From this strong foundation of love, I continue to build my own family and they are pretty decent human beings. My boys are on the Medicine path ( one reading one starting this Sept 🙏). My daughter works as a tech at the school I teach English in. She has given me a beautiful granddaughter.

Growing up as a kid, me and my brother were taken to my mums home town in Northern Ireland most years to visit her family on holiday. We were spread out across different relatives homes and I was always sent to grand parents where my female cousin lived, she was a little bit older than me. She wasn’t always very nice to me and I felt she liked to make me feel small. Anyhow years later after my parents divorced I learned that my ‘cousin’ was actually my sister from my mums previous marriage to a local man. She was left behind when my mum started a new life in England and had me and my brother; I suppose I would be angry too if that were me. My mum is still cagey to this day and won’t discuss anything even now in her 70’s. Everyone knew but me and my brother, the effort put into masking truths baffles me…

My mum.
I wish you knew how much I miss you. How much my heart breaks every day you’re not here. When dementia set in and we couldnt video call I broke. You kept me going when I was alone and pregnant in lockdown.
It was never perfect. But we worked on it. I’m sorry I didn’t recognise when your dementia started to hit you. How sad it made you.
I miss you. I’ve never needed you so much as I do now but I hope you have peace with granny and grandad x

My family have lived in this area for many generations. My mothers family lived at the bottom of the village and my fathers family lived at the top. To my fathers mother this meant that my mother came from a lower class than she did. Even though they all lived in the same type of house and had similar jobs. Before pavements and drains all the rain water (and other liquid) flowed down the hill, making those who lived higher up superior as their houses didn’t get flooded with the liquid.

One year ago my soulmate tried desperately to rest in this chair. Our whole lives on this planet, a series of small realisations that grew into big decisions, had led us to this moment in time.

Before family was ruptured and distant. But in an instant family was reborn with you, the three of us a new home for each other. Each of us parents moulded from our past family lives, from laughter and crying, from cuddles and fights, from hiding and coming out and not being seen, from fear and love, from pain and hope. Nobody really knows what another family has been through to get to where they are, or what challenges they might still face.

Sometimes I am a bit sad and wish that we had a closer family to share you with. But at other times I want to keep our small family sacred, just for the three of us. I love you both so much.

Drawing was a bridge.
Before words, there were lines— quiet marks reaching outward, pushing into being.
A way to connect without speaking. To be seen.
Around the table is what I remember.
Not one moment-many.
The feel of the wood. Old. Worn. Something to run your hands along.
Waiting. Always waiting
Time stretching. Not knowing for what.
Light through the window. Dust. Cobwebs.
The smell of carpet.
Bare floors.
Sitting close-shoulders touching without thinking.
Food shared.
Last chips.
Laughing. Singing something silly.
Talking. Debating. Arguing. Letting it pass.
The door open.
People coming. Going.
Friends. Neighbours. Whoever arrived.
Nothing fixed. But it held.
But loss sits in it too.
In the spaces where people should be.
In the quiet after the door closes.
In the separation that doesn’t make sense, but still happens.
There is a bond in family-something that feels natural, like it should just be there.
A current running underneath.
A river of blood that connects even when it is unknown, even when it is out of reach.
And somewhere between what is held and what is lost— connection.

I wrote this piece for a charity called the forgiveness project to share how I came to make peace with my dad before he died in 2014.
‘Growing up with an alcoholic father was extremely difficult, causing lots of family arguments and trauma. As a child I didn’t understand why my father hid cans of beer in the house and then spent the morning drinking them in the toilet. This sick behaviour would continue in the evening when he would spend most of his money in the pub and then come home drunk and verbally abuse us,
I curse the day you were born I curse the day you were born ive forgotten more in a minute than you’ve learnt in a life time ive forgotten more in a minute than you’ve learnt in a life time iveforgotten more in a minute than you’ve learnt in a life time Youre a dirty rotten thing youre a dirty rotten thing your dirty rotten thing He would then end up stealing more money from my mum. I used to feel such shame and embarrassment when I caught him in the act.
Undoubtedly my dad’s behaviour contributed to me growing up with low self-esteem, lack of confidence and depression. The mental, verbal and emotional abuse left me with deep emotional frustration. It was at college that a counsellor introduced me to Alateen, a 12-step fellowship of young people whose lives have been affected by alcoholism in a family member. It was here that I finally found unconditional love and a safe space to be myself. Through listening to others share I learnt a lot about alcoholism as a family disease and how it affects all the members emotionally and physically.
Attending meetings with Alateen gave me a safe space to open up and share honestly about the shame and humiliation I’d felt growing up. I continue to attend alanon meetings and it brings me a sense of peace, listening and sharing with others who have the courage to be vulnerable about the abuse they experienced.
It used to be very easy for me to list all the things that I hated about my dad. Much more challenging was making a list of things that I was grateful for. But doing this helped me to see that actually he had shown his love through pocket money and money for Christmas and birthdays. As I thought about his childhood growing up in rural Ireland and I looked at photographs of him as a child I realised he didn’t choose to be an alcoholic, but he grew up in a culture of problem drinking. I came to understand that my dad’s denial of his addiction was because he didn’t have the tools to talk about his depression.
Not till I was able to see that he was sick and that his behaviour came from hating himself, was I able to find compassion for him. I also didn’t want to carry around with me bitterness and resentment as I knew that I could have very easily followed him down the path of drinking.
It was in the final couple of weeks whilst visiting my dad dying in hospital that I was able to hold his hand and be at peace with him in silence.
His last words to me were, “I’m sorry”, and my last words to him as I stood by his bed with my sister, were, “We love you dad”.

This is a link to a music video I produced called my old man using puppets I sing my words of making peace with my dad

In the course I shared some of the writing by Desmond Tutu and John Odonahue. This piece I think highlights the complex and challenging nature of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is one of the really difficult things in life. The logic of receiving hurt seems to run in the direction of never forgetting either the hurt or the hurter. When you forgive, some deeper, divine generosity takes over. When you can forgive, then you are free. When you cannot forgive, you are a prisoner of the hurt done to you. If you are really disappointed in someone and you become embittered, you become incarcerated inside that feeling. Only the grace of forgiveness can break the straight logic of hurt and embitterment. It gives you a way out, because it places the conflict on a completely different level. In a strange way, it keeps the whole conflict human. You begin to see and understand the conditions, circumstances, or weakness that made the other person act as they did.’ John ODonahue

I know run courses and workshops sharing Desmond Tutus forgiveness cycle which is Telling the story, naming the hurt, granting forgiveness and renewing or releasing the relationship. I found these tools have been really helpful in my life and with others I have guided on this journey.

Forgiveness has many meanings, but three definitions particularly resonate:

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past.
Forgiveness is making peace with someone or something I can’t control.
Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Do any of these resonate with you? I believe shared understanding can help us all explore forgiveness more deeply.? I remember asking you about forgiveness Lemn at an event at BAC and you gave a great response so it’s nice to share this with you and well done on this beautiful project. You’re a very genuine kind creative person What you have in your connection with others is ubuntu you see our shared humanity and interconnectedness in your meet ups and beautiful glimmers you post on your Facebook. The photo was taken on a recent visit to ireland I visited sinead O’connors old house in Bray, Ireland

I’m so lucky to have my grandparents still, they are now 93 and have been married 72 years. Memories of them and my sister in the school holidays are the ones I cherish the most. Going to wimpy and having a milkshake, playing crazy golf with yogurt pots and sitting in their deckchairs with a skipping rope across us pretending to be on a rollercoaster! We loved it. Seeing them struggle as they get older has been hard, but they are truly such wise and resilient storytellers that still teach us so much about the world and what is important in life.

Our mum died when i was 7.
I was 37 before I learned that i’d suffered 30 years of anxiety.
I’m one of 5. We each have a different story of loss from that awful day in 1993.
My great uncle, whose house i was staying in whilst my mum underwent cancer treatment, had the awful duty of breaking the news to a seven year old boy that morning in December 1993… “i’m sorry son”.
Innocence gone.
Later that morning my siblings came together, collided. Aged 7,13,19,22,25.
The oldest leading the scrum, a hug amongst five in a broken home which would carry us through a lifetime.
30 years later, the five, together, lucky to each have longer lives than our mother, arm in arm once more at a nieces wedding

I used to love watching The Snowman with my Dad. He adored Christmas and always made it extra special. He died far too young. I was 20 and we sung Christmas carols at his funeral. In 2022 I had a beautiful baby girl, and we named her Lyra, after the stars. I loved watching The Snowman with her at Christmas – it felt like Dad was with us. My partner would hold her up in the air so she could fly. In 2025 she died, very suddenly and unexpectedly, from a rare condition called HLH. Rumi said “goodbyes are only for those that love with their eyes”. I watched The Snowman last Christmas. If you looked with your eyes you’d think I was alone, but they were both with me. They have taught me so much about love, and I know it defies all boundaries – space, time and even death.

Found family are as important as biological family. I adore my biological family, but I couldn’t do without my found family: my friends. They keep me going when times are tough, and I do the same for them.

I always knew I wanted to be a mum, even as a little girl. And when I met James, being parents was a dream we shared. 2 miscarriages and 4 failed rounds of IVF later, we became parents through adoption.

Only 8 months later, we got the devastating news that James had terminal cancer. We made the most of the time we had left, between surgeries and chemo. The term “making memories” had always sounded a little twee to me before, but that’s exactly what we were doing.

When James passed away, the children, who were already centre of my universe, became my reason to keep getting out of bed when I wasn’t sure I had the strength. They’d already experienced more loss in their lives than most adults, and needed me to be their constant.

We’ve all moved forward, James firmly in our heart. We’ve built on our family, sharing our lives with another wonderful man and his children. We continue to make new memories and to be grateful for the ones we have.

I deeply miss my parents. Both were from the countryside of Gojam, Ethiopia, and their lives shaped who I am today.

My father lost his sight at age 3. In those days, his path to education was through the church. As a teenager, he moved to Addis Ababa, facing immense challenges as a blind young man—but he persevered. He went on to lead Abune Teklehaimanot Church and became a respected scholar in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, authoring many books.

Through it all, my mother—strong, devoted, and unwavering—stood by him. Together, they raised 14 children with love, discipline, and purpose.

Their journey reminds me that strength is built through struggle, and a meaningful life is lived with intention.

I am the girl in the photo. They’re my two younger brothers. Don’t ask where my mum got the clothes from…we were always quite “out there” for North Staffs in the 1980s – whether it was our Benetton jumpers, exotic home cooked meals like lasagne, or coronation chicken sandwiches in our packed lunches.

Life was blissfully happy – although I did always have to be the bloody goalkeeper or the fielder. Once at uni I joined the cricket team to see if playing it properly made it more interesting. It didn’t.

I wanted to be a librarian and would make my brothers visit my library on the attic eaves room, for vigorous stamping of their books. As the first to get an Amstrad home computer (green screen, disc drive not tape oooh the glamour) my library even went semi-digital.

There were always friends, games in the garden, bbq’s, family holidays together. The blocked basin and the burst dinghy in Anglesey, the mosquito infested luxury villa with death-defying clifftop drive in Spain. There were endless parties and dinners, where the three of us would be the coat collectors and the nibble hander-outers. The Allo-Allo party. Crocodile rock in the Saab 900 turbo.

Maybe I am still that girl. But since my youngest brother Tom died, holding my hand, three months ago today, I am not so sure.
He’s the little cheeky one on the right.

Or was. What do I say – is, or was? When people ask, do I have two brothers? What the fuck do I say without making them feel bad?

I’m not the girl in the photo any more. I’m 43 and trying to find a way to cope with my new, unwelcome reality. Now there are just two of us in the photo, and it feels to me like at least part of that happiness and innocence has been lost forever.

This is Harry. He’s 15 and doing his year 10 mock exams. Harry has spent lots of time in hospital and been very poorly. He has had 3 liver transplants: when he was a baby, when he was 4 (part of dad’s liver as a live donation) when he was 13. But you’d never know.

I’m so proud to be mum to this amazing, kind, funny, clever young man who makes me laugh every day.
Organ donation has given Harry his future.

Broken fanilies fight internally by not speaking externally, and it hurts over a long period of wasted longing for something you havent actually experienced, and I spent a lifetime dreaming of love. I have always dreamt of love instead of loving myself, i dream about it as something im looking for too much not realisng its right there. I think my early years I felt love, and i was lucky to have that safety for a small amount of time before our family broke apart. Now i question what i experienced and wonder, what was that? They never told me. When you love something, share it, shout it from the mountains and from bridges down stream What is love? For those without any family at all how do you anchor yourself? I am lucky to have a some form of family although it remains a diffucult and fragmented one, it still frames my existence. What other frames can we envision to hold us well and imagine peace? Family is as much a vision as an experience……i vision nature as my family sometimes and go hug a tree to anchor me, to hold me, where i lack that hook. I am lucky to have adult children and i hope they feel safe, as i am small and feel rootless, but my love is radiant. I hope it is enough to give them an anchor x

I was born by cesarean to a family where my father was mentally unwell and violent towards my mam. I experienced violence and aggression while I grew up. They divorced when I was 8 and my mam remarried when I was 12. I moved out at 18 because I couldn’t stand the roller coaster that one minute was normal and the next shouting and aggression. I met and married my husband at 23 and we had our 1st son at 24. 5 weeks later my step dad took his own life and from there my life has continued to be ruled by the complicated relationship with my mam who hates my husband. We had our 2nd son almost 3 years later and I have made sure I have never treated them the way I experienced over my life. My mam now has paranoia and she believes I am doing spells to harm her so I still feel I have no peace from it all. I have just had a bout of ill health although thankfully I’ve recovered, it has made me realise I must put me first and can’t control what other people do. I also can’t just walk away I wish I could.

I wanted to quit school in 6th form after a heartbreak. My mum arranged for me to have her car so I could just drive in for my lessons and find it easier to cope. She died of cancer when I was 30 and didn’t get to see me get married, have my daughter and get divorced and live a happy life. She said she’d had a miserable life on her deathbed, but I’m so grateful for her and everything she taught me about being a Mum.

My parents are both twins. Mum – identical, Dad – non identical. My mum is one of 5 siblings, 4 female and one male. They only have 3 birthdays between them as the twins share and so do the other 2 sisters. Only the reclusive brother has his own birthday. All the female siblings are left handed. The male sibling is right handed. The same exact pattern is true of my mother’s mother; one of 5 siblings, 4 females who are left handed, 1 male who is right handed. When my mum’s twin had her first child, my mum had really bad stomach cramps – call it sympathetic or something altogether different – there has always been a synergy between these two women, these natural clones.

I wrote this poem for my nephew who took his own life aged 29
Freight Train Blues
The whistle sounds a mournful blast, a lonely, exhausted sigh,
Coming down the track, a steel-bound shroud beneath a mournful sky.
A freight train rolls, a behemoth dark, through dust and fading light,
Carrying a heavy payload, into the endless night.
Each rattling car, a coffin grim, holds memories untold,
Of a live extinguished, dreams grown dim, known only to his soul.

The engine groans, a weary beast, it pulls the weight of grief,
Across the tracks, a bitter feast, where solace finds no relief.
This freight train carries everywhere, the emptiness of space.
The die is cast, no volte face waiting for deaths embrace.
The clacking wheels, a mournful beat, a rhythm slow and deep,
A testament to a life incomplete, where secrets softly sleep.

Death’s shadow stretches, long and vast, upon the endless track,
The freight train blues, forever cast, there’s no turning back.
And as it approaches, it sounds for one last time; a ghost against the grey,
A strange echo now at night, of what was swept away.
Those freight train sirens, a somber tune, a lament for the lost,
A memento for the fallen, a heavy, bitter cost.
Copywrited 2024

The best times are when my three children come home again, all together. The walls ring with their grown-up squabbling and laughter and my ears feel under assault with the unaccustomed noise and it is joyous. I grab hugs at every opportunity and wince slightly as they love each other by teasing and roasting and rolling their eyes. I look at the wreck of dinner and experience a big bubble of satisfaction – they came, they enjoyed, and will come again.

We are currently in the process of adopting a baby boy, after a long time trying for a biological child and cycles of failed IVF.
I’m so happy now that our attempts failed because it led us to him.
When I look at his beautiful face and try to understand what he’s been through in his very short life all I can do is promise to love him, care for him, protect him, fight for him and help him to understand where he came from and how he came to be with us… Us, the luckiest people to have walked the face of this Earth, all because of this tiny baby who made us a family.
I thought I knew what love was, I didn’t. Not until I held him in my arms and at that moment I knew my life had changed forever. I love him so much more than I could ever put into words.
I only hope we can be the parents he deserves to have.

My mother was adopted and all we knew was her mother’s name and that she lived in a pub in Penrith. From being a teenager, I used to wander round Penrith when I visited the town, looking at older ladies and wondering if they were my family. Yesterday, I spent the day in Penrith with my biological uncle, some cousins, and my Grandma’s sister, the last one from that generation, and am still pinching myself that this is real.

I come from a family of hard workers. My great Grandma on my mums side, was left alone in her very early 20s with a baby boy and her husbands taxi firm to run. Her husband died of pneumonia weeks after her son was born. She built up that business and my Grandad soon took over when he was 16, turning it into a successful haulage company, and spent his life working hard, and supporting his beloved family. That was what he lived for, what a wonderful purpose. My great grandfather on my dad’s side, was an inventor, he invented ACDO, a washing powder. The business, with many different developments and turns, was then taken over by my grandad, then my dad, and now me! All this is wonderful, but wouldn’t be possible without the strong women in my life, my grandma, who helped look after special needs children, my mum and my sister both Nurses. The foundational rocks, the salt of the earth. I’m 36 now, I’m a busy, juggling business owner and mum to my 11 month old baby girl. Both of these family qualities I have been brought up with resonate so deeply with me, so I gladly take on both roles. I suppose my reflection here, is that there are so many polarising arguments and opinions and ideas around on how we should be living, how things are not what they used to be, how things are harder than ever, economically & politically. And all that is true, its not easy nowadays, to get on, and fulfil the expectations that life portrays for us, and navigate through the difficulties many of us face. But I look back, and listen to all the stories of my hard working family members and realise life has never been easy, it’s always been hard to get on, but what made life worth living was family, community, support, gratitude and love. So I take that through with me and hope I can give the same back. This photo is my grandma and grandad Blackwell on their wedding day at St Paul’s church in Ashley Bridge. It fills me with joy.

My dad was in the navy when I was a child in the UK and in 1955 he was posted to Freetown in Sierra Leone, West Africa. My mum was very shy and found being a naval wife difficult and throughout my life, I never knew her to have a friend or any family support. Whilst in Freetown a naval couple who could not have children, asked my mum if they could buy me for £10,000, which was a fortune in those days, with my dad earning less than £10 a week.

My mum refused their “offer” for her little girl who was under two. I realise now what a difficult question that was for the couple to ask my mum, but also how difficult it was for her to answer. She was out of her depth socially – a rich couple dangling money in front of her, and exhausted from coping alone with three children under five. An offer that could have been hidden in the fifties. An offer that could have been accepted and regretted by my mother forever. A lot of money for a little girl who might have walked off holding someone else’s hand into a different life. I am so grateful my mum protected herself and that little girl in that moment. I feel sorry that my mum was not protected more as a young mother and I wish I could have been her friend and supported her when she needed help the most.

Many years ago I had a boyfriend whose mother was one of the unmarried Irish young women in the 1950s who came to England to give birth, giving their children up for adoption because of religious pressure and social stigma.

She went back to Ireland and eventually married the same man and had two more children. She came back to claim her first son when he was 8 but he was upset that she had kept the other two and not him and wouldn’t go with them, (she’d brought his brother & sister to meet him) Of course he was too young to understand that she was doing something extraordinary.

He felt too different, he was a little cockney tyke always in trouble and they had Irish accents and he felt left out. He was brought up in children’s homes but at 15 was adopted by a nice couple who were good to him & he credited them for keeping him out of prison, but he never got over the feeling he had missed out on having his ‘real family’. No doubt he had missed out but his assumption that all ‘real’ families are perfect was somewhat blown out of the water when he met mine & he said, ‘F**k me I think I was better off than you!’

My dysfunctional Irish family made him feel better & less prone to feel sorry for himself. One day in his twenties, he was driving along a road in North London when he spotted his brother who he hadn’t seen since that day when he was 8 and his brother was 6- but he knew it was him. They talked and it turned out his mother was dying. He went to Ireland to visit her in the hospital & some relatives were trying to introduce him as a friend of the family – still plenty of stigma in the 70s. But his mum took his hand and said, ‘This is my son.’

This little dude, chilling in his incubator. He came too soon but not a care in the world. Not how I thought motherhood would feel- I remember sitting in the rocking chair, singing to my bump. I did it again when he was here, and cried. But he was OK. He, and his little brother, are my world ❤️

Our Sibling Walks – this is me, my sister and brother. As children we had very different experiences growing up in the same family. There are age gaps between us that once divided us – now time has brought us closer, we walk, talk and put the world to rights – then have a pub lunch. These are some of my favourite days.

I spent over a decade unsure whether I would have a family of my own. I was single for many years and the few men I did meet were not interested in settling down. Then I met my wonderful partner and my life changed in so many positive ways, although for different reasons, we were both unsure about having children for many years. That all changed in 2024. In 2025 we got married and I gave birth to our beautiful little boy. We feel so lucky to have created him and to have him in our lives everyday. He made us a family and we feel incredibly blessed.

I want to tell you about how strange it feels when someone you knew as a father becomes very distant you as you both grow older. Me and my dad are 50 and 74 now. At times we have been close and we always laughed a lot and enjoyed food or a few drinks together. We liked gigs and films and visiting family. Over the past 10 years we have become distant. I am not sure why, but his wife, they have been together 13 years or so, seems not to want him to talk to me. If ever we get together she constantly calls him and complains that he’s not home. It’s like I’ve watched him fade away slowly, like a film growing dim and losing its sound, becoming impossible to see. I miss him. He was so funny and irreverent. He seemed not to be frightened of anything but really, I think inside he was a little boy who felt quite lost and now he just wants to belong to someone who knows where he is all the time. I used to make plans to see him but they would be cancelled or go wrong somehow, like, he’d call and say the motorway was closed, or his car had broken down, or he had plans he’d forgot about and I couldn’t come over, or sometimes he would just not turn up. I found it so painful and felt so rejected but I’ve got used to it. I think we might even be estranged at this point. It happened slowly and it’s really hard to go back. I wonder if his wife would tell me if he was ill or died. I really don’t know. I used to look forward to seeing him, or hearing his voice. I don’t understand what happened, I think we’ve both kind moved on. I didn’t expect this to happen with parents but maybe for some people it’s normal?

My brother came into my life when I was 15 he’s my twin sister fiancé which makes people pull funny faces when I explain.
But as we’ve grown up together he’s become a sibling to me along with his younger brother Aaron they are both my brothers even if it sounds insane to people.
I think family is people we choose but also people we find along the way I think its like a patch work quilt of people or even a collage book.

My own little family of 4 began with a 21 year old me who met a man who travelled from Manchester to Cambridgeshire every weekend while I worked at a children’s home. I’d finished uni and was in a bad way. On my own, in serious debt, broken family, totally on my own. Then he appeared. The sweetest, kindest man. Willing to love me, look after me, accept me with all the difficult bits. Our 20 wedding anniversary is July 2026. Our family was created the day we met in 2001. Us, then us and our cat Toby, then is and our daughter, us and our son. Now a family of 4, with 2 whippets, another cat and our own story. One we’ve created for ourselves. A solid unit, full of love and learning, growth and contentment. Working through every hardship and trains and celebrating every success big and small.

My mum was diagnosed with a brain tumour when I was 11 years old. I was so shocked when I saw her in the hospital after surgery. Noone warned me or my sister about the tubes, the facial paralysis and her allergic reaction to medication. She was in her mid-40s but looked very, very old that day. I thought I’d lost her and became self-sufficient very quickly. She recovered but found life tough afterwards. I still remember that day in hospital like it was yesterday and how scared I was; it was more than 50 years ago.

This is my blended family. Andy and his girls lost their Mum in 2013 to a brain tumor. My husband left me and my son Ed in 2013 and never came back. We found each other in 2014 and never looked back. In 2019 Frank was born and he is the glue that makes us complete. We are so lucky to have found each other after tragedy, loss and grief

I lost my son because of an abusive marriage and was unable to have anymore children. I married my husband Ian who had a six year old daughter Natalie I became her step mother she has been a blessing in my life she has given me two beautiful grandchildren who I love with all my heart. Family isn’t just blood it’s love ❤️

Every year when I take my car for its MOT, I remember my dad, because back in the day before online renewals he kept the date it ran out on his calendar, and rang me to come home for the weekend so he could take it to the garage himself. All because one single time I got overcharged by a mechanic, and he didn’t like me being taken advantage of. He did this from when I was 24 (the year of MOT-gate) until I was 32, the year he died. That was in 2000 and I still think of him every year and miss him.

I’ve had three dads. One birth father, an adopted father and now my chosen father. Even in my older years, my chosen father, the light of my mother’s world past her children, gives me the feeling of security and love any girl would want from a father. Family isn’t just who you are born with, family is who makes you feel cherished.

My twins are 7 years old. I chose to do this solo, but I’m never alone. Not with the chuckle brothers around!

You have to get over so many things as a mum, especially a solo one. Being looked at – being judged – being loud – being chaos personified. But we do this together, as a team.

And at the end of the day, with their limbs entwined around mine and their sweaty heads pressed into the heat rash in the nooks of my elbows, we perform the litany of family. I’m scared – I’m sorry – I hurt you – I was wrong. It’s ok. I love you. I love you. It’s ok.

My childcare during the early 70s was going with my dad in his cattle lorry. I loved crossing the Penines with him, in his shining red Bedford. There was no radio so he would sing me his own eclectic musical repertoire. My favourite trip was to Simpsons Sausage Factory in Stockport. Most delicious sausages. Ever. I decided to get out of the lorry aged three or four, whilst he was out of the cab, for a wander. He was terrified – so many lorries reversing, lots of sausages being made, anything could have happened to me. He didn’t shout or get cross but later on he told me that the white bits in the sausages were the bones of children, who had got out of their dad’s lorries, and had been made into sausages. It was years before I ate another sausage. As a young adult I thought it was a really mean thing to tell a child. It probably was, but he managed to go to work everyday, take me with him and keep me safe. Now I think, ‘cheers Dad’.

My family lived aboard sailing boats for the first five years of my life. My mum and dad sailed across the Atlantic Ocean on Silverstones, a steel boat that dad built himself. We reached the West Indies and picked up two crew, then sailed back and settled in Falmouth, Cornwall. Family is wide blue horizons to me; the weft and weave of swell; the white of a sail held tight; being sailed is being loved.

Found family is amazing, i lost my friend, Hilary, but found her daughter, Diane, at the funeral and we’ve been exchanging glimmers and your poetry across our geographical divide

When I was younger when my mum would tell me how much she loves me I would reply with “I love you to the moon!” and she’d reply with “Well I love you to the moon and back!” and we’d go on and on about who loved each other more.

My deeply missed grandmother, Rose: my inspiration for adopting my son. Rose’s reflections on being a kinship carer to a boy named Peter, who she talked about as if her first born, taught me that love and affection for a child isn’t dependent on giving birth to them. She cared for him before her biological children (my father and aunt) arrived. No one still alive knows quite what the family connect to Peter was or why he arrived, or even how long he stayed, but he was clearly very much loved. My grandmother used to tell the story that my father (Michael) and aunt (Wendy) were named after the characters in the Peter Pan books she read to Peter

I am from love.
From being honest.
A problem shared
is one halved.
From fun times and fabulous food.

I come from green spaces
and breathing deeply.
From the Fairway Tree and the Wishing Chair.

From not always knowing what to do.
But giving things ago.
From hand holding and wings soaring.
I come from love.

My wonderful Mum Bridget often used to share a story when she was leading others, a story she told her staff (she was a headteacher), her pupils and her children and grandchildren.
It was about geese flying in formation.
She spoke of how they travel further together than they ever could alone. How they take turns to lead. How, when one grows tired or falls back, others instinctively come alongside to support it. And how the formation holds, even as the lead changes.
To Mum this wasn’t just a leadership model.
It was a way of living.
Alongside this lesson, she gave us another one she returned to often, especially on difficult days.
Even on the worst days, she would tell us to search for pockets of joy.
Small moments of light a laugh, a kindness, a shared cup of tea. Not to deny the existence of pain, but to remind us that goodness still lives alongside it.
She led many of us for a long time with purpose, patience, and love. And without us always realising it, she was preparing us for the moment when she would no longer be at the front.

Now it is her turn to rest she died on 18/12/25.

She has done her stint at the head of the formation. She has shown us how to fly, how to support one another, and how to keep going together.

And so we will take our turn holding the formation steady, watching out for one another, and searching for those pockets of joy until, in time, we all reach the same destination.

This is my family – from left to right, my dad, my mum, my wonderful husband, and me at the end. My mum is currently looking after my dad, who has had terminal cancer for nearly 4 years. This photo was taken a couple of years ago, when Dad wasn’t feeling so unwell and my husband and I had just relocated to Sheffield, so they came to visit and we went for a cold and windy walk – of course! I guess this photo stands as a reminder that life comes with many ups and downs, but that we will not walk alone.

One of the many things I love about being from the north of England is the way we prefix family members names with ‘our’. Siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews, aunties and uncles, within the same family, are always “Our…” -never just their name. It doesn’t extend to husbands and wives who have married in; I would never, for example, refer to my brother in law as “Our David”, yet, naturally my husband does. When I went to uni, friends from other regions would poke fun at this, seeing it as some kind of dialectic affectation. I imagine they thought I should have shaken it off once I’d moved away. What they didn’t see, what they couldn’t perhaps grasp, is the deep sense of familial connection it conveys – a recognition of belonging, ownership even – a perpetual bond embodied in a single possessive pronoun. It seems so natural and so firmly embedded to someone from here. I have, sadly, already lost two cousins, but they are still “Our Mark” and “Our Darren” whenever they are spoken about, meaning that this connection to people and family travels with us beyond life. I think it’s perfect.
Here I am with my sisters, Our Joanne on the right, Our Claire on the left – eternally mine.

Sheffield is my home, a warm, welcoming place where my family home was, and now where I live with my own family. Being a mum is gorgeous, but not having my mum anymore has given it some shades of grief. It feels healing to bring my baby up where my mum brought us all up. To share with him what my mum shared with us from her childhood; the walks, the views, the playgrounds. Even though my baby will never meet his nan, he’ll know her through all the shared places, and my stories about how his nan showed me those beautiful places.

Family is everything, my beautiful sister is everything. She fought for her health for 42 years before the fight became too much on 14th April 2026. I loved being in her orbit, she was a ray of sunshine on the darkest of days. My first love, my life and now family looks very different without her.

There was a time when I cursed the rain. Yes, me, current dancer in the rain. Fat drops pinging on the roof and puddling around the rafters brought dread. When large enough, the puddle above forced its way through the sheetrock and unto the floor. And then there was the torrential sideways rain that found every crack in the plaster and every break in the windows. Rain was an unwelcome guest. Once visited upon you, it reminded you throughout hours of cold and damp that you could not win against soggy clothing and holey shoes.

I was 19-years old when I learned to enjoy the rain, after my boyfriend gifted me my first jacket in 8 years. The jacket was a size too small, but still I wore it, testing it against the rain. When you know you have a place to come in from the rain, when you know you can be warm and dry, then you can dance in the rain. And so, I ventured out into the world in my too small jacket, knowing that I had a warm home to return to. And then I turned my face to the rain and allowed the drops to flow freely through my hair —that is when the dance started.

Later when I built my own home with glass in the panes and shingles on the roof, my love for rain was naturally bestowed upon my children, who never knew anything different. They laughed and galloped and splashed barefooted and joyful in every rain. They lifted small faces with tongues outstretched and lapped like thirsty pups.

Grammy visited often, showering the children, not with rain, but with love. Same thing in my mind. She enjoyed rain from in front of the fireplace, and my enthusiastic dances were met with puzzlement. The children, she insisted, must have umbrellas when they ventured out with me.

The first umbrella was for my daughter when she was 4 years old. Grammy gifted her a yellow Beauty and the Beast umbrella. My daughter was charmed by the little umbrella and twirled and whirled around the room. It took no effort to convince her to try it out in the rain. Once we got downtown though, sloshing through puddles, she soon tired of carrying it and she longed to feel the rain on her face. Yet, every time we left the house, Grammy was there to remind her to take it with her, and always bewildered when we arrived back home as wet as if we had swum the Channel in our clothing.

It was only a week or so later, while walking downtown in the rain that my daughter spied a broken man in a broken doorway with a soggy cardboard sign. She asked me whose lost daddy that was. I had no answer for her. Whose daddy was it? Lost and alone on the sidewalk? I did not know. I pushed her toward a sandwich shop a few doors down and we returned to the man and she handed him a sack with a sandwich and a carton of milk. He reached his drenched hand out for the bag, but said nothing to her in return. As I stepped away, she turned and pointed the umbrella towards him. He took the umbrella, smiled and thanked her. She smiled back in return.

Throughout the winter we saw him often with the little yellow Beauty and the Beast umbrella shielding him from the rain, or hooked to a loop on his backpack on sunny days. Every time we saw him, she let out an excited whisper, “there he is and he still has my umbrella!”

Soon Grammy caught on to the fact her granddaughter no longer had an umbrella. I explained that she had given it to someone more in need than herself, but Grammy was having none of it. She sent over a purple Cinderella umbrella and a red Mickey Mouse one. She must have thought she was done buying umbrellas, but my daughter had other plans and soon our walks downtown yielded sighting of three brightly colored umbrellas held by men who were lucky enough to be in her path but unlucky enough to have nowhere else to go.

Each year umbrella gifts were similarly distributed, and when my second daughter joined the family, she was happy enough to continue the tradition. The little umbrellas continued to be an occasional sight downtown for many years and we always kept an eye out for them. How hard did those men fight to keep those umbrellas I often wondered. The streets are not kind and gifts of umbrellas are precious.

It wasn’t too long before the umbrellas were gone and presumably the men who owned them. The kids had grown up enough that Grammy felt they could make their own decisions, and Disney umbrellas were too small for growing girls.

Over 25 years have passed since my daughter gave away that first umbrella. As I walk the drizzly streets I still search for the little umbrellas in the rain. I know I won’t see them, but I have the hope that if I do, there will be a dancing man on the other end.

My grandfather’s story is the ultimate “sliding doors” moment. After leaving Newfoundland at 18 to work in the Scottish forests, he traded his protected job for the Royal Navy, serving on minesweepers during the height of the Atlantic crossings. After one too many brushes with death, he went AWOL during shore leave in Newfoundland, hiding out at home until the Red Caps caught up with him. He was sentenced to two weeks in naval prison, but while he was locked up, his ship sailed without him; it was sunk a few weeks later with the loss of all hands. He survived because he was in a cell, going on to head a legacy that now spans 8 children, 18 grandchildren, 21 great-grandchildren, and 5 great-great-grandchildren. This photo of us is a reminder that none of us would be here if he’d actually made his ship.

Family is everything. They are my world. I was made to feel worthless as a child; I hope that no one ever feels that way around me.

I’m tired of strength and striving
Im tired of pushing through
I’m tired of curating responses
not raging at what’s true

Grief has made me weary
A stone around my neck
Where’s my peace and solitude
My perspective on this wreck

Your joy is suffocating
Your choices drive me mad
Where’s my little baby?
My love, why aren’t you a Dad

I thought the little moments
Would help to bridge the gap
Making cakes for birthdays
Being there to clap

But nephews & god children
For all their sticky joy
Don’t cry for me when hurting
They aren’t my little boy

I’ll never be that person
The harbour in the storm
The constant and the conflict
The home, the safe, the warm

So nature you’re my refuge
My place where I feel calm
I’m going to grow, to nurture,
to listen and to learn

Muddy boots and muddy paws,
seeds and earth and hope,
a refuge for the fledglings,
a green corner where I cope

So bring me peace and purpose
Bring me light and life
I’m lonely and I’m hurting
I wanted more than ‘wife’

This is my mother. Originally from India she arrived on these shores as a doctor aged 26. She worked as a GP in the NHS for 40 years. In that time she had just one regret – she remembered seeing a child in the 80s who she thought was seriously ill. She referred him to hospital as she should have done, but with a young family herself to get home to, she didn’t spend the time she felt she maybe should have, preparing the child’s parents for the diagnosis she expected. One regret. In 40 years of medicine. A life well lived.

When I was 15, my older brother died of a heroin overdose. I couldn’t understand it, why he’d choose to risk his life over it. I ended up becoming a heroin addict too. I went to rehab twice, I met a lot of great people who were sick past the point of return, I made and lost so many friends. I’m 20 now, and I’ve been sober for 6 months. I’m older than my brother ever got the chance to be. I hope he would be proud of me. I miss him more than anything. One of the last things we did together was go to a baseball game. I try to go to one every year on his birthday, now

When i was seventeen, I had a job as a breakfast chef in a hospital. I hated getting up at 6am to get in for 630am. My dad always woke me up and I told him i didnt want to go. He said I had to.
He drove me in on his way to work and dropped me off.
I could of walked there in two minutes but he always drove me.
When I got out and he drove off, i whispered;
“I love you daddy.”

my family has had a rough ride, but through it all we have stuck together, laughed and grown and learnt together. we are dysfunctional and probs make-up the DSM V between us but our love for each other outshines all of that.

My beautiful Auntie Roz and me.
She was murdered in 1985, at just 19 years old, yards away from her home.
The biggest fan of Boy George, a fanmail letter she had written and not sent was found in her bedroom shortly after. My Uncle posted it, explaining what had happened, and George replied with a note that read “Peace & Love” and a single red rose, both of which are buried with her.
I’ve written a short story about it in recent years. I owe it to her to carry her with me. Her memory lives on, always 🌹

Families are complicated.

The older I get and the more I experience life, the easier it becomes to forgive those who went before me. We’re all just figuring it out as we go.

This photo, which we jokingly call Our folk album cover, was taken on my 37th birthday. That’s me, front and centre, flanked by my mum and dad, my brother, my pregnant sister in law and ruled over by my niece Hattie. This was such a fun and happy day filled with laughter and optimism. None of us knew it would be our last family photo. We suddenly lost my incredible dad 3 months later. He had this photo with him in hospital and would tell anyone ‘that’s my family, I love my family’.

I’m now navigating life with grief and it’s hard. Standing to give his eulogy, the one I wrote, to a church full of Hawaiian shirts is something I will never forget. My second niece, Olive, was born the week after.

I am so incredibly lucky that I have the other people in this photo to lean on. My dad said he was so lucky to have my mum as his wife for over 40 years. They built more than a family for me, they built my structure and my safety. The older I get, and the more I see of the world, the more I realise how precious that is and how lucky I am.

