Tell Me Something About Family...

My Great Grandad’s story- a tale of two brothers.

For thirty years or so I lived on the east coast, in a town called Lowestoft. I’d moved there with my ex husband and had no family connections there, or so I thought. My parents were from Liverpool, and that’s where our roots were, up north.

Anyway, they were visiting one summer and brought a box of old photographs with them. One was of my great grandparents on the pier, and in the park over the road! My father said oh yes, Great Grandad Whatling was from this part of the world, and as he’d worked for the railways, got a ‘golden ticket’ to travel where he liked on retirement. The first I had heard of this!

A bit of research revealed a remarkable story. Great Grandad was called Albert Whatling, and he had a brother called William, plus four other siblings. The two boys lived in the middle of the countryside and worked as farm labourers- there weren’t many other options. So around 1880 they decided to walk across the country to Liverpool, to look for work on the docks. I don’t know how long this would have taken. On arrival in South Liverpool, both secured dock work at Garston where the docks were run by the London and North East Railway. Both married local girls and settled down. Their subsequent lives were very different. Albert and his wife had nine children, my grandma being the eldest of the seven daughters, so something of a local dynasty was founded. They had a good life despite their small terraced house being far too small. Albert’s wife was something of a local ‘wise woman’, and everyone came to her for help with births, deaths and local remedies. Their son Bob did well at the docks, becoming a foreman then dock manager, being awarded an OBE for his work during WW2, when the docks were targeted by bombers. The house was always well supplied with bananas, a main import and quite a luxury back then. Albert took to religion in later life- maybe to make up for all those bananas!

William fared less well. He and his wife had three daughters, and the youngest died tragically when her nightdress caught fire, and William himself died not long after. He’d only been in Liverpool a few years. His wife really struggled after this, and sent both girls to ‘The Sheltering Home for Destitute Children’. This home sent hundreds of children to Canada for adoption, and it was thought, a fresh start. Sadly, many suffered terrible abuse or were worked hard by the adoptive families who saw the scheme as free labour. Thankfully, the two girls were luckier than most. They were adopted by kind families and were eventually reunited. One married and lived the rest of her life in America, and the other chose to go Bible College, paid for by her adoptive family. She went out to India and worked for many years as a missionary and teacher, learning the language and integrating herself in society- quite an achievement for a young single woman in those days. She married a serviceman later in life and had one child- so William’s line continued.

I moved away from Lowestoft a few years ago, but shortly before leaving I was in touch with William’s great granddaughter, who lives in Canada and researches the lives of the ‘Home’ children. Through her I discovered my Great Great Grandmother Adela was buried in a churchyard the other side of town, a place I knew well. I visited there to see if I could find where she was laid to rest. No gravestone, but we had a plot number, so I could see the approximate area. It’s a beautiful thatched church overlooking the sea. Many a time I had walked round there with my own family, not realising. In some ways, this was a nice note to leave the town on- a connection I’d been unaware of and some loose ends tied up.

Blueberries at midnight

Today I Thought of you.
In between the dishes and the cleaning and the laughter and the screaming
I thought of you.

Are you coping with the changes?
Are you falling into bed exhausted beyond belief
Does tiredness wash over you and sleep come like sweet relief?
I thought of you.

My friend I’m grinding here.
Keep pushing the wheels, Keep it all turning, holding it back, the stomach churning
But know that I thought of you.

Massive pressure small pleasures.
A dance in the kitchen
The gutterall sounds escaping my throat like freedom
Remembering friendships and smoky hazy nights and I’m still there, I’m still here.
Eating blueberries at midnight.

Know this to be true my friend, I thought of you.

To the women I never knew
But who saw me and held me in their gaze
And we revealed one another’s eternal struggle in a tiny, insignificantly momentous moment

To The women I never knew
Who lived this life of mine
Many times before me and after me and with me
In every universe in every timeline

To The women I never knew
Who understood why I was angry
Why I was sad
Why I was repressing feelings
Why I was drinking too much

To The women I never knew
Who all put a baby to sleep that looked a lot like mine
The grandmother who held my grandmother who held my mother who held my brother who looked like my daughter
They all soothed and rocked and comforted a baby that looked like her
With rosy chubby cheeks and beautiful curls

To the women I never knew
Who loved like me and loved me and were me
And cried like me and fell apart like me
Yet, stood steadfastly.

I’ve been thinking recently about family. About how we have our biological families, our chosen families, the families in certain settings, and the ones we walk away from or who we find another path with, still as family.

My biological family and one of the first families I was a member of, was fractured and severed when my mum died when I was 12. My Dad, an alcoholic, fell apart and so I lost my 2 primary caregivers in one, foul, swoop.

My older brothers stepped in. One went to parents evening with me. The other drove me to school while he was also attending sixth form there, to make sure I got there. They told me, nobody is coming to save you from this life here. We can love you and do our best but you need to decide to put in the work. We formed a new family. Fragile, untrained and unequipped but bound by this unspeakable set of events we got through. They, got me through.

Before this there was my family consisting of my Grandparents whom I stayed with each weekend whilst my Mum retrained for a better life for us. We had our own ways, customs, rituals. Fish and chips on a Saturday. Roast chicken dinner Sundays. Always with mushy peas (!) cooked in a pressure cooker. Chicken sandwiches Sunday evening. My Grandmother’s best friend who left her husband for his brother and somehow, all 3 of them remained friends til the end. She fed us so much ice cream it made us sick but I loved to walk her garden with her and admire her produce. Extended family to the grandparent family. How lucky was I??

Later there was my family of university friends. All wildly different but united as 3 East Midlands lasses somehow thrown together in Liverpool. We’d all have each others backs no matter what.

Returning home from university to live with my Grandma, by then living with dementia. My turn to fetch and buy the fish and chips on a Saturday, to cook the chicken on a Sunday. Just as she taught me all those years ago.

Then my family with my husband to be, a tight knit team really borne out of both experience parental loss too young and being desperate for safety.

Years later creating my own biological family with 2 kids. Completing a house extension and thinking about that sense of home and what it means. Is it a person, is it a place, is it a belonging or a finding or a returning?

Departing from the marriage and feeling lost. I made this house for a family. We, are not, a family.

Meeting my partner. They have a kid. Realising I made this house for a family, just a different iteration of family that I didn’t know existed but just waited for us to come home to each other and complete the family as it was always meant to be.

How many more families will I be part of? What will these people look like who pull me through this one wild life?

When I watch television shows where the contestants or guests have childhood photos displayed, I feel a little stab of grief. I have none. I left my home country in my late twenties to marry a wonderful Brit. What I also left was a childhood of violence, abuse, addicted and mentally ill parents, a family of such disfunction that my relationship with my siblings could not survive it. Instead, I built a new life, one based on love, compassion and hope. There were plenty of challenges along the way, my own struggles, but my family always walked alongside me no matter how bumpy the road. This joyful photo of my daughter as a three year old reminds me that stories can change, that unhappy family legacies can end. I like to think that I’m part of this photo, well I suppose in a way I am.,

I’m one of four siblings, two brothers and one sister. Our parents weren’t the best, and not in the benign neglectful way a lot of 80s parents were so we didn’t have great role models for what made a good Mum and Dad to learn from but my god watching my brothers and sisters parent is just incredible to me. They are such brilliant parents, they listen to and see each of their kids so clearly and my nieces and nephews all clearly knows they are safe and loved for who they are. You know we hear and read a lot about breaking the cycle and every time I see one of my nieces take over the living room because she’s decided she needs a different space than her bedroom for whatever project she’s up to now, or one of my nephews loudly sings along to Golden from K-pop demon hunters I feel privileged to watch it in action

I’m Jo from Halifax, and when I was 12 my family broke.
I was a quiet shy only child, and from when I was 5 years old we moved about a lot because of my dad’s job, so by the time I want to secondary school that was my eighth change of school.
Anyway, one weekend when I was 12, I was sat in the living room alone, scrunched upon the sofa watching Mission Impossible, and my dad came in and told me that he and mum were splitting up.
I sat there on the sofa, I was determined not to let him see me cry, I kept staring at the television, then when the programme ended I ran up to my bedroom, with tears stinging my eyes.
After that we had to find somewhere new to live, my dad got himself a nice big detached house with a large garden, and me and mum went looking for small houses on estates, as dad said, ‘Beggars can’t be choosers!’
My dad didn’t just divorce my mum, he divorced me, and then he married the woman who used to live next door to us, and adopted her children, the ones I used to go round to babysit and play with.
The only good thing for me was I no longer had my dad smacking me when I couldn’t do my homework, and calling me stupid!

I have often reflected on this. Family. My family, through adoption , my children whose identity, their heritage ive been passionate to research and find out as much as possible on their behalf. Celebrating all that they are- and where i can, their ancestral links It’s important, giving them the grounding they need. . I wished the government had done more in this area, whilst in their Care, asked more questions. So family means for us, safety , security, understanding, respect and honesty. Love has grown but it wasn’t given unconditionally to me. And that’s ok. I’ll be their oak tree , solid , consistent and devoted with love and care for them always . But I do , every so often , send out to the universe , peace , health and healing to their First Family .

I have memories of this photograph being on the mantelpiece in our back to back terraced house in Leeds. It was probably taken to send to relatives back in Punjab India in the late 1960s. The photograph shows my Mum (centre), Dad, Dad’s younger sister, Me and my older brothers.
I am so proud of my courageous Mum who supported me to live a life very different from her own. She trusted me and encouraged me to make my own decisions in a culture she didn’t fully understand and an environment which could be unwelcoming.
I am part of a multicultural, neurodiverse family of adopted and birth children.
Thank you Mam for helping me to become who I am today.
I miss your laughter and your tight hugs. Your strength and support are alway with me.

I have often reflected on this. Family. My family, through adoption , my children whose identity, their heritage ive been passionate to research and find out as much as possible on their behalf. Celebrating all that they are- and where i can, their ancestral links It’s important, giving them the grounding they need. . I wished the government had done more in this area, whilst in their Care, asked more questions. So family means for us, safety , security, understanding, respect and honesty. Love has grown but it wasn’t given unconditionally to me. And that’s ok. I’ll be their oak tree , solid , consistent and devoted with love and care for them always . But I do , every so often , send out to the universe , peace , health and healing to their First Family .

C.P. Lee, cultural icon of Manchester, was a darlin’. Our desks were big old school desks facing each other. We had a lot of fun. He knew my Dad, only found that out a few years ago. We experienced a fellow colleague’s death and many changes during my time at Theatre and Performance Dept, University of Salford. I was dance focused.
I’ve made the decision to come home to Manchester. Here is aesthetically beautiful but has a second home owner vampiric atmosphere. There are honest, good people mostly Cornish born and bred.
My family, long gone and immediate, would be very proud I moved away from the smoke and smog of Manchester they knew and a bit cracked to want to go back.
Freedom as a Romanichal (Roma-Sinti Dad and Irish Traveller Mum) is integral to my being. It’s not just geographic. It’s the freedom to be who you are. I had C.P. Lee and Roland Metcalf to keep me steady from 1991 to 1996. Roland from what my Mum would call ‘posh’ really he was allowed the education my Mum was denied by her father.

Then, there was the time I asked my Dad if we, Irish Travellers and Romany Gypsies, had a capital city. He said ‘If Travellers and Gypsies gave any substance to such things. It’d be Manchester’ From then on I was escorted by him around the Manchester. C.P. Lee knew those streets too. Played the piano for the Mother of Rock’n’Roll did my Dad, when Ms Rosetta Tharpe visited Manchester in 1964. His Dad, my adored Dando, escorted her to the venue in a pony trap. I was present in Mum’s 7 months pregnant womb. Apparently I squiggled and wiggled ‘You were dancing before you came out’ Mum’d smile at me. Then blew Manchester & Salford away with my talent, skill and teaching. Roland Metcalf, C.P.Lee and the arts community certainly put me through me paces. I worked under the name Alex Smith-Lawrence then.

I am 12 years old and I live with my mum and dad. I think that family is the welcomed feeling you get from not only a biological family, but those around you who love you like family, and, therefore, are family.

These are my grandparents, whom I knew as Henry and Marie Alton, American citizens. But in pre-war Germany, he still used his birth name: Isidore Abraham. At 14, he had run away from his home in southern Germany and become a cattle dealer, which brought him to my grandmother’s town, in dairy country in the north. When he and my Lutheran grandmother fell in love, both sets of parents forbade the marriage – so they eloped: this photo was probably taken in nearby Hannover, where my mother was born in 1931. His Jewish family had sat shiva for him for marrying outside the faith. But they were all reunited as refugees in New York — he made it out in 1938; my mother and grandmother got out in 1940. My Jewish great grandparents came to adore my grandmother – and I’m told my mother, the “shiksa,” was their favourite granddaughter. As soon as the war ended, my grandfather helped my grandmother prepare and post weekly care packages to her parents, who had lost everything: their town, Rethem, was the scene of the last land battle of World War Two in western Europe. And when my grandparents returned to Rethem for the first time, in 1947, my Lutheran great grandparents presented my Jewish grandfather with two items they had kept hidden all through the war, among the few items they had managed to save from the wreckage of their home: his Torah and his prayer shawl. I never met my grandfather: he died in 1950, just one week after my grandparents had moved back to Rethem for good: my aunt tells me HE was the one who wanted to return, because Rethem was the place that had accepted him, and where he’d made a life. A few years ago I found a sealed envelope in a box from my grandmother’s house. In it were photos of my grandfather’s funeral: it’s clear the whole town turned out to say goodbye.

I arrived in Bradford with my mother in 1965. We joined my father who had come in the 1950’s, and it was a different Bradford to today. We were part of a community that looked after each neighbour, joint baby sitting between English/ Indian families. Sharing stories of migration with people from Ukraine, of people in India traumatised after partition. The legacy stayed with us as my dad suffered mental health issues all his life. We moved houses so many times that we saw all sides of Bradford , and neighbours from many parts of the world. Growing up in the 1970’s I was at primary school and scared by the playground stories of the skinheads coming to Bradford to deal with us “p….”. My mother taught us Sikh values of tolerance, but to be aware of social justice and support people around you. She taught us our history, of Indian freedom fighters, of our pioneering elders who had travelled to Vancouver in 1906 /1920’s and 1950’s. Mum taught us of the joys of growing up on a farm and rural life. We were taught at home of equality, to be better human beings and to analyse life, to gain an education. This did not always me though when I felt caught up in life as a Bradfordian, yet a Panjabi and a Sikh. A mixture of things, not solely one. But maybe that’s a good thing? Adapt and keep developing.

I feel very fortunate to have had a loving family and a happy childhood. I was an only child, and one of the memories that evokes for me the feeling of love, safety, and warmth is of Sundays at home. Junior choice on the radio, the aroma of coffee and dad frying bacon for breakfast, then off to Church/Sunday school. Back from church, pushing my bike through the back gate and smelling the Sunday roast, hearing the “Hiss” of the pressure cooker. Laying the table, chatting with my mum, and then the three of us sitting down together to eat, talking about the week, maybe a bit of gossip (Never malicious!) listening to dad’s memories and tales. In the afternoon we might go for a walk in the local park, drive out to the country, sometimes taking my grandparents too or perhaps visit family. Mum and dad are gone now and I am in my 60s. What I would give for one more Sunday with them both.

While all mothers are creators, quite literally, of living breathing worlds and universes (à la Jacques Derrida) I put forth the case that my mother is the mother of all creators. That is to say, she exists to compulsively create. When I was about 5 years old or so, I had a distinctly vivid dream of a tiny horse that collected golden leaves. This was no doubt inspired by the mustard-coloured eucalyptus leaves Mum and I would collect on our many walks through our bushland home.

Mum, recognising that the dream had felt overwhelmingly real to me, wrote and illustrated a short picture book of the horse from my recollections. This is only one example of Mum bringing things to life for me from the pockets of my imagination. One time it was a hand embroidered tote bag, whose felt horses had flowing thread manes. The other time it was a hand sewn Christmas stocking, with more festive animals. Now as an adult, I realise that somehow, through it all, Mum never stopped creating some kind of safe haven for me and my brothers.

Not through the horrific divorce with my estranged father which only now can I appreciate as being overwhelming lonely. Not when I screamed and refused to go to school for months on end, for the shame of my teenage acne. And not now, when she steals my dirty washing to put through the laundry despite her stage 4 breast cancer diagnosis.

To audaciously choose to create love, every time, at every instance, as the answer to every question, is my Mum’s dogged response to the evils of our world. Thank you Mum, Mug, Heather, the designer, the creator, the whole wide world.

My Dad did pretty well in life, but died aged 65 when I was 10. My Mum did the best she could as a parent whilst self-medicating with alcohol for depression. Whatever part of the family DNA that enabled Dad to succeed came my way. Whatever part leads to crippling depression went to my brother. I spent the first half of my life angry at the family life I didn’t have and the second half grateful how the DNA dice had fallen in my favour. I have my own kids now. I’m so glad that we are now more emotionally open. I love my kids dearly. I can only hope that the DNA dice have fallen in their favour too.

Kukhu was the matriach an assuming yet her word stayed. You daren’t argue over the den where as teenagers we vied for. She kept the keys and gave out to whoever deserved.

Kukhu was the kindest and generosity was never an issue. A hot day as days always were with my cousins in a shade we gathered. To listen to her stories eating nugu, a sweat banana she had ripened in the hollow behind her thatched kitchen.

kukhu’s was the refuge one fled to to escape angry parents and she would shelter you for even a month until their wrath dissipated.

Khukhu’s was where it was a pleasure to grind her millet flour on the two mother and baby stones. And you got to try on all her lovely presents of embroidered beautiful Ethiopian cotton. For Uncle Obano travelled these far lands of different people.

Kukhu’s is where you arrived even before reaching your mother and left your mental case from where your brothers would collect.

(Kukhu is grandmother in Luhya)

I am the daughter of immigrants, who built a business from scratch, a community that stuck together, and a big beautiful family in small town Australia. I never liked the town, and I never liked feeling different there, so I always wanted to leave, but I knew this would mean leaving my family, who I loved very much. There were so many of us; brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts and uncles. There were lots of loud family gatherings during the year, and Christmases that always involved some sort of drama. My parents were generous and very, very kind to those who were in need. Eventually, I migrated too, leaving Australia for England, where the father of my children was from. This meant the children never grew up with the big family Christmases I did. They never got to know how incredible their grandfather was, nor did they get to experience their grandmother’s famed cooking more than a few times. And they never got to see their cousins, uncles and aunts long enough to form a true bond with them. It breaks my heart in many ways that I took them away from this, and from such beautiful people. I will always carry this guilt with me and I am so, so sorry. The children’s father and I have since parted ways, and the children have fled the nest. I feel lost and very alone without them and my family, who are in Australia. I feel a pain in my heart and in my throat that does not go away. I hope I can be a part of a new family soon.

Ethel

My Mum, Jean, who sadly now has dementia and no memories, was always a very kind-hearted person. She was very bookish and quiet most of the time but she did have her moments: notably when reprimanding our neighbour who had cut down trees which grew over to our side, where blackbirds nested. She hated any cruelty to animals and felt deeply for pets, almost having a breakdown when her last dog, Annie, died.

One day in the late 60’s/early 70’s her sister Liz visited and Mum told her about an African lady she’d seen sitting on a bench near the local market. She was clearly homeless sitting with all her worldly goods in a cardboard box tied up with string. Liz simply replied: “She’s still there”. She had seen her herself shortly before arriving at our house. At this revelation Mum returned there and then to the market and talked to Ethel. From that moment on she and Ethel became friends.

I don’t know where Ethel slept all the time but Mum helped her as much as she could. I remember Ethel having a bath at our house and talking with her. She was from Sierra Leone and I was the only one in my class at school who had heard of the country. She was from Freetown, the capital, and preferred the warm weather in her own country because there was always a cool breeze blowing. She wasn’t keen on West Indians! She said they were bus drivers, whereas Africans were doctors and nurses!

Ethel was also suffering from mental health issues but social services just didn’t want to know. Mum tried everyone to get some help for Ethel: local clergy, the local MP, no one could or would help. The police certainly didn’t, calling her ‘Black Bess’. They were different times, with very few black people living in the area. There were only a handful of black children at my primary school. I’m not making excuses but just pointing out how it was.

It took Mum threatening to go to the papers before social services took her seriously. Mum told me not long before she started with the symptoms of dementia that we were about to go on holiday and it was make or break. Happily Ethel was admitted to Cheadle Royal where it was found that she had severe psychiatric problems.

She was homeless because her husband had kicked her out and in the words of Ethel: “moved in the white woman from next door”. Ethel and her husband had 7 children: one girl, Ada, and 6 boys. No doubt having 7 children in quick succession and the subsequent marital breakdown had all lead to her psychiatric problems.

She did recover and eventually moved to London, where, I think, she remarried. She never regained custody of the children who stayed in Stockport but she visited them whenever she could. I remember some of them visiting our house and them remarking on the Jackson 5 posters on my wall! I also remember seeing Ada, Ethel’s daughter, working on a fruit stall in the market. She said a shy “Hello!”

Dad wasn’t exactly supportive of Mum with all of this. He was of the opinion that her husband should have helped her. Mum often had to sneak out secretly when dealing with matters connected with Ethel. I remember going to visit Ada’s former foster mother in Cheadle when Ethel was living over there in a hostel and working for Smith’s Crisps. Like many African parents, Ethel and her husband sent their eldest to the UK on her own to be fostered until they could get there, as nurses, I think.

I knew I couldn’t tell Dad where we’d been, even though Mum hadn’t said anything to me. It must have been very hard for Mum trying to do the right thing and keeping it from Dad. I think it played on Dad’s mind though, because after Ethel was settled, he joined the local Shelter group and helped raise money for the homeless charity. In his later years he spoke very proudly of Mum and how she had helped Ethel when no one else would.

One poignant memory I have is reading a letter sent to Mum by one of Ethel’s brothers. He thanked Mum and said he loved her for helping his sister. I was confused because in my young mind I couldn’t understand how another man could love Mum as well as Dad. I didn’t realise then that there were different kinds of love between a man and a woman.

Mum certainly showed love and compassion towards a fellow human being. Her friend, Ethel.

My father died 4 years ago. He was the most joyful, funny, loving grandfather, father and husband loved by us all and we miss him every day.
He grew up knowing who his father was, seeing him in the distance occasionally, but never being allowed to meet him. He was abandoned by his mother who had built a new family and a new life that he didn’t fit into. His mother eventually emigrated to Canada and when my father heard that this was going to happen he cycled over to her house with presents for his sisters. His mother opened the door, took the presents and closed the door in his face. He didn’t see her for another 30 years.
My father met my mother when he was 21, a private in the army based in Libya in the 1950s. She was 19, working in an office at the army base and only spoke a little English. Her family spoke no English but they immediately loved him. Within three months of this meeting my father was told he was being posted back to England, he proposed, they married and had 65 wonderful years together. My dad said, when he met my mum he knew that he wanted her to be his family and he never wanted to be alone again, and he wasn’t.

Family are the people that know the parts of you that are knowable better than anyone else. But they will refuse to believe those things about you that are unexpected or normally kept for friends. Family is about belonging. My mother had a partner for 44 years who was not my dad. Some family members never accepted him. Not because they werent married but because personality wise he wasnt like us. That worked for her but alienated some of her children. They kept quiet for 40 years. Just moved away and didnt visit often. For forty years. He has passed away now and she gets more visits. But no one says why. I wonder if she knows but I will never ask her.