My dad died 18 months ago. My daughter asked me earlier if I missed going to the supermarket with him (linked to another random tangential chat that only a child can conjure up). I told her I can honestly say I don’t remember going to the supermarket with him. I remember the beach and the park and the cricket pitch and the swimming pool. I also remember his almost desperate need for fairness between us kids, and for financial control, and his temper. I remember him not really understanding most of my life choices and nodding off when he came to watch me in performances. I remember him crying when I lost a pregnancy and comforting me when I had an abortion. I remember him dancing to Status Quo at my wedding. But I do not remember going to the supermarket with him, which I’d probably a good thing as (according to mum) he could be a bloody pain in Tesco!!

I had my first baby when I was 24 weeks pregnant. He weighed 695g and fit inside the palm of my hand. I sat by the side of the incubator, crying and bleeding, for months. I couldn’t hold him for two weeks. I was only allowed to hold him once a day after that. He smelled like sugar. People would look at me and say: ‘he will be okay’. I hated them because they didn’t know, they were lying to me, so I cried and bled some more.

They were telling me the truth and I wish I had believed them.

Mum and Dad with baby Maggie, daughter of mum’s nephew Anthony and wife Ann, in Bantry Bay, mum’s birth place. Mum and dad immigrated to England for work in the 1950’s, 40 years later they would return ‘home’ for an annual holiday staying with family, always a highlight in the year for my parents. Dad died in 1997, Maggie had two sisters by this time, Mary and Trish. Mum continued her annual visits home, I would accompany her. A baby brother Paddy had arrived. Adventures were had, the beach and sea being a must, birthday celebrations, Irish dancing, forest walks and icecream all being part of real proper fun times. As the children grew they would come to Nottingham visiting, and the back and forth continues, now with partners and in the future Johnny and baby Maggie will be coming over. Maggie now lives in Australia and WhatsApp allows regular contact.

I still remember
When they put the needles in my legs –
Two fine points
To keep away the dread
And keep you in my womb:
You were trying to come too soon.
Your tiny lungs hadn’t developed yet,
Your organs not quite ready.

They told us this might happen
At the scans; they gave a plan –
To keep you in your place.
My placenta was playing tricks
Fixing to places it shouldn’t fix.

They warned us this might happen.

But, when the blood ran red
Beneath my legs
At 30 weeks,
And then briefly once more,
Then finally, at 34:
With me, on the floor,
Your brother – by the door;
Your father in another city,
Me, in the ambulance,
Stomach twitching and convulsing –

I wasn’t prepared.

“It’s time!” They said.
But I wasn’t ready:
Your father wasn’t here.
The meal – abandoned,
The train – cancelled.

“He’s coming,” spoke the doctor in the scrubs.
“Give me your phone: I’ll record it,” she said.
An act of surrealism amongst the dread.

Then, they put you on me:
All 4lb, 6oz of you.
Your face, screaming blue.
In the video, my eyes widened –
I didn’t know what to do.

They wheeled you off to NICU:
Put tubes in your nose,
On your fingers and your toes.
And a cage around your body.
A purple light to grow you:
My little acorn.

And here you are at 6 years tall.
You may be no oak tree yet:
You know you are small.
But your life,
Your light,
Is a miracle to us all.

I was adopted in 1957 my birth mum wasn’t married and was not allowed to keep her illegitimate baby. She was a dancer and used to lodge in Yorkshire with my godmother who knew a coy who were desperate for a baby. They had had one that died and it was arranged for them to travel down to Devon and collect me. They legally adopted me and went on to have their own baby my brother. I had a happy life and loving family, when i married i wanted to find my birth mother to tell her – thank you for giving me a better life ( probably) it took me 6 months to find her and we met on Torquay station in 1984 an emotional and precious reunion. My mum and dad brought me up and gave me everything but finding Fay was the missing piece in my life jigsaw. We all met up and had a rich relationship for their remaining years.

We love going by train. When I was growing up we didn’t have a car and so trains meant adventure and holidays. Now we chose to travel by train whenever we can. That way you can all experience the trip together. When my youngest daughter was maybe 2, we were travelling through London and had to run for the overground train. When I’d made sure we were all safely on board and collected all the bags at my feet, I looked down at my daughter in my lap and she was doing ‘I’m watching you’ fingers to eyes gestures at the woman opposite. Very very amusing all round.

I’m a foster carer with two birth children. My youngest son found his way to me by coming all the way from Afghanistan, through Turkey and the Balkans, across Europe and arriving with me as a foster son 7 years ago. We adopted him 2 years later and he is such a blessing in my life. I continued fostering and now he is my back up carer. I cannot put into words how lucky I feel to have 3 such beautiful children.

This picture from Christmas 1970 is one of my greatest treasures. It is of me (the baby) with my dad, grandad and great-grandad (holding me). My great-grandad had awful experiences in World War I – it’s pretty miraculous that he survived. Unlike many of his generation who became very closed to the world after such trauma, he embraced it, and I remember him as a happy, generous man who tried to see the best in people. I was named after him and I try to emulate his generosity of spirit.

My mum Carole ❤️ She had a difficult life from the start. Her mum was an alcoholic and would often leave the 4 kids for months on their own with my grandad – who would take it out on them and tie them to chairs. Mum was sexually abused by a family friend who nana would leave her with whilst she went to bingo. When she told people about it she was put into care. She was then abused by the staff at Southwood childrens home. At 16 she met my dad and ran away to Cornwall – not knowing she was isolating herself and entering into a new life of violence and control. In her 20s she fled the abuse and returned back home to Salford with 2 babies. My brother Jake born in June 83 and me born in July 84. Jake had a severe disability and was taken into foster care with Banardos. Mum ended up in a new relationship and had my sister in the 90s but by that time our lives had became plagued by heroin addiction. Mum trying to forget her past and the guilt of losing my brother to the care system, waking up crying asking why she hadnt died yet after trying to overdose the night before. As a teenager I didnt care or understand, I just felt the weight of everything and blamed her. We clashed, a lot and I felt unloved – mum wasnt good at giving hugs and affection it wasnt something she had as a child – but she desperately wanted it. By the 00s she had got clean and was single, she would go camping in Edale with her little one person tent and enjoyed solo holidays in Greece just like Shirley Valentine. She loved music and told me how she used to sing with my dad on his guitar. One day I came home and she told me she had seen my dad sleeping rough in Manchester and let him come to our house for a bath. I had just walked past him as he left our street but I didnt know and have never seen him since. Then news came that my brother had died aged 19 – we had visited him together with a social worker in his foster home just the week before. The relationship between mum and them was bad, they had written her down as a junkie who didnt care. We were invited to the funeral but mum wasnt really allowed to act like his mum, his foster parents wanted to arrange the funeral and bury him in their family plot in Wigan, they allowed my mum to pick a funeral song and she chose The Worlds Greatest by R Kelly. From there she relapsed and fell back into the darkness of addiction, entering a new codependant relationship. In 2006 i found out i was pregnant and i was having a boy – it was also the year we found out mum was dying of cancer. I wasnt there enough for her during that time and my whole pregnancy was a stuggle but on the 10th July 2007 she held her first grandchild. 7 days later aged just 46 she sadly died at home alone – something i have never forgiven myself for. Registering a birth and a death on the same day was not something I was ready for. As a child i never wanted to be like her but as an adult aged 41 I am immensely proud to be her daughter and grateful to have her courage strength and love ❤️

I love my big brother. He is 8 years older than me. He was the best big brother when I was growing up. We had our unique shared sibling humour: puerile, daft, the sort of humour that withstands adulthood, maturity, professional careers… When we’re together it just surfaces again. He now lives in Philadelphia, USA. One year we took a trip to Colorado together. This photo was taken in a store in Denver selling ranch gear. We spent hours trying on hats, cowboy boots, jackets, goofing around and giggling. Even the store assistant, who took the photo, got involved. My brother bought me the hat I’m wearing. A couple of years later I lost that hat on a beach in Crete. I was devastated. I tried to find it online so I could buy it again but no joy. I called him up with the tragic news that his little sister had lost the hat he had bought her. A few months later he happened to be working in Denver. He went back to the same store and bought exactly the same hat and brought it back to the UK in time for Christmas. I love my big brother.

I learnt that family can come to you. My real Mum chose my abuser over me but my step Mum came to my rescue and saved me from going into Care. I miss her every single day and am always grateful for her love and all she taught me.

As a single parent and charity worker we lived in an area where there was high crime and social disadvantage. My wee girl struggled to settle into nursery and the school she was due to attend went into special measures. My brother bought me a house in a better area, with a beautiful garden and view and gave me time to pay him back. I’d never have been able to get this home and opportunity for my girl. I’ll never be able to repay his kindness.

Family is recovery, healing, forgiveness. I spent many years being angry at my father. He was an alcoholic all my life, and while I felt very loved by him as a child he was always so volatile that I started to associate his love with feeling scared all the time. As a teenager I got angry instead, and carried this into my adulthood. Fast forward to my Dad’s later years, and an old man discharged from hospital, hard of walking but prescribed a strong laxative. That’s right – he could barely walk but they gave him a strong laxative. Facepalm. Once again I find myself dealing with my Dad’s shit – literally. I find him standing at the bathroom mirror, completely naked, save for his socks: his lower half smeared in excrement. For some strange reason he’s trying to shave… Years of anger fall away – I just want him to have his dignity. As I wash him down, he leans over, kisses me on the cheek, and mutters: “I hate you seeing me like this, babe.” And I say “It’s alright, Dad. It’s alright.”

I’m a trans man….family is a fluid thing – thicker than water but not always blood, it can be bloody. My mum doesn’t know who I am…she remembers an 18 year old ‘girl’. My dad….is troubled and struggled but works with it and works hard. I spent 4 days trying to talk with my brother: we talked about everything but he said nothing.

And what of partners…I have many – a constellation of connections where love’s expansive and knotted and threaded together tenderly and we work together with each other and our deeper messy selves too.

I’ve never wanted to biologically give birth so I create other things instead and those pieces of art, times in space, writings, images are a family too I guess.

Those are my thoughts for the time being –

7.18 pm – 29/04/2026. Written on the tram on the way to therapy on a sunny Mancunian Wednesday

There is something particularly jarring about grieving for living parents. The estranged love, the elastic distance that separates us is emotional. I am an exile in my most sacred circle. This heart hurts. My heart is family and this family endured a civil war, which trauma we have inherited in utero.
Love is everpresent, however there is a membrane of shame that prevent us from hugging, acknowledge our mutual understanding and crying it all out. I worry that the places that surrounded my childhood are slowly disintegrating, like a mirage that will never return. I see it every time I visit my wounded place, my people dissipating, those familiar eyes and voices becoming quieter, until silence and oblivion sweep it all over, like the re-occurring, implacable, retreating tide.

Picking blackberries with my nan. Strawberries with my daughter. Food, ritual, the smell of Sunday – rhubarb crumble and watery custard. Bath night, Sunday Dahl. Uncles,Aunties,cousins. Goldfish, rabbits, tortoise. Gardens. Seasons together.Christmas, birthdays, funerals, death.
Fires in the garden and in the grate.
Songs and stories. Music. Pain and tears.
Shape shifting.
The golden threads of connection from the past and into the future.

We went to center parcs my beautiful daughter Joanne was attempting windsurfing, she kept falling off . She got really cross and said it’s because I’m only 5ft and 7 stone . A few weeks later she had a car accident and in the process of donating her organs the doctor said ‘I don’t suppose you know her height and wait do you ? ‘
5ft and 7 stone

My parents got divorced when I was a baby. I met my father few times only in my whole life. He was a professional footballer and at times I could only see him playing in the stadium, from afar.
My mother went back to her family’s home and my maternal grandfather stepped in the role of a father for us. His love for me and my brother was immense; he used to wash our clothes, allowing us to roam around and play in all places. He sent my mother to go to college while helping to raise us.
A retired soldier and a UN peacekeeper, yet a prayer warrior, he was not a man of his time. Hence, we had a childhood full of adventure and freedom.
He died when I was in high school and I wish he saw that I succeeded and became the first in our family to study abroad on a full scholarship, an expat, a mother and more.
My biggest regret is not carrying his name instead of my absent father’s.

I was born and raised in Addis Ababa, and my father worked as an auditor. He once told us the story of how he came to marry my mother. At the time, he was involved in politics and had to serve the country during a time of conflict. He worried that if he died in the war, he wanted someone from his hometown to take care of things in his absence. My mother had just arrived in Addis Ababa and was new to the city when he approached her with this idea. She accepted, and when my father returned home safely, they later married.

My father was a very gentle and generous person. He was always willing to help those in need. Whenever he traveled back to his hometown, he would bring paper, pens, books, and pencils for children in the community. Years later, when those children grew up and came to Addis Ababa, they would often tell us how my father had given them an opportunity to continue their education.

My parents were together for 25 years, and I never saw them fight. Their relationship was full of care and respect. When my mother came home late from work, my father would go to the bus stop to meet her so they could walk home together. He would clean her shoes and iron her clothes, making sure she was prepared for the next day.

My father passed away exactly seven years ago, and I miss him deeply. I cherish the time we shared, especially our long conversations and the moments we spent together over coffee or a beer. His memory continues to stay with me every day.

I was born 6 weeks after my dad died suddenly which meant I was born into grief. My mum’s first and only child. She never discussed my father and I grew up with a nagging inner, unspoken fear and sense of deep loss which I could not articulate. It has shaped my life, and me, but now, just before I turn 50, I can look at myself and feel proud and say it has made me who I am. I carry this missing man inside me. It wasn’t until my 40s I could even begin to explore more about him. I have 2 lovely children who are now just adults. I feel a sense of belonging in the world. I made my own family through friends, connections and feel eternally blessed. It is not true that you don’t miss what you never had. It’s a disenfranchised grief. The photo is me with my grandma who died when I was around 11. Only recently, with some health issues I’ve had, which she had too, and survived, have I realised she took is inside me all, both my guiding lights.

I am one of 14 …. We all share a father but born of seven women. My father sort of had two wives in the traditional sense but civilly married to one ( my step mother). My mother the younger of the two women in terms being a second “wife” led quite a fascinating life. Not sure if she was rebellious or trying to survive. But what I can assure you is the majority of my strength came from her as I have gone on to have over come quite a lot of trials. I now live in the UK as having left home at the age of 20 for university. It’s been a strange life to say the least and only to now realise I could have had a different life if I had not been conditioned to self sacrifice. Now I know my family set up was chaotic and not the norm. That you live in the same town as your father and are in the same household but can go for weeks without seeing each other. Am not even sure I can explain it fully as I also do not fully understand it hat took place back then but know that my siblings and I have paid the price for the decisions my parents made back then. But what I also truly know is the fact that we were very much loved and provided for. And any mistakes made were truly not their fault but were being made by extremely traumatised children in adult bodies.

I married my husband Chris in 1999, we had our son Cade in 2002. We were a little unit, just the 3 of us until November 2025 when my husband passed away aged 58. Just 5 weeks before life was normal. We had just been on holiday. A diagnosis of rare cancer changed our world. Our little unit of 3 was now just 2 of us.
Memories are what keep us going. We are grateful for the time we had together as a family.

These are my maternal grandparents Tony and Iris. His name was Tony, but he was christened Ivor Novello Craig. His father died in a fire in Edinburgh when he was a child, leaving him to look after his three siblings, Robert, Irene and Norman. Norman was institutionalised soon after as he had learning disabilities and never had the freedom of living independently. My grandfather travelled to England with his other siblings and ended up stealing to get by. He ended up in prison. He met my Nan and they eloped. They had 5 children including my Mum, Lydia, the eldest. All 5 children ended up in the care system due to abandonment and neglect. My mum has passed now, she struggled to show us love, but I understand her better as an adult and know she did her best.

There are three mothers in this photo. My noo noo or biological mother. (Called noo after the teletubbies character – as teenagers my bother and I were making a point about her not clearing up after us and feeding us tubby toast and custard – she had a career). My step mother, mother of my two baby brothers now both over six foot. Her mother – my quasi grand who flies over from America to remind me that a grandmother’s love respects no borders. I am looking forward to our holiday this year in Northumberland. This is my family.

My dad worked hard to support his family. In his spare time, he often made things to sell, partly for the joy of it and partly for a little extra money. He made all sorts of things. Iron gates, wooden toys, dolls’ houses, and miniature furniture. We took the occasional holiday, and although we didn’t have much, we never felt poor growing up. This is a picture of us together on the pier at Colwyn Bay. He died when I was 20 from a smoking-related disease and didn’t live to see me graduate from university. My mother supported me through that time, and it must have been incredibly hard for her.

I took my (foster) daughter to visit her older sister, who was living in a children’s home many miles away. They hadn’t seen each other in four years.

Her sister had experienced 36 placement breakdowns, and there were wider, complex issues within the birth family that made maintaining relationships incredibly difficult.

We brought her some small gifts, including a photo album I’d put together. I’d gathered every photo I could find from the times we’d seen her years before.

She sat and looked through it carefully, page by page.

When she reached the end, she closed the album, smiled politely, and said:
“That’s really nice… but who is that?”

She didn’t recognise herself.

At 17 years old, she didn’t have a single photo from her life in ‘care’.
Since then, I’ve learned that her older siblings didn’t have photos either.

Every child deserves a story.
But, how do you build a story without witnesses?

This has to change.

My sister and I used to say, when we were little, that we were given each other so we weren’t alone. She’s my family, my guiding star. My partner died suddenly on 10 February 2024. Sara, held the space for my grief, and my daughter’s, whilst navigating her’s. I wrote this about her:

Twins

We are
connected
to that universal place
no one quite remembers
but we’ve all departed from.

Echoes of this life
come back to me
when I embrace you,
feel your heartbeat,
the shape of you.

An incidental touch
transports me,
if I pay attention
to this inner world we shared.

A world of muffled voices,
hearts beating,
blood flowing,
bodies wrapped together.
Life before a life.

I realised this week, approaching my 60th birthday, as a mum, granny and now a carer to my mum, an important thing. My mum, who raised 3 children with little or no help from my father in different times, now needs care.

She was a war baby, with unknown parentage until very recently thanks to dna, literally born as the bombs dropped in London in early May 42. Her mother was only 18 and her father a Canadian airman who never knew of her existence. She endured an abusive disrupted childhood in children’s homes, what we now call being an ‘looked after’ child, but unable to even speak until very late. She had a failed adoption, more rejection, and removed to boarding school. She loved us children, in her own way, not demonstrative, she was authoritarian and critical. We were rebellious and difficult teenagers, she couldn’t cope with us – how could she? She was never the mother or grandmother we needed but there was unspoken love. My father let her down, he was broken too, he ended up in prison for a blue collar crime.

This week she thanked me for caring for her, and said ‘no one has ever looked after me before.’ Alzheimer’s is softening her tone. In tears, I realised that for 84 years she has not felt looked after. It’s her turn now.

The years since Mum died have been a mixture of sadness & anger & bitter tears. Any chance for her to finally fill the emotional void she left behind when she abandoned me at 8 yrs old is forever gone.

I wallowed in my resentful grief until I heard a song that transported me back to a healing moment in the Children’s Home I grew up in. “Young, Gifted & Black.” Bob &Marcia’s reggae version, not Nina’s uplifting anthem nor Aretha’s gospel one.

My white mum brought the record with her when she visited me once and held my hand and my gaze as she serenaded me in her raw, tuneless voice…trying to breathe the words into my wounded teenage soul.

…and the music reminds me now, once again, that she loved me as much as she knew how to.

And that was enough.

I often like to say that when we had our first child we became a family. When we had our second child we became a dysfunctional family. What a ride, a challenge. The joy, the pain, the biggest lesson I think I’ve had. My little family and wider family feel like home, love it or hate it. Comfort yet stifling. Overriding pride and immense irritation . I look forward to what the next 30 years (if I’m lucky) bring

When my son was little, he was a real daddy’s boy. I wanted to be close to him but somehow, he never seemed to want me as much as he wanted his dad.

I was very sad about this for a long time. I tried lots of things, but nothing seemed to crack it. One day, I saw an advert for a subscription service for teaching kids about engineering. They would send you a box with a machine to put together each month. I signed up, and told my son we’d build it together each month, just him and me.

It worked. Each month he was excited to see what was in the box, and looked forward to building it with me. That small activity together made him excited about spending time with me. Among laser-cut wooden cogs and levers to assemble, we found each other. He’s a teenager now. I’ve never lost him since.

Family means always loving each other unconditionally. Life will throw you curve balls, but home and family should provide the safety and love to be able to face them and come out even stronger. I love watching my two boys grow up and seeing the world through their eyes.

My father died when I was 20, having been unwell for five years. My mother hated me being close to him and would accuse me of causing their arguments when he dared to defend me as a little child. Not against her physical abuse, but her verbal abuse. Verbal abuse leaves such confusion. It destroys you, but no one sees the damage. To avoid provoking her, I became distant from my father. He was a quiet man, so I have little recollection of much that he said other than, “Leave her alone”. One day, shortly after his death, I was sitting with my mother, and I was overwhelmed by grief. I started crying, and looking at me with no empathy, she said, “ I don’t know why you’re crying, you were just his daughter, I was his wife!”
I was not a mother myself at the time, but this struck me as so unnatural for a mother not to comfort her child. A light in my heart went off that day.
Then in 1991, my long-term boyfriend died from a head injury sustained in a friendly football match. I was 28 & he was 32.
When I rang my mother to tell her he had died, she turned on me again. She told me,” You have to believe”, and through my tears and heartache, I replied, “I prayed day and night, and I don’t believe”. Instead of being supportive of her daughter, she barked at me,” Well, what do you expect? You’re a cynic. I loved him as well, you know”

Those two events turned my heart off to her. I was her daughter, but I felt nothing when she died. She left me with a sense of myself which was so fragile. An inability to know what I was allowed to feel because she took everything from me and made it hers.
She was an unnatural mother. Now I know she was damaged herself, and I have some compassion for her. That is all.

I have a mixed family with my dads new family. I have my dad’s sisters and wife. My mum and her family. I have family that are from my late fiancé’s 2 relationships and both there baby mums and families. I have myself 3 children a boy a girl and a boy. Sadly my daughter took her life on the 1st of February 2025.I am forever blessed that I have my son in law and there family and the most precous gift I was left with was my grandsons who miss there mummy every day. We also have extended family and these are friends who we love.

She was born on a normal day. Nothing dramatic. Pregnancy had been fine, all the scans were “perfect,” and when she arrived, I was told she was healthy.
But not long after we got home, something didn’t feel right.
I couldn’t properly explain it. She just didn’t seem settled. Feeding was hard, she’d start, then stop, breathing fast, getting tired so quickly. I kept thinking, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

At first, I thought maybe it was just me. New mum, overthinking. But every time I raised it, I was brushed off.
“It’s baby blues.”
“You’re anxious.”
“Maybe she’s not getting enough milk.”
“You’re overthinking.”
One comment really stayed with me:
“Are you a doctor to be diagnosing heart problems?”
That hurt. Not because I thought I was a doctor but because I knew something wasn’t right.
Weeks went by. Then months. Nearly four. And that feeling never went away. If anything, it got stronger. I watched everything, her breathing, her feeding, how tired she was.
I kept going back. Kept asking. Kept pushing.
Eventually, a GP referred us to a cardiologist.
I felt relieved, but nervous too. By then I’d already started reading about VSD, ASD, surgeries… things I never thought I’d need to know. I tried explaining it to my husband, but I think he thought I was worrying too much. I don’t blame him. I wish I had been wrong.
The appointment came quickly.
I’ll never forget it.
As soon as the scan started, I could feel something shift. You just know.
Then they told me she couldn’t go home.
Her heart was deteriorating. Things could get serious very quickly.
Everything hit me at once but at the same time, I had this quiet thought: I knew it.
Within three weeks, she had surgery.
Those weeks are a blur. Fear, waiting, trying to hold it together. Handing your baby over for heart surgery… nothing prepares you for that.
But she got through it.
And so did we.
This year, it’s been 14 years. She’s now a very active teenager, full of life. You’d never think how it all started.
Looking back, one thing stays with me:
I didn’t give up.
Even when I wasn’t believed. Even when I was made to feel like I was imagining it.
I just kept going.
And I’m so glad I did.
If there’s one thing I’d say to any parent, it’s this:
Trust that feeling.
You might not have the words for it. But you know your child.
And sometimes, that’s enough.

I lost my mum 4 years ago and am single with no children. My brother lives at the other end of the country. My family is my friends. A huge network of people that lift me up and generously share their children and themselves with me. Family is having a door that you are always welcome to walk through, to a place where you are loved and you love in return. Found family feels like a blessing.

This is my brother, Nick, with my daughter, Eliza. She has a complex disability and can’t walk, talk, or use her hands. Nick died aged 51 on 10th February 2026. He loved Eliza unconditionally and saw her in a way many others don’t. Nick was an alcoholic, and this ultimately led to his death, but it didn’t define him. He was kind, funny, intelligent, loving, gentle and generous in every way – and he loved my four children as much as I love them myself. We have lost that love, and our lives are much poorer for it. I have had my fair share of grief in life, but losing my only brother has broken my heart. I miss him endlessly.

My family had to fight to survive through generations in Ireland and England, and eventually all they knew was fight. It has taken patience and courage to unravel this, to learn how to let things go and let love in and heal that pattern. I am home educating my son after fighting an education system that was breaking him. My family are there for us. Knowing how to hold the pieces together.

When I found out at my 20 week scan I was having a boy, I was disappointed. I feel great shame expressing this now and even at the time I could barely express these feelings to anyone as I knew it would be misinterpreted.
It wasn’t that I dreamed of dressing up a little girl (although little girls clothes are very cute!)
I feared raising a boy because my brother’s life has gone so far off the rails and I worried that all I would see in a son was my brother and a life of misadventure and incarceration.
As my son approaches his second birthday, my fears were unfounded. I look at him and I see hope for the future. There are still fears but that’s the nature of raising children in an uncertain world and looking back on a childhood growing up with family trauma.

My little brother was only 18 months younger than me and we were the eldest of 4 children. He suffered horrific facial scarring in a car accident when he was 7 and suffered from being bullied all through school . He became involved with drugs as a young adult and , whilst being chased on foot by dealers, he stepped in front of a moving car and sustained another horrible head injury. This left him with poor mental health for the next 20 years, and life was very challenging for him. He gave in to his pain and died by suicide 20 years ago. Giving my mum the awful news was the hardest thing that I have ever had to do. As a family we went through sadness, guilt and disbelief as we grieved, but now I only remember the happy times we shared and celebrate his wonderful outlook on life and the incredible adventures he had.

My father was a naval officer. He went AWOL. At night he studied accounting and became a banker.
He met my mother. She taught mathematics to children.
After their honeymoon, he went to prison. His superior had forged his name to steal from an account. My brother was born while he was inside. Later, they found my father not guilty. The truth came out.
He left accounting. Went back to night school. Studied sociology.
I am the youngest of three. My father was a quiet man. He did not show anger. My mother did enough for both of them. She kept order in the house.
My father read all the time. Books were everywhere. In 1985 E.C., when I was in the first grade, he bought me my first one.
My mother cooked well. She taught me when I was twelve.
I took what I could from both of them.
My father died fifteen years ago. He left me his library. More than four hundred books. They led me to writing.
Last month, my first story was published in African Writers Magazine.
For Easter, I made doro wot. I cook now for my mother. She is not as strong as she was.

I had just turned six when my lovely Grandad J.J. ( Johnnie) died after living his last days with us in Dublin. It was November 1963. Teilifis Eireann ( now RTE) pulled their early telly programmes “ as a mark of respect to a great man who has died “. I understood. I knew my Grandad was a great man.
Much later I found their tribute was for J.F.K.

Family was mum, dad and 2 children. Growing up there were always the family arguments. Dad didn’t speak to siblings, or his mum. We knew it was complex. We’re adults now and dad doesn’t speak to us. Mum protected us from the selfish situations he put the family in. As grown ups we could see those selfish situations ourselves and made decisions to protect our family. I didn’t want my children to grow up with a grandparent that promised the world and didn’t deliver – we went through that and I can protect my children from that world!

This is an extract from my memoir (after writing 40 for other people) about my experience growing up as the sister of a brother with autism, in the 70s and 80s, The Sibling. Published in November. This piece is from 2019:

Their shouts of abuse are now classed as hate crimes, and the police tell my brother to report any incidents. It becomes a relatively common occurrence to see a police car parked on the road outside our parents’ kitchen window. The only time Dad doesn’t complain about cars parked there.
One time somebody shouted from a car.
Just a name, a slur.
‘Liar!’
Sticks and stones.
But words hurt when names are used in hatred.

There is one day, pre-pandemic, when the police call to follow up my brother’s report of shouted abuse. I perch on the arm of our parents’ sofa and listen to the story, wincing when the policeman tells us my brother dialled 999. But they told him he should do that, if anyone shouted at him. It’s likely the word ‘shouted’ hooked into my brother’s subconscious. He does not like shouting, or loud noises.

The visit is from a community police officer, claustrophobic in his heavy equipment and well over-protected for the occasion. Overdressed for our parents’ living room, where the gas fire is on despite the sun outside; blood thinners bring a chill to their bones.
He tries to take a statement from my brother.
‘Can you tell me what the driver looked like, R?’ My brother sits calmly beside me on the sofa and gazes out of the window at our mother’s carefully tended garden.
‘R can.’
There is that half-step pause.
He thinks he has answered the question, because he has.
The policeman rubs at the stubble on his chin. He knows my brother, has seen him over his twenty years’ service in the town, but he’s due to retire next month, which means a whole file of explanations and new introductions for his replacement. He tries again.
‘Can you tell me what he looked like?’
‘He looked fine,’ R says, using the go-to platitude that replaces so much of his vocabulary.
‘OK. Was he older than me?’ the policeman tries. My brother looks momentarily puzzled; quantifying an age with a number does not sit well. He knows that he is six years younger than me but believes he is still young and will live forever.
‘Did he look like me perhaps?’ the policeman presses.
‘No.’
A silence falls while we all try to come up with ways we can help.
The policeman pulls a pen from his top pocket and passes it, and a pad, to my brother.
‘Could you draw a picture of him?’
Dad and I glance at each other across the room.
My brother takes the pad across his lap, pinches the pencil between both hands, one carefully guiding the other, and presents the policeman with his picture.

Dad looks over his shoulder at the drawing.
‘He should be easy to find,’ he says.

Defining what family means to me is not easy to put into words. It is vast, limitless, ever changing, a bit like mercury. I will tell you what is happening in mine right now.
The last of my dad’s generation died in 2025. He was one of 12 children raised in Ireland by Nellie and David O’Keeffe in a two bedroomed cottage in Midleton, Co Cork. In memory of our grandparents and in honour of our parents, aunts and uncles, we are holding a cousins reunion in Ireland this June. There may be up to two hundred of us meeting up and others who can’t be there but will be video calling to be part of the gathering. Our clan has grown and spread to include African, Mauritian, Australian, New Zealander, Swiss, American, Mexican and English family members now. Some cousins are foster children, step children, neurodivergent, disabled, gay and conceived through different types of IVF or egg donation. Some I have never met, some I am incredibly close to and most of my cousins exist somewhere in between. We seldom see eachother but when we do it is like we have never been apart. We tell eachother stories to make us feel part of this incredible, diverse family.
I can’t say I love them all, I can’t even say I like them all. I don’t even really know them all. To me, family isn’t about familiar love, it is about people giving me a sense of belonging. We are connected by the strong influences and bond and stories shared between our mums, dad’s aunts and uncles who have gone before us. And between them they did love us all.

As an aging, single aunt with no children myself, my siblings are still my family whilst their families are their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. I am not as important to them as they are to me and I have to accept that. But at the reunion, we will all muck in, tell our stories, pay tribute to and honour our ancestors who created us.

The photo is the last one of my parents with all of their children together when we had a small family reunion some years ago. My brothers and sisters came from Botswana, Mauritius and New Zealand for the occasion.

This is my amazing Mum Mavis aka Pink Grandma, she was helping my Dsd with the harvest in late 1950’s.
She passed away peacefully whilst holding my hand on 29th December last year. She is much missed by all our family.
For our 45th Wedding Anniversary last month 14th March, I changed one of the colours of my hair to pink in memory of her.

My mother’s mother died when my mother was 9. The day my father, David, died I discovered that his eldest sister, Mabel, was actually his mother. He had been born in a church home for unmarried mothers where most babies were up  for adoption. Mabel’s parents took David home with them and he grew up as the youngest of their 9 children although he always knew that Mabel was his mum. I felt sad that I never knew Mabel as my grandma but then I realised she did all those grandma things with me any way; taught me to play crib, how to knit, got me a library card, took me to London museums, had me to stay in school holidays…. It still feels like a “sliding doors” moment when I found out that my dad could have been adopted and not gone back to his family on the farm, not met my mum at the village school, not married her and had me…. Weird! Family has always been so important to us all yet could have turned out so different! Xx

On New Year’s Day 2022, my uncle Bartley died. He spent much of his life playing music in the Irish pubs of Kilburn and Cricklewood and was never happier than when holding a guitar in front of an audience. He joined the Irish Army aged 15 and despite being 5’4, held the trophy for ‘Fittest Man in the Irish Army’ from 1970 until his death. Micheál Martin, the Taoiseach at the time, wrote to my aunt granting permission for him to be buried with it.

Having never smoked or drank in his life, he died from lung cancer, brought about from all those years performing in pubs. He wasn’t supposed to die – he was my hero as a child and I always thought he’d live forever.

Around this time, I met up with my wife’s uncle, told him about Bartley, and showed him a picture I’d taken of him. I’d known ‘Uncle Bob’ for years from various family events and we’d only ever talked about his beloved West Ham. He scrutinised the photo and asked if I’d send him a copy.

What Bob hadn’t mentioned was that he had spent his entire career painstakingly sculpting coins for the Royal Mint. Eight weeks later, he sent me an incredible photo. He’d sculpted my picture of Bartley onto a clay disc and asked me what I’d like on the back of it. I sent him a photo of Bartley’s favourite guitar and Bob set to work again.

I met up with Bob a few months later and he’d called in a few favours from old colleagues at the mint. He handed me about 100 beautiful, silver-zinc coins of Bartley and asked me if I’d share them with a family that, other than at my wedding decades earlier, he’d never met. He wanted nothing in return – simply because I’d married his niece, we became part of his family and he became part of ours and that was what family meant to Bob. It was just the kindest thing.

Once Covid lockdown ended, the entire family headed back to the remote village in Connemara where Bartley grew up, so he could be buried alongside his parents. He was a hugely popular and charismatic man, so the church and graveyard were packed with people wanting to pay their respects. There weren’t nearly enough coins to go around, but I managed to make sure his closest family and friends received one.

Most of Bartley’s children and grandchildren live in London these days, so don’t get to visit his grave as often as they’d like. But whenever I meet up with my cousins, we all take out our Bartley coins and retell the stories of his crazy life. Turns out, we all carry those coins with us wherever we go. All thanks to my wife’s unassuming, West Ham-obsessed, generous, brilliant uncle Bob, whose love of family is boundless.

I have 5 children. One died. One came to us via the family courts with one weeks notice as a newborn and never left. My family is unusual. People feel uncomfortable around bereaved parents and others think they have the right to know the details of my adopted child’s life.
All you need to know is that I love all of my children and always will.
I didn’t lose a child, they will never leave me, I didn’t rescue a child, they are not lucky to have me, I am lucky to have them.

Distance and other complications mean that moments like these, with all three granddaughters gathered in the same place, are rare and precious. This grandmother was inordinately joyful to capture them together in all their glory.

My heart broke when nursery workers told me that they had concerns about my son’s social and emotional development. Five years on I still have my moments. Having a child with additional needs is hard. Yet, the love that this boy showers me with, verbally and physically, is more than I ever dreamt I’d receive from a child, let alone one with autism. I feel so lucky to be his mum.

I was 60 this year and I still haven’t recovered from my childhood. Hypercritical parenting has left a legacy of feeling like I’m a bad person who there’s something wrong with. I was managing a difficult situation with a colleague at work when their response triggered me because it resonated with my core beliefs about myself. In my dysregulated state, I made things worse. I’m not going to have anymore therapy, I resent how much heavy lifting I have to do because the people who are supposed to love me unconditionally, had a whole load of conditions. How will it ever change?

I was 60 this year and I still haven’t recovered from my childhood. Hypercritical parenting has left a legacy of feeling like I’m a bad person who there’s something wrong with. I was managing a difficult situation with a colleague at work when their response triggered me because it resonated with my core beliefs about myself. In my dysregulated state, I made things worse. I’m not going to have anymore therapy, I resent how much heavy lifting I have to do because the people who are supposed to love me unconditionally, had a whole load of conditions. How will it ever change?

In 1968 I was adopted as a baby. My Adoptive Mother Billie, was a devoted parent. When I was 7, she died suddenly and long story short, I then became a foster child. I received an antique doll, which she had bought for me in Paris. I played with it like a Barbie doll. As an adult, it was in pieces, but I had it restored. It is my only physical connection to her now. As an adult I also found my birth family. That journey has been mixed and not the fairytale ending I hoped for. Still we work at it. Family for me, has always been pleasure and pain. I went on to have my own precious, birth daughters. I never thought I could have them. They are my family. I named them after the moon and stars. They represent light and hope, shining in the darkness. My coffee name is Radiance. “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen

When after driving hard for several hours, to take my girlfriend to meet my father, when he opened the door he said ‘your late’

Family is bread and butter with every meal, watching TV together on Sunday nights after a bath, driving in the car listening to status quo but that was then. Now it’s meeting up for lunch once a month, check ins via the family WhatsApp, updates on health scares and new appointments, texting to say there’s a new TV programme worth watching and sending millions of photos of the kids and their achievements.

I am towards the latter part of my 30 year Midwifery career and family are the very essence of my being.
My life of 60 years young has been tinged with sadness, sorrow and grief however, the flip side I have been blessed with a family that has been there for me through the highs and the lows. I have been privileged to witness and experience the wonderment of new life both professionally and personally.
My photo is of our newest grandson, just over 2 weeks old and I have called it hope. Without hope we have nothing.

We arrived in a small market town in Somerset in 1966. We must of looked odd! Father mid thirties 5ft 6ins [including a wig] step-mother late teens and nearly 6ft, plus my brother and me, both of us under 10.

I don’t remember a single good day as a child, there was no love, no warmth, we where regularly told we lied, that we were no good at anything and would come to nothing in our lives. My father resented his decision ‘taking us’ rather that putting us into care.

My biological mum was, I found out later, not well mentally.

Both my brother and I were made to leave the family home at age 16..

Fast forward !!!! I met my current partner in my early twenties, we have been together now for over 40 years… This special person has stood by me and together we have parented three awesome children…Who, I tried not to ‘leak’ my past into being their dad.

I am in my 60’s now… I believe that Love, nurture, an appreciation and immersion in mother nature is the way forward to hopefully a fulfilling and relatively happy life.

Family is born. Family is chosen. Family can be chosen for you and you for it. Family is complicated, hardwork, rewarding & soul destroying. Family is not always what it seems. Family brings tears, of joy & sadness. Family is what you decide it is.

I don’t have a story yet.

My name is Karen, I am now 60. My dad came from Guyana my mum was a Scottish woman from a gypsy family! My sister and I were born in London, my dad “ had a spell away!” My mum not knowing what to do alone in a city she did not know with two small babies left and went to find her family in Scotland
Some time later my dad travelled all the gypsy camps he could and eventually found us, we grew up in small Scottish town, my sister and I were too white for some and too black for others, that small town had never really had a family such as ours and we had a eventful upbringing!! Sadly there was a lot drinking and fighting in our family but somehow my sister and I made it through! The feeling of not quite belonging still stands like a ghost whispering, but life now is good

Every year when I was a little girl we’d go to a guest house at the seaside in our car. I loved my teddies but one was too big to bring and my Dad, who was quite strict, had to work so he came on the train later in the week. He told me that my teddy kept popping his head out of the bag to ask if they were nearly there. My Dad died when I was 19. He never once told me that he loved me, but I know he did because of this story.

I grew up in foster care, and for a long time I didn’t think being a mother was something I would ever do. That changed in 2024, when I had my daughter, Luna.

She is the light of my life. She’s shown me a kind of love I didn’t know was possible, and through her I’m learning what family really means. It is unbelievably healing to break a cycle, to give her the stability, love and safety I didn’t always have.

Becoming her mum has changed everything. It’s given me a sense of home, a sense of purpose, and something steady to hold onto.

My days drift on the tide of my mother’s breath,
Distance folds in on itself;
the farther I travel, the closer I become.
It is a mystery,
a bond that refuses logic altogether.

Family to me is holding in my heart the ones who made me and embracing the family that I have come into. As a fourth generation Singaporean Indian rubber plantation workers currently living in the uk for near 25 years raising children with the Scottish/Irish family I have been claimed into is a daily dance straddling cultures religions and all the flavours that we bring to this pot we call our family. It is a daily reminder and manifestation of what love and family truly means to me. That despite all the shapes and sizes we may come as humans finding our people ( kin or not) and making them family is the gift this universe offers us.

Family is where I can be different and weird and noone thinks I’m different or weird they just know that’s who I am. It’s where I belong and I don’t have to make myself fit in. I know my family can be happy for my successes without being jealous. And they know how to help me when I’m sad because they know I won’t ask.
Family is a feeling and a knowing.

Nancy became a single mum when she gave birth to my dad in 1938. Although it was a time of social stigma and judgment, Nancy had the support of her family and he was brought up in a happy, loving home. He never knew his own father and the surname he was given was Nancy’s.
Several generations have since borne that name and when Nancy’s great-grandson got married last week, his beautiful wife decided to take it too.
To us, Nancy was soft, kind and funny, but she was also strong, brave, and determined.
I hope her name is passed down to many more generations.

In 1954, my beautiful grandmother left the Gaeltacht for what was then considered a better life in the UK, leaving her two infant daughters (one of them my mother) in the isolated farmhouse where her sister lived.

After settling in London – and having given birth to six sons – she returned to Ireland to collect her daughters. As the eldest sibling, my newly-homed mother was tasked with going door to door, collecting donations from the local burgeoning African, Irish, and Polish communities to build a Catholic church and school. Once built, she and her siblings then attended the school and, after teacher training college, she returned in 1973 to teach there for the next 43 years. A life well lived, and only possible due to the sacrifices her mother made all those years earlier.

A quiet but gloriously impish lady, my grandmother lived to see her 90th birthday, survived by her two daughters, but only three of her sons. In January, we took her body back to Ireland, where she’s buried alongside my grandfather, in a remote graveyard among the mountains of Connemara.

A family of hundreds – her remaining children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and those you call family that you collect along the way – travelled hundreds of miles to witness the end of a story that took ninety years to tell – a story simultaneously epic and ordinary, tragic and blessed. But there was no sadness at her funeral, only love. Just as she intended.

Twenty years ago I lost my mom. I used to have chest pain whenever I think about her. Eventually, I learned to live with the pain and learned slowly to enjoy what life brings.

My Nan was born in 1902, the second eldest of 13 and the oldest girl. She went into service aged 12, then later worked at the Clarks shoe factory in Street, Somerset. She married at 19. Her husband worked at the factory all his working life. Early in marriage they bought a new (then) bungalow with a view of the Tor. She never wanted children (having had to look after her younger siblings) but Dad happened accidentally and then – of course – she doted on him. He was definitely on the spectrum and so (with current research) was she. Grandpa died in his 70s but Nan lived in that bungalow till she was 97, long after my own mother died and my Dad had remarried. I wrote this poem about her experiences in service. She really was called Dorothy (Dolly) Windmill before she married.

Whale Song, 1915

Dolly Windmill won’t eat margarine.
It tastes of despair in its greasy
slide; there she blows, a bloody plume,
a slick of death swelling on an oily tide.

Dolly’s twelve, in service, done with school.
She can read, write, do her sums. Her wages
go to Mam; eleven younger babies and two
that died. Butter is a dream, in the big house

locked in the pantry. Cook dispenses
for the gentry: cucumber sandwiches, tea cakes,
anchovy paste. The young master’s set for Flanders.
His uniform glows in hissing gas lamp light,

proud family drink his health. Six farmhands
have enlisted under him. Cook pours cider
in the kitchen, slices soft white bread, spreads
fresh butter – steeping summer meadows, lark song,

honeysuckle, drunken bumble bees –
sprinkles sugar cracked from the pantry sugar loaf:
serves a whole heaven sandwich to each soldier, a finger
to each maid.
Dolly loves this taste of war.

I recently become a mother. I have never known such overwhelming love and pain. At our 20week scan my baby was diagnosed with Tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart disease. The past year has been the hardest time of my life.

Our wonderful little Olive is now 7 months old. She has needed multiple life saving surgeries and has spent nearly half her life in hospital but she is still smiling.

She literally gives me life but simultaneously I feel completely broken and lost. I have no idea how to be me again, while we fight our way through all of this.

I have had to learn to be vulnerable by accepting and asking for help. I could not of done this without the unwavering love and support of her father, our family and the family you choose, friends. They have been a lifesaver to us all and ensuring our family survives.

Born & bred in Salford. 18 months ago my youngest daughter gave birth to my first grandchild. 2 wks later i was diagnosed with breast cancer. They lived with me. My journey has simultaneously been both the most traumatic and the most beautiful. That child will never truly understand the depth of my love for her, getting through every day to have that cuddle at night and see her face light up in the mornings has been the one constant. She’s the reason i get up every day & I’m now on the other side of this horrible disease. Family xx

This is my mother, Mabel. She died in 2023 and I think she must live in Hell now. One of the hardest things to live with, as someone who has experienced infertility myself, is that she gave birth to 8 perfect, healthy children and she could have had so much JOY, yet where she put the majority of her imagination and effort was into sowing division, telling the most appalling lies, having affairs, terrorising us and, by the time my brother and I (the youngest) were growing up, straight up neglecting us. Professionals have told me that she had a personality disorder or was a psychopath or sadistic. I don’t know what was wrong with her and I can’t discuss it with my brother, as he died from a drug overdose following many years of severe mental illness. But I think the main thing I understand about family, from having experienced Mabel as my mother, is that most people who abuse their children look like normal people to the outside world.

Adopted from another continent, spent my childhood in another. Tumultuous teenage years culminated in a battle for my identity. I won. I reclaimed my narrative. I work hard, love harder, and I’ve made a family of my own. Each member that has been chosen has roots that run deep. We used to be a garden, now we’re a forest, intricately and intrinsically linked.

I am a grandparent to 5 wonderful young boys. We were devastated when our son suddenly cut off all contact between us and his family with the eldest grandson, 2 years ago. Meanwhile, our daughter was applying to adopt following two distressing pregnancy losses during the pandemic. Our adopted 5th grandson officially became part of our family just over a year ago, he is an absolute gift and adored by us all. His parents have an ongoing relationship with his biological family. We are incredibly thankful

I lived with my granny from the age of 6 till 11 as my mum couldn’t cope when my dad left her. Me and my sister were in boarding school as my dad was in the Navy. We went rich, in fact we were quite a poor family. We spent all those holidays between age 6 and 11 with Granny and Grandad in their tiny house with various aunties and uncles living at home or coming and going (they had 9 children). My granny Irish catholic and our time with her gave me so much amidst the chaos of other family members, my mum returning would often go very badly and there was a lot of stress, violence and upset. My granny gave us another world of fairys, leprechauns and told us stories each night in the double bed the 3 of us shared. Stories of Finn Macool, leprechauns and King O’Brien. She grew potatoes in the garden and lilac and roses. I made ‘perfume’ out of the rose petals and we used a step ladder in the small garden as the umpire chair to play tennis. It was the time of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe. Magical and fun memories amongst the pain and chaos. Then they moved to Cyprus, we had to go to our mums, she’d just married the farmer she was housekeeper to. It didn’t last and after a few months we went to live with my dad. By the time I was 14 and my sister was 16 we ran away, she left but the police took me back. Not long after that my dad and his wife disappeared (we were evicted from our house as they hadn’t been paying the mortgage). They went off to a caravan park and I stayed with the neighbours, after 2 weeks and no contact we went over to the caravan park but they had gone. I never saw my dad or his wife agsin. I ended up in care then till I was 18, with a lovely family but at 18 I had to leave. It was a hard lesson in what family is when I realised I wasn’t a permanent part of their family. Now at 55, creating my own family with my partner, children and friends has been so important. And the love and magic my granny brought to me stays on.

I miss my mum every day. But I can still feel her love surrounding me and holding me up. It’s a fierce love, and a truthful love that sees me for who I am and doesn’t waver when I make mistakes. It’s the greatest gift anyone could ever have and I thank her for it every day. I hope I am giving my own children the same gift. A mother’s love is safety and it’s freedom.

Don’t take having a family for granted. It’s an honour and responsibility and the journey can be hard so cherish it. We’re a blend of 2 northern parents, an Australian IVF teenager and an adopted 11 year old from the UK, with a few adopted pets thrown in too! Family can come in so many forms and from so many places, if you want it, be open and committed to whatever your journey is.

Two people who had a very slim chance of meeting from to continents. An arranged marriage that lasted .
My parents.
Beautiful example of resilience. I wouldn’t have dreamed of a better example.

Tuesday 28th February 1961 – I made my debut on planet earth , all 5lbs of me ! Although only weighing 5lbs, and just one day old, I’d already caused quite an uproar ! I was born illegitimate you see, my Mother was 21 years old, unmarried and my Father denied paternity, at the time ! That didn’t go down at all well with my mother’s family- her Father was furious , her Mother in poor health, aggravated more so by my imminent arrival and the ‘shame’ that my existence held. I was registered as Jayne, my maternal Grandfather chose the name – my Mother wanted to call me Amanda Mary, but she wasn’t allowed to give me that name – her Father thought it was too modern! My Mother would have liked to have kept me, but that wasn’t a choice she was allowed to make, instead I was adopted. And I became Susan Anne and I had a lovely childhood and couldn’t have been loved more by my doting parents, June and Arthur. My adoption was never spoken about. In my 50’s after both my parents had passed away, I got in contact with my birth mother, I wanted to let her know that I was well and that I’d had a good life. She still carried the ‘shame’ of having me, fearing what others would think and didn’t feel able to have contact. Her two sisters, however, were happy to talk to me, tell me about their family. They said my birth Mum changed after me being taken for adoption, she’d been a bubbly person and became withdrawn. She’d been given a tough time by the family over the pregnancy. She died in 2016. Two years later, I got in contact with the man named as my Father. We undertook DNA testing and he was indeed my birth Father. We hit it off straight away and enjoyed 4 years spending time together with him and his wife, and my new extended family. He passed away in 2022. I’m glad I found my birth parents. I’m angry and sad for the pain and shame that baby ‘Amanda Mary’ and ‘Jayne’ caused to so many people, including myself and the secrecy surrounding the truth about who I really am. And I will be forever grateful and blessed for my Mum and Dad, June and Arthur, the new extended family I gained and their unconditional love and care given to me and my children.

I’ve been so fortunate to have been brought up by such a loving family and have a family of my own. One of my kids has his challenges and its not been easy but I’m hopeful that love and support helps whether he knows it or not. As I and my parents get older I realise more and more how lucky I am and try to appreciate family more, and friends some of whom are like family in a different way

I was never able to find a father’s day card for my partner from my children. I was never able to find a birthday card for either of my children with other children on who looked like them. I never found any stories of families like ours – a white mother, black father. Once when I went into a card shop and asked if there was a card with a black child on for a five year old boy I was shown a card of Bob Marley smoking a spliff. Things are changing/have changed, but perhaps not as substantially as I hoped all those years ago. However, my children are now in their 30s and secure in their identities. I think what helped is that one of the most significant things the two of us did during their childhood was take them to their father’s country as often as we could afford – which wasn’t that often, but enough for them to know their family there, to feel they belong there. I cannot name them as that’s not my decision to take. But hard as it was to convince their schools, to find the money, to endure very difficult times travelling in that country (South Africa) as a mixed couple, I know it was worth it.

Drawing was a bridge.
Before words, there were lines quiet marks reaching outward, pushing into being. A way to connect without speaking. To be seen.
Around the table is what I remember.
Not one moment many.
The feel of the wood. Old. Worn. Something to run your hands along.
Waiting. Always waiting.
Time stretching. Not knowing for what.
Light through the window. Dust. Cobwebs.
The smell of carpet.
Bare floors.
Sitting close shoulders touching without thinking.
Food shared.
Last chips.
Laughing. Singing something silly.
Talking. Debating. Arguing. Letting it pass.
The door open.
People coming. Going.
Friends. Neighbours. Whoever arrived.
Nothing fixed. But it held.
But loss sits in it too.
In the spaces where people should be.
In the quiet after the door closes.
In the separation that doesn’t make sense, but still happens.
There is a bond in family something that feels natural, like it should just be there.
A current running underneath.
A river of blood that connects even when it is unknown, even when it is out of reach.
And somewhere between what is held and what is lost
connection.

I have two families, blood and friends. I think it’s really important to understand that there is a family you choose. It’s strange the link between people purely through biology, a seemingly random group thrown together and expected to get on because we’re family. I found it hard to be close to some members of my family because we are such different people. I only know one side of my family having never met my father and I found that strange for a long time in my youth. I felt that there was a part of me I didn’t understand or know. Now I’m older that gap is filled with the family that I’ve chosen that are my tribe, that are like me, where I feel i belong.

Selam Lemn,
Many thanks for creating such a lovely platform.
When I think about family, my story begins with my parents, along with my beloved late grandmother. My parents were longtime partners. Their love started as early as grade 8. They shared so many beautiful moments together, through both the ups and downs, until my father passed away in his early 70s. Together, they raised my two siblings and I. I deeply miss the time we spent together as a family, especially during holidays and special occasions. One of my biggest regrets is not being by my father’s side in his final months, as I was abroad with my own family (my partner and our children). I supported him in every way I could, but not being there physically in his last moments is something that stays with me. I’m grateful that I have a close relationship with my mother and my siblings….they truly are my home.
When it comes to my own family, supporting my children is my top priority. I cherish every moment with them: our busy weekends, family trips, and shared experiences—even though parenting comes with its own sweet challenges. Moments like sibling rivalries, or when they say I favor one over the other, remind me that parenting is an ongoing journey. I continue to grow and learn every day, I am still a student in this role. My family is my whole world.
I also want to mention my best friends, especially those from college. They are like family to me,my place of comfort, where I can always be myself… they hold a very special place in my heart.
Thank you again, Lemn.

I was at my lowest ebb mentally in 2013 and often thought about suicide. Then my brother told me he and his then partner were expecting, and I realised I was keener to experience becoming an aunt for the first time than I was to kill myself. My nephew was born in March 2014 and not only is he a major joy in my life but I owe everything that has happened since to him keeping me alive. I’ll probably never be able to tell him that though.

When I sat by her bedside as my mum passed away I looked out of the hospital window. The sun was rising at the breaking of a new day. She was gone and at the same time a new day was beginning. An end and a beginning laid bare. It made my heart sting. The sky was undeniably beautiful. Did she choose that moment to show me everything would be ok?

How could a new day start without her? It didn’t ask permission. It just did. It got on with it. And something changed in me.

Every morning, when the sun rises, I’m reminded how lucky I am to be granted another day. But equally, how lucky I was to be loved by my mother.

My family is my sadness, some ancient experience of banishment, an age old aloneness I feel in the pit of my being and my soul.

My sadness is a sea monster, ancient and slow, but mustering its strength quietly and powerfully just under the surface.

It is prehistoric, so old it was there before the earth was made.

It is readying itself for expression.

For millennia it has lain quietly in the depths, waiting for a moment to stir.

Now it is tensing and billowing and writhing. It wants a voice, and the voice will come as a mighty roar, but not yet.

It is the sadness of all the generations, the sadness that is as old as the world, the sadness that is complete abandonment and rejection and aloneness, that is the sadness I feel.

It is mine but it is not mine. It belongs to me but it belongs to everyone.

I dive into the waters where my sadness lives and am swept away to become part of the whole.

Then I can let it go. Then I can release every atom of grief I ever accumulated, and throw them into the torrents of the river of grief that belongs to the ages.

Then my sadness can become small, in the presence of all my brothers and sisters grief.

Then I am not alone. Then I am with family.

When I was in labour with my older son, I thought how incredible it is that the first thing a mother does for her child is suffer in this almost out of body way. I am Catholic, and felt so powerfully the connection to Our Lady, suffering with Jesus in His birth and His death. I feel the love for my children so fiercely, and I think it reveals to me how God loves us. My younger son is adopted and has complex needs, he is always afraid and hurts me a lot. I can’t imagine not loving him, even though I am so tired. I think this deep and enduring and slightly wild love is the power of a mother. I’m so grateful for it, for my children who taught it to me and are so easy to love.

Nothing quite prepares you for the utter privilege of watching a lifetime’s worth of your people fall in love with the tiny human you grew from scratch. They have their own private world, with inside jokes, and it belongs entirely to them. You are the architect of the connection, but you are not the tenant. Truly the greatest gift.

On an evening, not every evening but many evenings, my daughter and I, occasionally my son and sometimes the dog pile into our car and go chasing the sunset and later light. We drive around country lanes and roads that intersect the moors where we live and marvel at the light and scan for owls, sometimes we catch a glimpse of one, sometimes two and a couple of times we have caught sight of three owls. Our hearts warm and full of joy we head home to bed

my family, the one i grew up in, was mad
we were locked inside madness
like sanity was a game
we struggled hard to play

our marbles were sullied
our sackcloths soiled
our reason was sent to the wind
and i never should have survived

i’ve spent a lifetime trying to free
my mind from the madness that haunts me
you see, i was abused as a child
and somehow the pain of it never quite goes away

they used to say to me “why so glum”
“it may never happen”, not realising
my world had already been victim to a bomb
and that i was a shell waiting for the end

because that abuse stirred the madness in my mother
she was a hero, she confronted my abuser
stopped the abuse; went to his door
told him straight – a big fat ‘no’

but that wasn’t the end of it
her sanity hung in the balance
awoke the abuse she’d been victim to
from an uncle, when she was a child herself

her family were a big loud bruise of a family
ten kids and two parents shacked up
in a three bedroom flat before the war
sharing shoes with their neighbours

they were love embodied except when the pain
of abuse leaked through the door
and they just didn’t know how to hold each other
held on to god instead, one slippery fish that god

and the pain leaked through the generations
to send us mad, over and again
and when our neighbour sent for the psychiatrist
he knocked on my bedroom door

the mad doctor wanted me to tell him
what he needed to hear to prove that my mother was mad
i was only little and he might as well have killed me
i’m still not sure how i survived

my family, the one i grew up in, was mad
we were locked inside madness
like sanity was a game
we struggled hard to play

Brought up by my Aunt and Uncle following the death just after my birth of my Mum from Breast Cancer. Ireland 1957.
Named after the patron saint of Hopless Cases and Lost Causes. My Mum prayed to him during the pregnancy.
My two Dads were very alike.
We now foster.

This is my Mum, Dad and me taken in the early 70s. I was born with a variety of medical complications and congenital disabilities and at one point the doctors told my parents to go home and forget about me as I wasn’t going to survive – but they didn’t. They fought for me, supported me through countless operations and hospital stays, fought for me to go to a mainstreamschool. Now in my late 50s, married to the most amazingy man and mother to 3 lovely young men, I appreciate just how much they did for me. Nora and Theodore Traish loved and very much missed.

This is one of my very battered old cookbooks where I collect lovely recipes, most often from family and friends. It’s only one of five I have, but it contains the most important recipe in our family, Granny Molly’s drop scones! My grandma and grandpa got married in 1939, and had a really tough war, barely seeing each other. After the war they finally decided to go on honeymoon to try and reconnect, but could only afford a camping trip to the Highlands. It was wet, full of midges and pretty miserable until they stayed in this old farm where the farmer’s wife made these for them. My grandpa loved them so much the lady gave grandma the recipe so she could always butter him up if needed and remind him they loved each other. It’s been made by everyone in the family pretty regularly ever since and is accepted shorthand for “I love you” in our house. You can see how well used the page in the book is that we show each other we love each other a lot in our house. For me it is very important my kids always know I love them. This is a photo from the 1990’s of me, my granny and mum baking together.

We began fostering in 2018, full of hope to make a difference.
You became our family, our girls, siblings through connection not blood.
We taught you to eat, to walk, to talk, to read, to ride a bike , to swim, to love… years of loving you. Then you went back to family and all our promises of seeing you grow were taken away. Not our choice. Absolutely not out choice.
You hold our hearts, we cannot wait until you are old enough to tell you how much we loved you, love you, will always love you. To tell you something. Our girls. A&A. Our Family.

I was incredibly anxious about becoming a father for the first time, so I phoned my sister. “Don’t worry” she said, “you’re about to fall in love.” How right she was.

As a child this was just a beautiful photograph of my parents on their wedding day. As a adult, I realise it is so much more than that and it represents the strength of two amazing people who overcame many obstacles, especially in the 50’s but they remained married forever.
When I look at this photo now, I see beyond the strength and realise how incredibly amazing my parents were, to have beaten the odds for the many generations to come. “We are our ancestors wildest dreams!”
How lucky am I to be a part of something so incredible!

I was lucky I had a loving family and I still do but the most important person to me who made me feel safe my dad died just before I was 12. I listened to the paramedics trying to save him for what seemed like an age. Days later I was back at school dazed not present utterly broken and totally lost. Loss became a theme in my family for a few years after that and more family members died. I love what remains of my family but it’s never been the same. I am cautious and over independent as a result, I can’t lean on or expect anything it’s too risky. I have my own family now too I adore them they are my whole world I fear them being taken too in my quiet and alone moments when I don’t have to be strong. I help other people through my work who have lost families or never had them, who feel connection is a risk. I give what wasn’t available to me when I needed it. I hope it’s enough.

I had what appeared, from the outside, to be a very fortunate childhood in the 1950s. The post-war restraints didn’t hit us much as we lived in a prosperous small town in an area of north Yorkshire that hadn’t been bombed.
There was still food rationing, but we had a large overgrown garden with four productive apple trees, and my mother kept chickens and grew fruit and vegs. We had fresh eggs (when the ration was one each a week!) and some fruit was bottled and kept in the loft for the winter months.

My mother had a cleaning lady (there were few labour-saving devices, the laundry was done in a copper with a dolly-peg in the cellar, and put through a mangle before pegging out.) (Google it!)

We were a middle class family, we had toys, books, bicycles (which I was only allowed to ride in the garden. It wasn’t a mansion, just a Victorian semi, and riding the length of the drive, up and down, took two minutes if going slow). There were adequate clothes, a warm house and holidays. My brother and I went to private schools.

Lovely.

But my mother never took to me. I spent my life (until sent to boarding school at 11) trying to keep out of her way. She told me I was stupid, ugly, a constant disappointment, and constantly shouted at me: (“Good God child, why do you always LOOK so awful!”, “You’re such a FOOL! You can’t be let out, you can’t be trusted!” – the reason why I wasn’t allowed to leave the garden or play with any other local children.) If I ever appealed to my father for protection from these scalding rages, all I got was “Hush, dear, hush – you’ll upset your mother !” – something that had to be avoided at all costs.

My brother was sent to boarding school at seven, when I was five. I never saw much of him after that and he stopped being my friend.
So I was friendless and cowed. I didn’t have my own bedroom, or wardrobe, or drawer space, though my brother did. My clothes lived, until I left home, in my mothers room. I slept where I was put.

One image has always stuck, which sums up the family perfectly. I am sitting in the back of the family Wolsely, a car that started with a starter handle. (Google again.) We are in our way to the seaside for a holiday. I am about 6, between my brother and a pile of suitcases with our budgie in his cage on top. My nose is pouring blood, and I’m holding to it a pink woollen glove that was for some reason on the parcel shelf, sobbing “He hit me! He hit me! My nose is bleeding!”. My brother is sitting arms crossed and glowering “I’m glad I hit her! I’m glad she’s bleeding! She was being CHILDISH!” (I had been twittering “oooh, we’re going to the seaside!!” Like a child. Of 6.) My mother, in the front, is saying ” Stop the car! I’m getting out!! I’m leaving!!! I’m never coming back!!!!” ( We are in the middle of nowhere) and my father is saying “Oh, look at that beautiful view children!” Neither of the adults is addressing the fact that their son has just punched their little girl in the face, or why he’s become so angry and violent since going to boarding school. I am told to stop upsetting my mother, and am left to sob and bleed between my glowering brother and the chirrupping bird,

When I was 14, she left. She didn’t go anywhere, she just became nocturnal. She sat up all night, smoking and reading and listening to BBC world service, in a small back bedroom, coming up with mad theories. She believed everything in the Daily Mail. When morning came, she’d go to bed and sleep all day, getting up in time to make our evening meal. After which, she’d sleep in her chair and we couldn’t talk in case we disturbed her.

Later, they got a television, and it had to be on all through the evening meal, loud, to prevent the danger of conversation. As soon as my brother got a job, he was out at the pub every evening, and off with his friends at weekends. (He was fortunate in having a lot of boarding school friends living in the same town. I wasn’t, and didn’t. ) I was then on my own with the fury. Photos at the time (very few) show me as a shrunken girl, looking at the ground, as if trying not to be there, which I was. Not a beauty, but not monstrously, or even noticeably, ugly.

I had the misfortune, despite my fool status, of being very bright, and kept being put up a class, and was inevitably top of the class. I remember being up and down to the platform one speechday, getting the form prize, the exams prize, the English prize and the essay prize. I trotted up to my simmering mother with my armful of prizes and asked “Aren’t you just a LITTLE bit pleased with me?”, she leant down and hissed “We PAY enough for your schooling, so you SHOULD be top of the class!”. I was too deflated to point out that everyone else’s parents had paid the same, even the duffers at the bottom of the class. When I went into the sixth form a week before my fifteenth birthday (still a child in pigtails with no need of a bra) in a class of 17 and 18-yr-olds, to take four A-levels, she said the school obviously thought I was very stupid and very lazy, as they wouldn’t let me take all the subjects. She meant, everything I’d done at O-level. She didn’t know how the exam system worked, and could not be told.

Leaving at 16, plus the 4 A-levels, my parents didn’t know what to do with me. My mother resented this intruder who got underfoot in her, til now, private domain: I spent a lot of time sitting in the dining room looking at the wall, because if I moved, even to pick up a book, I was screamed at. I wasn’t allowed to help with cooking or cleaning, because I was too much of a fool. I don’t think it had occurred to them that I’d need a job, or something to do. My mother clearly thought I was too stupid for employment. I though that must be true. I didn’t know how you got one, anyway, My father just wanted a quiet life, and kept his head down. She told me I’d have to stick with my family, who would love me because itvwas their duty, but nobody else ever would.I believed it and felt total despair, thinking this was now my life forever. I thought I’d end up the mad woman in the attic. Or just disappear. I considered sticking my head in the gas oven, but assumed I’d fail at it, and be policed and screamed at even more.

Amazingly, it was my brother who resolved it, though we rarely had much to do with each other. He’d been expected to go to university, but had failed an A-level. So he was shoved into accountancy. At an extremely rare social event, when I was a depressed and monosyllabic 18, he spoke up loudly in public to my great astonishment. “That, ” he said, indicating me, “is a BRAIN, and it should be at university!” Everyone stared at me, jaws dropped. Relieved at having somewhere to park me, it was agreed.

So I went. I got a good honours degree. I wrote for the BBC, newspapers and magazines. But I constantly thought “Well, anyone could do that “. I was well in my forties before I realised “No, they bloody couldn’t!!”, clocked that I am unusually intelligent, and rather talented, and nothing like ugly.

But the ugly fool remains wedged firmly in my head, and returns when least needed. Probably why I remained friendless, as I never got the knack.
Luckily, it takes very little to make me happy.

[

This photo was taken of my son John and me, on 28 March 2011, on Bournemouth Beach. It was the first time I had met my son since he was born in Dorchester on 29 November 1982. Due to difficult personal circumstances John was adopted soon after he was born. I was told he would have a better life than I could give him at the time; I was told that they had found adoptive parents would love him and take care of him; I was told it was a closed adoption so could have no rights to knowing any more about his life. I was 18 years old at the time of his birth, I thought I was doing the right thing for him.
It turned out it wasn’t the right thing for him at all. His adoption broke down from around age 7 and he went into foster care from 9 years old. In those years I had tried to get a letterbox contact only to be told I had no rights; there was no resources to make contact with his adoptive family and I had signed his life away when I was a traumatised 18 year old girl.
Fast forward 28 years, to the sunny day on the beach in Bournemouth. We were no longer lost to each other, when we tightly hugged for the first time, he felt like home. He was home. My long lost blue eyed Dorset boy was home. Fast forward again to 12 November 2011, my boy has been found dead, suspected accidental drug and drink overdose. My heart is broken.

My dad died in 2020. He was a very proud doctor, father and grandfather. He moved to the UK from Pakistan in 1962, but his medical degree was not recognised so he had t work as a technician in operating theatres. He returned to Pakistan to complete additional exams while also working as a doctor.

He returned to the UK and became a consultant in 1976.

He was a gentle man. Unfailingly polite, immaculately dressed in a shirt and dress shoes, even on holidays, always interested in others, open minded and willingly listening and learning.

There is so much of my dad in who I have become. I wish I’d recognised that when he was alive. I hope I am honouring him in my work as a doctor, in the same hospital in which he worked.

He was my biggest champion. I knew he was so proud of me and loved me immensely.

Being the youngest of three children by 6 and 9 years I always felt like the baby and like I was trying to catch up with the others all the time – they always just understood more than I did. Often it caused them to laugh. One time when I was maybe 4 years old my dad, a doctor, was looking after me at home when he was called to an emergency. He left me at the ambulance station while he went off on the call (this only happened this one, singular time – I’ve no idea how circumstances conspired to me being left there). I remember the man put in charge of me being kind and offering me a KitKat from the fridge.

Back home, all together, Mum asked me how it had been at the ambulance station.
‘The man was nice,’ I said. ‘He gave me a KitKat and he was called Roger.’
‘How do you know his name was Roger?’ Mum asked.
‘Because he kept saying it into the radio,’ I replied. Quite simple, quite obvious to me.
But they all burst out laughing.

I thought I’d been pretty clever to pay attention and figure out his name by myself. It was only much later that I understood that ‘roger’ was a call sign and not necessarily actually his name.

When I was a bit older and at school, I was terrified of school dinners so on the first day that I had to have them, my family was keen to know how I’d got on.
‘I thought I should try a pea, so I cut one open to see, but all there was inside was layers and layers of pea-ness.’
Again – well done me for inventing a word to describe something I’d never had to describe before.
Again – they burst out laughing. Argh!
This time I realised what I’d said and why they were laughing, but it was another moment of realising that I’m always going to be on the back foot when it comes to understanding the world, or being a little outside of what the group thinks, feels and knows.

I do think sibling order makes a huge impact on your life and experience of the world, which people take on into the rest of their lives. I tend to feel that if there’s something I don’t know, because I haven’t been told, that it’s not my place to find out. I am still politely incurious. (I am a curious person! But I’m foremost polite and non-pushy about it.) I am content to let ‘adults’ be in charge and do my bit when asked. Even though I am very much an adult and a parent now myself, taking charge doesn’t come naturally to me.

However, I am very good at casting about quickly in a situation and getting the measure of people and their dynamics from the sidelines. The very early shame of feeling exposed by my wrong interpretations or sayings has stayed with me and makes me want to understand before I act.

When I think back to these moments, sitting in on the floor together in our front room or on the bench seats around our dining table, I feel cosy and calm (in spite of the embarrassment). The memories feel yellow, brown and green, a little blurred, in safe spaces, with people who laughed not because it was all too embarrassing but because they loved me. Our home always felt right. Not perfect but right.

My beautiful, older sister has succumbed to vicious, relentless, devious, violent alcoholism. She now barely exists, only able to move from a foetal position if in pursuit of booze, or fighting a loved one who dares try to keep her from it. Social services permanently removed her son, my beautiful nephew, from her care and I ache for them both. It has crippled my parents and, while none of us are yet willing to admit, it is going to kill one or both of them before this episode plays out. Fitzgerald once wrote “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” I thought I knew what he meant; now I feel what he meant.

For my Dad, who on beautiful Spring days like today would be found pottering away in his Empire. I miss you my friend.

—-

When the gardener has gone

Over the bramble hedges and the old stone wall
there’s a garden tucked away from the chaos of it all
where a man works the soil with tender, loving care
and swallows wheel and dive in the lucid summer air.

This garden is the empire of a gentle, loving man
a pair of battered wellies and an old watering can
to make the world a better place is his only goal
the flowers in the border are the colours of his soul.

A cat watches him working as it rests inside the shade
the robin looks for earthworms in the furrows that he’s made
all around him life ticks over but it’s slightly out of time
bed sheets soak up sunshine on the morning washing line.

Seasons roll through seasons and the days move us along
and there will come a time when the gardener has gone
but the roses will still bloom and the sunflowers will sway
and love is left behind that will never go away.

My mum was told she was adopted – but there were no adoption papers. A few years ago, I started researching her biological family. We discovered her bio mum died in her early 40s, but we also discovered she had two more children after giving birth my mother.

We were nervous to meet them, because both of my parents were raised in difficult families. But my mum’s half siblings are brilliant – we connected instantly, and I think about them daily.

We still don’t know how or why my mum wasn’t raised with her biological mother, but have evidence she was checked into – and quickly ran out of – a mother and baby home. It looks like forced adoption, without the legal adoption part. We have also since found out that the woman who raised my mother was a compulsive liar and a thief. We still have no idea who my mum’s biological father is.

There has been both joy and deep sadness unearthed on this journey so far. I think my mum is struggling with all of it, and I’m not sure how to help.

This is Amanda Jayne Lawrence . On 30th April 1962 aged 5 weeks old her mum dressed her up and took her to have her photo taken. On 4th May 1962 she was relinquished to another family and her name changed to Alison because her mum was an unmarried teenager and this situation was not socially acceptable then.
This is the only photo from the first 6 weeks of my life and I did not see it for over 60 years. It is very precious.
Strange to think that Amanda will never die and Alison was never born.

The story I grew up believing was my mum married my dad to give my older sister a father or she’d have to give her up for adoption. This was in the late 60s. My dad took his life when I was 12, I hadn’t seen him since I was 9, he was schizophrenic. My mum had terrible domestic violence relationships, we were abused by her partners and neglected by our mum. My sister went wild and rogue to escape and I was left behind until the care system finally stepped in age 12, 10 years too late. . I looked up to my sister, through my life mum and sister would try to control me with angry toxic behaviour. I kept my distance when I could until I was drawn back in. Ultimately my mum got sick and I cared for her until she died, now my sister is dying and I will shower her with love and care until she dies too. In the end we were all victims and we were massively dysfunctional but in those end moments I felt nothing but love and grief for the person who gave me life and now the only other person who has been with me since birth I shall grieve our bond which was twisted and torn but still hanging on by a thread.

Dear Limm, hope that you are well. I so admire you. My parents died over the last two years. They were from the midwest and I had moved away (as did my brother). I was living in upstate NY when my mom started to have terrible back pain. I jumped on a train to Illinois with my 18 year old son. While on the ride to Illinois, my son and I spoke about what I was worried about regarding my mom. I told him that I thought she was sick and that she had a tumor on her spine. He, being the logical person that he is, said that I was worrying unnecessarily and it was a waste of energy. It was fine because I would have been so relieved if he had been right. We arrived in Illinois to find a home that was usually teeming with fresh garden produce and home-baked cookies to be very slim pickings for a decent meal. But, there were eggs and a few onions and potatoes (going round the bend, as my mom would say) and I made an evening breakfast for all of us. My parents exclaimed over how delicious it was and I felt the weight of how less rich their lives had become with my mother’s decline.

It was a couple weeks later when my mom was diagnosed with multiple myeloma (MM). My parents came home with me to New York so I could tend my family and my mom’s illness.

So many moments seem full of emotion when I recall that time with my parents as my mom continued to decline. At first she had a bit of a bump as the radiation shrunk the tumors on her spine. But the MM had lots of time to do its damage because my mom had a rare type that showed nothing in her bloodwork.

Limm. My mom died in my dining room where I had set up a space for her. I was standing at the sink washing dishes and I heard music and thought, ‘oh, someone is calling me or my phone is on…… but no, my mom had taken her last breath.

And I’m just saying, my heart did not break in that moment. I felt that I had followed her wishes. She never wanted to be in a nursing home and she never wanted to live with dementia/loss of capacity to make decisions. My heart broke over time, watching my dad grieve, my brother grieve. Feeling this loss of centered-ness.

My dad died 15 months later. He was dedicated to living and I loved that about him. But, he was a realist, and he had full capacity and made measured decisions about what he wanted to do. I was able to have a full conversation about how and why hospice was needed.

I want to speak about cognitive loss. My mother despised the idea of other people making decisions for her. She never wanted to live in a nursing home and I made this silent promise to myself that I would never let it happen. And it didn’t.

Nonetheless. Heart is still broken. These magical creatures are gone from my actual life. I hope they exist in some way, but this longing is excruciating.

As a child we would hear family stories of the older generations, how they came from Germany as immigrants and made a new life in East London. Stories of how my grandmother sat in the air raid shelters during the second world war. I can still recall my grandad speaking and swearing in german.