The Argument Between Us

Adult Me:
Be kind to yourself.

Little Me:
Why?

Adult Me:
Because you were only two.

Little Me:
Two was old enough
to learn that arms
don’t always mean comfort.
Sometimes they shake you.
Sometimes they pass you on.
Sometimes they sign papers
and call it a new beginning
because nobody knows what to do with you
doesn’t look good on a file.
Four times.
Placed for adoption
four times.
Like pass the parcel,
only the prize was trauma
and the music never really stopped.

Adult Me:
None of that was your fault.

Little Me:
That’s easy for you to say.
You’ve got forty years
of fancy words now.
Trauma.
Attachment.
Intergenerational cycles.
Compassion focused therapy.
Very impressive.
I had broken bones
before I could pronounce my own name.

Adult Me:
I know.

Little Me:
No.
You understand.
That’s different.
You understand why Mum struggled.
You understand what happened to her.
You understand addiction, pain, survival,
how damaged people can damage people
without waking up each morning
and adding it to their to do list.
You understand everybody.
Except me.

Adult Me:
I am trying to understand you.

Little Me:
Then stop telling me to be kind.
Kindness feels suspicious.
Kindness feels like the quiet bit
before somebody changes their mind.
Kindness feels temporary.
Love always had an expiry date.

Adult Me:
But you deserve compassion.

Little Me:
Based on what?
The person who made me
didn’t think I was worth getting better for.
The person who should have loved me
didn’t make me feel lovable.
The person who should have been my safety
became the reason
I still check every exit.
So don’t tell me I deserve softness.
Where was it then?

Adult Me:
She was unwell.

Little Me:
I was a baby.

Adult Me:
She had her own trauma.

Little Me:
I had her trauma too.

Adult Me:
She did what she could.

Little Me:
And what she could
still hurt.

Adult Me:
I know.

Little Me:
Do you?
Because every year
when her anniversary comes around,
you start policing my grief.
Last year we missed her.
The year before, we forgave her.
This year I’m angry.
And you keep asking
whether anger is allowed
now that we understand.

Adult Me:
I’m scared anger makes us cruel.

Little Me:
No.
Pretending makes us cruel.
Silencing me
so everybody else can remain comfortable
is what we have always done.
You call it maturity.
I call it being abandoned
with better vocabulary.

Adult Me:
So what do you need from me?

Little Me:
Stop defending everyone
before you defend me.
Stop explaining her pain
before you name mine.
Stop treating understanding
like it is a magic eraser.
It doesn’t unbreak bones.
It doesn’t unshake babies.
It doesn’t collect me
from every home I was passed through
and put me back
where I belonged.

Adult Me:
Where did you belong?

Little Me:
With someone who wanted me.
Not tolerated me.
Not managed me.
Not assessed me.
Not placed me.
Wanted me.

Adult Me:
I want you.

Little Me:
Now you do.

Adult Me:
I always did.
I just didn’t know
you were still in here.

Little Me:
I have been screaming
behind every achievement.
Every degree.
Every speech.
Every room you walked into
pretending you weren’t terrified.
I was there.
Every time you fought for your children
like the world was coming to take them.
Every time you gave them
too much love,
too many chances,
too much of yourself,
that was me too.
Trying to make sure
they never looked into a camera
with eyes like mine.

Adult Me:
We broke the cycle.

Little Me:
We interrupted it.
There’s a difference.
Breaking sounds clean.
This has been messy.
We built safety
while still flinching.
We gave affection
while secretly wondering
when we would be punished for needing it back.
We became the mother
we needed,
then hated ourselves
for getting tired.

Adult Me:
That’s why I’m asking you
to let me be compassionate.

Little Me:
And I’m asking
what compassion even looks like
when it was never modelled.

Adult Me:
Maybe it looks like
not leaving you alone with the blame.

Little Me:
And when I say I’m angry?

Adult Me:
I won’t correct you.

Little Me:
When I say I loved her?

Adult Me:
I won’t shame you.

Little Me:
When I say I hate what she did?

Adult Me:
I won’t explain it away.

Little Me:
When I ask why I wasn’t enough?

Adult Me:
I will answer
until you believe me.
You were enough.
Before the files.
Before the placements.
Before the broken bones.
Before adults made their failures
feel like your identity.
You were enough.

Little Me:
Then why didn’t she choose me?

Adult Me:
Because sometimes
people can love us
and still be incapable
of loving us safely.

Little Me:
That sounds like another excuse.

Adult Me:
No.
It is an explanation.
And explanations belong to adults.
The blame never belonged to you.

Little Me:
So what happens now?

Adult Me:
We argue.
Probably daily.
You tell me I don’t deserve kindness.
I remind you
that survival is not a character flaw.
You tell me softness is dangerous.
I show you the children
sleeping safely in the home we built.
You tell me we are still broken.
I remind you
that broken things don’t usually
raise whole human beings
with this much love.

Little Me:
And when you forget?

Adult Me:
You remind me.

Little Me:
And when I become too much?

Adult Me:
You won’t.

Little Me:
Everybody says that
before they leave.

Adult Me:
Then watch me stay.
Because maybe compassion
isn’t loving every part of ourselves.
Maybe it is refusing
to abandon the parts
that are hardest to hold.
So look into those eyes.
Yes, there is pain.
There is rage.
There is grief.
There is a little girl
still waiting to be chosen.
But this time, baby girl,
the woman you became
is choosing you.

I was an only child, until I wasn’t. Divorce, remarriage, new siblings, new families, all of it added up to more love, not less. Then I met my husband, whose children were young when they came into my life. I watched them grow up, and now they’re parents themselves.

We have all these words, step, half, in-law, as if love needs a qualifier, as if some kinds of family come with an asterisk. But nobody in this family has ever loved by halves. Not my siblings, not my husband’s children, not me. So somewhere along the way, the labels just stopped mattering. I’m not step-Granny. I’m not some careful, technically correct title. I’m Granny.

My family was never about blood. It’s about love, and love doesn’t do modifiers.

As care experienced adult I am many parts of different families moulding myself each time to fit, taking on others traditions and quirks unable then to fit back into my birth family, a jigsaw piece now in the wrong box.
I have my own family now and we have created our own quirks and traditions. We all fit comfortably into our own jigsaw puzzle! My children have enriched lives through a grandparent relationship with one of my previous foster carers. They just see her as Granny without needing to understand the difficult road we travelled.

DAD
So this is a Poem about my dad
He was pretty flawed but a real character. I read this at his funeral.
I’m an amateur performing poet, but this was one of the hardest ones I ever wrote!

Before I start there’s a couple of things you cannot know that I need to explain

– [ ] My sister is Fran
– [ ] ‘Crannie and Tom’ are both ladies – full of character landladies who felt like they were from another age! (Victorian), in a very tall Victorian house in Wimbledon

Daddy

He threw me high and caught me

Time and time again
This new father delighting in
Being able to entertain
Totally trusting Daddy
Not to drop me from that height
As long as it was him
I knew…
I’d be

alright

Screaming with pleasure
as little toddlers do.
I swear to recalling this vividly
But I bet I was only two!!

Later – 60’s bohemian London
Down Oxford Street we walked
Oh my, how the shoppers there
must have truly gawped
What a sight we would’ve been
Cos only my little feet were seen
He wore the longest hippie cloak
I was right under it
Masterstroke!

An orange Austin 7
His total pride and joy.
He was the fastest driver ever!
What a crazy boy!

For me and Fran – this was no big deal.
We were used to speeding
with Dad at the wheel.
He’d say
“let’s get lost”
And drive to any old place
He likely knew the country roads
But kept a poker face!

He loved to meet new people,
So no hitch picking up a hiker
Indeed one fine and sunny day
He picked up two stranded bikers

They both sat in the back
rolled up a big fat joint
And as we whizzed right through the Shire,
It’s rather hard to pinpoint
Exactly when those bikers
turned a putrid shade of green
Now reticent, shaking like babies
now not quite so keen!
Fran and myself
as chirpy as you like.
As these leather clad
Hard-men returned to their bikes!

Me and my sister
We worshipped this man
He’d visit us in Oxfordshire
In his white touring van
Full of props, hand puppets,
and Marionettes
A thrilling new world of
theatre effects
He’d make the puppets come to life
before our widened eyes.
Our awe and wonderment
Knowing no disguise

On these occasions he’d appear
Magically conjuring six-pences
From behind our very ears!

As Dad left our little cottage
We’d both start to whimper
Begging him to stay a little longer.
To linger

Mum softly told us
Hey girls you’re not to cry
It’ll hurt your dad she explained
Lest we had no reason why
So we’d wait awhile, patiently
Til he was totally out of sight.
Then we didn’t have to be
Quite so resolutely watertight

The Seeds of magic and writing
For discovering his flair
In children’s entertainment
Taking him somewhere
For in a few years time
just around the corner
he’d become a prominent,
Successful
Esteemed
children’s author!

But back to Oxfordshire times
I recall it so well.
Dad said he was travelling
so off for a spell
My whole world was to shift
And dramatically alter.
For he told me he was off to sunny Gibraltar.
I can see it now – it’s the strongest image
But I thought it short term
And a nearby village!

He bought, then lived, on a sea faring boat.
Seems it’s a DNA thing
for some of us to float!
Years passed slowly by
His sporadic letters written
Opening them excitedly,
our little hearts would quicken
We knew he was the sender
He wrote in green or brown Ink
Another idiosyncrasy
don’t you think?

I collected the somewhat striking
Gibraltarian stamps
A series of colourful soldiers
Of various uniforms and ranks
One letter advised us
New siblings’d been conceived
I hate to admit being ‘somewhat less than pleased!

(Now All 5 of us are solid
Here we’ve given each other solace
It’s part credit to dad
We’ve turned out not too bad!)

In my early 20’s
He came to one of my hippie gigs
Dad certainly no stranger to
wine, women, parties, cigs
He imbibed some of the earthy, brewing mushroom tea.
He immediately seemed so uber-cool to me!
Smiling, he uttered this classic dad-quip:

“Who forced this mushroom tea between my protesting lips?!”

You see Dad with his charisma,
easy wit and charm,
You’d be PROUD to be seen
on his stylish arm
Artistic, creative, could turn his hand to anything
He loved an audience
Could make any party swing

Here are some snippets
of my cherished memories
Away from this end-of-life cemetery

Wimbledon Village
Crannie and Tom
One a totally sweetie
The other ‘somewhat strong’
Character landladies
The broadsheet dailys
Pretty lasses, exotic wines
His amusing storylines
How did he cook that incredible supper?
He only added half a block of
Finest salted butter
Smoking smelly Gallois
Or worse – those cigars!

Dads magic circle friends
Performing inches from your face
can’t suss their conjury
Even in a close proximity space
Hocus pokus, hand-sleights
Later rubbing shoulders with
Jacqueline Wilson
He must have been doing alright!

Awards at The Ritz
Genius at scrabble
Dads era in France
Numerous other worldly travels

Getting me aged 7 to stick his liquorice roll-up papers!
(I can still taste them now!)
His acute observations, and love of British nature
The Telegraph crossword solved
He was actually very clever
A Moroccan handbag for my birthday
Fringed in buck leather
Dads abject failure to tackle tax and finance
His unique, cute version of 70’s disco dance….
Only now I can see he suffered from ADHD
I could be harsh on him I realise
Yet that’s exactly the same as me! ….

So daddy now
you’re leaving us forever
There’s no point our being brave
It’s not needed nor clever

Mum

Now that he cannot witness our tears.
We can reassure and allay your fears
We’re now free to express this
Finally allowed

Darling Mummy
Dads first big love

Can we cry now?