My Barbadian dad & Spanish mum, the immigrants, married in London 1968, a year after the US had made interracial marriages legal. Not that mum would have cared, she gleefully defied the priest by turning up in white to the wedding. It took me many years to understand what mum meant when she would proudly tell me “You had some of the wedding cake!”. Dad would quietly laugh at the memory, knowing she was 6 and a half months pregnant at their white wedding.

Tracy and I have 3 daughters and started fostering when our youngest was 14. James was our only foster child for 6 years and we all love him as part of our family. Though he had to leave our home when he was 11, we have a better relationship with him than ever and he still calls us dad and mum. He will sit at the top table with our family when his big sister gets married next month.
We now foster teenage asylum seekers, and our 16 year old from Ethiopia had his Home Office interview today. Praying he gets through. He had a bright future and though he is a devout Muslim he tells us he ‘loves Jesus’ .

I used to think I had to be the glue, but nothing ever stuck.
Then I thought I had to build bridges, but people kept knocking them down.
So I gave up and sat down.
And saw the beautiful flowers growing all around me, where I sat.
Forcing wasn’t the way. Things can only grow when you give them space and time, including family.

Sometimes family are the ones you choose.

I am an only child, but grew up in a huge family of aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins in London. I felt thier love searing through me. Home was my family. I grew up, got married and have five grown up children. My most favourite people in the whole world. They have partners and I have two adorable grandsons. The stories and sayings continue and I count my blessings everyday. Family is home

Neither extraudonary or plenipotentiary

I was born in Lancashire in 1967. My parents did respite fostering for young children between then and my brother’s birth. He was born in 1970 and when a midwife came to check on him, I attacked her because I thought she had come to take him away like my other ‘siblings’ had been taken away.

Christmas was a big thing in my family – from Christmas Day to New Year’s Eve we would gather meet up once in each of four houses – ours, and each of my mum’s three siblings who still lived in the town where I grew up. The format was very similar – dining table laid for Christmas “tea” – full of turkey or ham sandwiches, sausage rolls, cocktail sausages, crisps, mince pies, chocolate log, Tunis cake… too many people for the number of chairs, so two kids to a chair, that sort of thing… and always, ALWAYS, a bowl of trifle and cream first, (in the case of a couple of uncles, accompanied by a slice of bread and butter) before we ate anything else. No idea why, but the suggestion was it cleared the bowls out of the way so then we could start on the savory. Then one day I was round my maternal grandparents’ house at Sunday teatime and watched them eat a bowl of tinned pears and ice cream before they had their sandwiches and realised it was far more likely that it was because my Nan preferred sweet stuff and wanted to make sure she could eat her favourite part first!

Coming together when we live far from eachother. Sharing our stories and retelling our shared histories that shaped the lives we have lived. Embracing the ‘yet to come’ and supporting eachother through tough times, loving our children as they grow and our parents as they fade.

Our family has become more precious, more needed and more loving as we’ve aged. My generation is now the eldest and we are putting right wrongs, banishing mistakes and showing the love that previous generations were too stuck, too damaged and too scared to acknowledge. I’m sick and won’t make it to old age, but I can face the trials to come with the joy of seeing our family growing and loving together.

Great uncles: Uncle Harry would say, “Hasn’t that little gal got a lift home from Brownies?”
And then, when I was older and he was very poorly, from the visitors’ hospital chair he’d remind them,
“Is that gal alright for money?”

And Uncle Ben and his wife, Auntie Italia, when I got a place at a Catholic school, took me to Staples stationery store for back‑to‑school essentials and more.

And Uncle Pip always said to be good and to have a little job then.

And Uncle Morris, in a photo of five generations of the family.

And Uncle Louie, taking his mum to the great big Christmas shop every year. I’d hear them returning from the top of her stairs.

We had short term foster brothers and sisters, about thirty in total over a period of about seven years (1970s). On a superficial level, my siblings and I loved having kids around the play with and on a deeper level I think it made us very open minded and also very accepting of the idea that you can feel like strangers are your brothers and sisters. I hope we provided some loving months to those children fostered with us. I keep in touch with one of them, and remember most of them.

I’d like to post some photos of us all together but I don’t want to invade other peoples’ privacy.

I until I was 50 I belonged to a family and then I found out through a DNA kit bought for me as a ‘gift’ that I did not…. it wasn’t true I had been lied to for 50 years by everyone I knew, trusted and loved and now I was un anchored, rootless and trusted no one…….how can ‘family’ do that. The ‘new family’ welcomed me embraced me even though I was a stranger they did not feel strange, they opened their arms, hearts, homes and all my history to me without expecting anything in return and suddenly everything made sense the missing pieces of the jigsaw were found and I was filled with knowing and the familiar…..now I live in the in between, I don’t feel like I belong to either the old or the new family I don’t trust the old and I have no shared history with the new. Instead I focus on the family I have made my husband and my 3 adult children, we don’t have any family secrets, we are messy, we show up for each other we are proud of each other, we celebrate each other, we laugh together, we cry together we argue and we make up as the matriarch of my family I stand tall and proud front and centre with the pride and protective spirit of a lioness. I also have my chosen family the friends who have been in my life for 40 + years my people my tribe they are not blood family but they have never lied to me or let me down and we have so much shared history that’s family.

My mum left my dad before I was born. He was born in Tenerife and came to England for a new life but was an abusive alcoholic who tried to burn our house down when she was pregnant with me. Thankfully my mum and all of her family have protected me by whole life but when my twins were 4, my half sister found me. She just looked like me and also had boy girl twins. I found out my dad had died of his alcoholism and was very abusive to my sisters mother. At last I had a sister and real family that had my skin colour. It’s not been easy to keep in touch over the years as we dont have that bond that siblings get from growing up together.
My DNA results came back last year and o found out that although I am half Yorkshire from mums side, I am a mixture of Spanish, Portuguese and African from my dad’s side. I love my skin colour at last and have found out so much about my other side of the family.

Every week my Aunt and Uncle would visit, sit on the sofa and we’d watch Top of the Pops together. There was never much conversation that I can remember, just the being together. It was 40 years ago. That Aunt and Uncle, 3 others and Mum and Dad are now all in a small cemetery in the Cotswolds, still together. I miss them.

People are always changing. The people our parents were when they were parenting us is not the people they became as we grew up. My mother went on changing and growing even in the midst of dementia. She became a kinder person because she was surprised to find the kindness in others.

Looking back, I would definitely do things differently, but I can’t change what I did. I had an undiagnosed autoimmune condition from the age of 16 and it influenced my life but I also had preconceptions and insecurities and drives and abilities and the balance they were in influenced my life. I spent my 20s and 30s reprocessing my parents’ divorce. Then lived it myself. You and your brother may be doing the same reprocessing in your different ways.

I know the context of my mother’s life was worse than the context she gave me. Finding out things about your family context helps understand them and understand yourself better. Having said that, everyone is responsible for their own regulation. Nobody else can do it for them. If you live long enough and are lucky enough you get to do therapy. Therapy is good.

You can’t build your life the way a child builds with Lego. There are ‘ghost’ legos! This is my own concept that I have just thought of. There are blocks – literally – that you don’t know are there. Finding them is important.

You may have the insight – and ghost Legos – your brother needs. He may have the insight you need. Keeping up that contact in spite of the difficulties is important if you can do it. I am arrogant enough to think that my sisters don’t hold any of the ghost Legos I need but I know I am wrong about that. They are also arrogant enough to think they don’t need me so it’s an impasse. Lol.

The child’s awareness can heal the adult. By parenting with love and without bullying, you have done that for me, and I am eternally grateful. You and your brother have been doing your work and have moved things on and helped your families evolve. I mean backwards. The people behind you – the parents and grandparents – have been able to evolve through you if they have chosen to.

You are making a difference. I am immensely proud of you xx

Married 56 years. 3 sons. 6 grandchildren.

Like a tapestry everyone of us have threads on the loom of our ‘family’. We bring texture, colour, shades…. it ALL comes together.

Our threads are weaving sometimes the patterns are clear as day, repetitive and steady. Sometimes the weave is so loose, we wonder how this row is going to hold it all together?

Fostering. Suddenly threads are being woven in that are still attached to someone else’s loom… tangling? Slower. Intentional weaving. Slow down. These threads are delicate. One chance to prove you are skillfull at the loom. Having your family tapestry on show, all the messy parts. Why? These new textures, colours and shades bring new dimension. Hard to work with? Yes. But beautiful.

A reminder to step back from the loom and take stock. Almost 10 years have passed. Their threads have been weaved at our loom the longest. Their threads are stronger. Once fragile their threads hold tension now. The most Intricate patterns. We are still weaving.

I’m grieving for my family, even though they are still alive.
I grieve for the memories not being made.
I grieve for the time not being spent.
I grieve for the conversations not being had.
I grieve for the music not being played.
I even grieve for the heated arguements.
I grieve for what my family used to be, now that ill physical and mental health has reared its ugly head.

We have a family tradition that began on a walk after my parents Ruby wedding party 34 years ago (today 19th April). Their six grandchildren sat on a log in the woods in age order for a photograph. Over the years four more grandchildren arrived, and some now have partners, and currently six great grandchildren (soon to be seven). Half of the grandchildren live in Australia so family get togethers are now rare and precious. But whenever a few of the original ten are together we take a photo of “cousins on a log” complete with partners and little ones. So brides might not stand next to their grooms and toddlers are bemused that they can’t stand next to mum or dad – the age order is always strictly adhered to 😂. Family times are the best 💙🩵💙

It’s only in my 50’s that I realise how much I love my siblings and indeed my wider family – cousins and second and third cousins – I have one of each. Our parents are gone and my siblings are now my link to who we all came from.

I work with foster carers and adopters, I know how hard life can be for so many kids who are separated from their blood relations. It makes me feel mine are even more precious……

They have no idea how much they mean to me and how important they are to me. I spend an unhealthy amount of time worrying about losing one or both and, you know what? I should just enjoy them whilst we all have the chance.

I fell pregnant with my son at 18 and had him at 19, his father who was much older than me chose to have nothing to do with him and subsequently passed away when he was 16. When my son was aged 2 we moved away to university- he went to nursery and I completed a social work degree. I went on to marry when my son was 11 and have two more kids and subsequently become a single parent again when my son was 15. So my son didn’t have a picture perfect life. Despite this he got a first at uni and a great job that he loves, he has fantastic friends. I have often reflected on where I could have done better in parenting him and how when he was young, my own stressors have impacted my attunement and availability to him. I have cried about this but also accept I did the best I could with the capacity I had. Today he’s aged 24 and called me asking if I was free to chat half joking that he was having an existential crisis…we chatted for almost two hours and the crises blended into a plan. I am proud that my son chose me to be someone he can chat to when life gets messy. I figure I have must have done something right. I am proud beyond measure to be his mum and I love him with all my heart. His birth gave me joy and purpose.

I went to my Birth Mum’s partner’s funeral with my Mum, my brothers, sister and their partners. All of us shared hugs, tears and tales from the years in his honour. John was a lovely man, he adopted my brother Ian when he met my mum again. He met me 13 years ago after I’d traced my Mum and we’d got back in touch. The thing he said I remember most is my Mum told me he’d said after I’d left that it was a shame they hadn’t found me sooner and that then they could have brought me up too. This means so much to me, since we’ve been back together both me and Karen my partner, and our dog Chica have been embraced by everyone and feel loved and cherished. All my birth family have welcomed us so completely and this makes up for all the loneliness I felt growing up after being adopted and not really having any warmth or emotional support shown to me. I now feel complete and spending time with my Mum, Trudy after the funeral last Thursday was us coming full circle after her being forced to give me up for adoption 58 years ago. We are now as we should have been then but with a rich tapestry of adventures in between. These leading us back to each other to share and celebrate the roads we’ve travelled in between. I’ve found my family.

En mi tierra se nos enseña a mostrar ternura a los niños.
He tenido una madre y un padre que supieron romper ciclos de violencia familiares.
Que me enseñaron que podía ser la persona más pobre y también la más culta en una habitación. Desde entonces llevo esa certeza dentro de mí, como un salvavidas.
Me inculcaron la curiosidad, el amor al conocimiento y el respeto por los seres vivos.
Hace unos años rompí el contacto con casi todos mis hermanos, después de toda una vida con ellos, porque no podía permitirles que siguieran tratándome mal. Con ellos perdí a docenas de tíos y primos que quisieron quitarle importancia a ese abuso y ponerse de su parte.
La sangre nunca debería imponerse al buen trato.

This is the landscape where I was formed, in the beautiful Shetland Isles. This sepia tinted 1970 photo of me in a garden swing, with nothing but sloping hills and water inlets all around, reminds me of my significance and insignificance. I revisited the island a few years ago for the first time since leaving as a toddler over 50 years ago and felt an instant deep connection to the land, the family that is nature, where people are incidental but nature endures. I felt my tiny imprint on the land, and the huge imprint of the land on me. Family has proven complex for me. There has been love but there has been so much loss. Loss of trust, loss of connection, loss of shared lives, loss of collectivity. But the simplicity, depth and endurance of this landscape was holding me through it all, and discovering that recently has grounded me. Nature is my family.

I thought i’d grown up in a happy family, and was appreciative of being a family of seven. We are all adults now and so much has happened – understanding how mum was controlled by dad, toxic masculinity, brothers that don’t accept they are gay, mental illness, prison sentences, dtreet homelessness. I know we all love each other, but there’s so much unbelieveably deep water under the bridge and scarring, it’s hard to move on.

Last week, I got a call to say you’d died.
A surge of emotion overtook me
And it surprised me.
Grief is a funny thing.
How do you grieve for someone you haven’t seen
For 29 years?
Your death is no loss to me.
Your death is no loss to the world.
If I hadn’t got that call
I’d never have known
And the world would have kept turning,
Completely unchanged.
I’m not saying goodbye to you.
I’m saying goodbye to the fear of bumping into you by accident
Whenever I go into town
Or pass by places you used to go
Or go to any new place
Because how could I know where you might be?
Goodbye to the faint idea in the back of my mind
That you might say sorry.
That somehow you might make attempts to redeem yourself
For things that are utterly irredeemable.
That you might be regretful, and sorry
For missing out on my life,
That you might realise what you have done.
Goodbye to the handful of memories of you
That aren’t tinged with fear and terror
And sadness
Because that’s all I feel when I remember you.
It feels weird to be learning what it’s like to walk in a world where you’re no longer in it.
Where I no longer have to breathe the same air as you
Because I’ve been forging ahead without you
For three whole decades
And if we’re honest,
Way before then too.
But I never realised
Until I knew you’d definitely gone
That there was so much
Buried deep in my soul
Waiting to come out,
Waiting to be let go.
Grief.
Fear.
Rage.
Sorrow.
What might I have had
If you weren’t you.
If you had made different choices.
If other people
Had made different choices.
What might I have had?
Who might I have been?
You are dead
And I’m glad.
I’m glad you’re dead.
But the pain you left behind
It’s still here.

As a child, I used to look forward to Christmas Day more than any other special day. I would wear my best dress and visit my grandma’s house around 2pm for Christmas dinner number 1. Spending time with my uncles and aunts was the highlight of the afternoon. Around 5pm, we would walk the 20 minutes or so to my nana’s flat. Christmas dinner number 2 followed by family favourites on the tele and watching the adults get tipsy.
When I look back on my childhood I try to focus on this day, because lots of the other memories are not so happy. I spent too much time in fear, walking on eggshells and playing a role to keep myself safe – sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.
I often look at children who appear happy and smiling and think to myself, I hope they are truly safe and carefree.

I was so blessed with my mum, dad and sister growing up in Kent. An imperfect safe home filled mostly with love and laughter. They are sadly no longer here. Dad, a competitive squash player, died far too young. Mum, a compassionate life long vegetarian, whose physical health worsened during lockdown. Then my beautiful sister, life and soul of a party, died aged just 61 from Covid. But yet they live- on in me, my daughter and her daughters. Spirited, kind, ambitious and hopeful.

I lost my dad in April last year and since then that part of my family have fallen apart.
My brother stole money from our elderly mother and my sister expects everyone to run around for her and her kids and refuses to work.
I have tried everything to piece them back together but sometimes, you have to accept that not every battle is yours to fight.
I am very ill but continue to work to support my family.
I’m blessed with my partner and two amazing sons and have had to decide to focus on just us.
Protecting my boys and our peace is my priority from now on.

The word family has a physical reaction. A gut wrenching punch to the stomach, and a wave of sadness that ripples for hours. Families have the power to cause pain like nothing else, yet I long to be a part of their lives.

I came to the UK as a child refugee from Uganda after Idi Amin expelled African Asians. However, colonialism of India / Africa by the British was the reason Asians ended up in Africa in the first place. It has a lot to answer for. We faced both poverty and racism in the 70s / 80s but there were also lovely British people who helped us who we cannot forget. Those people ie the helpers are the light in any society, selfless, compassionate and real humanity.
Sadly, racism hasn’t gone away and seems really bad right now – sometimes I feel like I am 11 again.
As a teacher, I love promoting similarities between religions and cultures, the need for respect and tolerance, and sharing true history such as the reasons we get refugees and recognising the contributions of black and Asian people in wars, inventions, sport, literature, science etc. Children get it, but some parents dont! We can only have hope in the darkness.

I was adopted very young and never felt a part of anything. My adopted parents were very different to me, my Mum was a narcissist and abusive to myself and my adopted Dad.
They kicked me out at 16 as someone phoned them anonymously and told them I was gay. I wasn’t ready.
We didn’t speak for years but I’m glad I managed to rebuild a relationship with her after my adopted dad died for both our sakes.
We had a few good years at the end. She had changed. Unrecognisable. She had done the work.
Now they’re both gone and life is very strange. She had filled my young head with so much negativity and I’m trying to start afresh without their ghosts ever present.
I will do this.
I am not what happened to me.
I am who I want to be. Or I will be…

I had two families one that was safe and one which was not.

In the one with my mum and. Dad things went wrong and my father turned his angst on us. It all came from the darkness that can descend when there the lights dim and then go out.

My family at my grandparents, where I stayed often even Christmas and every holiday. My grandad and stop grandmother ( what a women ) she taught us how to love with respect for all things and each other. Where care, warmth safety, happy times, happy home were abundant at all time. To her I am feeling fever grateful.
Marie Davies – 1929 – 1918 – forever in my blood dear lady.

My family is wonderful. I have three amazing children James, Mitch and Sam who are all wonderful people , kind and loving. I now have three incredible grandchildren who constantly amaze me with their joy and humour Isaac, Orson and Iona.
I was lucky to have two kind parents too. Mum Nina is still with us at 94! She likes to sing old songs and loves us all very much. We didn’t get on when I was a teenager but we got through it and are close now.
My dad Arthur was kind, gentle and funny. Sadly we lost him age 54 to an aneurysm. We still miss him ,me and my two sisters Angie and Jacqui. We all get along most of the time but occasionally there are arguments. Luckily we normally sort it out.
I’m very blessed . I tried to run away from family in my twenties but once I had my own kids we all united again.

I had a lovely childhood and lots of good memories.

“Let this be the end of our relationship.” The ending of a letter I received three months before my son was born was signed ‘Mr G. R. Ford’ and it was from my father. He was an advocate of Enoch Powell. The father of my son is from St Lucia.
My beautiful boy was born in Hammersmith Hospital in November 1990, just one month after I had been evicted from my London flat. He looked up into my eyes and I whispered, “We’ve got this” as I pushed away feelings of rejection and abandonment.
The first year of my son’s life was tough. We moved into shared emergency housing. Then one day a miracle happened and we were handed the keys.
I remember opening the gate, pushing my son’s buggy towards two large brown double doors and looking up. A small one bedroom flat on the top floor of a grand terraced house. Our first home which we filled with happiness, hope and love. We lived there for eight wonderful years where we learned to trust, to overcome adversity, to develop resilience, to have determination, to work hard and to never give up. Filling our hearts with gratitude we learned to forgive and to become the best we could be. Together.
Our humble beginnings became our greatest blessings

Family, to me, is everything. It isn’t defined only by blood, but by the love we choose to give and receive. There are seven of us under one roof—some born into my life, others found along the way—but all equally mine. Our home is full of laughter, noise, and the kind of warmth that stays with you long after you leave the room.
For 24 years, I’ve fostered, opening my door and my heart to children who needed a place to feel safe. Alongside my birth son and extended family, we’ve built something bigger than ourselves—a family stitched together by care, loyalty, and shared moments.
We are funny, we are loving, and we stand by each other. That’s what family means to me: not just where you come from, but where you belong.

My family line (i.e., my maternal line—the one that carries the mitochondrial DNA) will die with me. I’m childfree by choice. I choose not to pass generational trauma onto any children I may bear and have them make the same mistakes I, my mother, and her mother before her made. Maybe my mother could’ve helped me make better choices. But I’m grateful I know my choice is the best one forever.

Family is a double edged sword. Glinting steel.
My mother wielded it well.
It cut me to the core, turned my insides to ribbons and made me a shell.
Family was all I had.
It ground me down to dust, rubbed me raw until there I was, a speck on the floor.
It cracked me open when I was taken away. To hell.
Family was all I had.
The push pull addiction of never knowing if it was love or hate, a guessing game from dusk til dawn until we’re spent.
Family was all I had.
Family is a dull knife. No longer raw.
An old wound, a thick scab that never heals but doesn’t hurt the same. Just itches every now and then. No longer bleeding me dry on the ground.
Family wasn’t all I had.
Family is a shining light. Family is chosen.
Family is joy and peels of laughter. Family is a home cooked dinner all for yourself. Family is work colleagues and pals buying you a drink at the pub.
Family is your best friend walking you down the aisle. Family is your boyfriend’s mum. Family is your neighbour giving you a Christmas card. Family is a poem. Family is the mantra you told yourself that got you through it when no one else did. Family is the one you made yourself.
Family is a connection, no matter what it looks like. Family is sharing. Family can be found all over the globe. Family isn’t blood. Family is the inside jokes, the memories, and the random puzzle pieces of a group culture you made with other human beings.
Family isn’t all you have. And that’s fine.

Despite having qualifications that should have led to more rewarding work I have been a cleaner for many years. I believe the anxiety and mental illness that undermined my prospects were the consequence of hypercritical parenting, my mother relished the impact of her criticism, seeing the insults land, and my father enabled it. They were so controlling, despite my moving away, that I ended all contact with them and survived. Years later I was advised of my mother’s and then my father’s death. As an only child these less than perfect parents were what there was to love, as no one else in our family saw the harm they did to me. I see them in myself and have no children because I didn’t want to repeat their mistakes. I work for a company that sells wine and, even though I didn’t have to, I replaced a broken tasting glass so that my father can in a way take part in tastings, in spirit, something he would have loved to do.

The assumption that I ‘fell out’ with family has been a struggle to process. You have to be in, in order to fall out. It has taken over 60 years to understand that I was never in but all that has come with guilt and shame and yet, here I am. I want to tell you. I want someone to say, ‘It’s ok.’ I know it is ok but I grieve for an experience of family that would have given me a sense of belonging. It’s a huge family and I’m on the outside looking in learning that the happier state would be to turn my gaze to friends ❤️

I thought it was a given that your Mum loved you, but I spent a long time feeling like my mum didnt because she would often drink too much and it frightened me. Now I realise that my mum was also hurting about her Mum. I have done my best to make sure my daughter knows she is loved.

I’m on a retreat this weekend to help with all the sh*t I’ve been left with through years of not having a mum who could mother- not her fault, she didn’t either but it stops here with me. It’s mine to process and get free of and what a gift it is to have the means to do this.

I know how to curtsy.
I learned for the Queen.
I learned from my grandfather.
On the front lawn of his house in the City. In the shadow of the Chutes. On a foggy afternoon with crows squawking their displeasure from the tree tops.
Me—5 years old, all dusty elbows and scraped knees. A dirty face and a ratty cotton print dress two sizes too big.
My grandfather—53 years old, a runner and an athlete. Graying and balding. Baggy gray sweatpants and crisp white Converse sneakers.

“Like this,” he instructed, pinching the sweatpants fleece between his thumbs and forefingers, swinging his right sneaker behind the left as he gracefully bent his knees and lowered himself, and then righted himself in one motion.
I clutched my dress and tripped and fumbled over and over. Tears carved clean streaks down my cheeks.

He shook his finger in my face, “What will you do when you meet the Queen?” So I continued clumsily parroting him, but not mirroring him. And he, like a dancer, swooping down in the fog over and over. And the crows long since flown away. And the neighbors staring out their picture windows at the spectacle across the street.

And then I pinched the fabric of my too big dress one last time, and I shoved one dirty bare foot behind the other and I lowered myself and then rose in one motion like my grandfather. He clapped his hands with joy and leaped in the air, “You are ready for the Queen!” he shouted. He shook his fist at the nosy neighbors, “She is ready for the Queen, how do you like that?”

I stood with my head held high. Proud of the hard-earned praise. I was ready for the Queen and all the neighbors knew it.
Upon my head, I imaged a crown, fully as luxurious as the crown of the Queen herself. I followed my grandfather to the front door, one toe carefully pointed in front of the other, imaginary crown perched elegantly upon my uncombed hair, mimicking his grace. He stopped abruptly, pivoted and pointed to the water hose, “wash your filthy feet before you step into my house! What are you, an animal?”

Maybe not fit for my grandfather’s house, but certainly fit for the Queen.

It’s not always what you needed it to be or imagined it would be. Family is the combined effort of everyone in it and the capacity of each member to care sufficiently about the effect they have on the others. It’s a place your emotions are shaped and damaged, given life and exercised. It is whatever you feel it is and yet nothing you can control.

Family is so complicated. We love them so much but they can also cause us so much pain. My family brings me deep

Joy and shared memories but also lots of angst. Choosing moments of happiness with them now but also creating boundaries has been an important journey. And let’s not forget my chosen family who anchor me in a way that maybe my bloody family never can

My family taught me that two things can exist at once:
* That I can be loved and also be lonely
* That I can have everything material but nothing emotional
* That I made people proud, but also disappointed
* That I can be included, but also excluded
* That I can meet some expectations, but not all expectations
* That parents often have a cookie cutter plan for you life, but that you don’t fit the right shape cookie cutter
* That you can remember a happy childhood, but also a sad one
* That people want siblings to be different, but also the same

The hardest thing is always the cookie cutter thing though. I am not the shape my parents wanted. I am not the person my parents wanted. And that hurts.

I am of mixed heritage 3rd generation immigrant, my mothers side are from Guyana and the other hail from Scotland.
I have a twin brother, 2 half siblings and a brother and sister in law.

When my mum put us to bed the last thing she would always say is
“See you in the…..” and we would reply “morning”.

Now I do it with my kids, and they changed it slightly but I prefer it.
I say “See you in the…….” and they say “morning time”

When you have a family, it’s important to make things simple and comfortable, even if you don’t realize it at the time. Life gave me a hard time when I was nine. I was born in a small town, but I had to move to a very rural area. Despite this, I didn’t want to quit my education, so I traveled for more than an hour to get to school. My situation is different because many children move from rural areas to urban ones for education; in my case, I migrated from urban to rural while still keeping up with my schooling.

During this time, my mother passed away, and it was very hard to understand why it happened. My eldest sister took on the responsibility for our family. Family is an institution where we not only share the same meals and roof but also share our struggles and risks.

Two feet of snow covered the ground Christmas morning. I could only remember one other white Christmas in Vancouver. This Christmas was different in many ways. The house had sold. It would be the last Christmas spent here. It was the first Christmas I woke up without my husband next to me.
Two months earlier I had asked for a divorce after seventeen years of marriage and two daughters. When we told them we were separating, the eldest at twelve was silent for a minute, then said, “Did you know about the hole in the ozone layer?”

He moved out. Into a hotel. Said he spent his time sitting at the end of the bed watching television. And crying. I knew he came into the house when I wasn’t home. He’d redial and *69 the home phone. None of this was particularly new. For years he told me my friends were bitches.
This was the first Christmas I didn’t listen to him. No presents would be thrown back at me. I wouldn’t have to carry two recycling boxes to the curb on garbage day. The girls wouldn’t hear him slur his words and watch him pass out.

The girls woke me, excited to see what Santa brought. An absent dad didn’t diminish their enthusiasm. He worked all the time anyway. When he did see the girls, he told them they were too noisy, too messy.
We came downstairs to the smell of strong coffee. The white tree lights glowed in the dark living room and through the front window the snow twinkled under the street lamp. My visiting parents, bundled in their housecoats, wished us merry Christmas.
He rang the doorbell. I’d invited him to spend Christmas with his kids. He left his snow-crusted boots outside the door.

The kids played happily, surrounded by paper and boxes as my mother handed me a long thin box. The card read: There is a memory inside – from my mom and her mom – to you, from me – a keepsake! Inside lay a long scarf about a hand-width wide, woven with jewel-toned silk threads of ruby red, emerald green, sapphire blue, and mended with tiny hand-sewn stitches.
Somehow this scarf had found its way into my hands, bypassing ten great-aunts and my mother’s seven siblings. In 1919 my great-grandparents escaped Russia, taking with them as much as they could wear and carry.

I wrapped the scarf around the post of my bed. I cooked the turkey, made snow angels, worked on a new puzzle that was full of shadows and light, and listened to the girls’ father sigh. He settled into his favorite chair and watched Twister with us, sighing. My mom saw him to the door at the end of the day.
I fell asleep staring at the scarf, against the ladder-like reflection of the snow as it filtered through the blinds. My grandmother visited me in my dreams that night. She stroked my head, and told me, “Wear the scarf. Your great-grandmother wore it fleeing thousands of men, you only have to flee one.”

Values.
Difference is not a an opportunity to discriminate.
From a Romanichel (Irish Traveller and Romany Gypsy) family, a tribe specific to the North West of England it was assumed I never experienced racism because I was pink.
In 1970 a transit site of Irish Travellers was firebombed, age 6 I was sat down and given the talk. Those racists, bigots and fascists – some within my own family – whose shins I kicked then ran away from could and would kill me if I ‘went too far’.
My Nanna Annie Smith taught me that ‘we were once immigrants too and we asked people to come’ in 60s and 70s Hulme and Moss Side.
My Mum taught me that by getting to know each other we find we actually do have more in common than we first assumed.
I try to instil these values in my own family but fear holds great sway.
Whilst I will never experience the veiled double take others give my nephew because he is mixed race please don’t assume I don’t know what racism is – from lived experience. To this day whispers of ‘gippo, pikey, knacker scum’ are stilled hissed at me on the bus. Will it stop me taking the bus? Nah.

Family Is Family

Family is the beginning, middle
and endless crossroads,

the beautiful, best and flawed,
profound inspiration and sorrow.

A closed door, an open embrace,
giggling playing games and silence.

They lift us up on the shoulder of giants
or leave us crying alone.

The finest of times and vilest,
miracle of grandkids, love of partners,

deep hope and absence, wonder
and wondering where they are now.

Embrace all people as one true family
together as one in true community.

Family is nans house, where the kettle is always on and biscuits are eaten. We all meet up here. You can talk about anything, and you will come away feeling lighter.

Family is also the one I made. It might not be how i envisioned it, but its me and my babies cuddling in bed, safe in our own home. ❤️

I tried for ten years to have a family. In that time I experienced a grief that got deeper as the moths and years went by. I read a verse in th bible that said ‘ he will make you a happy mother of children’. But as the years went on that hope died. And then in 2019 we looked into adoption. I realised I had a spirit that was always meant to be a mother through adoption. When I met our children, it was immediate love. And watching them grow, grieve, overcome and flourish has been the biggest privilege of my life.

Families are messy.
Connected through blood, through marriage, through choice or through no fault of our own.
Family can mean love, support and nurture.
It can also mean manipulation, obligation and overwhelm.
I love directly up my family tree and directly down my family tree but the other branches are rotting or distant or just of no interest to me whatsoever.

Family is safety
Family is love
It is anger, it is pain, it is shared joy, it is rain
Family is giving
Family is caring
It is laughter, it is sunshine, it is sometimes pain, but always there
Family is who you are and who you want to be
Family is what you know and what you see

My family are in Wales and in South Africa, Lands of choral singing, mines and friendly people – so much in common in the distant South and North.

So grateful to have grandchildren an unexpected bonus

Love, acceptance, tolerance run through my family. I feel this love from my family who have gone before me. I pass this love on to those in my family who will be here after I have gone. Some of my family are not connected by blood, they are sisters and misters who have shared the love, over the years. My family, past, present and future, are my everything.

I have always wanted to be asked this question!

Family, to me, is about belonging and acceptance. It is as much about my amazing ancestors as well as my family in the here and now. As well as dear cherished friends whom I consider as family.

I am a single mother to a 19 year old daughter, who is about to go travelling in SE Asia and will start university in September, doing journalism; our concept of family is about to transform. She is spreading her wings, as it should be, but there will always, always, be a home in my heart for her to come back to, wherever we are geographically. I am immensely proud to be her mum.

I am, at nearly 52, the eldest sibling to four siblings, 3 sisters and one brother, who are very very important to me; we have big age gaps between us, but I feel incredibly proud that we all connect so strongly despite this… my youngest sister is younger than my daughter! We all laugh a lot together, and I feel this is such good medicine. I feel grateful for them every single day.

Christmas days were always and still are an absolutely magical time in my family, even through the separation and divorce of our parents. I have tried to uphold this magic with my own daughter. Father Christmas still comes for her, and as it turns out, for me too this Christmas!

My parents have always been there for me through so many hardships, and I feel immensely, soulfully grateful for that. I felt a real empathy and compassion for them when I was going through my own divorce 12 years ago.

I was incredibly close to all my grandparents, and was very lucky to know and love them all before they passed. My paternal grandad – little grandad as we called him- used to hold me up in front of the mirror when I was little and laugh with me. He was such a vibrant, strong man, and the grief of losing him to Parkinson’s when I was 12 is still with me to this day. To see him suffer and not be able to move except through his desperate eyes breaks my heart to this day. My maternal grandfather was such a gentle, humble soul; but also very successful, he got a CBE through setting up his own business. I am myself a musician, pianist and composer, and at my maternal grandparents’ house when I was little and beginning to play the piano, my ‘big grandad’ would appear and wave his arms around like a conductor when I played, and I knew that he liked what I was doing through his gestures! I have lots of cousins, and we would play in their huge garden and climb trees. I miss them both so much. My big grandad also sadly died of Parkinson’s when I was 30. I was blessed to be there at the hospital hours before he passed, and he turned to me and grasped my hand really strongly- he was telling me to keep going. To keep being me. So much emotion was transmitted through his hand, and I will never ever forget this moment, and the strength it took for him to do this. I played Bach’s prelude in C Major at his memorial service. It still remains the hardest ‘gig’ I have ever done. But such an incredible honour.

My paternal Granny was a woman of steel. I see this steeliness in my own child and my siblings’ children. She had the most amazing memory; she would tell me all about her own father, who she heartbreakingly lost when she was just 19, to TB, in 1939. I think of my own daughter now who is the same age. I was also with her just hours before she died, and I sat with her, mostly in silence, holding her hand, and although she wasn’t conscious, I decided to speak out loud the names of everyone in our family, slowly and intentionally. I just knew she could hear me. It was such a beautiful moment and one that I will never forget. I spoke the eulogy at her funeral on behalf of all the cousins, our memories of her. It was very hard to do this after hearing John Lennon’s Imagine, but I called on my granny’s steel and delivered it in a clear, unwavering voice, I think: a testament to her legacy. My maternal nana was my fellow conspirator; we would sneak outside for fags together and this is such a cherished memory, these moments of naughtiness and complicity. She was never afraid to speak her mind which I look back on fondly. And she loved to dance. And to flirt! I played maple leaf rag at her funeral and could just see her dancing. I feel very grateful that my daughter knew both my granny and my nana.

My great grandfathers on my paternal side are a huge influence on me. My granny’s father was a silent film pianist and violinist, and worked as a pattern chaser at Partington Iron and steelworks. His daughter, my granny, said that he played the piano at home for them, and granny would sing to accompany him. I feel a really affinity with him. My little grandad’s father was in the merchant navy- I’ve always loved boats!- in Bristol, then they moved to Manchester. There’s a bit of family mystery around this which I’ve yet to uncover! He became very involved with cooperative movement, and was the MC to the cooperative orchestra which granny’s father was involved in. I have a photo of the orchestra from 1923 on my piano with both of them looking at me as I compose and play. He worked at Irlam soap factory. I also recently discovered he was a magician! I also feel a huge affinity with him too.

Dear friends are also family to me. They can see through the bullshit and talk me through all the various curveballs that life throws. This is reciprocal. I love these ‘family’ relationships, as they are chosen, and a life force.

Family is extremely important to me. I feel so grateful for seeing this post, and writing about this, and bringing all these amazing family beings into life!

Thank you.

Laura

Having my own child enables me to understand the power of family connection. Having dear friends helps me realise that a chosen family is also incredibly valuable. Love to everyone – look at the Artemis mission images without human borders and let’s all be each other’s family across the Earth 🌎 💜

I live with my husband & 3 teenage children.
I am from a long line of strong, Northern women and carry this on with my own daughter(16).
3 years ago myself, older sister & niece (24) spent 3 weeks visiting coffee shops with my terminally ill mother & 3 days nursing her as she drifted from this world to the next.
It was an honour & a privilege and also incredibly, breathtakingly sad.
The year after my 2 brothers in law adopted a baby boy & I felt my heart lift with a joy in a way it had not for a while.
Life is for living.

Love was in our family so too anger, fights , joy , tears , celebration , dismay . Pea pie when money was tight , five penguins in a pack weekly treat if Mum was flush. Pillowcases lined up five in a row Christmas Eve night , midnight mass, toast, laughter, forgiveness, one parcel each then bed.

At its best family: unconditional love, your best interests at heart, have your back

To me, real family is built through love, respect and connection not just bilogy. You are family to me and my son.

🏵Family is special when it is nuturing supportive and loving not only in good times but also in difficult times because no family is perfect – but still holds a bond even when apart – it holds an understanding that needs no words – it is true to say that Family are the people who really know you and despite any faults they love each other anyway with an unconditional love because they are all connected in the roots that bind them just like a tree standing through generations.🏵

For me, family is about stories that shape you and the people who tell them. I grew up with grandmothers who told stories of their forebears and became parts of the stories themselves.

It is only as time has gone on that I’ve realised the importance of family. Now that
my family has mostly gone, very good friends have become my family and they are more precious to me than gold.
us ti me t

Family is where we are – me & my two children. Following divorce, I had to sell my forever home, so I took my children, aged 7 & 10 to Australia from the UK. We travelled, and they spent a term in school. Back in the UK, we had to move through several rental properties, and these were the happiest years of my life: just us 3, our things, our cats, the children playing their instruments, learning, reading, laughing together. I feel truly blessed to have had that time.

In Wales we have a word…Perthyn.

This translates as Belonging. When I had my family, I felt that I belonged to a group of people who accepted me (warts and all) despite the endless mistakes I made growing up. Family love you unconditionally and accept you as you are.

I have now lost my parents and my husband, I feel all alone in the world. I no longer feel that I belong and I find myself questioning what my purpose is now. Family are the sustaining light in the darkness.

Mental Health, understanding , treating, supporting, has been a major part of family life. You must however face the challenges in front of you, show empathy & love. You can’t effect the past. Someone is always worse of than you. Roots in Ethiopia & UK

Patterns

My Mother fell out with her mother, I’ve fallen out with mine and my eldest has fallen out with me. Sometimes it doesn’t help to know what’s gone wrong if you don’t know how to make it right.

Family felt like fighting for agency until I had a child. Family now feels like protecting and protection.

2 + 2 = 4, heartbreak and hearts full of joy. Tears of dispare and tears of love.

I live with my wife and foster daughter. We’ve all had experiences of being let down by birth family and struggle with the word. sometimes we prefer to call ourselves a team. We make a good team

At 62 I ‘ve found a way to live alongside my Mum without worrying what she thinks or trying to understand her. I have realised and accepted that I have no emotional attachment to her, no sense of belonging and that this is OK. I can be the dutiful daughter and I can respect her wishes, ensure her life is comfortable and do anything required to help her. The relief is enormous.
My mother was of the task based generation, where time management was crucial and all tasks had measurable outcomes, preferably visual. Shining the step with red polish, sheets out to dry before work, windows cleaned, children bathed and fed.
Parenting was also task based. My sister and I were kept in line with stern looks and threats hissed through gritted teeth. We didn’t question it. Nothing was negotiable. We were fed, bathed, sent to school and taken to visit grandparents every other weekend. A lost Thank you or a missed please were jumped on, vanity was frowned upon and ‘lying was the ultimate sin resulting in early bedtimes and loss of freedom. As we grew older her world was still very black and white, judgements came thick and fast and my kids were wary of her. Disappointments made for tense family get togethers and my sister retreated into the shadows 15 years ago. I remained struggling to understand her take on the world, her relationship with Dad and the overwhelming outpouring of emotion she lavished on the dog.
So I have now accepted it and I am grateful not to follow in her footsteps, to have showered my kids with affection and to have given them freedom to make their own mistakes but above all, I have engaged with life, sort things that challenge and questioned routine reactions where she sits behind high walls with few visitors ‘nursing her wrath to keep it warm’

A First born’s story

I am the firstborn of five siblings. I grew up moving from place to place in Ethiopia because my mother was a teacher and needed to move around because of her career and family. My father and mother died when I was 16 and 17 respectively. They left behind a 7, 9,13, 15 and 17 year olds behind. since then, and way earlier than this, I have been responsible for raising my siblings. As a first born, I was my mother’s helping hand. Thank my mom for influencing me to be an independent and strong woman. I became a teacher following her footsteps and that meant I was able to provide for my siblings. We nested under a small roof, relieved that we did not disintegrate, attended school, held each other’s hands through the bad and the ugly and survived the orphanage. I attended continued education, my siblings finished school and completed some post secondary.

Life is full of turns and twists. I started my own family 13 years ago and immigrated to Canada following my husband who studied here. I had to make a tough decision leaving my two younger brothers behind(my two sisters were adults by then). They were attending the last year of high school.

As a firstborn, I accepted the mother figure life has made me to become. Though my younger sisters and a half sister decided to take on the responsibility of supporting my brothers when I moved to Canada, it’s not been easy for me to leave them behind. With the pain of settling in a new country, I also felt that I abundoned my siblings. I left my job backhome and I had a baby in 6 weeks after arriving in Canada. So I don’t have any income to support them. Even after I started earning income after a year of arriving in Canada, marriage meant supporting the new family and making compromises- I was not able to help. I suffered silently: always worried about my siblings, instead of being grateful for my food, I often cried imagining my siblings going hungry. I was not satisfied with the very minimal financial support we were able to provide. I often say to myself I am a firstborn and there is a heavy weight on my shoulders. My husband is a last born and his philosophy in providing financial assistance is completely different. So I felt like nobody will understand me. Not my husband, not my children, not my family backhome. Everyday, every moment, every meal makes me think of my siblings. I always tried to crack what I can to help with the university, medical expenses or life expenses. But I objectively know that I am not doing close to enough. Now, is a firstborn’s marriage supposed to be tough because of all this ? I left my siblings behind, but not the responsibility, not my unconditional love, not my commitment to their success until death do us part.
This meant though, working so hard to change things in my life, arguments, negotiations, …so much more. This meant, my marriage is struggling, our love is rotting under the rug! I felt incapacitated. Life for me becomes continuously contemplating divorce, always wanting to help but not able to, living like one leg in and one leg out, not being able to fully settle, bitterness.

The saddest part since my mother’s passing has been loosing one of my brothers in January 2020. He has been unwell for a while. I prayed, hoped and thought that death will give us some time, at least to try our best. In the 12 years I have been away, I only visited my family two times and spent time with my brother in hours. He has been working so he has not been available during the day, I had to move around to visit family and friends. When I saw him after his illness, I knew that he was really unwell. I cried, he told me not to cry or he will leave me. I took him to a public hospital, the day before I came back to Canada, with my three little ones and visiting others everywhere, I didn’t get enough time to spend with him. I pleaded for more time but I was unsuccessful. We did nothing really in the one day we had at the hospital. They referred him elsewhere. I also told my siblings to facilitate a referral so we can fundraise for him to get medical help abroad. I advised him to follow up and update me. I knew then, unless he gets advanced treatment, things might get worse. Despite my daily prayers, a year after I saw him, I learned that he is gone, gone too early(at 30) before he started living, death beat my plans and I felt God abondend me. What happened to my worry and my prayers? Why?He is gone, I was not on his side, I heard his passing just like that and I am living on! January 12,2020, I was 8 months pregnant, March 2020 Covid-19 shutdown! He has no idea that I didn’t even bereave with my siblings yet and I don’t know when I will be going. As if I didn’t hold him in the pocket of my heart since he was a baby, as if my dairy is not full of his name, as if I didn’t fight for him, he is gone and I am here. The last messenger text he sent me says thank you to my two children then and me and my husband.

Now I am living with the agony of grief: losing a brother I raised like my child, not being able to find him better treatment, shame for not being rebellious enough to save him, shame for being too submissive to my life and anger for facing all this alone. I realized that as much as I am grieving him, I am grieving my own life. I felt that I gave up on matters very dear to my heart got my family to stay in tact and I am living the consequences. Regret, loss of interest in life and purpose, remorse and deep pain and sadness.
I keep my brother in my heart and soul every day and every moment. The weight of his loss feels like I am carrying a crocodile in my belly and this beast is waiting to swallow me. It’s roar would deafen me, it’s move would crash me, it’s spit would poison me but yet I am carrying it, I am cuddling it until death do us part.

A firstborn’s burden! I couldn’t save my mother because I was too young and had nothing to help with. She died of illness and poverty at 38. I couldn’t save(at least) try to save my brother because I had to give in to the will of my marriage. The next and last tragedy will be my younger sister who is struggling in poverty with three young children and who in fact had to care for and bury my mother and brother as I was away both times. I am a first born living with remorse, lifelong burden, shame and guilt. I grieve alone, I might die sad!

Family is home. Wherever they are, whenever they are with me, I’m home.?

I wish I’d spoken to my mum about her heartbreak. She wrote it all down; several times. I read and I feel her pain, the torment, the disappointment and mental anguish. I wished I’d been there for her, but now she’s gone. I hope she knows.

We are a fostering family, our hearts are bigger than we ever knew!

We have grown our family with a small, funny, cheeky, girl who challenges us with all that she has been through, she however also makes me and my heart so proud of everything she achieves everyday!

It’s just me and pickle. But there’s enough love to give some to the rest of the world

Just into the ambulance Dad looked at me and said “You are harming children”. His eyes flitting away and back, he said it twice. It was the only madness of the journey away from his hometown to his care home: this thing he didn’t want to happen. “Errors” – he talks of making errors, like this cruel disease is punishment. Our family overthinks, overanalyses, lets the fear grow roots in the cracks of doubt. Fear is the most debilitating force in our family. It shrinks courage and it shrinks possibility. Our family has held onto a misconception that mental ill-health is a luxury or a punishment. My grandmothers held grief and shame close to their hearts in harsh times, until they became confused with love.

I think in my view, family is the smallest unit of a country population . In other word, family is the foundation of any community,society or the country as a whole. So to have good family is to have good citizens in any given country.

Family is complex, confusing, childish, defensive, quick to judge, vicious, hard, dismissive and rejecting.

Our family is a kinship family, we have 4 grandchildren we are guardians for, as hard as it is we would not change having them,.it can be stressful but it’s also full of so much love and laughter too. X

Much of our family has been broken without realising. It has trickled down like a leaking pipe collecting at the bottom. I am the puddle, the flood, the crumbling walls of the years of it. I am drying out, recasting the foundation onto solid ground, replacing all the rot and pipe work and dodgy electrics to finally make a home that is safe. It is not my family’s fault. But I have splinters in my hands and plaster thick like sand under my nails from scratching at the walls and clinging from the gutter. The house is heavy with it, and I am not a plumber, plasterer, carpenter, electrician. I am only me, their blood in my veins and trying to make peace with it.

Family Haiku
Some people’s houses
Have no love, like a desert.
Mine’s a rain forest

Family is love, struggle and resolution, unconditional, expanding and contracting, safety net and launch pad, rest, joyful, celebration and commiseration, compassion, always evolving

Family is complicated. My daughter is adopted and has many siblings whom are also adopted. She sometimes asks if she’ll get a new mummy because of all the change she’s experienced. She is constantly testing the attachment. But family is strength, grit and determination, you push yourself to the furthest limits and realise you’re capable of so much.

Family is standing up for someone, hearing things you don’t want to hear but sticking by them no matter what. Family is pride, love, and bravery but it’s also tiring and hardwork at times.

My family is a middle class .we are 5 sibling. My mothe age half of My father was government worker.my mother was housewife.i have 3 brother and 1 sister. Due to age difference both my families need different. My mother more moder than father.but he is one of scholar of Orthodox church.

As an Ethiopian diaspora, the pressure of family responsibility when I am supposed to take care of my entire family has been stressful for for last 20 years. This is something we Ethiopians and probably other immigrants suffer with quietly.

And so she lived with the Irish woman in town when her father went away to the mine. She’d dress in her white blouse and have her hair braided into two long pigtails on school days. She liked to learn. She was quick with ciphers and they told her she had beautiful handwriting. The boys sitting behind her never could resist dipping the ends of her long plaits into the ink well, often ruining her blouse. The Irish woman would not believe that she never noticed these shenanigans. “Stop fibbing, Viola” she’d say, “and go and clean your blouse, again.” She’d much rather have been wandering the slopes of Anvil Mountain, collecting alpine flowers, or find some wild rhubarb, outside in the fresh air. She missed her dog. She missed her mother. She missed not feeling so alone.

——————
My paternal grandmother was born in Silverton, Colorado (a mining town at 9k ft elevation, high in the San Juan Mtns) in February of 1908, the only daughter of Italian immigrants who were original settlers of the town. Her mother died when she was 6. She often talked about how she would spend her time as a child, outside, alone on the hillsides, playing with her dog or other animals, amongst the wildflowers. When her father died in 1925 she came east by train to CT to live with her only known relative, her mother’s sister and never returned to her beloved moubtains. But she shared her stories with her grandchildren, and when I had the chance to visit Silverton in 2011, the land knew me, and I knew it. I wished I could have visited with her.

Family is time spent with my brother who played action man and Barbie with me as a child, building parachutes to throw them from the bedroom window and watch them glide to the ground. Family is writing to him every day he was away in the British army looking out for children in far off countries. Family is watching him spend endless hours with my own children recreating joy and wonder. Family is having an adventurer who brought love and compassion to our lives. Family is sharing the grief of loss when he is lost to us and yet seeing him live everyday in others. Family is live, joy, caring, sharing and sometimes loss. But always remembering. If we remember we never truly loose.

My birth family was the centering force of stability and love in my life – something I didn’t fully appreciate until after my parents died in the late 1990’s.

My grandparents are originally from Ireland and the North East of England. My uncles used to work in the coal mine in Boldon Colliery near South Sheilds and Whitley Bay. My grandfather took part in the Jarrow March. My uncle fought in the Korean War. My grandmother lost her husband when she was 51 years old, she remained single and worked two or three jobs at a time. She wallpapered my kitchen when she was 82 years old. She loved Hawaiian music and said she could have written all of Catherine Cookson’s books. She would be very happy to know I have two published poems so far.

I was brought up by my grandmother, and at her funeral I spoke about family being all about shared stories- something I’d heard at a talk by you a few days before. I also spoke about what a cool grandmother she was- staying out later and partying more than me when I was a teenager- much my embarrassment!

I live in Surrey now, but I was born in Newcastle Upon Tyne. I wrote a poem about all the wonderful memories of my childhood at my Grandparent’s house. It’s called ‘The Lullaby of Wallsend’

Listen very carefully, can you hear that train go by?
That’s the sound of my childhood and I’m about to tell you why.
That mundane monotonous sound might not mean much to you,
But it brings back happy memories to me and all my crew.
My Grandparents lived by the Metro line in the wonderful North East,
Many Sundays spent there while Nana would cook up a feast.
Homemade Yorkshire puddings the best we’d all agree,
Lots of laughter and music and endless cups of tea.
Stottie cakes, horse racing on the telly, Grandad’s strong cigar,
Smells and tastes of my upbringing, the happiest one by far.
Pork and pease pudding sarnies from the butchers down the road,
Family popping over, the conversation always flowed.
Grandad telling stories from when he worked at the local shipyard,
I have so much respect for all those people who laboured so hard.
Holding our breath through the Tyne Tunnel, one of our favourite games.
All the neighbours welcoming, knowing each one of our names.
On the streets armies of black and white kits proud of their local team,
If Newcastle had won the match that day it was every magpies dream.
We’d often stay the night and hear the Metro doors “beep beep”,
That was my sweet lullaby that sent me off to sleep.

My Grandparents may no longer be with us but I will forever have these special memories to keep them alive.
Thank you for this opportunity to share my story.

We have an exhausting dynamic where we always end up ‘fighting’ and it is difficult to be oneself as we misunderstand so often; and yet we have a very close bond, for better or worse. And it is in its own way founded on how passionately we all feel, about love and decency even if on the face of it, it might not seem that way to an outsider or indeed to all of us and often not all at the same time. Sometimes some of us get that we love each other when others don’t!!

When my mother died and I was standing next to her, I thought: now she will never know her father. She was adopted from abroad, knew her mother once she was an adult, but could never trace anything about her Jewish father. I felt so sad for her.

My Grandparents are both from Saint Lucia,
A place that tourism is used ta.
Now I am in the UK I feel all alone;
But for me St.Lucia is a place I call home.
My skin brown like the bark of the tree,
that keeps that soup and the leaves.
Mangos falling all across the streets floor,
My Uncle Mal would always eat one on the sea shore.
I met an aunt of mine in a place called Gros islet gladly,
it was her that showed me a whole tree of family.
I was shocked to see cousins with slanted eyes like mine,
a wide nose like mine and the same precise lip designs.
God is truly good, and I realized we must share the same blood too;
Green fig and salt fish is our national dish, one of few.
every christmas I yearn to spend there as the days lessen,
would you believe we spend the whole day listening to country and western.
The elders dance to Quadrille in Creole printed fine fabrics,
I am a child of Saint Lucian lineage with Saint Lucian habits.
The Patios we speak, outsiders call it “broken French”
and insiders call “the Sulphur springs” an “awoken stench”.
Our landmark is the two pitons that I call Saint Lucia’s podium;
yet not a day goes by that others ask if I am Ethiopian.
My lineage must go back further than I know NASA,
but it explains why I grew up with an affiliation to Rasta!

Families can bring out the best and the worst in you. They are full of love and hate, you need to recognise the latter to ensure they feel the former!

My dad passed away in September last year. He and Mam had been married for 67 years. Yesterday was the first time, since Dad passed, that I saw pure joy in her face again. We are in London visiting her grandchildren (my adult children.) The love is palpable. ❤️

“you don’t know your born”!
That’s how lucky I am. I know, and am so grateful.
A family, freedom, a home and love.
My parents worked hard, doing their best for my brother and me.
Only now I am grown up, I realise the effort.
To care, provide, nurture and guide.
We were blessed. To be close and ok. To be there. Together.
My grandparents were brilliant.
To me, they were love and family itself.
Saturday’s at Nannie Besties. Watching wrestling or snooker on TV. She did the pools. Would take us to Disney if she won .
I remember the smell of tomatoes in the greenhouse. Her soap.
The patterned carpets and her slippers.
Visiting great aunties. Slobbery kiss!
Wipe it off! But so sweet and comfy.
Half term at my grans. SE22. 185 bus., Bacon sandwich, blankets.
The telly had doors?!
The bath was in the kitchen. Joany lived upstairs.
Skate round the park with a pull along dog. watching Why Don’t You and Top of the Pops. Electric blankets. The smell of germoline.
Now they have all passed. Memories so dear. So so lucky.
Here we are now. My parents are old. I’m getting on too – truth be told!
My dad’s in a home. I miss him so much. Mums heart is broken.
We feel guilty and sad.
He is well cared for but alone. No visiting for so long. He is vanishing. Family. We need to be near. To hug and to kiss. To sing and listen and clap along. Comb his hair. Feed him treats. Is he sad without us.?
I pray he is content. His memory is gone. We hang on to ours.
My role is reversed now. They need me to help them
Gladly of course. I owe them the world.
And a family of my own too! I still can’t believe! A husband who loves me, and two beautiful girls.
I hope I am enough. That I am up to the job.
I’m tired and emotional. Scared and in awe.
But so so thankful.
To be loved and to love.
Blessed family.
Drive eachother mad of course.
But that’s a sign we care huh?!?
Love is the thing.
Hug, smile. Tell them. Share. Play. Listen.
Love.

Our family grew from 2 to 3 in January 2021. Miles has brought such joy and happiness to our extended family after such a difficult year of being apart

My Nanna crocheted a blanket for each of her grandchildren.

Granny was our anchor in turbulent and unpredictable times. My sisters and I would spend a precious week or so of the summer holidays with her and Grandpa. It was kind of like a retreat for us slightly unruly kids – time out of a challenging family life at home. She made proper meals – from scratch – plate pies were a favourite (with gravy of course). We would line up in the yard and she would pass pancakes through the window. She’d also cut our fringe too short, mend our clothes and make us go to the church next door. Thinking about it she’d covered all the bases! She used to take us swimming to an outdoor pool in her wonderful old Volvo that she polished with pledge. We would cry when we had to leave, but her love would sustain us until the next time.

Family, it’s complicated. Isn’t it meant to be where we all go home too? But it’s not, is it? Family is complicated.

I could tell you of the stories, of the lies, of the loves, of the suicides, the children, the adventures, the gardens and the flowers. I could look at the betrayals across the generations of my family or the dedication and love.
Maybe I could ponder my own sense of attachment to family, or my need to break free of its constraints.

I tried to think of one family story to share with Lemn, but I couldn’t. It’s too big to squeeze down into a soundbite. Family it’s complicated, isn’t it?

Perhaps that’s it’s greatest asset.

P.S. I still don’t know if it’s true that we all (girls that is) turn into our mothers and I’m 55. Do boys turn into their dads?

Family is a feeling, a memory. My close family members are no longer here, but I am standing on the shoulders of giants. My family supports me and pushes me upwards. In my family, some are members by blood, others not. My dad, funny, always looking for a laugh (often down the pub), my step dad – so calm and kind. On my mum’s side, a large East End family: my great aunt, foster mother to many; my grandmother, my memories of whom are faded, but who was kind and nurturing, and alive every day in my mother. And my own mum, recently lost, and whose absence is almost unbearable. I include friends in my family – my first boyfriend, not seen for decades, but who helped to shape me nonetheless. My family includes the unknown – the child who was miscarried, and the adopted child my partner and I hope to welcome. My family is evolving – it feels like I have been loved, and I want to pass that feeling on.

I love my family. Sometimes they frustrate me but they are everything to me. I now have twin nieces and I love them so much.

Family is my way of coming back to my sense roots no matter where we all are in the world and however many years later.

My brother and I lost our parents before we were 25. We only have each other now. We have no other family members. That which should have made us close, holding on to each other, in reality made us insignificant and irrelevant. We no longer speak without the glue to hold us tigether.

What a wonderful idea to share thoughts of family – you are welcome to join ours! I
I do have the incredible opportunity of being an identical twin(female). We have two siblings (male). My parents have passed on after a hardworking, simple life that became full of joy for them. We all were brought up near London and later in life all moved on to Sussex. We chose to live very separate lives, but near each other. A family is a responsibility, like THE MOST PRECIOUS JEWEL AND REALISING DURING YOUR NLIFE YOU HAD BEST NOT LOOSE IT !! Where does family stop though? An international organisation called SERVAS – set up to encourage Peace and Friendship worldwide – gives me the opportunity to make everyone like family. With love
to you,
Lindsey XX

Christmas was very special when I was little. My mum, aunt and their cousins would take it in turns to host. Boxing Day was always my favourite as it felt more like a party and all the extended family would be there. Each family member would take their turn to sing, and I remember just watching and taking it all in, and loving it. We don’t do it anymore and I still miss those huge family gatherings with the loud chatter, song, laughter and endless plates of meat and potato pie.

My family on my Father side started in Southern Ireland and then came to England; In the first part of the 20th Century.My Granddad changed his first & last names so he could find work at 14 in the mines of West Yorkshire. Being from Ireland he didnt always find England a welcoming place. He went on to have a large loving family. My own Father, my Grandad’s son who was brought up in Yorkshire emigrated to Australia when he retired, so in my lifetime we have spanned several continents. My Mother’s parents came from Ireland too and settled in Sheffield. One of my Mothers sisters emigrated to Canada in the 1950’s so I now have many cousins and relatives in Canada too.We once had a family gathering on my Mothers side in Sheffield and in the community hall were over a hundred of my relations; all looking very familiar to me. Family means having lots of loving brothers and sisters and many, many cousins. It means never been alone; there is always someone to phone or write to. Family are the ties that bind you to a place and people forever. They are our connection to our past and our future. Growing up our household was noisy and I could never have any space to be alone but I wouldnt change that now. Coming from a large family which travelled for work means that I have an outward positive view of the world and that I dont believe in International borders. I believe that newcomers are just family that we havent met yet! I have friends who I count as part of my family too. I feel very lucky and I cherish my family.

If I visualise a happy, safe space, my brain takes me to my parents kitchen of my childhood home. There, 6 (or more) cats would be settled around the Aga, or on the chairs with at least one dog under the kitchen table. My grandfather would be sitting in a chair, smoking a cheroot, or off to the sitting room to watch ‘Egg Heads’. And tea, always tea. Perhaps the kettle would be on, perhaps the tea would be in the pot, brewing, but it would never be far away. And there, I would sit, and relish the warm mug in my hands, a cat in my lap, and my mother nearby.

When I lived in Canada as a kid every summer my parents, brother and I would go to Algonquin Park, canoeing and camping in the wilderness, with our guide and friend Trevor. One evening my dad was chopping wood and cut his thumb almost clean off. With blood spurting we were left with two options: either leave immediately and canoe through the night to the nearest hospital, or go to sleep and do it in the morning, bandaging his thumb up as best as possible in the meantime. We went with the first option. The five of us packed up our bags and tents, loaded them onto the canoes, and set off.

Through the blood, panic and chaos, we found ourselves paddling up a still lake in the dead of night. All you could hear was the trickle of water falling off the oar with each stroke, and the call of a loon in the distance, as the moonlit mist settled around us. My dad paddling at the back, deliriously exclaiming how beautiful it was and how proud he was of his family pulling together when it was needed. It ended up being one of our favourite memories.

I miss my family back in Manchester and Kent, but I love my smaller family here in Northern Ireland too.
I feel blessed to have more than one place to call home.
Family is not anchored in a place it’s a feeling of safety and love. And I’m lucky to have been loved by family members around the globe.

Love in a Shoebox

Every New Yorker of my generation has an Aunt Gladys.

Mine was big, beautiful and never short of an opinion or two. She never married, and my brothers and I became her surrogate children. She regularly took us on thrilling outings – to the Bronx Zoo, to Broadway shows, days out at the amusement park at Coney Island, and the like. When she died at the age of 86, I assumed responsibility for clearing her apartment. Believe me, this was no small task. Gladys’s apartment was pretty much a Black Hole – nothing that entered ever left. I chanced upon a shoebox at the back of a wardrobe. It contained a collection of old love letters, amongst which were six blue envelopes held together with a rubber band. These revealed the story of a short courtship that took place between November 1945 and January 1946 in the Greenpoint neighbourhood of Brooklyn, where Gladys was born and grew up.

The letters were from a G.I. who had recently returned from the Pacific conflict and spotted Gladys helping out in our family candy store/newsagent/soda shop. Apparently smitten at first sight, ‘Bob’, who didn’t want to embarrass the young Gladys who he thought too beautiful not to have a boyfriend, wrote her a letter of introduction. Subsequent letters revealed that they spoke on the phone a few times and eventually went to a movie where they held hands. His letters, long and with beautiful penmanship and not a single crossing out, were written in the ‘Brooklynese’ of the time and in Damon Runyon-like prose that jumped off the page – befitting the New York Daily News tabloid journalist that Bob was. The letters tell the story, not just of a courtship, but also of his bitterness about the war. He writes:

“Go ahead sucker pick up that 60-pound pack and that rifle. Chase the Jap, dodge bullets, run, bleed, suffer, die, put your young life on the line for 50 bucks a month. Go ahead dope, sweat, fight for that democracy stuff they scream about back home, live, and sleep in mud and see dead men all around you, hear your heart thump and break out in a cold sweat as you stand your ground to meet the Jap at close quarters as they come screaming crazily into your lines, age 100 years in one night, sucker!”

In his sixth and final letter, we find that Gladys has “dumped” him, claiming that she felt guilty as she was still corresponding with a boyfriend who had not yet returned from the war. Here we find Bob to be distraught, seemingly suicidal. He has quit his job, he says, as he can now see no future for himself and no point in carrying on.

Was Gladys telling the truth? I think not. My wife, upon reading the letters, immediately said “Gladys was spinning a yarn”.

What makes us think so, you may well ask. Quite simply, it is inconceivable that Gladys’s parents, my grandparents, would have ever been allowed to have a relationship with Bob if they had known about him. And why not? One simple clue: my grandparents were very religious orthodox Jews, and included amongst the small cache of Bob’s letters was a Christmas card along with his photograph.

No New York Jew would ever have sent anyone a Christmas card – probably not now and most certainly not in 1945!

We are a mixed parentage family of 5 – Paul, Jackie, Harvey, Maddie and Ethan. We live in Norwich and have been here for 19 years.

Summer holidays in West Cork. Each family member is represented ; either in the frame My dad and i ,or by my sisters reading book ,my brothers fishing rod and the smile we are giving the photographer ,My mum!
Carefree memories we all share
That keep us together despite our grown up varying paths!

A packet of Quavers evokes such a powerful memory for me.

My parents got arranged marriage in Sri Lanka in the early 1960’s. My mother was 19yrs and my dad 26yrs. They never met before the wedding day. My mother was the eldest child of 5 other siblings. My mother wanted to continue education but that wasn’t allowed.
My parents came to the UK and had 4 children a year apart starting in 1965. My father was a heavy smoker, drinker and ate meat. My mother a non smoker non drinker and vegetarian. My father was very violent to all of us as an alcoholic. My mother got night shift work and other jobs to help feed us.
Unfortunately the violence started straight away. My mother begged her parents in Sri Lanka to help but they couldn’t do anything. Both her parents died within months of each other tragically leaving her siblings as orphans and her helpless to support them given her own terrible situation with husband and 4 small kids – no money -violence – strange country.
Growing up we never had parties or went on holiday and friends and family mainly shunned us.
On Mother’s Day one year my father drank so much we again had to all leave the house. My mother couldn’t drive so we walked everywhere. He fell and hit his head at home. He was found by a relative and taken to hospital. We didn’t realise he was taken to a mental institution for 6 months and they did a front lobal lobotomy. He changed when he came out and didn’t drink again but his personality changed and acted as a tramp picking up cigarette butts in the street. We as children pretended he wasn’t our father when we saw him.

Anyway a memory is my mother taking us four children to the corner shop to get bottle of whiskey for my father as she was forced to. We enjoyed being out of the house and a real treat for us was a bag of quavers as we were often very hungry. We loved quavers. It was special. Bittersweet memory. I buy quavers for my daughter and tell her this. She has no idea. Thank god. Fortunately me and my siblings have all done well in life. My father died 2003. My mother is still alive and well. Quavers is such a gift.

Desperately trying to plot a route back to the UK to be reunited with my family this summer.

You don’t choose your family and as a child you don’t have any say in how family dynamics operate. Many kids have aspects of their family life they would not choose. As a teacher I’m aware of just how many kids have challenging family circumstances and often no one to turn to to alleviate those circumstances.

As a child I did get frustrated with my parents specially my Dad who influenced my educational choices in a direction I would not have chosen if left to myself. As an adult I realised how lucky I had been as this was pretty much the only negative aspect of my upbringing. Yes, there were arguments, differences of opinion and sometimes more serious clashes but overall our relationships were positive.

My parents were non practising Jews, politically very active – left of course – culturally very inclusive and had a large social circle that included my aunts, uncles and cousins. My sister and I had the freedom of playing in a neighbourhood bombed site with other local kids, were often taken to the theatre and musical events, encouraged to engage in political activities, to form our own friendships and bring home any of those friends.

I was the first one in the family to marry a non -Jewish boy, my parents welcomed him into the family and gave us the biggest wedding celebration party. Some of my aunts and uncles were not so happy about me marrying ‘out’ but it did eventually help my deaf cousin when he chose a non -Jewish girl to marry.

We moved to Brighton when my husband got a job there and bought our house because it had a very large – for Brighton – garden and a four car two story garage. Eventually we had the garage converted and my in laws moved in. Some years later my father -in -law died but my mother -in -law stayed on living in the garage. A couple of years later my husband died very suddenly. My mother -in -law was very domineering and tried hard to influence how I lived my life. I wasn’t complicit and when she had the opportunity, she moved out to live near her daughter.

My son moved into the garage very soon after she left. Twenty years later he is still there with his partner and three lovely daughters. Again, an overall very positive relationship that we both work to maintain. I wish that were true for all the kids I’ve worked with and children everywhere.

My family and I have had our ups and downs. We have fallen out, not spoken, made up again, shouted and screamed at each other, but the love is still there and always will be.

When I was 8, my ma left my da, taking my sister and I early one morning while he was sleeping,, leaving my eldest 3 siblings who were later in their teens and at a stage where leaving for 200 miles away would have been disruptive. Let’s just say he and whisky didn’t agree.
In those days (the 80’s) there was no internet, mobile ma didn’t exist and we made do with occasional calls to a red telephone box.

All these years later, we continue to get on like a house on fire, perhaps partly shaped by or even because of these events.

Initially I was angry in my teens and throughtout my 20′. Over time I’ve come to realise that being in your 20’s and having 5 kids and not a lot of money would have been tough in those days and it’s far too easy to pass judgment. . Better to have empathy.

Family to me means being there through thick and thin.

Family is the people you choose to love, whether they share blood with you or not.

When there were thunderstorms at night, we’d be woken up and given chocolate. Just a gentle tap to wake us up, a coin of chocolate during the storm and then off to bed.

My parents separated when I was young. I remember crying myself to sleep shortly after, as I found a postcard of a sheep that my Dad had sent me when he had been away when I was a baby. But then I did get to go shopping and choose a new duvet set, to 6 year old me that was healing. I am so fortunate that now, 32 years later, my parents remain friends with each other.

I am living at home again now, with my mum and dad. None of us sleep well because we are all anxiously listening out in case one of us is unwell in the night. If one person goes to the loo the other two are then awake on tenterhooks for the next 15 mins. None of us discuss it. It’s sad and also sweet.

It’s Lemn Sissay here. I saw Jason Manford’s tweet about family and I asked him if I could post it on this site. He replied “Of course brother”. So here it is.

My father moved over from India as a child in the 60s, and grew up in Crawley as the eldest of 5 children. He married my mother, a white woman, after they met at Cambridge. Though my grandparents didn’t approve of the marriage and did not attend the wedding, over the years things have softened and our family is gorgeous and mixed and so full of love. We have people from all faiths and all backgrounds in our wonderful chaos and I love every bit of it.

Dad arrived in the 70s in Teesport from Cape Verde one day. An intelligent ships navigator, big hair and big flares. Influencer James Brown.

Not much of that in Middlesbrough then. Met Mam with big hair and skinny jeans (she’d faint in them). Her brothers had big hair and flares, but they were ‘accepted’ in a unique Middlesbrough.

Mams family were proper –
Town centre, Over the Border, Grove Hill. Doors always left open and sat on the front. Life changing stuff happened on those fronts. Monney borrowed, children fed, children stayed over neighbours… sometimes for decades.

My Nanna took ‘kids in’ and ‘made things right’. She protected her own and everyone elses. She watched snooker on the black and white TV. Knew every colour but hated that little young spotty player Steven Hendrie -easy Nanna, easy…

Allsorts of ‘can’t mentions’ happening all the time and not just the crime but the time that it took for somebody to look at what needed to change in family.

1979 and I come along. Grew up in the best street with my asian mates – Michael Jackson cards, Hubba Bubba and cricket. The food… the scraps… the car dents… the cennectedness.

Dad worked in security after the ships cause his Intelligentness wasn’t recognised then – big man can work security and chase the ‘border’ kids. Jesus. A black guy doing security in over the border – if you know you know…

Dad connected though. He talked, he listned, he fixed, he helped, he laughed, he held babies, he had a cuppa. Those border kids grew and had families themselves. My Dad proud as punch of the Border Kids.

He retired a service manager in our council – well respected and knew loads. His intelligence was used up.

Dad’s from Cape Verde islands. My great Grandma I met once. Didn’t say much. Used to sit in the chair and whack everyone across the face. I rocked up in 1997 for my first visit and got face strokes and smiles – miss you Untia Gran Vu Vu.

Cape Verde Grandma, Vu Vu, Dads Mam. She’s lush like. She’s the rock of the Cape Verde Family. Money kept in the bra or stashed under the… (can’t say she’d flip).

Vu Vu toom kids in… stayed for years… Grandad Vu Vo was a nice guy. Parkinsons took him. He gave us all the hairline and lots of other relatives too. Family is family.

My sister’s so nice, the best sister. Not around much but we couldn’t be any closer.

So me and my Wifey and bestie we have our 3 blessings, our children. All I’ve ever wanted was my own family – no other aspirations.

My Ma and Pa (my in laws) love them to bits. So caring and kind… that’s good for my kids. They’re fully functional. Played life with an A*.

My jobs is working for Middlesbrough children and young people. I love it. Always will do. I’m a Middlesbrough lad and the town matters so much to me. I guess… no, they are my family too.

My Dad taught me that every person was of equal worth, regardless of their status, race, colour, gender, occupation, intelligence, financial worth and that everyone deserved the same respect. I was much older when I realised what a gift he had offered.

I didnt know my father growing up. He left when I was just a few months old.
Sometimes I would sneak a look at his photo in the draw, trying to see if there was anything of me in his face.

When his mother, my grandmother, passed away my mum went to the funeral and came back and said she’d seen my brother.
I didn’t know I had a brother (I was in my twenties) and I’m an only child.
I had always wanted siblings and suddenly there was this new relationship.
Following the funeral we made contact and started to build a relationship.
Unfortunately before we had an opportunity to meet he died suddenly.

I also had a half sister and we did meet but it sadly wasn’t like the TV tearful reunion. It just felt strange.

I’ve not built a relationship with my biological father. It’s been attempted but again these things aren’t simple.

He was adopted and didn’t know his birth parents so my history on one side of my family is completely unknown.

But I have the luck of being brought up with loving parents.
Whilst I didn’t know all about my past, (and my mother’s family also have their own story of losses and grief), I feel no losses.
It’s important that whilst we need to acknowledge the past, we don’t feel we have to take that baggage into our future.
We need to acknowledge and forgive the past and move forward with Love.

My family mean the world to me and i dont know where I’d be without them.
We have been through more than id like to think about but we’ve stuck together.
Thank you my family.
Miss you dad.

Mum was from Simons Town she was sent by her family to see what England was like as her Grandfather was from Birmingham. Dad was working in London, was two years younger, late for work and buying a paper and some tobacco. He set eyes on Mum and decided that was the woman he was going to marry. Mum took a little persuading but they were together 60 years. Dad was always deceptively determined once he set his mind to something. He persuaded her with the temptation of further travel as he had his National Service call up. There was also strong urging on the part of Mum’s Mum – (she and Dad had an immediate rapport Ma was adopted and had a tough childhood, Dad had a quiet father and a difficult mother.). Needless to say they married but Dad failed his medical. However the urge to travel remained strong so we became £10 Poms and left in the late 60’s for Western Australia. Later Dad’s sister came to live with us before she married. I remember watching the Moon landing in the front room of our house in Kelmscott. I remember Mum being alerted to the presence of a large Iguana in the garden by one of our dogs. I remember our surprise to find the front room window full of frogs during a rainstorm and eating navel oranges and passion fruit from the garden. I remember my brother and I darting in and out of sprinklers on peoples lawns on our way to school. I remember Christmas on the beach. We had many experiences together that made us who we are and different when we returned to the UK. Here is a little mosaic of our family, our parents gave us riches in terms of love and life experiences. Gone but never forgotten. PS the painting is by my brother – I found it whilst we were clearing Dad’s shed ❤️

My great grandmother always told a story about how my dad as a little boy tied up her cat so it would stay with him. He hated this story, she told it like he was cruel or odd but he said he loved the cat and had just wanted it to stay. When I was little I put our cat in the wicker washing basket so it would stay in my room. I never told my dad but I think he might have known. I think I was a bit cruel to the cat, but I loved him too

I am one of 7 children from two marriages. We ways had Sunday roast together and then watched Sunday night TV. My step dad would give us a not from his wallet and we would walk round to the local shop and buy as many bars of chocolate as we could. My dad would then hold the bag high above our heads and we would have to lucky dip for a bar.