Im Mel
I grew up in care – never really knew my biological family and the families i did have werent really my family.
Id never felt love until i had my own family.
Family to me means lots of pictures to show every moment in life.
Life in care i was over represented
Leaving care – i was under represented
This was how my life was presented 🎁
My nana aged 93 is the queen of our family with 10 children, my own mum had 10 children. There are hundreds of my family members scattered all over the UK
One day i will be reunited with my siblings whom i was separated from because of life in care.
My family will be complete when i reunite with them all. I Yearn to find them.
Family to me are my own children and animals id be lost without them! They made me whole!
My age 36 i think i finally found that my own family are my peace at last 😌 something id always wanted of my own – my own family

I was born in 1967 , my mother was unmarried at the time , luckily she never gave me up and struggled on in a time when judgement of that situation was prevalent. She held her head high pushing me in my silver cross pram everyday . I was lucky she married when I was 1 which gave me a beautiful sister who I cherish . Family is everything whether you are blood related or not . I now have 3 beautiful children as well as 3 wonderful grandchildren Let no one judge what others deal with daily , be thankful for all you have . I am

My favourite meal as a child was Sunday lunch at Ma and Pa’s house – this is me and my twin sitting at the table, aged about 16 I think. My Mum is one of five and I loved it the most when we showed up in multiples, because lunch always became high tea, though still at 12:30 on the dot. Sometimes we had crumpets, coming straight from the oven grill, but always with two kinds of sandwiches (must be eaten before cake) and trifle to finish (one cherry per person, trading allowed). We cousins all got taller and then started bringing our own partners and kids, but that room didn’t change. My grandparents died over a decade ago now, but we still get together, as many and as often as we can. Sunday lunch is usually a barbeque, since there’s far too many of us to fit round a dining room table these days, but there is ALWAYS a trifle – with an awful lot of cherries on top!

I (1 of 4 sisters) came from a long line of non-maternal women in poverty, who didn’t really show love. That cycle broke with me. When my youngest sister ended up with a narcissistic millionaire going through a divorce, my parents overlooked his aggression and moved themselves onto his land. He banned one of us from his property over a disagreement and my parents gladly turned their back on 2 daughters and 6 grandchildren. I’m concentrating on being a better ancestor than a descendent.

I still dream about my grandparents house in the Rhondda, even though it’s been 25 years since I’ve stepped through the door. It was old and un-modernised…..the bath was in the kitchen! I sat in that bath and watched my Nanny cook something nice for supper. Then she’d wrap me in a warm towel.
They had 2 pianos! That sounds fancier than it is. One was the old family piano that my great-grandparents had bought. The 2nd was newer, a treasured inheritance from my Nanny’s brother. We’d play it together, duets, both feeling our way through the piece and laughing at the wrong notes. She would say she needed more practice but her fingers were graceful as they moved across the keyboard.
My Grampy would butter bread for our tea, the butter was soft from the pantry. He’d buy a can of coke and keep it in the fridge, just for me. We’d have homemade cake and M&S biscuits, the posh ones!
On a sunny day, we’d sit in the garden with views of the mountains. We’d have a choc ice. Every memory revolves around the food we ate.
I dream about the house, about the improvements that must have been made, about going back to find the pink wallpaper still there.

The Family I Built

I didn’t inherit a family tree
with strong roots and tidy branches.
Mine came with gaps,
questions,
and a fair bit of generational chaos.

So I planted my own.

Three children.
Twelve opinions.
Seventeen loads of washing,
and apparently,
I’m the only person who can see the basket.

I hold this family together
with one pair of hands,
a tired heart,
dark humour
and a love so fierce
it refuses to repeat history.

I cannot change
where I came from,
but I can change
what gets passed down.

Not the silence.
Not the shame.
Not the survival mode.

They will inherit laughter,
loud love,
open arms
and the certainty
that home will never disappear
when life gets difficult.

Family, to me,
is not the cycle I was born into.

It is the cycle
I had the courage to break,

and the beautiful, noisy,
slightly feral little village
I built in its place.
TAh💛✨️

My nan was small, round with apple red cheeks. We played cards in the summer holidays and ambled in her garden.

I was lucky to be very close to her – as she got older she told me how worried and scared she got at night in her house alone. So I agreed to keep my mobile phone by my bed every night just in case she needed me.

I realised at 19 that this was the point that we were looking out for each other equally.

No hug has ever felt as safe or heartful as one from her.

Some effects of immigration

There are two questions that crop up very regularly when people first meet me. People ask: “Why Polish?” (when they hear that I’m learning it) and “are you sure you’ve got all of that?” (when they see me subconsciously scraping every last scrap of food off my plate at the end of a meal). The reason for both of these is: Ted.

Ted was my Polish Step-Grandad, my Grandma’s second husband. I didn’t get to meet my biological grandfather on that side, as he had died long before I was born. All I knew in that space was Ted, and I spent time at their house most days as a child. Ted’s surname was Kamień, the Polish word for ‘stone’, ‘gem’.

Ted and I would sit across from each other in my Grandma’s front room, quietly sharing the space together, no need for conversation, just existing in each other’s company – Ted often playing a solitary card game while I watched children’s TV, and both of us eating toffee humbugs.

Ted didn’t say a lot. By the time I was old enough to remember a conversation, he had had a stroke, affecting his speech. But some of the things he did say – in his wonderful, deep, gravelly Polish accent – stuck in my head: That he would like to visit Poland again some time, but he wasn’t sure he would make it [he didn’t]; and that he loved me – said to me one New Year’s Eve, in a way that suggested he thought it was going to be his last [it was].

At mealtimes at my Grandma’s, I would often sit opposite Ted. That’s when I must have learned it from him – the plate-scraping that would later become a subconscious routine for me at every meal. At that point, I didn’t notice that he did it. I certainly didn’t know the likely reason. Nor did I understand why they said at his funeral that the later years of his life were the happiest. I was 13 and felt a deep sadness when he died. I remember making a promise to myself that I would try hard at school and still make him proud.

It was not until I was in my 20s and happened to ask my Grandma more about Ted’s past that fragments of his story began to emerge.
Ted grew up in the Polish region around Stanisławów – now the Ukrainian region around Ivano-Frankivsk. His school reports (some of his only surviving possessions) show good marks, and he was then working on farms in that area. When I search for that region on the Internet, I get pictures of rolling hills, fields blanketed with crops and interspersed with occasional rivers and ponds. But Ted was about to be brutally torn from that landscape.

The Nazi invasion of Poland from the West is well known. What is less spoken about is the Soviet occupation of Poland from the East. Almost 2 million[1] Polish citizens were taken from their homes in waves of mass deportations to the USSR. They vanished – ‘jak kamień w wodę’ (‘like a stone into water’; without trace). Ted was amongst them.

It was the night before Ted’s 17th birthday that they came to his home around midnight. They marched him and many others to the station and crammed them into cattle trucks (unheated trains, in freezing February). He estimated it was about 48 wagons, with around 30-45 people packed into each one, and they were taken off to Siberia. Just think about that. Normal life. To Siberia. The far side of Russia. The journey took weeks. He described it as 23 days without proper food, water or sanitation. Other accounts on the internet state that the only toilet was a hole in the wagon floor[2]. Disease became rife. Those who died on the way were thrown out of the carriage. Ted somehow survived.

When they arrived in Siberia, they were put into forced labour camps. Conditions were tough: hard labour combined with starvation through meagre rations, combined with the harsh environment of Siberia in Winter. People died. Ted somehow lived.

He stayed there for what must have been at least a year and a half. The only way that he got out of that camp was because of something I now know to be the Sikorski-Mayski agreement of July 1941, precipitated by the German invasion of the Soviet Union a month earlier. This agreement involved a so-called “amnesty”[3] of many Polish citizens from the camps, and the formation of another Polish army from them to fight for the Allies. This force would be led by the Polish government-in-exile, with General Władysław Anders as its commander. This was the army whose name now rings out in Polish history: the Polish 2nd Corps or, as it became known, Anders’ Army. Tens of thousands of Polish citizens in captivity in Soviet camps responded to the call-up. Imagine the choice: stay in captivity, starving and forced to do hard labour in Siberia, or sign up to fight in a long-lasting and bloody war. Ted joined up.

To get to where they needed to be — in Persia (now Iran), they had to endure the harsh conditions of the journey; large parts of it (at the least) involved long gruelling treks on foot. Russia to Persia. Some people didn’t make it. One man who had helped others to keep going died soon after they got there.

In Anders’ Army, Ted then went on to fight in the Italian Campaign, including in what is often described as one of the (if not, the) toughest and bloodiest battles of the Second World War, the Battle of Monte Cassino. After various attempts by other nations there, the Poles were instrumental in defeating the Germans, which then opened the road for the Allies to liberate Rome. The Battle of Monte Cassino is seen by some as “the beginning of the final crumbling of the Nazi military machine”[4]. It certainly holds a deep cultural and historical significance in Polish Society today. Around 20,000 soldiers lost their lives on the German side; around 54,000 Allied soldiers were killed. Ted somehow survived.

Towards the end of the war, the Yalta Conference confirmed that Poland would be under communist control; Poland’s borders were defined, and Ted’s home region was in the part taken — and allowed to be kept — by the Soviet Union. Many Polish people in this situation were left as political refugees, who couldn’t return home. In recognition of the Polish contributions to Allied war efforts, however, Polish forces and refugees were allowed to settle in Britain. And so Ted came to be in Northern England. After his first marriage had ended, he met my Grandma. They married, they worked hard, saved up and enjoyed holidays together in Austria, as well as some trips to (the newly defined) Poland. His niece, who later settled in Germany, came to visit and remained in contact with our family.

After all this, surviving so much physically and mentally, Ted ended up eating humbugs and watching kids’ TV with me. I could feel he cared for me a great deal, and I cared for him the same.

It’s staggering how something so fragile and special as a human being can survive such a sequence of events, or even just one of them. But somehow Ted came through this — ‘trafiła kosa na kamień’ (‘the scythe hit the stone’; used to express someone’s pure resilience or stubbornness, someone who cannot be overcome[5]). I would never wish any of these things on anyone, but their result — that Ted ended up marrying my Grandma in our little village — has had a huge influence on my life. At 13, a few months after he died, I did an exchange with his niece’s daughter in Germany. I went on to study a degree in German and became a professional linguist. Most of all, though, it has given me a love of Poland. I’ve walked the Baltic beaches of Sopot and the fairytale streets of Poland’s amber capital, Gdańsk, in the North. I’ve seen the stunning Tatra mountains and lively folk musicians of Zakopane in the South. I’ve visited the statue of Kraków’s famous dragon and heard the historic bugler playing his ancient tune from the top of the Mariacka Basilica; I’ve seen the incredible old town of Poznań, returned brick-by-brick to its former pre-war beauty. I’ve eaten amazing Polish food in these places, and at Polish gatherings in Manchester. I’ve been having Polish lessons for almost three years now. I’ve watched Polish films at the cinema near Deansgate, been mesmerised by Polish folk dancing in Moss Side and listened to achingly beautiful Chopin music. These are the effects of Ted’s immigration on my life, and my world and mind is immeasurably richer for it.

The last thing to say: For many years I said to people that it was sad that I didn’t know Ted’s story until after he had died. I was still a child. I never got to ask him about it. I never heard it from him or got to tell him how glad I was that he ended up in my life. I had googled his name a few times before and nothing much came up, until I tried again recently. My jaw dropped. A website came up with records of people who had been transported to Siberia and statements taken from them about what had happened to them[6]. These documents had been stored away for safe-keeping at the Hoover Institution in California. There, online, was the scan of a handwritten statement from Ted. The location is given as Totskoye, Russia — where Anders’ Army was formed, before they went on to Persia. I don’t know if it is his handwriting or that of the person taking the statement, but this is Ted’s story and after 80 years, Ted’s voice is telling it loud and clear.