My growing up could be described as a bit of Just William, the Beano and Dandy mixed with Saturday Cinema, rolled up in a chip paper. My Mother and Father were so loving and full of good things and tried to give us all education and free ideas, in a rural agricultural idyll. Post-war, rationing, not a lot to live on other than the land and what we could make of it. But we did. My dad was an entirely resourceful independent man. Had been at Dunkirk and never wanted to say much about it. The other side of that Lemn, and whoever reads this was fear of losing their children. Or whatever the psychologists might write in that order. The love was suffocating for me, so as much as I could, I was with school friends and their families more than my own. Out on my bike, across fields through the woods on adventures. Not in a knowingly harmful way to Mum and Dad but I knew my ‘place’ was somewhere else – others might say growing up wanting to find your own way. My father’s mother had come to live with us after her friend died and she became my confidant and storyteller in a way, reading to me when I got home from school, going for walks in the warm summer evenings and not so warm evenings but then I was quite young. Toast in front of her fire. Telling me things of other times and other places. She had even chosen my name, my mum had said. She passed away in our front room [her bed-sitting room] after not being right during the day and my mum had phoned the doctor, who said give her some aspirin and I’ll call in, in the morning. I wasn’t that old about seven or eight I guess. And couldn’t understand why she was taken away from us [meaning me mostly, probably]. It’s affected me my whole life. Then, as the others of my small family have gone, my other grandmother, my mum, dad, brother, uncle and just a few months ago my beautiful sister. And friends from school, art school, former colleagues and pub-pals it goes on. Then, as things pass through the grip of our fingers like grains of sand, sometimes, it’s just so hard. to bear. But my family were never the type to talk much about some of these things. Just tightened the apron strings to hold on to what they had. ‘Just keeping on,’ was one of my dad’s expressions when asked how he was. So I kept on doing what I wanted and needed for me, not the family, even though our love for each other was strong, I was on the other side of it.

I would pretend I was asleep and squeeze my eyes tight shut. I could hear him shivering, then talking his wellies off and the squeak of the back door. I had butterflies in my tummy. His whistling would start with a different tune,Monday was always a Beatles song! The bucket handle rhythmic pinging made me squeal silently with joy and go right under the covers. I felt him draw breath as the door handle turned, a gasp of fatherhood I reckon, he whispered ‘ we’ve been blessed by another beautiful day, are you waking up to dance with me in it again? I’d titter; he’d pretend he hadn’t heard. He scratched and rustled about his business and we together and apart waited for the draw. Then the smell, especially if it was wet coal and then my nose tested the warm flames as they stretched upwards and my arms mirrored with a yawn. ‘Hello beautiful, you’ve made my day with those eyes, my girl… it’s a riproar today, porridge is on, best get to your brother…’. And then the magical wink, I wanted to burst! I put on his cloak of complete and utter love as I followed in his footsteps to once again dance through my childhood days. And the frost melted away from the inside of our windows as our family breath gave heat forever after.

Family is all of us together. Spirits and souls that will live forever. Family. The ones who were, are and will be.

Started as nuclear: traditional husband, wife, son, daughter. Now blossomed into wife, female partner, son and daughter, who are also part of father, father’s partner, half brother and half sister. At the heart of it are mother, son and daughter who love, laugh, challenge and fight like crazy ? Family is a sense of belonging whilst still searching for that untouchable essence of what it is that’s missing. Family is chosen. Family is challenge when you need it, judgement when you deserve it and security at all times.

True family are the people who love you more than words can ever say. There’s a deep connection that can survive even when it’s never spoken about.

My grandma always said ‘a family who plays together, stays together’ and so we always make time for a game, no matter the occasion.

When I’m not feeling well I just want my mammy’s cool hand on my forehead and her to make me poached eggs on wheaten bread toast. And all my 4 brothers and sisters are the same even though she’s been dead for 2 and a half years now. There is no other hand or no other poached eggs the same

Family isn’t just about blood. I have been so welcomed by my husband’s family for the last 25 years l can’t imagine life without them. My paternal and maternal relationship was poor to say the least and my Nan and Grandad were my saviour, both sadly are no longer here but l have my extended non blood family who are my world. I cannot talk about family without the biggest shout out to my wonderful husband and my amazing 16 year old son who is becoming a young man in his own right!! ???

My grandfather, my love. (uploaded wrong photo on previous story)

The respect we have for each others difference blows my mind. I’m a family therapist and see all the things we could have done better and all the things (of which there are many more) that we have surpassed the majority. Our love is full we try (and sometimes fail) to encourage the beauty in each other and walk beside each other when our ugliness shows.

I ended up in Chile on a whim, deciding to extend a backpacking trip by going further south still, thinking that I might be able to land a job in the wine trade. This was so long ago (1991) that I was even able to sell my plane ticket back to the UK to someone else who flew back as me – no tight security controls back then and it wasn’t an uncommon practice!
At some point, a new friend I made at the English Language school introduced me to friends of hers. And as it happened, the original friend eventually cut ties with everyone in Santiago and moved away, and those friends of hers became so, so close, that they are to this day my Chilean family. Who’d have known that we would become so close…???
In those early days, there was no email, no whatsapp, no zoom; a 1 minute phone call home to the UK cost the equivalent of 10 GBP which was a lot of money then. My sister was herself halfway across the world on her own adventures, so contact was by postcards, occasional parcels home and Poste Restante (methinks today’s generations would have a hard time with this…!). But the relationship that developed with my Chilean family was not one of replacement or substitution – I was lucky to feel very solid ties to and have the support (moral) of my parents. Instead it simply flowed organically, and without realising it, very deep and caring bonds were created in parallel.
And over the following years, in fact, both families met and now they always ask after each other, equally assimilated into my life. And the values and traits that make both my family are the same: love, acceptance, care, forgiveness, being there whenever, whatever and whyever,
I’m back in Europe now (Spain), so it’s been wonderful to be nearer to my Uk family (now spread to Morocco and France), but I miss those in Chile tremendously.

When my daughter was 6, I would get up very early in the morning sometimes and write at my desk in the quiet before the day starts. She slept in my bed often at that time, and on occasion she would wake and wander, more asleep than awake to look for me. When I held her and kissed her hair the smell of her, all warm, wrapped in slumber, hair muzzled was so intense, it was a transcendental experience. I breathed in big lung fulls, knowing that no other smell in my life would come close.

Family is try to love people even when they are difficult to like.

Family is like that cup of tea made when you have just woken up from a nap and are drowsy – perfectly brewed tea leaves marred with either too much or too little milk, courtesy of loose sleepy hands. Striving to be ideal, mostly missing the mark. Many don’t even have the luxury of that cup of tea, or even a bed to take that nap on.

It’s so terribly sad when some family members choose to exclude siblings, nieces, cousins and close relatives just because the deceased said so.

My relationship with my mother was always volatile towards me even though I spent much of life up until my 40’s providing for her financially and emotionally whilst my siblings moved away and rarely visited her except, it seemed, when they needed something such as a place to stay or…babysitting (which she called me up to help with anyway and offloaded my niece on to me – not that I minded, I loved/love my niece).
For my mental well-being and the sake of my own family (my temper was terrible after a session with my mother) I had to let go and be free of her narcissistic personality. This meant that she now leaned on my brother and sister for support and I guess they finally had a taste of her qualities. I was quickly dismissed from any contact with them event though I tried to maintain contact, they never replied.
On the death of my mother, my brother in law rang to tell me – with an amount of glee I feel – that she had died and that she had said I was not to attend her funeral. So … that’s what the did. They didn’t invite me, or her grand daughter, because, as my bother-in-law said ‘then I’d know where and when the funeral would be taking place’ and ‘they didn’t want me to make a scene’.

I don’t hate them. I actually feel very sorry for them that, on her orders, they carried out the last evil action of my mother towards me. I have forgiven them but they will have to live with what they have done.

Funerals are for the living.

The dead have moved on.
It’s a shame that some of the living can’t or won’t.

Our family was 90% pets. Rescue dogs, feral cats, other people’s abandoned creatures – whoever needed a home, be they four-legged, six-legged, one-footed, furry, slimy, scaly, they were welcomed into our house. The giant African land snail who would only eat the middle of the cucumber, the gerbils we looked after while my sister’s friend went on holiday only for her to not want them back when she returned, the stick insects who multiplied until they were countless and my sister sold them for a pound each at school. Until I was 18 and left for uni I had no idea what it was to go to bed and not have to share it with someone fluffy.

To me, pets are family, and pets make a family.

We lived in the hills. We had a big extended family of the sort you’ll find all over the world where cousins are like brothers and sisters, where in my Mother’s family the oldest had left by the time the youngest had arrived, where someone died young, too young and others last forever, where everyone worked with their hands and the women became nurses, where someone had to stay behind to look after the parents, where everything was out there somewhere and took years to come back and it was all gone, where choices and not choices cast you into an adulthood that is away out over the sea and only the faintest soundings of home are possible and language has to be reinvented daily to recognize the world at all. They told us to come in at night or the fox would get us. We knew the names of the fields. No one lives there now.

We all feel that family is forever but that is not the reality
For some families are incomplete, that’s what happened to me
The eldest of five, 3 boys 2girls, a mum and a dad
But since 1987, there’s a space where there used to be a 7 yr old lad.
It was xmas time , a time for laughter and joy
Though was not meant to be for this little boy
On his way back from school, just off the bus
A car out of nowhere, tore the heart out of all of us

So yea, family that’s what we are, a group connected by blood
Has it’s ups and downs , it’s bad times and good
We may not have him with us but he never left our hearts
And surely that’s where the meaning of family truly starts

It’s the people that we care for, whether they be kith or kin
Open up your heart to them, let those people in
Tell them that you love them, show them every day
You never know the moment when they will be tqken away.

Family can be painful, family can be love. Family can feel like a duty and being in one is sometimes tough. But where would i be without one? I would be lost.

Neither of my parents loved me. I walked away when I was 21. I’ve always struggled to accept love as an adult. The pain never goes away.

My family’s secrets are still tumbling out, 50 years after the death of my mother and seven years after the death of my father. It is both bitter and sweet. Last year, I learnt of yet another new half brother, who is an utter joy! I previously learnt that, after my mother died, my father told his side of the family that we’d gone to live with my mother’s side of the family. I’m fact he put us into care and visited so rarely that the last time I saw him as child, I did not recognise him.

Family to me is about truly belonging. Growing up, our house was all about ‘Dad’s music’. My brother and I used to complain about it so much. It was so uncool. But these days, those are the sounds of my childhood. Neil Young. Bob Dylan. Today, those artists are some of my favourites, and I sing those songs to my own young children as an invisible thread from one generation to the next. I can’t listen to Birds by Neil Young without a pang of nostalgia and often a tear in my eye.

Your mum stopping your siblings sitting in your seat when you’ve only gone to the toilet! ?

Our family would not be complete without the dog and cats, they are the glue that holds us together.?

My Grandfather died 31 years ago when I was 11. And for that short 11 years I knew him I think he had the greatest impact on me above anyone I have ever known and his love has carried me through life. So many songs I hear now that he would play to me, only this morning Sugar sugar by the archers came on the radio and im right back there with him, he loved that song. We planted flowers together, collected wildlife stickers together, enjoyed a sweet cup of tea together, he would hide 10 pence coins amongst the flowers so I would find them and tell me the butterflies left it for me. So many memories of him, I can still smell him and hear his laugh and the older I get I cant quite believe I only knew him for 11 years, he is there imprinted on my heart.

When my teenage children are out and about my heart is in my mouth until they are home safe. They will never know about my fear.

I’m one of 5 sisters, when we were little we went on a family holiday to Butlins. My mum entered the Glamorous Grannie competition with me! We got 2nd place and she was made up!???

There is a strong family look shared between me and my cousins, from my mother’s side of the family and I love the feeling of connection this gives me. I know I am lucky to have it. My dad’s side of the family are all deceased so I cherish feeling part of something bigger.

Family, like home, is a loaded word. I have one child. No partner. My Mum is dead. My brothers are estranged, from each other and from me. I don’t feel like I’m part of, or belong to anyones family. The rhetoric of “friends & family” during the pandemic has left me feeling very isolated & alone. Family size food packs. Family discount. They all exclude people like me. Families should be about love, and I love my son fiercely, but he is all I have. I am his Mum, Dad, Grandma, Auntie, sibling, cousin and everything else in one. There is no one else to call on. There is such pain in the loneliness of not belonging.

My family are fu***d up. The woman are fat and single.

My father came to the UK in 1975. He was 25. I’m not sure whether his dream was to come or whether he needed to come to support his family back home. He came from India where he was a bank manager with a first class bachelor of science degree in Physics. I’m sure he told me that he sat some exams for his brother too. He used to revise under a coconut tree. When he arrived, he needed to hit the ground running to support his family here as well as in India so he took whatever manual work he could find. He could not pursue his profession and worked incredibly hard as initially a Train Driver in London and then a Postman in Leicester, where he remained until he retired in 2013. He once had a drink at the pub near the West Ham stadium, Upton Park, back in the 70s and was racially abused by some fools. His black West Indian friend protected him and stood up for him. Solidarity. I thank that man for protecting my father. When I think about my father, I think of love and sacrifice. He has sacrificed, along with my mother, everything for us. He started this journey of sacrifice way before he stepped foot on British shores in 1975. After the age of 25 he only saw his mother and father a few more times. Can you imagine only seeing your folks 3 more times after you turn 25? I can’t. Now, at the nimble age of 70, I wonder what goes through his kind brilliant mind? What memories he recalls and what he thinks about the future? I hope that he knows that many people love him. I’m sure that if all you reading this met him, you would love him too. Well, maybe you know him a little bit now too 🙂

I have several families. The one I grew up. The one I created with my son and his mother. The one I created with my daughter and her mother. And the small family of friends I hold dear. Unconditional love all around. And all these families are connected through me and give each other sustenance.

We had an amazing great aunt who lived in Chorlton Cum Hardy and we used to visit regularly from Wigan. My mum didn’t drive so my brother myself and mum would travel there by bus and train. It was like a different world coming into Manchester Victoria station. We would always have homemade cakes when we got to her house and in the summer would put on shows in the garden with an old sheet as a curtain. Auntie Mabel was the one who introduced us to the game Boy, girl, flower, fruit, which we still play to this day.

OFFSPRING

You’re the open smell of clothes dried in the summer sun,
You’re the violet light between night’s death and the throes of morning,
You’re the cotton blanket in the closed drawer,
You’re the silent repartee in this novel of longing.

You’re the perfect peeled potato,
You’re the siesta at the beach cove,
You’re the stone sandcastle
And you’re the love of love of love of love.

At one point in our house we managed to have four completely different diets yet we still had no problems all making our food and eating it: I was vegetarian, my brother completely kosher, mother Type 1 diabetic and father a total omnivore who just ate from a continually evolving pot of soup that he just added more ingredients to every day. Proud we could all be so different yet get along fine!

My mum and dad had 6 kids and their childhoods were blessed and blighted in equal part. Our kids are doing better. We hope.

I have a small family on my mother’s side which is both precious and difficult. On my father’s side, who is the son of an Arab immigrant with many names, my family is imagined. It is both everything and nothing. I know nothing about them, so they don’t exist. But they’re also the zenith of family as I’ve dreamt up everything about them.

My family like to sing. My mum’s family is from Ireland and my dad is Scottish and when we all gather together we sing songs – old, new, a capella or with a guitar. Some of my best memories are sitting round the table singing with them all, everyone a bit tipsy, a fire in the grate, harmonies flying off the ceiling. I want this for my children too. I want their lives to be full of song.

Just before I turned 40, I discovered I was adopted as a baby

When all else fails, food brings us together.

My mother’s cousin was Bill Millin, he was a Commando in WW2 and Lord Lovat’s piper, and one of the many heroes of the D Day landings and battles in France.

Bill used to stay in our home town in Scotland but eventually left and settled in the south of England, but he was fond of my mother and visited us often over the following years. As a small boy I would sit and listen to his tales of marching across Pegasus Bridge, bullets whizzing past his head, killing his colleagues, but none hitting him.

Various explanations were offered for this, that the German troops were sure he must be crazy so didn’t shoot him, but it seems more likely that the German commander was so impressed by Bill’s bravery that he ordered his men to avoid shooting him. I always liked the latter explanation, that a vestige of honour was maintained even in the midst of madness.

But what I did not discover until fairly recently was the impact the D Day landings had on my mother.

As a young woman in central Scotland, born into a large mining family of 15 children, she found work in a munitions factory, driving a crane. Around this time a cousin from Canada came over with the Allied troops to join in the D Day landings, and along with a group of his fellow Canadians, visited my mum’s family home and spent some time before going off to fight. Sadly her cousin was killed during the Landings and was buried in France.

By this time mum had moved to the Scottish Highlands, asked to come up to look after one of her sister’s family. And it was here that she met my dad, got married and settled down, raising three children. Decades later mum went with my dad to France to visit her cousin’s grave, just one young man amongst an uncountable number who fell in that foreign field. I still have some of the photos mum took of this trip. It was obvious that for some reason this particular event was significant, for reasons other than just the death of a relative, but I never discovered why.

Later in life my dad suffered severe ill health and passed away when only 70 after a miserable retirement punctuated by mental illness, but an illness which revealed many aspects of his life he had kept concealed. Mum gamely carried on and eventually, when in her late 60’s, decided to go alone to Canada to visit the remaining cousins she’d never met, several of whom were older than her and infirm and she wanted to see them before they died. She met up with some in the Saskatchewan plains, and then traveled to the B.C. coast to meet others. She had a great time.

But more than ten years later, and starting to show the early signs of dementia, mum quietly revealed a story she’d concealed for almost 60 years. I’m not sure of her motivation….maybe a sense of her failing mind, the love of ‘the story’, a feeling of guilt, or perhaps and more likely, just closing a circle that had for too long been left unattended….

Biting her lip, a glass of wine in her hand, and her eyes focused somewhere distant, she told me the story of her trip to Canada…….

“I didn’t just go to see the cousins………och…..John it’s a long story…….” and a tear welled up in her eye….“..when the Canadians came I fell in love with one of them……and we got engaged……”

….then…a long silence. Another sip of wine. A tear wiped before it started to obey the inexorable pull of gravity.

“He….well…he…bought me a ring, we were engaged, and I was so happy…. But then he had to go to war, off to fight in Europe, and I went to the railway station to see him and his fellow soldiers off, to wish them well. And then…….(a long regretful sigh)..and then……..my mum, your granny, and one of my big sisters appeared, and they pulled the ring off my finger and shouted at him…..and I just remember them throwing the ring at him, telling him it would never happen between us and the ring CLINK CLINK CLINKing and rolling along the platform towards him, and I was pulled away and he left on the train……….I can still remember his face, so sad, I could see it through my tears as the train left…..and then…..I never saw him again.”

Another silence, thoughts being lined up, emotion swelling and choking……both of us

“And then I heard nothing more from him, and I moved north and met your dad, and we had a family and…..and….”

A long pensive stare out of the window.

“But I discovered only a short time ago, after your dad died, that my Canadian soldier had written to me, had written many many letters, but they never got to me, your granny or my sisters destroyed them, didn’t forward them to me, never told me he’d persisted trying to get in touch…..and he kept trying and trying….he never forgot me……and…….and……I never forgot him either….”

I’m utterly silent now, transfixed as the story unfolds….

“But I knew roughly where he’d been born in Canada, so when I went to visit the cousins all those years ago what I didn’t tell you or anybody was that I bought a bus ticket and went to the nearest small town to where I knew he came from, hundreds and hundreds of miles from where I should have been going. I didn’t know where to start – it was only a small plains town, a farming centre, but spread out, so I went to the Town Hall where they had a small tourist office and asked. There was a woman at the desk and she smiled and I asked her if she might be able to help me locate someone. “Who is it?” she enquired so I said, just a Canadian soldier I met when he was in Scotland before the D Day landings, he was with my cousin, and I just ….well…wanted to get in touch with him again.”

“What was his name?” she asked, so I told her……”

“She smiled even more broadly. “He was my father-in-law!” she said.”

Mum stood and listened as the woman explained that he’d survived the war, came home to Canada and eventually met his wife, a local girl, and had a family. But, with emotion cracking in her voice continued ….“…..sadly he died…just last year, I’m so sorry.”

A circle closed. Letters written, never received; a love lost against a backdrop of a war that saw the loss of many. But each one had a story, and it took many many years to discover just a fraction of the story of my mother’s experience.

And when my son is old enough I’ll tell him too. About war, about love, and most of all about the importance of stories. About keeping them safe. Then passing them on to family.

During the Summer of 1976 I remember Grampie taking us for a walk to buy us Strawberry Mivvies. On the way we popped tar bubbles that were forming on the pavements due to the heat.

My family is unique. It’s made up of two dads and two mixed race boys. A wonderful mix which works perfectly.
It’s like many flavours you wouldn’t expect to work creating the most wonderful taste.

There is a recurring impact of the story of my first family where I am daughter and sister to my family now, where I am wife and mother. Sometimes, this is a wonderful blueprint and sometimes it is a terrible hindrance.

I can remember the day that you were born, and the day after when I visited your mother in the hospital, my sister. A baby niece, Matilda, lifted out from your mummy’s opened tummy. It hit me then, like it hadn’t before, the fact of you.

I remember too, when we stayed together at Christmas when you were 1. We played together, you and me, with colourful cups that stacked to form a tower. I remember you looking up at me, and how we stacked them over and over. My sister said to me, ‘I think you’ve made a friend’.

Later we would ‘sew’ with shoelaces, thread them through a colourful board that we could decorate with animal shapes. Each time I visited, you would ask me, ‘can we sew’? We would sit cross-legged on your bedroom floor. You would thread the coloured lines, and I would tie the knots.

More recently we laughed together, stayed up silly late playing a game that we couldn’t put down. Babysitting you, supposedly, I told my sister I forgot myself, that time slipped by as it can do, was outrun by our play.

Now, it’s been a while, and although I message you sometimes to wish that I could hug you, this time apart has shaken me. I think I am supposed to say that it doesn’t change anything, or that something about family is unshakeable.

So I’m writing this message to you, to our being apart. To how I love you, albeit unbeknownst to you, to try and show the fierceness of the good you give to me. Your bravery.

Matilda.

My family growing up had highs and lows but taught me how to love and be loved. My mother showed me a sense of family that was always open to others, willing to include and accept even when she didn’t understand what or how to embrace. Because she knew what it felt like to be rejected. I’m imprinted by her heart. There are many in our family who have joined us along the way on this journey of life. The love and care makes them family.

My family are of Spanish origins – there’s a long history of colonialism and pain cause by and inflicted upon my Peruvian family, but my Arequipeñan mother was raised by a strict but kind matriarch, and a slightly bumbling but equally loving father, who lived only to go fishing and used to swear that he was once cursed by a witch to never be happy in love.

My mother wanted to be a diplomat like her grandfather, a socialist political exile who fought for the less fortunate and was persecuted for it. However, by the time she was old enough to go to diplomatic college, terrorism was abound in Peru. She moved to Canada, where she started a different life, a different career, and was put on the path that led her to England, where she had me and my younger sister.

Both of my parental lines include decendants from the island of Ireland

Before I was born, my parents were looking for somewhere to live in Paris.

My dad was strongly against living on the other side of the ring road, while my mum didn’t understand why they should buy a tiny studio instead of a 2 bed just for a postcode. My dad explained that it was because his family was from Montmartre and he was really proud of his history. They took part in the Revolution, in the Commune avec much more. Eventually, my mum found a flat in Ivry-sur-Seine, just outside the ring road, after much discussion, she convinced him to buy a 2 bed there. My dad was a bit disappointed but knew it was a sensible decision.

30 years later, we’re in a pandemic and I am bored. A bit randomly I decide to do my family tree. Luckily, most of French archives have been digitalised so I can find nearly all the information I need. I do read many stories about my dad’s family in Montmartre, all cramped in a tiny flat with view on the Little Crown train line. But they moved there in 1920’s. Before this, half of them where in Libya, the other half… In Ivry-sur-Seine.

They were there physically, but not ‘there’ in any other sense. We have contact occassionally, but I have lived a different, better, more fulfilling life

The C*********’s – they were Tom’s family. My best friend at school. A split family. Mum living on one side of Balham. His Dad, his step-mum and sister Alice living on the other side. I was living in a children’s home in Roehampton and had stopped going to school. One day I was at Tom’s house (his mum’s) and she asked me why I wasn’t going to school. ‘They knock on my bedroom door in the morning and ask if I want to go to school and I just say no now and they leave me and just go and knock on the next door’. I remember Helen’s face, a mixture of sadness, shock and anger. I don’t remember hardly any time passing before she said ‘What if you came to live here, would you go to school?’ I dared not think it was even possible, but of course said yes. Imagine being able to live with your best friend. Helen get in touch with my local authority. She spoke to my social worker. Went to meetings, filled out forms and jumped through every hoop. She made no promises to me except I could stay until I completed my mock exams and then we’d take it from there. Her honesty meant everything and in a few weeks I was living with her and Tom and his little brother Joe. It was like a dream come true. Weeks passed. I kept going to school and in that time Tom’s dad and his family also took me in, so when Tom and Joe would move between their two families I would move too. At first I felt like an extra, a plus one, and odd-end, but both C********* families never made me feel like that, that came from within myself. Being abandoned by my blood family created a hole that is hard to fill. I knew I was different within the C********* family, but I was also the same. Closer to them then I woulld have expected. I felt their care, I felt their love and when us boys got out of hand I felt their disappointment equally with Tom and Joe as we sat that on the sofa all being read the riot act. A part of me loved it. Getting told together, having barriers thrown up around us, expectations being thrust upon us and the three of us like brothers sat on that sofa taking the heat. There was not a single moment when I remember crossing over from a friend who had come to stay for a little while to becoming part of the family. Blood I would have once thought would have been the ultimate barrier, but it never got in the way. Blood is chance. Blood in coincidence. But this was more. It cut through those barriers. The C*********’s opened their doors, their hearts and their arms and let me fall into their family, now my family and still my family twenty five years later. I stayed with the C*********’s for another two years before I went to University, but even today they’re never far away. Just a post code away, a WhatApp message away, two stops on the train away, a recalled memory away…most importantly their part of me and I carry them all, isn’t that what family is about. There is no escape and I love it.

Family is feeling known and seen. It’s seeing yourself in family members, past and present and them seeing themselves in you. It’s not having to explain. It’s deep, ancestral, spiritual and sensory knowledge and understanding of ourselves and each other. At times it is too much, to be seen and have yourself reflected back at you. It can therefore be challenging, maddening and even depressing. I guess that’s why families can feel so difficult yet so fabulous all at once- the deepest love mixed with the deepest hate. It’s also where we first learn about ourselves and others and how we can exist, show up and interact in the world around us. Like a microcosm of everything.

My sister taught me confidence, how to navigate the world in my twenties and how to have fun. I miss her everyday

I was the youngest of 7 children. I came to England when i was 24 years old. My mum died in January.

We are here part black, part white. Sometimes all around seems dark as night. When all feels hopeless and nothing right, you turn to family to find the light.

My father 1912-1977 was born in Middlesbrough and my mother 1924-2017 was born in India . My mother was the daughter of American Methodist Missionaries posted out to India . My father and mother met whilst out in India where my father was an administrator in the Indian Civil Service from 1935-1947.

I am writing this because photographs of Lemn Sissay as a baby reminds me so much of my Ethiopian adopted grandson. The resemblance is amazing. Liam my beautiful grandson born in April 2014 was abandoned by his mother or family for unknown reasons. He was found in Addis Ababa by a Security Guard on a grass bank covered in a white blanket crawling with ants. He was said to be 2 or 3 days old. The Security Guard gave him the Ethiopian name of Dagwali. My son and daughter-in-law adopted him and named him Liam Dxxxxxi. He lived happily in Dubai with them until he was diagnosed with SSPE a rare condition that develops after measles infection destroying nerve cells in the brain.

The Doctors a Great Ormond Street Hospital told us on Liam’s third birthday that he was terminally ill. He died in July 2019. Liam had big brown eyes and big smile and was full of fun and laughter. It gives me comfort to think Liam would have grown up with the same big smile and similar looks to Mr Lemn Sissay.

I think of Liam everyday and loved him so much. He is in my heart.

My loveliest memory is so simple Going to the launderette with my nan – the washing in an old pushchair. The ride back was sooo good – sitting on a pile of warm and dry washing – it felt like a carriage!!! Every nan seemed to have an old pushchair for washing and shopping !!

I always knew I was adopted, but not in a ‘special’ way, more a ‘saved from the gutter way’. My adoption and that of other adoptees in the family was not a good experience. Let’s leave it there, I’m not writing about that per se. My husband Roger has researched family trees for over forty-five years, as a hobby; but I’ve always said no to my family tree. However, when the laws changed back in 1976, after a few years we traced and met my birth family, or rather, my father (on several occasions). My mother wanted to keep the secret from everyone still, including her two subsequent children. My full-blooded brother and sister; my birth parents married each other when I was six years old.

Fast forward to January 2017, both adopted parents now dead and after yet another adopted family rejection by my godparents/aunt and uncle I said to Roger, I need to know where I’m from, I want to know my bloodline and so he started tracing my family tree one evening when I out. By the time I got home, through my father’s line he was back to the Plantagenets and beyond. This finally inspired me to but fingers to keyboard and writie my journey of finding me…

Chapter Extract: – finding My Birth Certificate
One of the ups of the ups and downs of Roger’s work as an offshore Pipeline Engineer was the ‘being entertained’ bit. It was August 1990, a lovely summers day and we were being taken to dinner at the rather swanky Greenhouse Restaurant; Gary Rhodes was head chef at the time, sadly both restaurant and chef are no longer with us. I organised our baby sitter to come early and meet the girls from school and I took the train into London. I would have been dressed in my best, probably a Laura Ashley dress back then, and feeling good. I went to St Catherine’s House on the corner of Kingsway and the Aldwych which at that time housed the Births, Deaths and Marriages records for England. That too is no more. It closed its doors in 1973 and became the headquarters of an oil company, Exxon Mobil. Civil registration began on 1st July 1837 and originally records were kept at Somerset House. It wasn’t the first time I’d been to St Catherine’s House. We had taken Rachel and Lou to show them their entries in the big registers. And they really were big, old, dusty leather-bound books. Each book held records for quarter of each year. There was row upon row of plain, no nonsense bookshelves housing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of registers. I can’t remember whether the entries were handwritten or typed but you looked up your name in the register for the quarter of the year that your birth day was in and there you were – except I wasn’t. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be in the register along with Roger, the girls and everyone else since 1837.

I, along with every other officially adopted person since 1926 was excluded from polite society, kept separate, we were on the naughty shelf. I still remember the feeling of indignation and hurt, on behalf of us all, that we were side-lined. I’d like to feel that that made us special, not being among the great rabble of society; that we had a special place because we were special. It didn’t. I felt the tears prick my eyes but I stuffed my feelings down into my shoes on that first visit because I was there as a mum, not an adoptee. This was a family outing and afterwards we took the girls to The Chicago Meatpackers (another long gone); the girls loved watching the trains zoom along the tracks above our heads, I loved the pulled pork sandwich with and apple coleslaw. This was family time.

But on that August day, I was on a mission. I now knew my original birth name, and of course I knew my birthday, which meant I could now look me up in the register. I was definitely discombobulated excitement and trepidation; I got confused about where to look and had to ask an assistant to point me in the right direction. It was really quite simple. I found the register for June 1956, my finger traced up and down the pages until I saw me: Patricia Bxxxn. My finger clung to the entry. Me, a different me, an other me, but still me. The overhead fluorescent lights still hummed as the world stopped spinning while this monumental moment materialised before my eyes, ink on parchment page. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. I was screaming, inside my head – I’ve found me, I’m here. I’m not a secret, this is me. Look everyone, Me. I’ve found ME. No one looked. Heads continued bobbing down in private searching.

I took a pencil and carefully filled in the form with the reference number, went to the cashier’s window and handed over my money. I had just ordered my original birth certificate. The certificate for me; before I was adopted. My certificate valid from 10th June 1956 until my adoption certificate was issued on 26th November 1956. Another existence, before a file and a ‘chop’, as they call it in Malaysia; chop seems more fitting. One life, one future was chopped off and another began with an official stamp on official paper. Northumberland was swopped for Suffolk, both coastal, both with rivers. How different would my life have been without that chop? Best not to dwell ‘some’ would say, ‘some’ have said…

I waited for my birth certificate to arrive. When it did, I was stunned to discover that Roland’s name wasn’t on it. A blank where my father’s name should be. Why didn’t Ann acknowledge him, it seemed a scandal in the making to leave it blank, as if she didn’t know; what would the neighbours say if they found out? Was it to put ‘me’ of the scent? I now know that its all down to good old-fashioned bureaucracy, if the father’s not present when a birth is registered, his name is not on the certificate. However, a father can register the birth without the mother being present, arcane English law at work.
Birth certificates are required to have the details of the biological mother and – where possible – the details of the biological father.

In other words, if you’re not married to the child’s mother, you need to be present at the birth registration to guarantee your right to parental responsibility.
It is usually the mother’s responsibility to register the birth, but the father can do it on his own if he is married to the mother.

Ann was in Lowestoft, I’ve no idea where Roland was. He just got a phone call and the matter was never spoken about again, ever, until I showed up.

It’s now 2021, it’s taken me another thirty-two years to get to this point. I’ve started many times. I’ve written on the terrace of the Red Piano Bar in Cambodia, on a balcony overlooking the Andaman Sea; on a five-mastered clipper in the Caribbean. I’ve ripped up the pages and binned them in airport lounges; deleted the files from my computer in my study and definitely hit delete sitting on the deck of a friend’s house in Bozeman, Montana. I’ve taken writing classes up front and personal and by zoom in the pandemic. Friends across the miles, across the years have said “when are you going to write your story”, my husband says it a lot.

My maternal Grandmother is Welsh , a small pretty woman with delicate features. Little but fierce and so ahead of her time. From this Welsh speaking female 5 children were born and raised children of their own resulting in 4 grandchildren with their growing families in ?? America , 3 grandchildren with their growing families in Australia ?? 1 grandson with his family in Thailand and myself who brought up my children in Wales ??????? . While some emigrated to England . One small Granny can change the World ? and it is truly round

We flitted to Scotland after my dad was found in a caravan with a neighbour – she was a social worker. This little village was an oasis to grow up in. Fields, fish farms, farmers and fun! We had snow in the winter and swam in rivers filled with the rain from our surrounding hills in summer. I believed the collection I could see from my bedroom was actually a sleeping, friendly giant. My older brother used to push me around our house on a Sindy beach buggy, as I dodged the jagged Artex walls.

My mother and father died within two years of each other, they were our everything. My brothers and sisters (6 of us!) are very close and we are convinced that our parents are always nearby when we need them, two magpie birds visit and let us know all will be ok.

I always assumed my mixed ethnic background was Indigenous, Spanish and probably Arab from northern Africa. Recently, I found out that I am also descendant of Sephardic Jews that were expelled from Spain in the 16th century. I like to think that my body carries many stories of colonialism, hope and resistance. I like to imagine those stories and think that my body brings them together to remind us that we are one, that we are simply human.

Family is love, laughter, eating together and holidays.

I remember camping in the summer with my family. Us kids would run wild, climb trees, explore new places and old alike. It was pure heaven!

Family is your heartbeat. We dance in time to eachothers rhythm. We sing in harmonious embrace. Without family, my heart ceases to work as it should do.

It’s 2.45am and I’m lying awake with so many thoughts, worries & memories racing around my head. Even though I’m exhausted & need to be up in 5 hours with my best smile on and my ears wide open. I’m Zoe, a foster mum so our family changes on a regular basis. The three main characters never change in our ever evolving family. There’s myself, my husband and our beautiful 18 year old son.. So why am I struggling to sleep? Well, our youngest family member has been with us now for 4 years but on Monday he leaves us to start the next part of his family journey. Don’t worry it’s a very happy reunion but I don’t mind admitting it has been a very, very difficult 4 years. He will be returning back to his mum after 8 long years of only seeing each other once a month for an hour in a grim contact centre. I worry if he’ll cope, if he’ll end up back in the system, if she will cope, will the support we fought long and hard for him to have just fall away without me there at the helm? So many, many worries. We will wave him off with his box full of memories as he disappears out of sight in a strange car with only his social worker by his side. We will sit round the table that night for dinner and talk about all the things we hope we did well, what we could have done better and contemplate who will arrive next needing a safe place to call home.

I learnt how to share early on, before most ever do. I learnt how to share in the womb. Two heart beats, two bodies in one perfect room, a magic box of baby talk between me and you. Its easy to share when you know how to. Easy peasy, it just takes two – two babas babbling like a river running through their very own beautiful boogaboo world. Every mystery a frontier we chart together. Every treasure, every story better shared. A secret language of laughter and dancing hands, of understanding she’s got my back, and my nose, and my eyes and the way our smiles crack when we’re tired, the way we curl up together and lean in, soft and warm and almost one thing, but two. Not as easy learning that duplication is unusual. Freaky, even. People stare. We get asked so many questions – what is it like, being a twin? Oh! Look! So strange, so odd, look at those weirdos! Did you ever?! What is strange? The world seems to pull us apart with their expectations of singularity. It’s hard saying ‘I’ when I want to say ‘we.’ You may find this hard to believe, but I’ve never quite understood the word ‘me.’ Sharing is all I know how to do. It’s hard being one when your rhythm is two.

Together we are stronger. We havd just lost nan but we grieve as one

I have two amazing children, that I haven’t been able to see because of the pandemic. Jessica and Steven are my world and I miss them so much. I am so lucky to have two such incredible people in my life.
Also I miss my lovely parents, both of whom have recently passed. If I got to spend just one day with anyone, it would be my mum and dad, for just one last hug.

My great grand uncle Charlie was the most colourful character. Charismatic, handsome, always immaculately turned out, he had a louche, languid charm, a razor sharp wit and a predilection for beautiful women, a good cigar and the inside of a casino. He brought a heavily pregnant croupier to the door of my grandparents, asking them to look after her until she had the baby. He talked his sister into giving him her half of the company they had inherited from their father, and promptly lost it at cards. He was jailed at one stage for a gambling debt (the family explained it away vaguely by telling people he had “got lost”). But somehow, everyone loved him. He was a gifted magician and would entrance any children he met with his close up tricks. I am sure that there are many, many more stories about the extraordinary life of Uncle Charlie, and I wish I knew them.

When i was a child i liked to watch old black and white pictures on the tv with my Grandmother. She would always get very involved in the story and says things like ‘ hes a clever actor. He’ll work out she lying.’ It made it so entertaining

Our family history research shows my great-great-grandfather Simon Jacobson was a translator in the Russian Merchant Marines. He married Rose Jusman, and they lived in Liverpool.

Hi lemy

What i would like to share is a memory of a short few years i had a cat, her name was smokey and she meant the world to me, she showed me such love and commitment that wasn’t available to me from my family,my family set up was very dysfunctional, my deepest memory was when smokey was pregnant with kittens and i stayed with her throughout the labour i was only allowed to keep one of the kittens and the rest were disposed off which horrified me. I named my new kitten cinders, i remember their soft fur and gentle touch and the melodic purr as she cuddled up to me as i hid away in the green house reading books, Love comes in unexpected ways and smokey helped me through a very difficult patch in my life i will forever be grateful to her.