[The photo is of my writing desk.]

[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/83/a7652883.shtml
[2]https://www.bbc.com/bradford/big_questions/poland_deportations_to_ussr_1940.shtml
[3]This word was protested due to its connotations of criminal activity: https://www.gov.pl/web/iraq/wartime-diplomacy-part-iv
[4]https://2korpus.org/en/1947-monte-cassino-anniversary-speech/
[5]Sometimes with a sense of someone else who is strong/stubborn having met their match.
[6]https://zapisyterroru.pl/dlibra

We lost the youngest of my Uncle’s in July of 2023.
Just a few years older than me, he was like the ‘cool big brother’ I never had, growing up.
He was fun-loving, and free; he ‘dared to be different’ before it even became a ‘thing’.
He met the love of his life whilst still a teenager, they married, had children, then grandchildren, and now a great grandchild; in 2023 they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, all before reaching his three score and ten.
He had it tough.
They had it tough.
His moments in the sun were far fewer than they should have been.
He had two lives – one before a life changing event – and one after.
His children, his grandchildren, many of his other nieces and nephews, will only have known and loved one version of him.
I am old enough to have seen, loved, and experienced both the first and second lives he had.
He leaves behind, two women in particular, his wife, my Aunty C; and his big sister, my Aunty J. These two women probably are jointly responsible for keeping him here as buoyancy aides in the big swimming pool of life. Both with hearts as big as the ocean, and ferocious in their protective love for him.
He also leaves behind my Uncle K, ‘Snake’, – there is not a man still alive that can hold a candle to this man! Holding the joint titles of ‘best friend/brother’.
For them, I pray for their strength 🤍
My cousins, S and J, have lost their father, their most fierce supporter and loyal protector; I know the pain that brings. The same for his grandchildren.
For them, I pray for their strength 🤍
He will remain forever in my heart as ‘our Jeff’, the little brother my late Dad, who loved him as a son; one of my late lil’Bro’s favourite people and ‘big brother’ in every way that counts.
Reunited now with them and your beloved Mum 🤍
Thank you for the love. I will miss you.
Until we meet again, over the rainbow …
🧡

On Sundays, most Sundays, Grandpop complains that he’s been telling her that he hates sprouts for 40 years. Most Sundays Grandma serves him sprouts. And so they carry on.
Later his brother will sleep in front of what’s on. When we change the channel he’ll wake up, say he was watching that. Grandma will tell him that he bloody well wasn’t. She’ll say he was fast on. At some point my Mother and Grandma will have their weekly “ding dong”. The door will slam and that’s the last we’ll see of my mother for days.
Most Sundays, I can’t leave the table until the inedible food has gone, till I can see the the bull pictured on my plate. I fear breaking a tooth on her concrete pastry, or choking as the stewing steak gets bigger in my mouth with each chew.
The dog helps.
We carry on.

I am an immigrant, and I will always carry that identity with me. My journey, my memories, and my origins are an inseparable part of who I am.

At my naturalisation ceremony in the town hall, I stood alongside other immigrants and took the Oath of Allegiance, surrounded by flags and a sense of community. It was a moment of commitment, reflection, and belonging.

The flag stands as a symbol of freedom, unity, and inclusion, yet it also carries a history of boundaries and exclusion. For immigrants, it holds a complex meaning—a symbol of the new home we embrace while honouring the journeys and histories we bring with us. This is my new family.

My father’s journey began in Pakistan, where he was born and educated in Karachi before taking the courageous step of emigrating to the United Kingdom in search of a better future. Like so many of his generation, he arrived with little more than hope, determination, and the belief that through hard work he could build something meaningful.

He found work in the textile mills of northern England, during a time when opportunities were limited and racism was a painful reality for many. Yet he never allowed those challenges to define him. He worked tirelessly on the factory floor, and when his working day ended, he studied at night, earning his degree in Accountancy through sheer dedication and perseverance.

It was an achievement that reflected his intelligence, discipline, and ambition. But life was about choices and responsibilities. The factory offered more shifts and greater financial security, and he chose to put the needs of his family before his own dreams. His greatest qualification was not the degree he earned, but the life he built through sacrifice, love, and commitment.

He married, raised his children, and carried the responsibility of caring for his family in both Pakistan and the United Kingdom. He gave us more than material support; he gave us values that will remain with us forever. He taught us to work hard, to be resilient, to respect others, and to always remember where we came from and those who helped shape us.

When he chose his final resting place, he chose to return to the people who formed the foundation of his life. He wanted to be buried beside his brothers and sisters—the men and women who raised him, loved him, and shared his earliest memories. In their company, he found the belonging that distance and time could never take away.

His grave is not simply a place where he rests. It is a place where worlds meet—a connection between Pakistan and Britain, between the past and the present, and between generations of our family. No matter how far we travel or how much time passes, we return. We visit, we remember, we cry, we pray, and we reconnect.

Through his resting place, my father continues to bring us together. He reminds us that family is stronger than borders, that love survives distance, and that the legacy of those who came before us lives on through the generations that follow.

My husband’s grandmother Flo was born in Sydney, Australia in the 1870s., the youngest of eight children, two of whom had died in infancy before she was born. Her father died when she was 7 leaving her mother struggling to raise her six young children. A childless English couple took a shine to little Flo and offered to bring her up. She went to live with them, the agreement being that she would still see her mothers and siblings. Very shortly afterwards the Englishman took a job in Melbourne and moved there with his wife – and Flo. Barely a year later he himself died, and his widow returned to England to sort out his affairs, taking 8 year old Flo with her… Flo never saw her mother and siblings again.
A couple of years later, still in England, her “adoptive mother’ remarried, and as the new husband didn’t want a “ready-made family” (his words according to family letters), Flo was sent off to boarding school.
At the age of 30 she herself found happiness at last when she met, and eventually married, her husband. They had four children together and lived in London until her death from cancer at the age of just 60.

Family is a set of disputed memories between one group of people over a lifetime

My mother, who is now terminally ill, has narrow-minded views on any kind of relationships that aren’t man/woman. So, she will never know that I’m bisexual or about my first love/same sex relationship and the grief I felt when my girlfriend took her own life and how it’s still a big part of who I am today.

I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by telling my mum now, but it still makes me sad that I couldn’t share a significant part of my life and experiences with her.

My sisters and I were lucky enough to be raised by both parents with love & enough money for our needs. From an outsider’s perspective everything was perfect; but severe metal illness also resided in our home, so we grew up learning to walk, talk, be-quiet, watchful, fearful and confused.

This environment shaped each of us differently. This splintered and divided us when we were young, but it also made us resilient, capable and kind.

Technology now brings us together for a weekly chat. Despite being worlds apart geographically, spread over 3 continents, our love for each other & our sisterly bonds are unbreakable.

Mu uncle passed away in 2011 he gave me my music taste. We got his old ipod with all of his music on it, listening to that music inspired me and shaped my music taste. He was a musician and i think it’s down to him that i love music so much and that its still such a big part of my life.

The family I grew up in was all I knew. My mum was kind, messy, always running late, volunteered her time to help others, got a job cleaning and tried to educate herself as she missed out on school due to her mum dying when she was only 12. As if by a cruel fate I also lost my mum just as I turned 15 years old. I actually dreamt about it not long before as I spoke up crying. That always left me with the fear I had somehow willed it to happen. I now know I didn’t but it lingers. The worst part of my dream was imagining being left with my dad. You see my dad was violent to my mum and us kids. Then when I turned 12 he started grooming and sexually abusing me. I’m sorry to share that here I know to anyone reading this is heavy but it’s my life it’s my truth. Things got worse after my mum died. I know it’s awful to think isn’t it while I’m still grieving my poor mum
I had to cope with this even worse trauma. I’ve often thought maybe my mum was too gentle for this world and her passing was a saving grace but selfishly I just wish I had my mum to cuddle or phone when I just needed her unconditional love. That’s what parents give you don’t they? Long story short when the police came to my school I told them everything. We got removed and put in kinship care, then foster care, split up from my siblings I got shipped off to a children’s home on my own. I always think that had a negative impact on my sibling relationships and I often wonder if somewhere deep down they resent me for breaking the family up including a foster placement we were so sad in I took on the role of whistle blower again and at age 16 I honestly just tried to do my best by us all. All I knew was this didn’t feel like a home with real love. It was very very conditional. I would have taken conditional.

So fast forward to today. I have worked hard on myself to heal and make sure I don’t pass the hurt on. I’ve had many ups and downs. I broke the cycle. I’m proud of myself. I’m so lucky to have a true gentleman and diamond of a husband and we were blessed with 3 happy children. I have a successful career but I feel this is based on an innate drive to turn my life around and not let my dad impact my future. My mum gave me a gift with her passing, the deep understanding that we only get one chance at life, nothings guaranteed and we should treat others as we wish to be treated. A gift of course I never received. I can’t change that but I can change how I see it.

Mum I so wish you were here to cuddle my children and tell me I’m a good mum. I wish you were here to answer my worries. I wish you were here to cuddle me. Instead you left me with to earth angels, Margaret and Bill. A wonderful couple who knew you and my grandpa. Somehow you left me with a connection to them. They lived next to a club I went to once a week and I started visiting them for a cuppa and a lift home after my club. This is when I learned something wonderful. Unconditional love can be found in other places. I thought this feeling of unconditional love was only possible from your parents. Margaret and Bill showed me complete unconditional love that filled my cup to the brim. Wow I couldn’t believe it. They loved me like their own. It took me time to trust it but I felt it in my bones. How lucky was I to make such a serendipitous life changing connection? A connection that runs like a golden thread through my life. A thread instrumental in who I am today and reflected in my very own little family of steadfast unconditional love. A love that I must continue to nurture and protect. This is my version of family today.

I was infertile. Absolutely barren. I adopted my most cherished, loved, wanted, celebrated children. And I was done. Then…menopausal….aged 47..I missed a period. Fully expecting a scan for polycystic ovary flare up, my partner suggested a pregnancy test to rule it out. Well #shitmyactuallife! Less than 0.1% chance of conception. I had never conceived. Ever. Upwards of 85% chance of miscarriage. I carried him to term. My blond curlywig bombshell. If this miracle doesn’t cure cancer I’m putting him on eBay!

My sisters and I were lucky enough to be raised by both parents with love & enough money for our needs. From an outsider’s perspective everything was perfect; but severe mental illness also resided in our home, so we grew up learning to walk, talk, be-quiet, watchful, fearful and confused.

This environment shaped each of us differently. This splintered and divided us when we were young, but it also made us resilient, capable and kind.

Technology now brings us together for a weekly chat. Despite being worlds apart geographically, spread over 3 continents, our love for each other & our sisterly bonds are unbreakable.

Sixty years ago this month, my mum and dad got married. On the day that England won the World Cup. A country girl and a city boy who had met by fate at a milkman’s ball. Mum, a book-loving chorister and Dad a young solider aspiring to be both Elvis and George Best, whom mum would affectionately refer to in later years as her Sharpe.

They left Belfast in the late 1960s to travel the world as a young couple, returning to Irish roots and soil in the 1980s as a family of six.

Over the last seven decades, they have borne out the promises made on their wedding day.

There have been good times and bad. Sickness and health.

They have been each other’s anchors through both chaotic and calm seas, providing unshakeable foundations for their four children, seven grandchildren (whom Dad lovingly calls his seven wonders of the world) and – in recent times – two great grandchildren.

Along the way, they have welcomed partners, in‑laws, and friends‑who‑became‑family into their home in open embrace, generous hospitality, approachability and acceptance, with an unrivalled sense of childlike fun.

Generation after generation, our lives have been shaped by the music, poetry, play and unconditional love of two extraordinary people.

And so as England reach the end of this year’s World Cup endeavours – whether it’s coming home or not – these two continue to be our forever home. Happy anniversary Bert and Maggie, Mum and Dad, Granny and Grandad xx

My Mum was one of 6 children born in a north east mining family. Opportunities were scarce and all of the siblings either emigrated, worked abroad or moved away at some point. When I was 12 my parents took my brother and I to the Bahamas where they taught. My brother and I returned to the north east and lived with my youngest aunt. My parents returned briefly and went back to the Bahamas where they became citizens when I was 19. For my 50th birthday my family cycled the coast to coast with me. On the final day I was joined by my Dad, brother, husband, 3 daughters, 2 nieces, 3 uncles including one from Canada, 7 of my cousins, 4 half cousins and in laws. I am who I am because of my family especially my youngest aunt Cherry who gave my brother and I a home when my parents left. The photo includes the cyclists on the beach at Roker at the end of the ride

I loved sitting on my dad’s knee, it was sturdy and safe. When I was six my parent’s marriage broke down and he moved into the house next door, which he owned and rented out. My dad became my neighbour. The sad thing is he withdrew from the family and we became strangers, passing each other in the street without even acknowledging each other.

No one talked about it and I spent most of my childhood not knowing if I should say I had a dad or not. It was confusing.

When I was 21 I wrote him a letter telling him I wanted to get to know him. I went next door and he told me he was delighted to receive it. From there we rebuilt a relationship, getting to know each other via trips to the Harvester and some awkward family meals.

It certainly caused me some issues that I’ve had to work through but the beautiful thing was that as we grew back together, so did my parents. They became companions again and my family got back together in a functionally dysfunctional way, still living as neighbours but the silence stopped.

My dad passed away peacefully in December 2022, five hours before his 85th birthday. I had the honour of feeling his last heartbeat with my fingertips and letting him go with no regrets.

Growing up in a family affected by the Post Office scandal has changed me.
Watching my parents sat at the kitchen table, thinking of ways they could put money they hadn’t even lost back into the business.
Every month the pay getting worse, and my parents becoming increasingly worried they wouldn’t be able to support themselves, nevermind a child.
The long days and evening spent behind the counter searching for money that didn’t even exist, and coming home to the same slow cooker meals every day because there was no time to cook.
I was too young to know the truth of their stresses, but I felt them in the lack of my mum’s smile, and my dad’s silence.
I will be forever grateful for the sacrifices they made which allowed me to become the young woman I am, and the experiences they still gave me in childhood through supporting my passions.

This beautiful star shine is William. His Mummy, my daughter, and her partner endured 8 whole hideous rounds of IVF in order to have a family. After every failure, my beautiful daughter would cry to me that why was this happening, she was a good person. And yes she’s an amazing, beautiful, loyal and very generous person, who makes me proud every single day. I was only 20 when I had her so we have grown up together but I can’t take credit for the sheer tenacity and bravery it’s taken to get her through one of the hardest times in her life. It’s all her…every lady ounce of grit comes from somewhere inside of her…from the universe. I can’t tell you how many days I asked the universe to grant my wish for this beautiful boy. I’m not religious but I asked whoever was listening to please help. And then it happened. He was born November 5th and it was love at first sight. He has brought together so many family members from both sides who just want to be part of his life. His parents haven’t stopped smiling at him from day one and he’s rewarded them with a smile so big it lights up my sky. He is and always will be my star shine…our William

Last year my husband offered to look into my family history, I thought I knew everything about them, because mum and dad talked a lot about their lives. We met all the aunties and uncles. I had 3 living grandparents as a child up to teenage years. My dad had sadly lost his beloved mum before I was born, when mum and he were newly weds. But they kept her memory alive, talking about her. I always felt I knew her.
Until Phil started to research and we found out that she held a very sad secret. She had a young brother and sister who I never knew about, they were found by Phil on the electoral roll and the census. We found out that they both died in what was then called an asylum. My great uncle was 17 when he was committed to Whittingham and died there after spending all his life there. My great aunt was 25 and committed to another institution in Lancaster in 1931, lived her whole remaining life there and died in 1977. I never knew about them but I would have loved to have visited them, reached out to them. Nobody went to their funerals but staff, they died in their individual institutions. I only found out last summer. It was a shock- especially thinking I knew everything about my family. I know mental health wasn’t talked about then though.
We found the admission books at Preston archives, we found the areas that their ashes were sprinkled in Lancaster and Whittingham. I said goodbye and felt the earth.
They were my family and I wanted to acknowledge them.

My great grandad was given up for adoption at ten years old. Forced by her older children from an earlier, his mum made the decision to hand him to Barnardos. From there he was in an orphanage in London, sent to Canada, sent back home because he was “an imbecile”, and spent the rest of his childhood in the orphanage in London. His mum wrote to get him back, asked for him to come home for Christmas, but was rejected. When he was 18, he got a job in London. Soon after, he came back home to Ipswich, and was reunited with his mum. Ten years of trauma. That led him to help other boys in difficult circumstances for the rest of his short life. We finally received his Barnardo care file and it is heartbreaking. But I’m so proud of him.

My Mum was one of 6 children born in a north east mining family. Opportunities were scarce and all of the siblings either emigrated, worked abroad or moved away at some point. When I was 12 my parents took my brother and I to the Bahamas where they taught. My brother and I returned to the north east and lived with my youngest aunt. My parents returned briefly and went back to the Bahamas where they became citizens when I was 19. For my 50th birthday my family cycled the coast to coast with me. On the final day I was joined by my Dad, brother, husband, 3 daughters, 2 nieces, 3 uncles including one from Canada, 7 of my cousins, 4 half cousins and in laws. I am who I am because of my family especially my youngest aunt Cherry who gave my brother and I a home when my parents left. The photo includes the cyclists on the beach at Roker at the end of the ride

My family is my beloved husband Stewart and our two ‘children’ Holly (24) and Finn (22). Stewart and I had some challenges with our families of origin but have broken some patterns and have two, happy, adult offspring who are beautiful people. I look at them and think: that is what it is like to grow up knowing that your parents always,always, always have your back. Nothing else matters to us.

Two wonderful people, full of chatter and stories and laughter, for whom there are many fond memories of, and who had a home bursting with love. This is how I remember them.

There was always light pouring into that bungalow, which we’d take a left and then another left and then a final left to get to, parking down the slope of the drive but never into the car porch and I never understood why, but I’d get distracted by my Gran already talking before we’d got through the door, “just finishing a call” or “I saw you through the window”, and then off she went with Mum or Auntie conspiring about how she might not have got enough in despite the fridge door unable to close and I can see the crabsticks and the olives and the chutney and we’re through the back door and Grandad’s waving as he leaves the greenhouse, barely breaking a sweat saying “now, look at that sun” and we pick up the putter to play the nine holes he’s made on the lawn not even the size of a golf course green and that light never fades even in the winter when everyone piles in and the presents are in a heap on the living room floor and I pick them up one by one to give to their new owner and his smile lights up the corner watching it unfold and she’s in and out and in and out with tea, biscuits, chocolates, wine and then she’s in the corner, perched on a chair after we said goodbye to him and she’s still smiling and saying “it was just his time” and she needs a hand up and the grip is thinner when getting her back to bed, the duvet and pillows and throws in a heap on the living room floor and that sun still pours in, a summer’s heat on a winter’s eve, this time the button to help her up and I’m in and out and in and out and always her smile to say “would you like a drink”, even if I make it myself, and a kiss on the forehead to say “see you later and it’s that show on next” and then there isn’t a next time and it’s a phone call and it’s “we knew it was coming” and it’s the same hymn but no one’s sat in the corner anymore and the walls are bare and it’s sold out front but the warmth of loving grandparents lingering on and on and on and what I remember most was the light as arms wrap round with kisses and “would you like a tea” and Keith saying “Doreen, they’re here”, and she replies “be right with you, dear”.

We are ordinary family of 5. Mum, Dad, three children growing up and going in their different directions. A strong bond, family holidays occasionally even into their 20’s
Memories made with camping trips, London trips and dragging them around National Trust properties with the promise of cake and a gift shop at the end. We were doing ok.
In April, I was away with Chris in Wales, we were having a nice time, laughing and pottering around. We’d visited an historic woollen mill and were heading off to Powys castle (NT of course!) without any warning we collapsed.
Long story, short……people from the village came to help, emergency services arrived. The farmer moved his sheep from a field so a helicopter could land. The kids came to us, that took 6 hours. He had been relentlessly alive, but he died.
10 weeks on, we are ok.
We talk about him every day, life has gone on, I’ve finished an art residency that was planned. Degree endings have been extended, one new degree is staring in September.
We are a different family of 5.

My father had been a Sargeant during WW2 so his family were his army. We were brought up strict catholic. I was the youngest of 5 and my father was less strict and kinder to me than he had been with my siblings. My mother was 40 and he was 45 when i was born.
My oldest sister once brought a boyfriend home. He was called Soloman and he was chief of a tribe in Ghana. I quickly established that he was catholic before i started to be the annoying, nosey little sister.
We were sitting having a cup of tea when my father arrived home. He was cross and said Solomon had to leave! I quickly ran into the kitchen after my father and explained that it was OK i had already found out he was a catholic. I remember being very confused as i really liked Solomon. Something he said to my mother about colour mixing made me realise it was the colour of Solomon’s skin he didn’t like. I, as a 7 year old, found this completely ridiculous. He was the chief of a tribe! I remember being very disappointed as i thought my father was wonderful.
We had a black boy in our year at school, in a predominately white area. I heard another boy calling him the n word so i got the kids to stop talking to the culprit.
Racism still disappoints and puzzles me. I loved my father, but i realised then, that parents are not perfect.

I don’t have family in the genetic sense, I used to have a huge family but one by one they passed away until now at the age of 38 I’m the last one standing. I have a tribe of intelligent beautiful women though. Some of them have been with me as long as I remember and others we have gathered as we trudge threw the storms life brings us. Family is more than blood it’s a sense of belonging and purpose

This is my beautiful sister Julie. My first love and my best friend who overcame health challenges together for 42 years until April 2026 when the fight became too much. My sister is and always will be the heart of what it is to be loved and to be a family. I’m now trying to navigate this new reality without her.

My uncle disappeared from the family home on the Irish border over seventy years ago, when he was a two year old child. For years we thought he had crawled into a nearby river and been washed away, but had never known for sure as no one had seen him and no body was ever found. But now, strange rumours are whispered around the village that there’s more about his disappearance than meets the eye…

It’s my Mum Audrey in 2021. We were allowed back to Blackpool after the first episode of lockdown. A year in the house had all but finished her mobility and declined her health.
She needed an adventure so we packed our clothes and her binoculars.
We always went to Blackpool a couple of times a year. We loved our trips and the nostalgia from times in our caravan in years gone by. She loved the slot machines, fish and chips, nice hotels and lovely dinners.
We laughed all the time.
A plaque in her loving memory now rests on North Pier, and is overlooked, and minded by The sea, the sand and Blackpool Tower.

London, 1976.

My single parent dad trying to keep it all together raising myself (5) and my sister (8) alone after my mum moved to Liverpool to be with her boyfriend, at the same time as losing his eyesight to macular degeneration.

My dad cooking dinner and me and my sister playing in our bedroom when we hear bang, crash, wallop coming from the kitchen.

We gingerly enter the kitchen to investigate, our dinner is dripping down the wall, the saucepan on the floor. My dad leaves the room and shuts himself in his bedroom.

Me and my sister clear up the mess in silence.

10 minutes later dad returns, dry but red eyes like he’s been crying. He thanks us for clearing it all up.

He takes a deep breath.

And starts cooking dinner again. We eat.