For many people a smell can relocate them through time or space. Not so much for me but an image? Certainly. And this wooden green door set into a wall draped with ivy transports me back through time to my primary school years when my love of reading was embedded into my very fibres. The book? The Secret Garden, of course. What else could it be? A mysterious door set into a high wall through which there is no automatic entry.

Some books I read and truly never think of again. Others stay with me in the immediate aftermath. A rare few I carry with me for life and so it is with this classic. I loved the challenge of reading the Yorkshire accent – I was fascinated that language could be written to represent true speech. As children we are accustomed to reading grammatically correct pieces – “Yes, I am going to the shop. Would you like to come with me?” rather than the vernacular – “Yeah, I’m goin’ to the shop. You comin’?” I remember the teachers who would make me repeat myself if I dared shorten the we are to we’re or you will to you’ll. This was my first exposure to a written dialect and I struggled with it at first. I sounded the abbreviated words out loud and pondered their meaning. I recall hearing the accent on tv and knowing instantly that that was what I had been trying to read.

The character of Colin – the sickly boy who had been confined to his bed – infuriated me. I distinctly recall wanting to shake him and to tell him to give over his egocentric ways. I had little patience for his moaning. I was more fond of Dickon, the free spirited animal lover. I fantasised about living his life, free to roam as he pleased and to make friends with all manner of wild creatures. I admired his respect for his family and the maturity he showed. The wild boy had much to teach the wealthier cousins of the story.

And I identified with the heroine, Mary Lennox, of course. The book begins with her being orphaned in India and sent to live with an uncle in, well, Yorkshire. Just as Anne of Green Gables was fostered from the mainland, Emily of New Moon and Pollyanna are sent to live with aunts – as is James of Giant Peach fame. Oliver Twist gets adopted. Harry Potter was orphaned. We never know the origins of the dark haired, ill tempered Heathcliff. (The Secret Garden had been a wonderful introduction to the moors on which he and Cathy lived, loved and died.)

I blush to think that I was well into my 30s before realising what so many literary heroes of mine have in common and why they held such interest to me. As an adopted child I was accustomed to wondering what could have been – most people are born into their family and that is the only place they could ever belong. Yes, I was born to a set of parents but from there my life could have taken any number of turns. There was another girl adopted into a family living in Arklow the same week as me. I do not know her name but I know a little of her story and it could easily have been mine. Her father died from suicide when we were still teenagers and I remember feeling so grateful and then guilty that that was her fate and not mine. Afterall, what factor decided which of us would go live with which family? That I even grew up in Arklow was not a predestined given. Adopted from a Dublin agency I could easily have ended up anywhere on the eastern side of the country. I might have never met my Arklow born husband and raised my own two Arklow born children.

But my love of reading – where was it born? In my Saturday trips to the library, walking up the steps into the echoey tiled entrance hall, the books cradled in my arms. Each week I would gaze at the large marine bomb on display in fascination before entering into the library’s hushed tones. I stood at the brown counter that gradually shrank as I grew and would pass over my small pile of books to one of the two elderly ladies behind the desk. Then I would do my rushed library walk – a quick step movement denying energy but unable to hide my enthusiasm – to the children’s shelves to eek out authors I loved and unread tomes, while frequently glancing over to the adult shelves for reassurance. There, eeking out loved authors and unread tomes, would stand my mother, holding books close to her face to read the first page or so to gauge interest. As the years passed the text in her books became larger and my books morphed into young adult material but for years we both honoured our hushed ritual of the choosing.

And, apart from poor troubled Heathcliff, those characters I loved all lived happily ever after. As, for the most part, did I.

As an only child, of my parents (though I had much older half siblings) my playmates were always hugely important to me. I remember long warm summer days, where I only seemed to go home for meals. We would play in the street: British Bulldog, May I, Farmer may I cross your Golden River, Budge, Tiggy on High and so many others. We gave ‘baccys’ on bikes and some dads built go-carts. As we got older and roamed a bit further, we often got into bother scrumping for apples, falling into rivers and streams (or being pushed) when fishing, with our jam jars and nets, in Meanwood Park and The Hollies. Halcyon days full of fun and freedom.

My family is flexible – it is not a static concept, the very essence of it and of its boundaries is blurry. In stories of immigration, loss and diaspora, it is hard to keep in touch, recognizing others as part of your own family. What is it that ties us together ? Memories, places we left, feeling, the shape of an eye, photos ? We need something that binds us. In Judaism, it is the family that is at the epicenter of religion, not the synagogue. Sacrality and ritual: we find them in family traditions and stories. We create space with ties, memory with love. Family is learning how not to forget.

Because of the family I was born into, I have always been scared my husband would leave me, that I wasn’t good enough to be loved by him. Then I had my daughter, and I stopped being scared, because she is a special kind of glue, the most precious, glorious person I have ever met.

I want to tell you about my grandmother, who died in January of this year aged 96. She made ice cream for literally anyone, and regularly used to beat me when we watched University Challenge. In 1939 her Canadian stepfather moved her and her younger siblings to Canada to be safer, and after she finished university early, she snuck onto a Belgian arms ship to come back to the UK and do her wartime duty, fixing radios for the WRNS. During her lifetime she lived in North London, her older brother in Switzerland, her younger half brother in Seattle, and her younger half sister in Israel. She was the last one of them left for many years. I feel too far away from my sister while we live on opposite sides of London. I can’t imagine the isolation she must have felt during her lifetime.

I underestimated my family. They have proved to be amazing to me. All the years of doubt – should my parents stay together? Would we ever learn not to explode into arguments when together? – We’ve all learnt what each others’ limits are, I think, and don’t push each other so far beyond what each person can handle. My parents have done everything in their power to help me make a home for my children and stand on my own two feet. We hung in there. We’re not all cosy together, but it’s strong in its own way.

My father fought in 1st World War in Palestine. my mother was 30 years younger than him.. she had had TB and spent 3years convalescent on The Isle of Wright .

Family. My family has changed a lot throughout my life. I lived in Shetland with my mam and dad until they split up when I was a toddler. Me and mam moved to the mainland, life was happy I seen my mam as my best friend but addiction took a hold of her and at the age of about 7 my dad won a full custody of me in the courts with the help of his mam and dad my grandparents, we moved back to Shetland. I cant say I liked it much to begin with, I had missed so much school when id lived with mam, being stuck inside all day learning over the summer holidays was the last thing I wanted to do, especially when id been used to an amount of freedom that wasn’t very normal for someone my age. Me and dad lived with my grandparents at first in their big Victorian home, we had taken my kitten Kiara up to Shetland with us and it made the summer indoors bearable until I met new kids after summer.
I ended up having a very stable and loving family network me and dad got our own home and granny and grandad always had space for me, as did my dads brother my uncle. I still missed mam and seen her in the holidays. When I was ten addiction got the better of my mam and she passed away. I wont go through the sad details of the funeral or the experience of death. I will however share the bonds that followed. I think hardship does bring people closer together but my dad became my hero and a beckon of strength for me during the weeks, months and years that followed. I was torn up as any kid would be but dad just kept feeding my soul with knowledge, books, media and most of all love. He had endless encouragement and understanding which I think is what a good parent should do but doesn’t always manage- we’re all human at the end of the day! But my dad did manage it. People who knew me and dad always commented on our ability to know what each other was thinking without having to say to each other. My dad had a saying for everything too, whether he made it up or it was a common turn of phrase; if id behaved well as a kid to I was as good as gold, when I stumbled my toes running up the stairs dad would say, if you’re going to be dump you gotta be tough. My personal favourite was one he made up on the spot when I was a teenager, your life by the magic of rhyme, don’t worry sweetheart there’s plenty of time. My granny became my stand in mam of sorts and it suited me just fine that she didn’t try and encroach trying to be my mam. She took me through the woman hood side of life and was always starting creative projects with me way into my teenage years. Grandad was just always there I suppose. I don’t know how else to put it, he has always been such a calm and serene soul. I never ever got shouted at by grandad if I ever got into trouble he would sit me down and talk calmly through what I had done wrong, why I had done it and what could be done to make things right. I was nurtured so much by my family and I truly see how its made me into the woman I am today. The times when me and my dad would go to my grandparents for Sunday dinner were the times I have felt most at home in my life, sat round talking about the week that had passed.
When I was 21 my dad died. By that stage my grandparents had divorced and the beautiful Victorian house was sold on. My grandparents are still a big part of my life though and I speak to them on the phone a lot. I have a boyfriend, his family and some friends who love me. My idea of family has been changed again since my dads passing. I feel like I’m looking through a thick glass windows to normal families when I go to a wedding, or being invited to something as simple as a Sunday roast. Don’t get me wrong I want to be invited to these things and I love being around the people who mean so much to me. I’m just trying to figure out what family means to me now that im reaching my mid 20s, and to be honest nothing I feel now comes close to the security the word family brought me in my mid teens. There is a place that has helped fill in some of the gaps in my life that I have been looking to find, the Whocares?Scotland family has given me so much. Its not just an organisation to me its a place of nurturing, somewhere you can find yourself through the compassion of others. The sense of connection surprised me as I really didn’t think you could be this close to people you hardly knew. Some might try say that its solidarity that brings people to WhoCares?Scotland but for me I was a lost soul looking for a family and an identity and the family at WhoCares?Scotland are the ones who found me and brought me into the fold.
I am learning how to connect, I’ve always known how to empathise but my attachments have been unhealthy in friendships since my dad died. Ive wanted my friends to fill that family hole that was left but really the surface level friendships that we manage to build can only go so deep. The love can be real and returned in full, but the exception to be able to rely on in life is going a bit far. Thankfully I do have a couple of friends that I can rely on in the real world when things get tough and they are my family. When it comes to building me up and nurturing me I think my couple pals and WhoCares?Scotland, with them by my side I can keep on going through life and keep my head above water.

My dad had undiagnosed ADHD. He had crazy boundless energy and he was exciting to be around. Nothing was ever boring if my dad was involved. I, on the other hand, grew into a calm, chilled person. My dad helped me develop patience. I am a better parent because of him.

My family are my life

My family is dominated by my mother. I have always searched for but never achieved her approval. She is sensitive and brutal, fierce and fragile, loving and unkind, god fearing and judgemental, demanding of the highest standards of herself and others but never feeling as if anyone achieves them including herself. Her feelings which are out there and visceral have always trumped mine which are inward and repressed. I wonder what its like to be free of the shackles of maternal love.
This is a lovely project Lemn , Thank you

I have an ache like no other when I have not seen my Grandchildren. I actually feel a physical heart throb when I get a photo or video of them

I found my daughter on the bedroom floor of her rented house. Her 4 year old son lay beside her with his eyes tightly shut, pretending to be asleep. My 6 year old granddaughter was in her room. Every toy she owned had been pulled down onto the floor. She had been into her mothers room, she knew there was no response from mummy. Mummy wasn’t waking up.
They came to live with me that night and have done this past 3 and a half years.
“Are you my family?” the boy said after visiting their dad and his girlfriend and their young son.
” You have a different name to mine”
So I explained about his mothers name being that of my first husband, my name being that of a combination of my maiden name and my third husband, like his was a combination of his mum and dads surnames but that yes, we were most definitely family.

Family is…

Family is blue skies then horizontal rain;
Out early and up through corries to plateau and mountain peak,
Squares of chocolate and hot squash,
Giggles when gloves won’t slip onto cold, wet fingers.
A kiss on the forehead,
A scream of frustration,
A waulking song,
A high-five.

Family is floating in blue spaces,
With the pull and suck of a paddle
Through smooth liquid seaweed.
Our eldest is a back-seat paddler,
Always noting inadequacies;
And so, a swap in the shallows
Curled toes in wet sand.

Family picks at its own scabs,
Rips stitches, slams doors in its own face,
And cries into endless pillows.

Family pulls its punches,
Presents a united front, a force to be reckoned with,
And curates a will of its own.

Family is honesty.
Family is tenderness.
Family is courage.
Family is fractal.
Family is hope.
Family is oxygen.

My family is crafted. Our ties are not blood ties, they are heartfelt bonds that are stronger than anything I could imagine in this world. The pleasure in my people is so powerful, it sometimes hurts. My adolescent son, without prompting, gives a fleeting and discreet peck on my forehead—pang. A friend has a lost look in her eyes, so I fold her in an embrace—crunch. Out of the corner of my partner’s mouth, comes the sweetest smirk—whack. Family conjures up the stormy and exhilarating tensions of pleasure and pain. Family is not a rare gem that is found but is a well-polished stone that uniquely glistens and sparkles with effort and care. My family is everything.

I want to tell you about my old Uncle Tom, he lived to 100! My granny’s brother, she didn’t speak to him for years, basically because she was a bit snobby, it was complicated, but quite sad. When I did meet Tom, as an adult,, it was like seeing the male version of my granny, which was very funny! But, Tom, he had lived a great life, he was a rebel, he messed around and didn’t do what he was told. He was in the Navy, and caught their attention for his bad behaviour, always breaking the rules. So they gave him the choice, youre out or secret service, let’s make use of that wild spirit and intelligence, seeking its own fun! He never told us about that service but he always had a twinkle in his eye. Their was a great story about rum! I’m lucky to have had great men in my family, those who are no longer here, like Tom, I aspire to have their spirit, drive and adventure in me. He had a great laugh too and when he turned 100 he was interviewed by Radio Ipswich and he recommended a fry up every day and a pint! Haha! I love and miss him, be kind and fun whenever you can. Take risks, tell stories, be yourself and have a twinkle in your eyes xx

Family is strange and some of it estranged, which hurts. But the burning I feel in my chest reminds me of how much I love the ones who are close. And a few of my friends have become chosen family. They help with the absence of presence.

For me, life and being part of a family is a journey where the whole array of emotions are evoked. Feelings that include joy, worry, fun, sorrow, frustrations, humour and anger. As individuals we mismatch and harmonise. Our personal histories are emotional and complex. Despite of and because of all this, the foundation maintaining our family is love.

My family is me and my three children who are 22, 21 and 17. They are each individuals but there are similarities between us. We are all creative people but in unique ways. We share family stories amd support each other through life. We are open amd honest with each other. I have learned about many things because of the interests of my children. I’ve also learned to trust them as they got older and consider the older two as friends (the younger one is not quite there yet).

Close bond , everlasting,, connected

We get by on love, chaos, humility, apologies, forgiveness, long walks, pizza and morning hugs.

there was so much laughter in our home. We have gone to Church all our lives and we still do… we avoid to look at each other even in Church lest we burst into laughter just by looking at each other .

Being in my family as a child was like being in a gang. We had our own language and our own jokes, our stories and our mythology. We were invincible and invincibly were ‘we’. As we’ve grown and moved away sometimes family has tugged and pulled uncomfortably, sometimes it has been an ear worm, a song which sings itself when I’m not directly listening. Always it has been a net.

Home

A house stands bright at the top of the rise
As you climb through green bracken and gorse
Deep hedges conceal all its magic inside
And all of its memories of course.

This is my home. This is the place
Where I played as a child and ran free
Where I laid on the grass with a book in my hand
Where I knew that I could be me.
Where we stayed out all day, building dens, building dams
Then ran back home for our tea.

It’s not just the place but the people within
Those you’re attached to by elastic and string
Whose hearts chime with yours, who draw you back in,
Whose love you can trust, through thick and through thin.

And it isn’t just those that are there when you go
But all of the people you’ve been lucky to know
And share happy gatherings over the years;
They’re part of its fabric and part of the trees
And the shrubs and the flowers, the grass and the breeze
That blows over the forest and in through the gate
They’re part of the memories that make it the place
Where you know you belong, that is inside of you.
That began as a seed and grew as you grew.

Hide and seek children, barefoot on the grass
At family gatherings of many years past,
On garden chairs, with tea cups, the elderly dears
who are part of the magic that’s been there through the years.
From the very first visit when the grass dry and tall
invited us in to discover it all.

Over the gate we tumbled and ran
Exploring this place, the adventure began
Down paths through the trees where the well pump stood
to the shed with old paint pots and pieces of wood
The garden ran happily untamed and wild
Perfect for hiding places, when you are a child.
The house so neglected, forlorn and unloved
Arched windows and pillars, a red roof above.
And cascading wisteria bedecking its face
Twisting tendrils through windows to capture the place.

We sat on the porch steps and breathed it all in
Enchanted; a new life about to begin.

The roots that I grew here, grew into my soul
It’s a place I feel grounded and rested and whole
It’s the distance, in some ways, now that I’ve flown,
That conjures the magic that calls me back home.

My parents fostered 2 children when we were little. They came to us aged 9 and 12. We were aged 1, 2, 4 and 5. They lived with us until they were adults. I always considered them part of our family.

Dad was a natural comedian, people loved him because he was really quick and funny. He was also a really good singer and would get up at the ‘Go as you Please’ nights at the pubs and clubs. We grew up in a house of laughter and song. I love it when people comment that we, his 4 children, have his sense of humour, we can all hold a tune as well. One story my mam recounts was when they had an argument and he threatened to not make her laugh any more ?❤️ Of course he couldn’t stay grumpy for long ?Hapoy birthday Lemn xxxx

When love is shown it’s wonderful , when it’s not it’s painful

I’m a twin and will love my brother forever, though we are verg different. Family is about connection, with whoever we’ve become – because we garden. What we grow includes things taken as seedlings from our dear much missed dad’s garden – so there are plants nodding in borders all over the country. When I see them flower and glory in my garden, I’m with my dad, my twin, my mum, my little sister. Grown and growing together somehow, so when we meet up it’s like we were never apart and all that growing continues. So my image? Would be (if the system let me copy it in, which for sone reason it won’t) of something growing still, passed to me by my dad, the wise and funny gardener whose wisdom, humour and green fingers we now pass down the generations growing on from here.

When I wasn’t looking, Tom suddenly appeared. He is my older brother by four years and was born to our mother Aasta May when so many miles away from her family and home. Tom was adopted in April 1950, four or six weeks after his birth, and it took 65 years for me to learn about any of this. Since acquiring such knowledge, I have layered much of its warm and welcome certainty with surmise and deduction, each strand of imagining attached to increasing feelings of sadness for mom giving up a son I am sure she wanted to love. I can never know for sure why she journeyed the nearly 500 miles from Omaha to Denver to give birth, but researching reveals that at the Florence Crittenton Home where Tom was born, the rule was he, like all new babies, would be given up for adoption – mothers there for that very reason and with the dreadful motivation usually being concealment of a family’s embarrassment and shame. I might assume our mother asked the Lutheran Social Services to handle that adoption – one of three commonest ‘agency’ choices – but I can never know for sure why she christened my brother Michael, though I can also assume this was her reason for giving the same meaningful name to me.

I’ve learned that family is not just your blood relatives. Family are ghe people who welcome you with open arms, love you in spite of yourself and never give up on you. Family are the people who open their hearts and homes to you. Family, something i always yearned for yet felt i didnt deserve. Even when i had my own children i didnt know how to be a father or how to love them. Until one day people i didnt know made me a part of their family and taught me how to love my own. Family is where i am safest.

THE DAY ALL THE TOYS WENT ON A TRIP
It was a nice sunny afternoon. The Beatles were on the radio singing “Penny Lane”. I was three.
My older half-brother Graham said “Oh alright then, I’ll take you round the block” after me badgering him for ages to have a go in his motorbike sidecar. I was fascinated with it’s scale. To me in my little world it looked like a teeny tiny car. A short while later he was horrified to see I had crammed every dolly/teddy/glass animal/ I owned into his sidecar. We were off! How exciting. Three minutes later we were back home. I didn’t mind the trips brevity. Everything in my world was so small. It was fine. And a day I’ll never forget. What a trip! Thanks Graham!

When my Aunty, my mum’s younger sister (there was 3 girls) and always my Grandparents favourite, was a teenager she moved to Plymouth with some other girl friends from the local area. My strict Grandpa reluctantly agreed. Then he had a call from another parent one of the girls was taking the pill so Grandpa got in the car, late at night, drove to the flat and turfed Ruth out. Just a rumour one of them was on the pill was enough! She had no choice and had to say for weeks and weeks it wasn’t her who was on the pill to be allowed to return to the flat. Years later at family celebrations we laugh about this story, or we did, our family is all very fractured now but this shows how times change. I still loved my Grandpa; he was a man of his time trying to do his best and pregnancy when unmarried was one of his biggest fears for one of his three daughters.

A letter to my dad, my rock, my prayer worrier;
It will be almost six years since you went to your heavenly father so suddenly, leaving a hole I cannot fill. Doing what you taught me, your values and love of your family, community, and country—striving to honor you every day by trying to do my corner of the world better.
The last time we spoke, you told me to leave my life in God’s hand. To praise him through my triumphs and challenges, to surrender all to him, and say TEMESGEN!!/ PRAISE!!/.
You said, “leave your worries and surrender. Lift your hands and say I surrender!!” It has been hard without you, I see you every day in my son’s and my daughter’s kindness, my sisters’ tenacity and faith, my borther^s heart, my mom^s determination.
Thank you for praying for us , teaching us to have strong faith, love each other, share what we have, and do it all to honor God.
I miss you, and I love you.
Your baby girl

Family is the small things that aren’t small at all, and that you carry all your life. Memories to cherish, building blocks of your character and important narratives of who you are, your refuge when ever you need one. Here’s a small thing: my dad borrowed a camera from his colleague at work to capture a moment of me being awarded a prize at primary school.. On the way we found it didn’t work…my dad stopped at an electronic shop and buys a brand new camera he could ill-afford. He managed just one blurred picture of me getting my prize – he didn’t quite know how to work the damn thing. After the ceremony, I took a picture of Dad explaining the operating manual to my Mom. It’s one of my favourite photos of my youthful, loving parents whose adventures mostly revolved around what they did for their kids. The small things…

My Mam enraged me because she was paranoid about my car and wouldn’t let me drive it with my son in it. Then later my brother and sister in law told me that they were expecting another baby, and we had champagne. Mam is still wrong, but it’s because she loves us.

My mother was unexpectedly bereaved last March. We were not able to visit her at first because of self isolation and lockdown rules. My sister sent my mum a poem, by text, every night at about 11.30 pm for the first few weeks . At least one of them was by Lemn Sissay. Mum said receiving these bedtime poems from her younger daughter was one of the things that helped her heal the most in those difficult days .

We grew up in a big house on a square in London. I knew we had more than most people living in the area. My mum said that she had grown up in Ireland, but after she died I found out that in fact she grew up in Earl’s Court, above a butcher’s shop, and that her family were very poor. I wasn’t half Irish after all. And Mum had made it all up, because she wanted to escape from the world she grew up in. She went to grammar school and became ashamed of her family. I have met my aunt and 2 cousins now, and feel a sadness and anger that the class system in this country divided us and deprived us me of my family when I was growing up and needed them

5 marriages, 3 divorces, 3 sisters, 2 brothers, 3 deaths.

When people ask I have often said ‘oh my families complicated’, but it’s not really what I mean, and that’s just describing it be outside definitions and putting people in my family in boxes with labels that the outside world wants in order to understand – asks to understand by our ‘blood relations’, mother, father, step parent, half-sister, step brother….they are my parents, my brothers and my sisters, we shared parts of our lives together, we loved people together and we grieved for people together, differently but together.

At the heart of all that is my Mum, who has driven me crazy over the years, but who I love with all my heart. She’s at the centre, because without her fire, and her adventure and her challenge, non or us would know each other and actually for me it’s not very complicated at all. I have been lucky enough to have 5 parents and 5 brothers and sisters, and yet I’m an only child – how lucky am I! It’s not complicated because I have been cloaked in love from this big messy beautiful, dysfunctional family.

Each of us hurt and scared in different ways, and I know some deeper than others. Maybe I’m the one who see’s our family through rose coloured spectacles and, after all I was the who only experienced some of the drunkenness on the every- other- weekends and holidays, I was the one who still had my Mum as an anchor, and my extended web of family on that side when you lost yours.

What is family to me, a beautiful mix of wonderful different people, who I love with all my heart, who I would not have known if my life had been ‘conventional’ by other people’s standards.

This is not complicated, this is beautiful, and messy and love, and hurt, and let down, and love and sadness and joy and sharing and love.

My sisters are who keep me sane and smiling, even when we face difficulties as we have all our lives

It is the solid and secure foundation of my life ?

I had a baby 7 weeks ago; mine and my partners first child. We are now a family. Within hours of him arriving I felt a love, protectiveness and attachment that I had never felt before, and imagined a loss, worry and failure that I could never contemplate before. I immediately understood my relationship with my parents more, and the idea of family became something else to me.

When my daughter was born I was so very surprised to find that from the very first second of her life she led the way in what she needed and I followed, rather than the other way round as I’d previously understood from the expression ‘bringing up a child’.

The picture is of my sister and me on Christmas Day 2020, taken by my daughter. There are only three of us in the country and we were determined to spend that time together.

The traditional concelt of family is somewhat alien to me. Of course, i grew up in a family. Quite a large one, actually. It was hard for me to see all of the other kids at school with their ‘normal’ families. Meanwhile, at home I had two alcoholic parents and lived my childhood flinching as a glass flew across the room. No extended family members helped or supported myself and my siblings – something that in hindsight (now having nephews of my own) is baffling to me. Stereotypically, family is supposed to love and care about you, but it felt the opposite. Then I went to university, and everyone got drunk and shared their own disfunctional stories of their families. Our crazy mums and dads became famous to one another. Being the only one left every easter, summer and christmas because i didn’t have a good family to go back to just emphasised to everyone else the need I had to be cared for – often traveling to stay with friends in their hometown and enjoying a few evenings with their families. The contrast was fascinsting. And then by the time I left university three years later, i had created my own family. A group of misfits who had just experienced some of the craziest years of our lives together.l. I still don’t know if a ‘normal’ family exists, but I hope I can give my children something closer to it in the future. Not all stories about families are lovely, and it’s ok to recognise and honour those who missed out on a fairy tale concept of family.

Originally from a farming background, my parents had four daughters. Two became nurses ( i am one of those) two became farmers. I am married with Two beautiful adult sons who have amazing partners. Believe in living for the moment

Born to young parents youth club sweethearts, married as teens had us 4 kids rapid. Our childhood was fun structured lots of freedom outdoors as we had to be out so as not to mess up the house or cause them bother. We entertained each other 3 of us shared a bedroom till my Dad bought outright our first house. He was driven by money you see. We hardly saw him but when we did he was fun and adventurous he would pack the car to ‘set off’ we went all over the north of England the 6 of us packed in the car to experience days out. Mum was the arty one and creative made amazing food. We went from rags to riches rapid and then boom our parents ‘lost it’ arguing and wrecking everything we had – Mum left us all & we had years of turmoil they divorced. I was angry with them for a longtime not now but its incredible how much we all care for them in their old age. As siblings we parented each other & we parent our parents. So family has taught me how to be resilient, how to channel drama, that comedy and story telling are my go to coping strategies. Family can be complicated unpredictable and emotional. Families are forever changing mum always said ‘nothing lasts for forever’ …… I expect very little from my parents as they remain highly needy and demanding!

Family is more than blood and biology, it is a circle of friends who’s love is so strong and supportive that it protects you from any challenge life throws at you.

My mother was Peruvian and my father was English. We lived in 5 countries so I was sent to school in the UK. However my mother’s bond with her family was so strong that we still carry it to this day even though she died 12 years ago. I am very close to my cousins in Peru and my brother lives there. Peru is such a big part of me and my siblings. I look English but peel away a layer and Peru is there. For me Peru is family.

My parents split when I was ten in a pretty dramatic way. We liked to do things in a big way in our family! Dad was difficult to live with, disabled from a life changing accident he had when he was nineteen on a night out in Brighton. Him and his friend, driving back to barracks fell asleep, the car crashed down the side of the coast road, dad went through the roof. He was told he would never walk again. Dad being dad had none of it. He dragged himself up and down the stairs of his council flat morning and night till he got his legs working. But the injuries went deep and covered other pain from a seriously dysfunctional family life where alcohol ruled the day.

Mum and dad met and fell in love. But very soon after the birth of first my brother and then me, the cracks started to appear and the bouts of violence. Women in those days couldn’t just leave, even though the divorce law was in place, you had to prove cruelty and bad treatment ans have the finances to support you, so mum was instructed to keep a ten year diary.

So, there I was, just home from school and mum says, ‘you and your brother, meet me in the living room as I have something important to tell you’. What could it be? worst case sinarios were playing loud tunes in my head – nan’s died, the guinea pigs eaten it’s baby, mums found the broken ornament under my bed!

Mum told us we were leaving dad and going on a new journey with a man called frank who we were to call uncle frank. We were moving to Gravesend and starting a new life. It all sounded so exciting that we didn’t have a chance to think about what we were leaving behind. The moment of dad finding the house empty haunted me for many years to come.

Looking back years later I realised that mum must have had so much courage to do what she did and leave an abusive relationship
.
Dad eventually found another partner.

Moving from a sleepy kent village and thrown into a mixed comprehensive on an estate in Gravesend was a rude awakening and made bad education look sissy. Every girl in my class was called Sharon or Tracey and they were tough. If you dared look at them you would get a punch. My defence against the dark arts was to eat and build body armour but this just made matters worse, self loathing amidst the chanting of ‘fatty foster’ was a torment that almost took me to the edge.

Mum decided to take me to the doctor and I got put on a diet of lettuce and celery. Be to honest this was a god send as I have always loved my greens to this day! Learning the shamans ritual of being taunted with home made chips waved under my nose whilst chomping on a carrot has had its benefits.

The diet worked, I lost weight and gained confidence. Nan, a brilliant seamstress who could magic a dress out of thin air, tailored made me a school dress that emphasised my new figure. I felt like the bees knees. The name calling vanished behind the cloak of immaturity and I gained respect. ‘The dress’ my savour, my chariot, helped me put on a ‘new me’ to step out into the world in and was to feature many times, in many guises, in the years to come.

The image attached is of my daughter modelling a paper dress I made from torn pieces of wallpaper inscribed with words.

I was one of four – we were always busy, always had jobs to do, both parents working full time and grandparents to help out too across the road. My cousin says she remembers it was always noisy and she loved it. I have three chicks, always noisy, busy and happy. Three of eleven grandchildren in our family, all grown up, and we are now awaiting the arrival of number eight in the next generation. It’s still noisy and busy but spread out. Our house extended to accommodate granny in our granny flat, where it is quieter but often noisy as it overflows with love and chicks.

My great grandmother and two of her daughters were involved in the Belgian resistance during the second world war.

Buying the ticket
To catch the train
To gaze out the window –
Forehead against cool glass –
To peer past the gates
To family waiting
And into the car –
Smells of dog and rug –
And back to the house
And out to the garden
And toes in wet grass
Ignoring a thistle
In arch of a foot
Running around
An old cricket bat
And a tennis ball calling
The dog joining in –
One hand one bounce rule –
With the sun in your eyes
Try to angle the catch,
Gran joining in
Blackberries lining
In wait for a pause
In the game
Purple mouths purple fingers
Dew drop jean hems
Wiping bare feet on door mat
Not to bring in the dirt
Box of apples by back door
Stacked up high from the Fall
Telly loud for the parrot
Chuckling with the canned laughs
Biscuit tin full of bourbons
Orange squash by the sink
Running through skidding slightly
Rug moving like socks
On wooden floors –
Charles and Diana
Wedding glasses witness all –
Barrel straight into Grandpa
Arms wide, moustache tickles,
Cotton shirt collar worn down
Under sky blue v-neck
With holes at the elbows
Full of love and worn softness.

Buying the ticket.

I was raised by my grandparents, aunts and uncles!

For me it’s a feeling not a relationship. Feeling safe and heard and valued makea me think of people as family.

Dear Lemn Sissay, greetings! My mother is everything to me. This poem I wrote all about her life journey as I understand it. I shared it on poemhunter.com years ago. Fabric. Chapter 1. Rich farmer lots of children. Wife died tempo disrupted grief stricken. His half sister with issues of her own, abducted his favorite daughter, uprooted from her birthplace, one of her brothers was the accomplice, the eight year old changed her pace, new city became her new identity, was it the sugar cane? sweetening her life thus? she blended aunt diligently helped, sent her to school raised her good, rode bicycle to move around, at the paper factory she worked, whenever school closed, aunt didn’t mind. She met him there, he pursued her, she was only sixteen. Chapter 2. Defied the aunt married the man. Started journey without plan. Family unit strengthened thanks to first born. Happiness reigned, woman thrived. Half a year baby fell ill. Gone to heaven bereaved woman stood still. What made her trust life once again? What was the reason? Was it the love for the man? Was it the belief not to question? Accepting must be in her nature. Or! Support group helped her to move on? Comforting massaging her belly with butter. A little of this a little of that. Second child here let’s name her. Another town woman didn’t groan. Followed man loyally he’s her guardian. A baby boy oh what a joy! On second thought! So demanding. So draining. Pushed aside his sister oh dear oh dear. Chapter 3. On the move once again do not frown. Man is trying family is growing. To the capital city full of opportunity. Man struggled buckled but never surrendered. Happy family life sustained him good. Day time laborer night time scholar. The fourth child is so pretty. Sunshine befitted her beauty. The happy woman weaving her nest in earnest , welcomed her father siblings extended family members, frequently visited she radiated. Accommodating nature won her neighbors. Her house is full no distress. Regarding her husband who fought hard, couldn’t get paid as he should, he was forced to make decision. Gave up fighting for cause which wasn’t his own. Family comes first he was no politician. became a seaman fifth child wasn’t one. Chapter 4. Her life was lost without him, she cried hard life became grim. She endured a lot making ends meet., did Socialism helped or hindered? food was rationed. life was censored. Ethio-Somali war dictated everything to the war front! contribute yourself to the utmost, children had fun take heed. songs of war filled their head. staged and played out wars of their own. Re-enacting hilariously what went on.

I have always been fascinated by the stories behind the names of my aunts, uncles, and grandparents on my mother’s side. They tell such a poignant story of their journey. My grandfather’s name was Bishaw (if God wants). He was born months after his father died in a war. His mother, who was depressed and feeling overwhelmed, named him Bishaw as circumstances were dire, and so, if God wants, let him live; if not, let him die. My grandmother was Tarikua, which means her story. This couple’s and their family’s story is beautifully and powerfully written in their children’s names. Their first child was Desta – happiness – happy at their first born! Then came my mother, Tewabech, she became beautiful, and she IS beautiful! Then, two children were born – Besufekad (by God’s will) and Ejegayehu (I saw so much!). Unfortunately, these two children died while they were young. Two years after their deaths, Badege was born. His name means I hope he grows – a direct reflection of the pain and loss they experienced. After him, Alemayehu (I saw the world) in both the loss and the joy. Then, Temesgen (praise be to God – through whom all gifts flow), Tarekegn (God has reconciled with me), Genet (Heaven), and Yehualashet (the last seed), who was, in fact, the last born of this family. Names are powerful!

Today we buried my Mum’s ashes – born on 29 Dec 1932, died on her 87th birthday, 2019. The pandemic prevented her being re-united with my Dad sooner, and my sister, in Canada, from being with us today. A rebellious, individual spirit until the end, I’m glad Mum didn’t have to experience Covid restrictions. Miss you Mum xx

In my late forties my sister decided to tell me that our Dad wasn’t really my Dad. My darling Dad, who I grieved and missed and who had lived and cared for me with no discernible difference from my other sisters, was not my Father. He knew this when I was born, when he put his name on my birth certificate and in order to keep the family together kept his silence. The silence was to protect me and the rest of the family. After finding out I too have remained silent. To protect my Mother who would be destroyed if she knew I knew the truth. Inside I am screaming,

I wasn’t a planed baby and it was 1967 so my mum went through a scary time. But my dad married her and they’re still together. I’ve got a younger sister and loads of cousins. My extended family are also great friends of mine. We really get on and have a laugh together. I’m so grateful for them all. I’m a stepmum, mum, mum to a disabled adult. My life is full of love but definitely not easy. My youngest child is 23 this year, I already have two step-grandchildren and I love that. I’m happiest when I’ve got my children, nieces and family around me. I would’ve adopted children and given birth to more if my disabled son hadn’t needed so much extra help. The imperfections are what make it all perfect. Love is not easy, parenting can be tough work. Acceptance, letting go and gratitude can create magic, though.

I taught for 40 years, when I met my last tutor group, I told them that I would do my best for all of them to achieve their best, we made a pact, we learnt to trust each other and accepted that we could all make mistakes but with help from each other we would succeed. We talked all the time, before school, at breaktime, lunchtime, after school, we all did a lot of listening too. They often complained that I was expecting too much, that I was the only tutor who gave homework, that nobody else had to write essays every other week… They brought their parents for me to mediate when parents were too strict, they introduced me to them as ‘Madame B, my professional Mum’.
We did develop as a family, over a period of 5 years, When groups were halved for tutors to work intensively with their tutees, there was no way I could split my family, we stayed together, all 31 of us; a few had left to see how green the grass was on the other side but the majority came back, some came to work with me during a summer holiday to catch up with all the missing homework as they wanted to be in the best group in their last year, I ‘lost 2 weeks’ of my summer holiday but it was worth it. They all did really well in their exams.
I retired but we kept meeting on social media, I was invited to birthday parties, engagements, weddings, Chritmas reunions, they came to my house for parties, brought me their babies etc…My children were not the only ones I kept contact with, I have wonderful memories of seeing exhibitions with their parents, inviting 3 generations of their family for lunch in my garden etc…
This huge extended family of mine is a real rainbow, full of diversity, love and wonderful experiences!

There was always a long queue for the loo; if you were lucky enough to get inside that small, cold and draughty cubicle, you were even more fortunate to get out, because the door handle was rusty and stuck; and some smart Alec on the other side of the door was always ready to make sure you might never be seen again. And so I learned to climb through windows – narrow and high – and turned myself aged 7 or so into an escape artist.

When I look in, family is all about husbands, wives, Mums, Dads, brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, nephews, nieces, Nanas and Grandpas. I’ve always felt lucky to have such stability around me.
When I look out, I see that family can also mean so much more than this. When there’s complexity or uncertainty or trauma, people often create their own family. It might look a bit different to what I’m used to, but the same things sit at the heart – love, security, support and a future together.

21 years ago today my son Frank was born, very early in the morning at St Thomas’s hospital by the river Thames. All my other pregnancies had ended in miscarriage and he was our ‘miracle’. We lived then on a street of little houses in East London, and when we raced out to our car at the crack of dawn, to my amazement several faces of women who were my neighbours popped out of their windows to send us good luck. How they knew, what woke them was a mystery, but a beautiful sign of that extended family a good neighbourhood gives you. When we got home his unofficial aunties were in straight away to see him and welcome him to the world.