I was born in the North but raised in the south. The North Sea runs through my veins but the southern vowels hang from my mouth. My family is the same, north and south colliding, which means home is not a place but a feeling. Home is chips on a bench outside of nursery. Home is a gig aged 11 with front row seats. Home is dogs doing zombies round the lawn and the smell of the campervan at night. Home, like family, is not blood but what we choose. It’s the Wessie twang of ‘I love you’ and the never knowing if I am from here or there, but that we’re a family when our pack is together.

THAT DAY
On funeral day, we men
Gathered in a small living room
To convey our kin to rest
A fine portrait was produced
Of an equine racer
Proffered to us boys
But politely declined
Cousin Paul, it was suggested
Might enjoy it more
And in grateful silence
He accepted
Then to shoe-gazing
We quickly returned
The hearse arrived
And with mournful cargo
Reversed along a cul de sac
Thin as the local bacon
To the crematorium we crept
Greeted there by shadows of the past
Flitting self-consciously about
Rendered silent by their B&H
Inside, a son, sobbing dry tears
For the mighty unknown
A few comforting words
From a well meaning stranger
Then, curtains drawn
And off to the fiery appointment
That’s how I remember
That day

Michael Whitehead – 2010

The Family Photographs

It’s fallen to me to be the keeper of the family photographs. Four large plastic storage boxes, full of them. They sit in my bedroom cupboard waiting, so heavily weighted that the floorboards no longer align properly and the door frame has become distorted so that the door will not shut. I wonder if they are trying to escape.

They have been in my possession since mother died ten years ago, passed on in the hope that I would be the one to ‘sort them out’, knowing that none of my three brothers were sufficiently organised or bothered enough to ‘do it properly’ (mother’s words). Mother seemed to spend her whole life trying to sort things out but never actually achieving the required degree of organisation.

Lately I’ve been pondering the thought that I too may fall into ‘failed in that respect’ category when it comes to the family photographs. If I don’t hurry up, it might be too late. Will I peg it or lose my marbles before I get round to it? Will my daughter inherit the same burgeoning boxes as I have done, with little knowledge of who’s who and how they all fit together?

The trouble is, I don’t know how to go about it. I’ve spent many years immersed in researching the family history and I have so much knowledge now, all festering in my head, that my brain has declared an embargo on receiving any more information. I thought it might prove fulfilling, give me some sense of what it feels like to belong within the context of a family. If I got to know the ancestors, how their lives panned out, the choices they made, the decisions they took, maybe I could make more sense of my own life and why in my seventh decade, I still living with an unrelenting yearning to belong with, and to, something more substantial than the village W.I..

Meanwhile the cupboard door remains ajar and the family photographs still beckon, yearning too, perhaps, for their rightful place in history, for their account to be related, explanations given and reasons to excuse.

I do know that I will have to do it though. I used to feel it as burden of responsibility and duty but years of therapy successfully created a barren field of resentment which has, until recently, enabled me to avoid the whole project and leave the boxes well alone. But now that I cannot actually shut the cupboard door, I will have to move them, reduce their number and weightiness and get a carpenter to realign the door. So I will have to sort them out.

Maybe it’s time to look them all in face, search behind the blank eyes of formal poses and meet them properly for the first time. Would Martha, the hop farmer’s daughter, want her story to be told, how at age 24 in 1838, life in rural England was exchanged for the searing heat of India, married to a widower she had never met? Would Emma Jane, her daughter, want the truth to be told about how it really felt to be sent away ‘back home’ for schooling in how to become suitable for marriage upon her eventual return? Would her daughter Emma Helen actually want me to explain on her behalf, the price she paid for the years of separation from her family, as like her mother, her education in England took precedence over family unity. And would Marjorie, my grandmother, herself subjected to the same fate, call it a betrayal to air the family laundry for all and sundry to view? They thought they had done the right thing for their children you see. They honestly believed in the whole debacle.

But I know what it cost. Though my experience was one of being left behind, rather than being sent away. I know what it feels like when family life, however it presented itself at the time, was ripped away. Siblings sent asunder, substitute mothering and fathering allotted to some other person or institution, the unacknowledged pact of silence that we all had to adhere to, or risk further expulsion from what remained of family unity and how we all fought to the bitter end to maintain the illusion of a cohesive family life.

So now avoidance begins to hold compassion and I will open the boxes soon and look into their eyes. Perhaps they will sigh a little or weep a little tear, knowing that at long last, someone understands just a little of their sufferings.

Many of my mother’s forebears were keelmen (i.e.) watermen, a proud group who carried coal on the river Tyne. The song about these people id called “The Keel Row”

I realise there is no name for me. I was and am a mother, but my loved child has passed away. I don’t apologise for saying passed away. I know he has died, but believe that we WILL meet again, have to believe that we will meet again, otherwise …
My son was born with his heart on the wrong side, went through a number of open heart surgeries. Following his last surgery he developed a condition that overtook his little body and that he didn’t survive.
As time has gone by, fewer and fewer people speak of him, say his name, talk of him to me.
He was my family for not quite a decade and I miss him every day. Twenty years later and I want still to be able to say lali always beautiful boy ❤️

I am one of four children, born into a poor area in an inner city in the Midlands. We had little of economic value but we all pulled together. I remember dancing in the front room (saved for best) to rock ‘n’ roll records on the hi-fi that dad built, my feet on his feet as he taught me the dance steps, the needle jumping as we hopped along to Bill Haley and his Comets. I am glad I grew up in the pre-digital age, with our analogue entertainment that involved talking and laughing with my parents and siblings.

I wanted to share the eulogy I wrote for my Dad’s funeral, which took place on 20 May 2025. It tells a little about him and the effect he had on others.

Eulogy follows….

Jeff Cross

Thank you for coming today to remember my Dad, Jeff Cross.

Dad was born on 17 April 1944 in Billinge, Lancashire (I am sure he would want me to point out it was Lancashire and not St Helens or Merseyside!).

He lived in those early years with his family in Wigan. His parents were John (who was a local coal miner) and Ellen – who everyone knew as Nellie, or in our case Nana, and he had one sister, Carol, who sadly passed away relatively recently.

When the time came, Dad passed his 11 plus exam meaning that he went to grammar school. He would describe himself as a ‘lapsed Catholic’, but was intensely proud of his role as an altar boy in his childhood and still had his rosary beads and prayer book in the top drawer of his bedroom cabinet when he died.

Outside of school he would play football for hours in the streets or amongst the spoil heaps from the local pit – being a goalie (like his father before him) that was a very dangerous thing to be doing, often complaining that his knees would be ripped to pieces from diving about.

Those hardening experiences served him well though and he turned out to play football to a pretty high standard – and you can see a picture inside the order of service today where he was playing for Wigan Boys at U16 level in yet another cup final.

He played a lot of sport during his life, mainly football and cricket – anyone who had been to his house would see that he still displayed the many trophies he won, including a massive trophy with a cricketer on top which he was awarded for Cricketer of the Year for his work cricket team in his middle age.

He also used to a tell a story where he and some school friends were on a trip to Germany and as part of this they went to a local gym to take part in a boxing match against boys of a similar age. The Germans picked the biggest of their contingent to represent them, and the British boys picked Dad to represent them. Apparently things were going well and the fight was fairly even over the first couple of minutes – however the next thing Dad remembers is waking up a couple of hours later in a local bar surrounded by beer and enthusiastically cheering Germans! Dad made a lot of friends that day, and it’s a fairly typical reminder of how he loved sport, drink and living life to the full whenever he could.

When it came to work, Dad always tells the story of how his Dad (John) a straight talking coal miner, took him up to the pit face of Wigan pit when he was a teenager and asked him if he was going to follow his footsteps by working in the local colliery. Dad said no, as he wanted a (safer) career where he felt his skills could be better used. His father was apparently very relieved and said that if he had said he was planning on working in the pit, he would have thrown him down there himself rather than taking him home!

So instead Dad got a job working for British Rail. I believe he started off as a booking office clerk and worked his way up to being an Area Civil Engineer. He worked there his whole working life and retired early at 57.

In regards to work, I can remember him being very proud of 3 things – 1) his free first class travel on any train, which he continued to use right up till his death, 2) not having any formal Civil Engineering qualifications, just the various BR courses that his employers sent him on (many times at The Grove near Watford, which is now a luxury hotel) and 3) religiously not having a mobile phone or checking his email account. Even when he passed away his personal phone was still an incredibly basic Nokia brick phone that he could just ring friends on or text about the latest football or rugby league scores – he was not a fan of technology!

Dad eventually married my Mum, Jen Wright. She went from being Miss Wright to being Mrs Cross in just one wedding ceremony! They were together for many years, and had 2 children, myself and my older sister, Viv. Between myself and Viv we had 3 children each – Ellys, Jamie and Daniel and Blythe, Caoimhe and Esther. He loved his 6 grandchildren very much, even if his grandparenting skills often revolved about buying large amounts of sweets or chocolates for them, which he would safely be away from when the sugar rush kicked in for us to sort out!

I will miss our endless conversations about Watford FC and Wigan RL. We sat next to each other as season ticket holders at Vicarage Road for many years, and when I was a child he used to take me down to Wembley every year to watch the Rugby League Challenge Cup Final – which being the 80s and 90s meant that we were watching Wigan play and win most years!

From talking to friends and former colleagues, I know he will be very missed – for his humour and friendship. Everyone is invited to come to the Farmers Arms later with us and come for a drink and enjoy the buffet – I know Dad will be particularly gutted about missing those two things!

Thanks again for coming, I know he would have loved seeing you all.

We each have different stories and understandings of the things that happened in our family.
There are as many truths as there are people in a family

Our family is enormous compared to some. Sometimes that’s a blessing sometimes it’s a challenge. With 5 siblings, 3 children, 5 grandchildren, 10 nieces and nephews and everyone’s partners family dynamics can be a challenge. But I’ve never felt alone. Not even when I was bringing up my children as a single parent. Our family has roots in England, Jamaica, Barbados, Portugal, Angola, Pakistan and Ireland. Step-parents have often chosen to play important roles in our family, when birth parents have chosen to abandon. Love isn’t always about blood it’s about who codes to show up and stay.

I was born the day before you Lemn, in the same hospital. I like to think that our mums may have said hello or passed the time together.
I don’t remember much about living at Kitt Green. We moved when I was 3 years old. But mum and dad told me stories of being outside in the pram for hours on end. And running to get the washing in when the Heinz factory started up – in time to stop all the soot fall in the clothes.
We moved to East Anglia after Lancashire – dad moved from being a curate with the Church of England to a parish on the Fens. But do you know – I tried an app to check my accent and dialect a few years ago and it placed me in Wigan. Some things run deep.

Like many others, my grandfather was displaced by the flooding of the present -day Mangla Reservoir in Pakistan and his family resettled high in the hillsides before he came to the UK to pay for the education of his brothers in Pakistan, who later went on to become successful international businessmen in Saudi Arabia before retiring to the new family farm. My grandfather settled in Bradford to work the mills and welcomed in six daughters, of whom my mother was the middle child. My mother married my father around the turn of the millennium and gave birth to me in the summer of 2001.

My life story exists within a kind of bubble—one shaped by migration, resilience, and the multiple places I have called home. I was born in 2003 to Ethiopian parents whose journey began when they fled on foot to neighbouring Sudan before seeking asylum as refugees in New Zealand in the late 1990s. For the past ten years, Australia has been home. Yet, even at 22, I often find myself asking: What truly defines home? Is it the country of my birth, the land of my heritage, or the country where I have grown into adulthood?

I grew up in a large family of seven children. Although we lived in small houses before moving into a larger home in Australia, I never experienced them as cramped. They were always full—of laughter, conversation, and the constant presence of people I loved. Being part of a large family has always felt normal to me, extending far beyond my immediate household to a wide network of relatives and close family friends.