I have 3 children now grown up – to me they are wonderful and are successful adults with their own children and good jobs. Despite some difficulties – 2 have fathers who have abandoned them, one is adopted by me and her father is unknown, they have grown into loving parents and I am so proud of them and they and their families are such a source of joy

I created a family when I had none. There was no mum, no dad, no grandparents, no uncles, there was just me.
I am now the proud and dedicated mother of 6 children, two of my sons are not on this earth anymore, and I miss them every day.
My other 4 children keeps me going, fills me with pride, with love, with strength.

I am a grandmother now, of a sweet little baby boy, and he has and will always have a grandmother, my children will always have a mother.

These children, this grandchild, they will always know love, because I will always be their fighter, their protector, their comfort and their foundation.

Family is love. Family is self sacrifice, family is true.

Family doesn’t have to consist of blood, when blood turns their back on you, go and create your own family.

I am a matriarch, that is how I choose to define me, I choose to rise and be who my children needs me to be.

I was a child without love, a child who was abandoned, abused, not wanted.

Family is love, and love keeps us alive.

I want family to be the brightest strongest thing but my reality is so different. I guess I am lucky I get christmas and birthday cards and a call once a couple of months. Family is just me and my son now and he is the brightest light in the whole world to me. I chose people to be my family, friends who are there, and his acceptance of them makes my heart sing.

On the day I brought my youngest daughter home when she was born , my middle daughter, who was 4 at the time, was so proud of her new sister that she went out to the front garden to collect all the children from our street to come upstairs one by one , into the bedroom where I was resting in bed, to show her off!

I always felt like I was not part of family due to being in foster care. I had “Real” and Foster family. I was not accepted by both but in both families they were shining lights for me My Aunt Julie in my real family and my foster sister they both have me feeling like I’m worth something and not feel like a nobody or nothing. Another person in my family was Nana she was imperfect set in her ways yet the world was changing too fast but she was loved and she loved.
My father was not in my life until my teens but was not interested in me he just wanted to marry me off so he his family gained dowry not in my life since was a child and left again at 13. Came back when I was 30 lecturing me. At least the advice I was given with respect and love from my Aunt, Foster Sis, Nana. My destain against my father is he is overtly religious and throws that down my throat like he is perfect. I have been disowned due to me speaking truth about how evil he was towards my mother and me. You need family even if you don’t have one. The help in times in need. Just don’t let it be all and end of all because you don’t have family. I don’t really see my family as much due to the pandemic and I feel more further apart and alone. I may reunite with My Foster Sister and Aunt. My not have a great mother or father or foster mother but I learned how to never treat anyone. Family for me now is myself until I create one or find someone who accepts me. That will almost certainly impossible.

My family made me who I am today. Early years and bonding is so important. The biggest influence in my life was my dad.

I try to remember the words that were pronounced badly or that my children did not understand. There are some that I remember and that make me smile.

When my brother died, we were all there. My sister in law, his daughter, me, my husband, my daughter. We held hands and talked about our times together and he just sighed and died. So we had a cup of tea and cried and laughed. Still miss him.

My mum is from Burma ( now Myanmar) but her family were displaced when she was a child during independence. Her family were Eurasian so were forced to denounce their European identity or leave. We have lost all links with any relatives back there. Burma has always remained in our family though, through food and stories. As we lose my grandparents generation we lose their stories too. I wish I’d paid more attention or recorded them. It has been bittersweet to now feel more connected with other Burmese people in the UK – as we raise awareness of the horrific attacks on the Burmese people by the current military junta. I often wonder about the family I do not know, who are living through that. My heart goes out to them. (The photo is of my mum and uncle as kids. We don’t know who the man was – family or family friend. It reminds me of our many lost connections).

For me there is no greater love, that moves me from inside out, than that for my (now adult) children. Apologies to my husband who of course I love very much too. But my love for my children is visceral and almost a physical feeling. My happiest times are when I am with them.
We are now part of a blended family. My children were quite young when my first marriage broke up. Some years later I remarried and my husband had 2 slightly older children. I feel that one of my biggest achievements in life has been the successful blending of our 2 families despite some initial teething problems. Our four adult children enjoy each other’s company and have relationships independent of my husband and I. They have fun getting together and sharing what thy consider funny stories about my husband and I!!! They like to time their Christmases so that they coincide their visits and we all share time together.
A couple of years ago when we had some spare money we decided the best thing we could offer our children was to rent a villa abroad off season and they could all dip in and out when it suited them and have a holiday. To our amusement they all wanted to be there at the same time. It was such a success that we decided to repeat it but the pandemic prevented it happening.
I am so happy and proud that I have a great relationship with my stepchildren and that my children and their stepdad have a very easy relationship too. Each of our 4 children have lived with us as young adults for extended periods of time (though rarely at the same time) for various reasons. We have enjoyed this very much and I feel this has been a privilege.
This all sounds smug and somewhat boastful and it is not something I express easily and freely but I feel it is one of the best achievements of my life.

I am English. But I am also fifth generation Irish, my family first came over in the famine. I am the first generation to marry ‘out’, the first to marry someone of English, not Irish, heritage. I don’t think the English realise how hard they are to assimilate with.

A group of people who live for and love one another in the greater circle of love.
My circle…
A father who always provided his children with tender love. Who educated them beyond his means.
A mother who cared for her husband when life’s fortunes abandoned him and jumped left, center and right to cover his role towards his children.
Siblings and cousins who love and fight, care and nag, comfort and tease each other. Who remain kids to this day in the eyes of their parents. Who speak in an ordinary language but understood only by members of the circle, the unsaid included.

Family is my forever home. Family is hate. Family is love. Family is sacred. Family is a glove. Soft as a velvet. Hard as a stone. I learnt about function from dysfunction. I learnt about connection from disconnection. I learnt about friendship from being left alone. In my family. In my forever home. Thank you Lemn Sissay. You are an inspiration. May your light shine forever in this big, small world…

My family is extended a million times over. Anyone brings home a friend, new partner or colleague, you automatically become family and can never leave

Family, I thonk are Roots….but I della likes I have no Roots and this lets me feel like a leaf in the Wind, a child in a Square of an unknown Place She saw for the First Time at the Age of Seven….that feat Is Always with me although consecutive love although my own next family. I’m a woman, a wife, a teacher but i’m Always searching for my Roots.

I grew up thinking a ‘flodear’ was a real word meaning to spill something. But it was really “Flo, dear!” after a great aunt Floretta who always dropped food down her ample bosom and her husband would say, “Oh, Flo dear.”

Family for me is safety, unconditional love, joy. Mostly I think about my immediate family but there is an invisible thread that ties me to those extended and further away. I know how lucky I am to have the comfort and security of a loving family. My mother created this despite her own turbulent and challenging childhood. My father has always put family first. Family is everything to me, the love I can give and receive is like having a safety net, a bubble of love that I know will catch me if I fall, celebrate when I fly and walk beside me every day.

Family isn’t something I’ve always had growing up. Being taken from my own to somewhere that isn’t my own. Through being in care and experiencing different families, I had time to learn what family is and what it isn’t. At a stage in my life the system was family . I’ve finally connected a relationship with my ‘real’ family it may not be what I dreamt it would be but it’s reality and nothing can take away from that. Positive or negative that’s my family. I am in awe of the days i can make more memories with them. Establishing a relationship with my family has shown me I’m not merely another statistic of a care leaver there is more to life. Such as, embracing the culture and language from my home country where I was born in Somalia many things I have missed out on. Family is my safe place, it is has kept me hopeful. My family kept me hopeful in times of being broken. In multiple homes with a broken system with doubts of no where to call home. My ‘real’ family made it all worth it, through all the feelings I have endured in the name of ‘family’ However for me family is also a word that is still confusing. Maybe one day it won’t and that day will be amazing ?!!!

My Dad is Irish and my Mum is half-Irish and half-Lithuanian. Her Dad (my grandad who unfortunately died when I was three) fled Lithuania and was separated from the rest of his family – he never heard from or saw them again. I was born in London and yet I wouldn’t be here if my grandad hadn’t sacrificed being with his family in order to survive. Family is wishing us, it is brutal, it is heartbreaking, it is powerful. We have the need within us to create our own family anchors if we are without one.

An old Guyanese saying my Dad used to say that made me and my sister laugh when he said it in his resigned fashion when we’d upset him. “When your own lice bite you you’re well bitten.” Still don’t know what he meant.

Baci, swallows returning home and long manicured nails. When I was very little I didn’t speak much Italian, but I knew the word for kisses due to my obsession with the delicious bite size chocolates that each contained a short note about love; ‘Baci’. One day, before speaking with my beloved Nonna on the phone, I asked my Mum for an Italian word for a big number- she taught me ‘Mille’, a thousand. At the end of the call, I closed it by saying ‘ciao, mille baci!’ (goodbye, a thousand kisses). I’ll never forget the laugh my Nonna gave, I could feel her smiling down the phone. It became our special sign off, our secret shorthand for the love we had/have for one another. She was wonderful in every way, patient, funny, kind, with impeccable taste in suits and long manicured nails that she used to run through my hair to send me to sleep. The last thing she ever told me was to eat, I was 16 and I had been starving myself. I’m 28 now, and sometimes I wish she could see now how sustained I am, how full my life is with love and good food and joy. I think in some way she knows, or at least she knew I would be ok in the end. I sometimes see her in dreams – it’s very comforting, she is often behind a door, drenched in golden light and just holds me for a while. When I turned 18, my Mum and I went and got a tattoo together in memory of her. My Mum and Dad had just moved away to Greece and I was out in the world living independently. We each got a swallow on our wrist as we had read that sailors used to get them as a symbol of always returning home to their families after long journeys at sea. Under my Mums swallow is the word ‘Mille’ and under mine ‘Baci’. It’s my only tattoo and every day I look at it. It makes me think of my Nonna, my Mum and the strength that love brings to families who are far apart. We can connect to one another in physical spaces, in memories and dreams and that is how I return home.

1985. I’m 14. A Friday in September. Our family changed. My Mum took an overdose. Found by my Dad. I was sent to school. My Mum Survived. Six weeks in a local Psychiatric Hospital. Came home. Never mentioned. Never spoken about. At 49 I still carry the pain. The unanswered questions. Only my best friend from school knows as she held my hand as I cried in assembly that day. That’s my family. We don’t talk. We brush things aside. Still hurting.

When I think of my family I think of my grandmother. She had a tremendous impact on my teenage years where she was my refuge and I was her support and partner in crime. The was closer to me than anyone else ever was.

She was a single mum in the 1950s having split up with the father of my dad before he was born.

I grew up in a large house my grandmother jointly owned with her much older sister who also lived there with her family. Despite this, my grandmother was the matriarch, ran the household (well actually both), ran the fields and gardens, she was working full time and at some point took over the care for her sister and her brother in law when their child failed. Her loyalty to her sister, who struggled with mental health and its decline, inability to properly care for her family at some point, let my grandmother make enormous sacrifices – from travel to love.

She was resilient, humble, outspoken and when I was in trouble she helped building bridges and create perspectives. She looked after the teenage me and I looked after her and supported her when her health started to fail.

I miss her dearly but still can hear her voice calling me, see her standing on the landing in our house and feel the hugs we gave each other.

Making mince pies…..
Coerced into memory:
the pastry yellow under my nails,
every circular cut
a neat-edged summary
of Christmas ritual.

Before the wreck of age grounded
you on rocks of wild assertion,
dulled your mind and wasted muscles,
the top seat was yours,
directing willing and unwilling hands
for Christmas dinner.

Once done, our stomachs bulging,
table cleared, cheese
for any corners left unfilled,
your Christmas court included
party tricks, a song or recitation.
Yours, learned by heart, Excelsior,
the Banner with a Strange Device.
Then port passed clockwise,
cracker jokes read out in turn:
I say, I say, I say;
boum boum; kindly get off.

Christmas Day is signalled
by mince pies for breakfast.
Remembering now that once
they were shaped like coffins.

In the beginning, it’s rough green carpet and the smell of sweet spit and everything bright and sharp. Falling asleep in the middle of the road and knowing you’ll get to where you’re going anyway. In the middle, inconvenience, lumbering trail of the uncool, coiling embarrassment. The car waiting outside with its windows up in the cold. Then one day, looking up, up at the youngest, not down. It’s a packet of crisps at the pub, shared – willingly. Gangly elbows, winks and in-jokes. Seeing the road, and choosing to go home.

No one family is the same as another – and you put up with stuff from close family that you would never tolerate from a friend. That said it works the other way too !

WHAT A LEGACY: Celebrating my MUM ANNE b1922 epitomised FAMILY (not just her own but welcomed other waifs & strays). Came from Milltown, Tuam, Co. Galway during the 2nd WW. Trained & worked as a nurse: Psychiatric, General & Midwife (her best work love) Had 8 Children, 19 Grandchildren (only 1 deceased) & 18 Greatchildren. Died @ 98, Jan 2021: Alzheimer’s, Covid positive (not recorded). Loved her family, community, church: RC, anything green!, current affairs, spectator sports (especially snooker football & horseracing & anything else that had legs!). Devoted to us all, UK, Eire, Indonesia the world. Sadly gone but never forgotten. We miss you so much, not an easy life but lots & lots of joy! A truly loving, kind, supportive Mother & true friend to all. Thanks Lemn Sissay for this wonderful opportunity

For me the word family never meant much, family is a random group of people only connected by chance and some shared memories sometimes chance is merciful and good sometimes chance is cruel and sadistic. In my case it chance was good not amazing but good there are some things seperating us and some things uniting us; values, ways of living, self expression, sleep rythms and many more. We get along well enough and yet to different to be very close. Ultimately I’d say the most important thing about family is that they shape who you are and I’ve seen many good examples of this and many bad examples of this, people broken, abused or manipulated by the people who raised them. Words that always meant a lot to me are Love and Acceptance sometimes that is found within family sometimes it isn’t. I’ve always felt loved and accepted by my godparents, by some people at the church I was part of once, to a certain degree by my family and now also by my friends to me that is more important than blood and yet now that the health of my last remaining grandparent is slowly declining I want to call her more often.

I’m thankful that I grew up with over 15 brothers and sisters, all of which needed a loving home. I thank God everyday that whether they are brothers and sisters by blood or not, that I had an experience of family like no other because my Mum and Dad were willing to do something I wish more people would. There was never a quiet day in the household and I wouldn’t want it any other way!

Some people jell with their biological families, and some collect like minded people around them to love and to hold. The people that love you, are there for you when needed, listen to you – these are the people who make you feel safe in this world.

I lost my father about a month ago. I know you would expect that from most daughters in life, but my father was a hero (for myself at least and I think my 6 siblings would agree) and an inspiration for many people in my small country. He defined politics and the private sector in a way not everybody would agree but that’s life. He believed in integrity, diversity and integration in a city where more than half of the residents are foreign passport holders. He wanted all of them to have their say. To have their vote on the politics and public services that defined their country of choice and to whose wealth and economy they had all contributed. He came out with a vision for a green economy before anyone was ready or pressured enough to think about it. All of this took a toll on his private life. He was certainly not present very much. But he was there when we needed him most and he was a mentor. When we were kids, we would have regular Friday pizza dates with him and he would insist that we take 24 bites of each piece. It basically turned something so yummy like a pizza into a vegetable soup. He taught us about history, politics and music with the attention to detail and complexity of an academic. Knowledge humbled him because he knew he wouldnt be able to get it all. And that there were two sides to the same coin. But he was also a crafter, a painter, a builder. He was fascinated about the logistics of travel. Of cars, ships, boats and planes. Not so much the leisure side of it, but how time & space could be compressed so that we could buy fresh tulips on the market in the morning or safely deliver beluga whales from China to Iceland so that they could be released from captivity into the ocean. Like anyone of his generation, he was confronted with technology. But he embraced it with open arms. He loved it. He would track every flight we took over his flight radar app, from departure to landing. He would arrive right on time to hug us. Technology meant that he was instantly connected to the world and all the knowledge it had on offer. I didn’t mean to write an hommage to my father, but I miss him so very much and there were so many questions I still needed to ask. The pandemic has deprived my family of the last moments we could have spent together, of the last Christmas that we used to celebrate with abundance of joy like we celebrated every dinner we held together. Covid deprived my mother of the possibility of attending to him in hospital as he left this world. But he would not have wanted to leave this place in anger. On the last day we spoke on the phone he commented on the linguistic and cultural diversity of the hospital staff & how it reflected life in the city where he lived & loved. He left us thinking about a society defined not by closed borders, national sentiment and fear but one characterised by diversity, integration and opportunities. Rest in peace Papa.

I’ve found my family to be created and re-created in different places and spaces over time. I think family is in constant change and flux, not a tree but a plant which pops up year after year, in the same place of your garden but always different, with new seedlings and cuttings dotted off in other places.

I am an Ethiopian, a former civil servant, and a socialist who helped the Ginbot 7 and Borena shifta over the years when they worked to overthrow the western supported dictatorship in Ethiopia. I finally have a chance to cast a ballot next June to decide who leads my country. Despite considering myself a patriot who served his country – part of my family is now supporting the TPLF (the remnants of the former dictatorship who are still trying to return to power) and others are supporting ethno-nationalists who are hell-bent on demonizing particular ethnic groups or religions for the woes of the world. Including cousins I hold very dear. I now wonder if they are fighting to return the suffering we faced during the past 30 years. And there was much suffering and death and deprivation. And there is no need to elaborate here – as there is no doubt of the suffering and death that was caused by the former powers we have now overthrown. I would not have done it- were it not for my family’s safety. I would not have served save for the fact that I believed the safety of my family as well as the safety of the families of comrades and fellow Ethiopians depended on service. There was no other motivation. Now at this moment of history for my country – I am both glad that we made it this far – and worried we may not go further together. I have little appetite to forgive members of my family who stand with the enemy – and I suspect they feel the same of me. So no wise words from me. Just words to tell of the struggle even within families. And sharing the worry we have for our future as family.

my family is a roller coaster of emotions

I come from a long line of happy people, happy people who tell stories, stories that remind us of why we are happy.

For me, the greatest of the storytells was my grandfather. His stories were tall and broad and full of colour and I believed them all.

I have just returned to the town i grew up in, literally days ago, and im wandering around and bumping into these stories, ones I never even knew I knew. Like ghost on the hills, onky these ghosts have flesh and a tangibility that evokes a myriad of emotion that i cant explain.
As I drive over the estuary (the misty marshes) and glace to my right, I see three hills topped with white houses that shine in the sun…the Secret Isles of Avalon, my grandfather said…and of course i thiugh that was face, because everything is always hidden in plain sight.

And now i live on one of these Isles of Avalon, in a house thst coincidentally has been built exactly where my grandfather told me the gold at the end of the tainbow was buried.

And the thing I love most about this, is that he was right…gold is here, nit of the metaliç variety….but in the family I have grown and brought with me and the happiness we share. We know we are lucky, that we have been gifted with the keys of life, passed down from generation to generation and we know how to find magic exactly where we are.

Im living in a half remembered dream, surrounded by little catch phrases and the smell of vegetables roasting in the oven…and surrounded by the laughter of these little people who came long after my story teller had died.

And I sit here and I smile and I wonder who’s stories will narrate their lives, and I pray to my magical spaces that they can be their own narrators.

My Indian parents both now sadly deceased were married in 1957 having never met each other before. They grew to love each other and had such a strong bond. Mum cared for dad until he passed in 2014 – she was devastated to lose him but gradually regained her zest for life. We lost her to Covid in 2020.
Both doctors thsey moved to the UK in 1961 and worked for the NHS until retirement.
My older brother was born in India, myself & younger brother in tge UK.
We are all married. I now live in the Netherlands
We are a close family-pre Covid meeting up often. We were raised with a strong sense of family ties despite distance, and compassion & care for others. I can’t wait until travel is easier and we can meet again

Tell you about my family
Ok, but where to start
Do you want happy memories?
Or enter painful territory?
Because my family
Like most families
Is a hod podge
A spectrum
A mixed up reality

I remember great grandparents
Ancient people we visited once a year
Smelling of old age and cigarettes
They looked like they might break
So I stood slightly away
Observing
Listening
Before going to Blackpool pleasure beach
And relaxing

My grandparents
Couldn’t have been more different from each other
Two halves of a family
Never to mix together

We visited mum’s parents
Mum insisted
Every time she hated it
Yet she persisted
Snide comments
So many put downs
Constant comparisons
Such a negative situation
Generational pain
Passed down yet again
I know there was love
But it was hidden
Couldn’t be given
Couldn’t be shown
Instead harsh words were thrown
I watched my mum be less
Hurt, yet again
And then cry or rant
In pain she couldn’t express
A duty to be performed
To attend and find contempt….

Those expectations were passed on
But I couldn’t take it on
And that caused rifts
So many family shifts
Which wider family judged
I was pushed and shoved
But I stood my ground
To protect myself and my family
I had to care for them and me
The endless negativity
Could break me
That’s the reality

In separation I still loved
And I hurt
Just as she hurt
I don’t think anyone can
Ever understand the pain
Of separation even when you’ve made the right decision
Of knowing you are hated
Vilified
Unknown and yet judged
They don’t know I never felt loved
Because my mum never felt loved by her mum
That’s the generational reality

My mum is now gone
Her pain at an end
We eventually found
Healing ground
Beyond the pain we shared
There was love
Which we learned to express
That healed us both
Though I’m healing still
In therapy
Doing the work to break
The chain of heartache

And breathe…..

My dad’s side were older
Yet somehow younger
There was dementia
And love
I remember bouncing on grandad’s knee
Before he was cared for behind locked doors
Click bang
Click bang
Does he even know me?
I hope that he knows me
So much love
And faith
My gran loved him constantly
That was clear to me
So wonderful to see
And when he died
I cried
And I remember her telling me
About heaven
With no more pain
No more confusion
A place of endless love
A belief so strong that it’s never gone
And gran lived old
Not quite old enough for a telegram
But very nearly
I’ll never forget the call
To say she’d died
Not unexpected
And yet
And end of an era
Yet somehow she was nearer
She’s still near me
Her words ring in my ears
Her faith resonates in my heart
When asked to name a hero
It’s her name I whisper
Gran

Of course there’s more family
People I love intensely
Husband
Father
Brother
Nephews
Sons….
Sons who never took a breath
Their story a hurt so deep
It would take too many words
To share here
Their story has been written
Their place in my heart eternal

And then there’s my daughter
Who I love immensely
Perhaps too intensely
Because love matters
More than anything
She will NEVER think
I don’t love her
Nothing she could ever do
Could break that love

I pray each morning
That the generational pain
Is healed
Not buried
But resolved
That love flows openly
Without hesitation

So that’s my family
Or at least a glimpse from me I hope it tells you something
About loving.

These are the people who make you feel safe in this world

Through the natural order of life, my family are declining in numbers. I am thankful for the memories of those now gone, for the loving and joyous times and even for the sharp pains of the loss. This pain is the signal of the importance of family and each jab of pain a reminder to cherish those present. I’m so lucky to have love remaining and love departed, warmth, safety and security.

They tell you the truth. They hold you up when you are down. They will always be the constant in a world of in consistencies and change. They are our refuge, our hearth, my heart.

My family first consisted of 5 children and our parents who came to England in 1950 from Jamaica, but not as a couple. They came to London to create a new life for themselves. My mother was to complete her nurse’s training. My dad was an experienced bricklayer who was offered a job with British Rail which he held until retirement. We think our parents met through our mum’s cousin, who also worked for British Rail. Mum was a high colour beauty so it was no surprise that she started a relationship with someone who turned out to be my dad. We lived in a north London village called Crouch End and had our own house from the year I was born, 1954. The three boys and two girls that were our original family became four boys and three girls when two of my mum’s kids from a former relationship in Jamaica were sent to live with us. At home, we were a Jamaican family. Like many homeowners I later discovered, we lived in fewer of the rooms in our house so that others from Jamaica could come and stay a while until they found somewhere else to settle. Eventually, our mum’s brother-in-law and his eldest son came to live with us, too. This became long-term and the son got married from our house and the wife moved in, too, and they had their first child while living there. So, from an early age, family has meant sharing and helping others. That is the Caribbean way.

Family is so much more than who is related by blood. I’m an only child, no aunts or uncles, no cousins. But through my faith family, my Christian family, I have relatives all over the world. People who I love and, I know love me unconditionally just like we all know we are overwhelmingly and totally loved by our father God. That’s why I’m so completely passionate about welcome for those who who need family wrapped around them through fostering, adoption, supported lodgings.

Lie here by the fire that your Daddy has made, feel the warmth of his smile.
Watch now as the dog lays her paws down beside you and rest for a while.
Hold tightly as we walk the valleys, the moorlands with heather in bloom.
Hear my voice and know that I’ll always be with you this side of the moon.
Sound the call of the people we love who can’t wait to be with you,
Wait to feel tiny hands pressed in their own, time and again.
Still new memories make as you smile at them, rosy cheeks gleaming,
Watching their shadows on a silver screen, waiting for when…

Still, they know you, they know you, son of our times.
Yes, they know you, they know you, son of our times.
And we’ll show you, we’ll show you how to love and to thrive.
’Cause we know you, we know you, son of our times.

I thought I’d share something in verse.

Family
We admire it as a child
Idolise it at eight
Fight with it in teens
Shout at it when late

We extend it to grow
Build on it with age
Touch the tiny hands
To write another page

We see parents in what we do
With the passing of time
Understanding them later on
When their lot became mine

We see the cycle return
Though forget what to do
It’s just the ways of a family
At least, from my view.

Mohamed Saloo.

Sorting out my parent’s house after they died I came across this piece of writing by my mother. She gave birth to 11 children and didn’t have much time for herself but she sometimes wrote about her feelings. This is what she wrote.

My family means so much to me, I love them so very much, you see.
Six lovely girls and five lovely boys all fill my life with such wonderful joys.
I have had unkind things said to me about the size of my family but I’m happy with all eleven lovely children sent from Heaven.
Sadly are first born aged forty years died of cancer there were lots of tears.
Our dear Walter is now free of pain and we know one day we’ll meet again.
We now have daughters and sons -in law and are blessed with grandchildren.

Our family home was full of love.

My grandmother, daughter of a doctor from Scotland, gave dance lessons to the Emperor Hirohito of Japan during the 1920s

Both my brother and I grew closer to my parents when we moved out. Were we just difficult to live with or is it because now we both live alone we have a better understanding of what it’s like being a grown-up? That’s the big question for me and my family. I guess we’ll never know.

I’m adopted and became a mother for the first time two years ago and I am now pregnant with my second baby. The huge journey I have been on healing and understanding my role as a mother and what family can mean is something painful but incredible. I find it impossible to articulate but I know there are a minority few who understand & this gives strength. Love to all those who do.

FAMILY CAN BE A KINGDOM FOR THE AMBIVALENT

It can be the best or worst thing in the world.

I believed there were penguins in Jamaica until my teens because my mum called children Jamaican penguins.

Humans are bound up in thought. Collective & individual. Thereby, families are a large collection of old thinking, with the potential for new thinking. We hear & see & feel the thoughts of the family members we were raised by & were situated in. Similarly the thoughts of the families that we are part of today & the extended families some of us have through relationship-building. Seeing thought in families as created, in flux & truthless, is powerful. It can allow us to see beyond thought, to reach something universal & profound. Thought is not real, but it creates the illusion it is.

My family is where my shoulders are down.

Family is feeling safe and loved. Family is about growing together and ensuring that each member has a voice.
Family is about trust.
Family is like a warm hug on a cold day.

Family is what you decide it will be. If there is a gap where a parent would have been, there is a gap in your knowledge of who you are. And so you you fill in that gap.

I thought I understood what family meant to me. But since my husband died my views have changed. Family ie blood relatives have turned their back and not one have stepped up for my children as I had imagined or hoped for. Family literally just means we share the same blood. My children will forever know what it is to be loved.. I will make sure of that but when I die what then.? I hope I live long enough to see them all through to adulthood.

My family has a whole vocabulary of its own that started growing when my daughter started learning to talk. Oatcakes are still ‘agiks’, blackcurrant squash is still ‘purple juice’ and French bread is ‘scrunch bread’ because she heard the word ‘French’ and didn’t know it, but the bread is scrunchy, so she thought that’s what it must be. She’s 18 now, but the list continues to grow. The latest is ‘placky wocky’ for a plastic document wallet, owing to a delightful slip of the tongue by my husband.

My family was good at giving me money.

It’s OK not to love members of your family. Some things were never going to happen.

I’ll take my family extended and extending please!

Although I live in North America now, I grew up in Addis with my 7 siblings. One memory I have is of us trying to put together a talent show of singing and some acrobatics for my parents and grandma. And one time my sister slipped while doing some move and my grandma stood up to help and my dad told her “you can’t go to her. She is on tv.” Never a dull moment. Wish my parents were still alive.

Family is everything for me.

My Dad a beautiful man died aged 93 last September. We had lost Mum 3 years earlier after a long and painful battle with MS. Dad cared for Mum untill his own health started to fail.He had dementia but his love for me made it clearer he always remembered me , my family and my brothers family. On the Thursday before we died we sat together in the garden of his care home. He was confused, as I held his hand he said “what’s going on Lynn where am I”. I explained that we had moved him from his native Manchester to be closer to us because he needed extra help ” Oh right yes ” ..I added ” you have looked after us all for so long and we wanted to look after you” and without a beat and with such clarity he said ” but that was a pleasure “.. I was so blessed to have that unconditional love to have parents who were interested in the details of my life and my families life. To be there present when I needed help, guidance, a loan.. I was loved and to me that is family. A bumpy road of highs and lows but ultimately the love. I miss my Dad he was my truest friend always kind and honest. I am now happily married and have 16 year old twins. In my relationship with them I try and often fail to show that understanding, patience . I often say to myself what would Dad do and come back to just hold their hand and say something so kind and loving show them how loved, precious and special they are to me. That is my Dads legacy love.

In 1989 I was newly divorced with 2 daughters. My eldest daughter had a friend who was very unhappy, she had lost her mum at 2 weeks old and was being raised by her dad and a stepmum who abused her mentally. I felt a need to do something about it and offered for her to live with us. After speaking to her dad she moved in with us until adulthood and when her stepmum died she went back to be with her dad.
32 years. later she is still my daughter, we are close friends and I am granny to her daughter. Family, for me, is not about blood ties, it’s about love. I love her with all my heart and I am so glad she came into my life.

in my family Water is Thicker than Blood, bound interwind by love, cross-pollination of kindness. Oak tree sheds as many new acons for new oaks to grow.
political post-1968 riots in Paris led My birth mother who went to London to write the longest poem on London. Fell in Love end up serving time at her majesty’s pleasure… after her release adjustment was difficult.. Her family was words and friends whilst her children slipped away into the wind.. if it wasn’t for a nurturing of nature in how a family of Australians brought me and my siblings together…

descendants of a common ancestor – earth, wind, fire and water – family is nature a gang with a common goal of love that can heal and grow and keep safe under,
What is family its the house owned by the family of bond, connection and that is what makes a foundation for one to stand tall and to put one foot in front of the other knowing you have your tribe who ever is in it.

I became a mum via adoption to a little 6 year old. Hes now 23 and although family life has been extremely difficult at times for us we have never given up on one another. We are now fighting for his baby daughter to be able to know us. Family is who is there for you but biology and knowing your identity and history is important too.

Family to me is that security blanket that everyone deserves, but not everyone gets.
My family, and by extension, my husband’s family, are the most supportive, loud and considerate people, I’ve ever met. Family to me means someone is on your side, has your best interests at heart, and that can apply to blood relations as well as the friends you consider family too

36 years ago a chance meeting in Moss Side, Manchester. When I came across a young lad with dreadlocks and a walking stick looking lost. I asked him where he wanted to go? He replied 8411 where he was doing a poetry reading I replied I was going there too. So we made our way to 8411 together and have been friends ever since. We have shared many good times and some not so good times but despite this our friendship has lasted. It’s been an unconditional friendship and we have been honest and open with our views and opinions this was hard at times as we didn’t always agree but we learnt to respect each other viewpoint. We have had each other’s back through the tough times and shared the successes making our bond stronger.

So when thinking of who is family I believe you are born in a family and through your life you meet people who become part of your family and so Lemn Sissay I chose you to be part of my famIly

Family is bonds of love and care that can span continents, always there.

As I’ve got older, I’ve become more and more interested in my family history, trying to recall stories and anecdotes that may shed some light on directions of research, and inevitably dispelling some as myths or partially remembered. Sadly, there are few now whom I am able to quiz and check. If only I’d been more attentive at the time, so much more information could have been captured and sifted for accuracy. An example is that my Mum believed that her mother was born in the Scottish Borders, so I took her there years ago, only revealing the destination once we’d passed The Lakes and Carlisle. She was genuinely excited, a special few hours for both of us. Sadly, after she died I found that it wasn’t her mother who was born there, but her grandmother. If only I could have told her that. Another example is an aunt who was adopted into the family failry secretively at the time (pre-WW2), and she untook research to uncover her origins but, although this was spoken about in front of me whilst I was a teenager, I didn’t absorb the information and have only established the truth through my own research in recent years, many years after her death. There was definitely a sense of shame in the family about this, typical of the time but not at all shocking in a modern context. If only …

When I was a kid family was scary: I spent the time picking up after alcoholic parents and was constantly on edge.

I’m an adult and have built my own family. We argue about bedtimes, chicken nuggets, mess and noise. We also play the drumming game on the Nintendo Switch and the family take the mickey out of my lack of coordination!

I’m safe now.

Our family is connected across villages and cities, mountains and seas, stories and emotions.

Family is the reason your house is full of mad trinkets you’d never buy yourself but have been left to you and you keep tight hold of because they remind you of those who have passed.

Family is the ‘circle’ of my life. I grow up, I see a new family, new “rings of people” around me evolve. Being a widow is being both parents to my two amazing children as I see them tenderly creating new ‘rings’. Life circles on.

When it works it’s beautiful. When it fails is life changing. My failing start has made me so determined to give my children the best. The diff between what I want and what I give however varies. I feel like
A pioneer.

Sometimes the best family is the one you choose yourself.

You can’t choose them, there can be dark days that will stay with you all your life, you will need to be strong , to be the better person when parents become ill and you need to show compassion. All our lives have many twists and turns, take time as an adult to try and make sense of your parents actions when you were a child. Even if it’s tiny ; find some forgiveness in order to move on positively in your own life and become the parent you needed as a child

Family is messy

Like tree roots – knotted, intertwined, spreading deep, life giving, dark, nourishing

Who was the one who feeds me mostly?
It’s my mum, it’s my mum.
Who’s the one that baths me mostly
It’s my mum, it’s my mum.
Who’s the one who gives me snuggles?
It’s my mum, it’s my mum.

She’s the one who does me airplane
She’s the one who takes me to Nursery
She’s the one who takes me from Lunch Club
She’s the one who goes to work in the world,
For me.

You smell like a beautiful candle smell.
You smell like a candle when it blows away
It smells really nice—the burnt bit.
You smell like a blown candle.

My family come from family who come from far away. My family are loud. My family eat gherkins and chicken soup. My family love fiercely and sometimes that fierceness is hard. They are mine.

Family is so important. Family is safety in numbers. Family is being yourself. Family is about a team. Family is helping each other to be better people. Saying a forever goodbye is so hard.

Transient love. Frightening behaviour. Arguements Kindness. Being known. Being bored. Taking people for granted Missing people I loved. Regrets.

My family have laughed, cried, argued and always come out the other end. We have our share of ‘odd bods’ (not naming anyone!) and sometimes life isn’t easy, but we muddle through. There’s nothing like family.

Dear Dad,

When they use the term ‘victorian’ to describe a parenting style do they mean distant or uncaring?

Is it out of politeness we use the term because emotional austerity suggests the cruel impact on a child.

An orphan may cling to hopes of understandable barriers that prevent their parents’ presence but here you sat, present and absent and undeniable.

Still…..(though undeserved )

With all my love,

Chris

Diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic at the age of 12 I was lucky to have a dad who encouraged me to challenge myself. Nothing changed in my activities, weekly swimming club – my dad would be standing at the side with a Mars bar. On the way home there would be a bag of hot salt and vinegared chips. We took up kayaking,, again there he was alongside me with several Mars bars! He never ever made me feel that being a girl made me less of a person. Despite comments from others
As well as always challenging me he also supported my creative side and was a brilliant role model, always reading. Fifty years on we still sit and draw, paint and read together. He instilled in me a love of life and I know how lucky I am to still have him. Our roles have reversed and I now care for him and my mum, but what he has contributed to mine, my husband and my children’s lives is irreplaceable xx

I’m adopted and so is my sister. We don’t share birth parents. My adoptive parents were wonderful. Sadly both are now dead. I always knew I was adopted and have no desire to find my birth parents. Family is not only bonded by blood.

This is the memory of the last time I saw my Grandpop.

For the last year of his life (not that either of us knew it at the time) I saw my grandparents on a weekly basis. On this particular week, my Nan had to go into hospital for a check-up. My Aunty took her and I stayed in with Grandpop.

There were many things Grandpop loved in life, but two of his favourites were cricket and classical music. That day we sat and watched the e cricket, he was patient as I asked questions (I still don’t fully understand cricket!) and gleeful as he watched England do their thing.

When the innings were finished for that day, he decided he wanted to listen to some classical music. I found a CD that was agreeable to him and we sat side-by-side, holding hands as Beethoven’s moonlight sonata broke through the heat of the summer afternoon.

It was as if fate knew this would be the last time we saw each other, and planned a perfect, peaceful day for us to appreciate one another’s company.

Grandpop passed away two weeks later whilst I was on holiday. I was given the choice to go see his body, but decided to keep hold of the last memory of that perfect day. I still remember the click of the cricket ball against the bat, the moving piano music floating through the air, and the coolness of his hand in mine.

I miss him when I think of him, his picture in my living room more than 15 years later to remind me of that day. I’m lucky to have known that stillness and love.

I hadn’t realised what my family was until after my Mum died.
Growing up my family felt large and mighty. Seeing my aunties, uncles, cousins and grandparents regularly felt normal. It felt like you were part of something. It felt safe and comforting.
I felt sorry for my friends at school who didn’t get to experience the things I did, and that my family gave me.
What I didn’t fully appreciate, was my family included friends and neighbours and wasn’t just restricted to relatives from marriage or blood.
What I realised, when I turned around at the church and saw the hundreds of people there at my Mother’s funeral, was my family was a community.
A community where I knew all the parts but was never aware of the size and reach of the whole but they had all shaped me.
My family was all those people and more.
Only I never understood that until one of the chief foundation builders of that community was gone. I hope she got to see and know the role she played in building it.
So if you want know about family, it’s not about shared dna or names. It’s about people who give love, acceptance, support and encouragement. It’s about the people you fallout with and disagree. It’s about the ones who break your heart and the ones who heal it. It’s about being there.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, but it’s not a village it’s a community. And if you build a good one, no matter where or with who, that is a family. The very best kind.
Trust me because I had the best one.