Family has always been a source of pride. It is through my family that I first came to understand community, love, and care. These values were deeply embedded in our Ethiopian upbringing and remained ever-present, even while growing up in the West. To me, family has never been limited to those who share my home or my surname. Family includes those who have built lives both within and beyond Ethiopia—relatives who fled as refugees in search of safety, who pursued education abroad as international students, or who migrated in the hope of creating better opportunities for future generations.

Their journeys have shaped not only my family’s story but also my own understanding of identity, belonging, and resilience. They have taught me that home is not confined to a single place; rather, it is carried through relationships, culture, shared memories, and the communities we create wherever life takes us.

Both my parents were taken into care in 1930s, it damaged them both but in different ways. My Mum became strong and decided she would never rely on anyone else, my Dad only ever really felt safe in the company of children, he never trusted adults, not ever. Which made it difficult for me and my sister as we grew because our Dad who had been our best playmate became hypercritical when we moved into adulthood. We never understood why but I do now. It is a testament to them that after the brutality of their childhood that they never visited that on us. They were married for over 62 years and had a bond that was unbreakable. I am so glad they found each other because it meant they never had to explain themselves as each just understood the others demons because they had also lived with them.

I come from a very touchy-feely family. We say “I love you” at the end of every phone call, or with a kiss on the cheek before bed if we’re visiting. We hug a lot, we cry often, we talk about how we feel, and it’s been this way since I was little.

I married into a family unlike this. Feelings are not discussed. Hugs are not frequent and “I love you” is seldom heard. Not because the love isn’t there, but because cultural and generational norms mean these expressions of love do not come easily for my in-laws. It took a while for me to learn to understand their ways of showing love.

It’s the making a fuss and sending you home with a carrier bag full of random food items after every visit. It’s the cash slipped into your hand as “fuel money” and the way that refusing this offering results in crisp banknotes mysteriously appearing in coat pockets later on. It’s “do you need a toothbrush?” every time we visit, despite the fact that we have never forgotten to bring our own. It’s Easter eggs even though you’re nearly 40 and you didn’t get chance to visit until August but they kept them there, waiting for you all that time.

I recently mentioned to someone my mother-in-law and the country she’s from. They told me “my friend’s parents are from there! Does she give you fruit?”

“Yes! She does! Why? Is that a thing?!”

“That’s a LOVE LANGUAGE,” they replied, “My friend’s parents do it. It’s hard for them to say ‘I love you’ because of their upbringing, but offering fruit is their way of saying it.”

I thought about the punnet of lychees slid across the kitchen table. The delicious Chinese pears. The bowl of oranges set down in front of us. The disappearing into the kitchen at random times and returning to ask “Would you like a kiwi?”
I eat more fruit at my mother-in-law’s house than I ever do at home. We always thought it was quite funny. Very kind but quite an odd little quirk, leaving us wondering at every visit what the fruits du jour will be. We thought perhaps she just thought that we were at risk of scurvy.

But I see it now.
I may never hear the words “I love you ” from my mother-in-law, but I hear an offer of fruit and I smile and accept, and I know what it really means.

CP Lee was a darlin’ 🙂 Our desks at Salford were big old school desks facing each other. Much Fun. He knew my Dad, only found that out a few years ago. We experienced a fellow colleague’s death and many changes during my time at University of Salford. I have made the decision to come home to Manchester. Here is aesthetically beautiful, has a moral stench and vampiric atmosphere with a sprinkling of honest, good people. My family, long gone and immediate would be very proud – I can almost hear my parents saying ‘not surprised’ Freedom as a Romanichal is integral to my being. It’s not just geographic. And I do have to consider my disability. I had Chris and Roland Metcalf to keep me steady from 1991 to 1996. Roland from what us ‘common as muck’ ones would call posh. Well, my Mum would, bless her 🙂 Then, there is the time I asked my Dad if we had a capital city. He said ‘If Travellers and Gypsies gave any weight to such things. It’d be Manchester’ From then on I was escorted by him around the Manchester. C.P. Lee knew those streets too. Played the joanna for the Mother of Rock’n’Roll did my Dad. When Ms Tharpe visited Manchester . His Dad, my adored Dando, escorted her to the venue in a pony trap. I was present in Mum’s pregnant womb. Apparently I squiggled and wiggled ‘You were dancing before you came out’ Mum’d smile at me. Then blew Manchester & Salford away with my talent, skill and teaching. Roland and the arts community then certainly put me through me paces.

When dear Friends are like family

Golden Threads
Golden threads woven by our dear friend Linda Lines,
still catching light on days like this one,
a thread pulled through the ordinary,
turning it to something rare.
Linda lives in the thread that runs between us,
two friends who both knew her generous heart,
different lives, different paths, one common blessing,
her kindness was the thread that played its part.
Today that thread catches the light again,
her birthday blooming in the summer air,
and though she walks in another garden now,
her love is stitched through everywhere.
So here’s to Linda, and to friendship,
not blood, but kin of a kind,
still golden, still remembered,
still woven through by her design.
Thinking of her, and of you, today.
With love,
Mairead

My three nieces are my pride and joy.

We as family of 5, Mum, Dad and 3 sisters came to Bradford in 1972. Dad in August after Asians were forced to leave Uganda. Mum, my sisters and I came in Dec 72, we were India on holiday when Dad was forced Uganda. Dad never wanted to come to UK, he loved Africa, even though we was born in India.
Initially we stayed with Dad’s brother and his family.
It was very cramped. At it had an outside loo. A new experience!
In Feb 1973 Dad used his severance pay to buy a shop.
Over the next 33 years my parents ran the shop, taking no holidays and struggles that are involved in run a grocery store. The abuse, thefts and physical attacks were bad. They were hard to take but my parent persevered.
Dad was respected by many in the community he serviced and kindness he show when people did have enough money to buy food.
People would come to him for advice and help to translate letter if didn’t under English. You see Dad spoke 7 languages.
The shop was nearest to St Joseph Church, one day of the clergy came to shop. He asked my dad is name. My dad told him, to which the Father I can’t pronounce that. Do mind if I call you Joe.
From that day my Dad was know as Joe.
Sadly we lost Dad in 2015.
I still see people young & old that remember my Dad.
They all remember him fondly and say that is a kind and good man. How much he and the shop are missed.

I was born in Leeds 2015 to a Polish mum and a Portuguese dad. They met in Birmingham and now we all live in Bradford .
I love reading and always enjoy a good chess match. I have published a children’s ‘The Boy who saved the World’ to inspire children to read more.
My mum loves dancing salsa, and my dad is a big fan of heavy metal and afro music. I have a younger brother whose passion is football; he’s really good at it.
I am very lucky to have ancestral roots in four (and counting) countries – Poland, Portugal, Guinea -Bissau and São Tomé.
The most important thing to our family is to stay together loving and supporting each other.

My Family are my light. I am so lucky to be so loved. I hope I can love them as well as I have been loved.

Golden Threads
Golden threads woven by our dear friend Linda Lines,
still catching light on days like this one,
a thread pulled through the ordinary,
turning it to something rare.
Linda lives in the thread that runs between us,
two friends who both knew her generous heart,
different lives, different paths, one common blessing,
her kindness was the thread that played its part.
Today that thread catches the light again,
her birthday blooming in the summer air,
and though she walks in another garden now,
her love is stitched through everywhere.
So here’s to Linda, and to friendship,
not blood, but kin of a kind,
still golden, still remembered,
still woven through by her design.
Thinking of her, and of you, today.
With love,
Mairead

For much of my life, family has felt more like an obligation than a source of belonging. Instead, I have found fulfilment through friendships, colleagues, and communities built around shared interests. My life has largely centred on personal goals and independence.

Although I remain grateful for the love and care my parents gave me, I gradually came to recognise the limits of our relationship. There was often a lack of mutual understanding and acceptance, leaving me feeling more at ease with people who encouraged my curiosity, respected my independence, and accepted me for who I was.

This experience led me to question the assumption that family is necessarily the deepest source of belonging. For some people it is, but for others, belonging is found through mutual respect, freely chosen relationships, and a sense of being understood. I have come to see family not simply as a matter of blood, but as the people with whom one can be most fully oneself.

I am proud to be born and raised in Bradford city. My parents immigrated to this country when they were 10 and 11. There for I would never call myself British but British Indian.

This is due to the traditional Indian way I was raised and my parents and my heritage.

My sisters and I were very lucky. My dad wanted us married at 16. This was the tradition for girls in his side of the family. My mum a kind, gentle and spiritual soul put her foot down. “Not for my daughters” she stated they will be educated and career women. As typical Indian parents education and doing well at school was a requirement not a choice.

My parents and grandparents suffered racism when they came over. They worked hard so now my dad has a Solicitor IT Project manger, A internal project manger and a dentist as his legacy. My parents worked all hours so we have easy careers. Its part of my heritage to try and give back to society. I try and do this through volunteering.

My dad was called racist names. My mum spat on. Now 60years later my sisters patients refused to have their teeth checked by her due to her not being white. I get told to go back to where I am from. My family ALL pay taxes and are British citizens. How have we as an intelligent human race regressed? Can we all just remember we are human beings and connect on that level.

I worry for my niece and nephew what kind of future do they face in such a decisive society.

I don’t remember much of my time in ZIm. While I was born there, Mom and Dad took us to England when I was 3. Since that move, I’ve onl returned to my home sporadically.

But one thing is for certain, I’m always treated like I’ve been there all my life.

To my aunties, my uncles and my wonderfully amazing sister – I love you all, and I’m looking forward to see all again.

Uthando njalo.

My family expanded in unexpected ways. I come from a large one in Georgia, USA. When I emigrated from the US to rural Bavaria in 2021, I met an enthusiastic runner who quickly became a good friend. He was concerned when he realized how far away from my family I was and invited me to have dinner with his parents. His parents immediately treated me like one of their own; his mother even said, “You’re not here alone anymore! You have us as your family. Any friend of my son’s is family to me.” Well, my big, chaotic family made the journey over from the States to visit the following summer. Everyone got along great. I’m married to that enthusiastic man now and our mothers text each other a couple of times a month to talk about the BBC murder mysteries they both watch religiously–my mom in English, my mother-in-law in German. It has been a blessing to see our families welcome and become part of each other.

i think of the physicists who said spacetime is like a blanket
with weights dotted all over it
warping the fabric into sand dunes and valleys
i think of you wrapped in the blanket a volunteer we’ll never meet made
of all the countless lives who were different and better because of you sometimes without knowing you
the daughter of a refugee quietly reading on a tablet
a friend tasting the focaccia i made with dimples like smiles, like sand dunes
some joys are big enough that time bends around them
i read to you quietly
il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest ce jour-là
your epilogue smells like salt spray and rosemary

As a child my mother always said to me
Be what you want to be. Take every opportunity that wasn’t afforded me.
And I did and became the me my mother freed me to be.

Years later when cruel dementia abraded her capacity,
my mother childlike asked “what was it I used to be?”
I held her hand gently and re-gifted the adage she gave to me
“ mum my love you’re all to me, your wisdom set me free-
Now within your corraded mind and faltering memory –
Be free to be what you want to be, whatever you always wanted to be”.
She just smiled at me.

A nuclear family is supposed to be the ideal. The term is oddly apposite. Sometimes, mine was corrosive. Abuse casts a long shadow: the truth teller remains hyper vigilant, mindful at all times. She had to- like a volcano, the nuclear family patriarch was prone to eruptions.

Both my Nan and Grandad were championship swimmers and that’s how they met. And they were both incredibly humble. I remember visiting Hollingworth lake in Littleborough numerous times as a kid and my grandad telling me he’d swam round it. What he declined to tell me was it was a competitive race and he’d qualified to swim in Holland. I am always so proud to be their granddaughter but I do wish I’d inherited their swimming ability.

This picture was hiding behind a photograph i borrowed earlier in the year and i thought you would like to see.

From tiny acorns…The pic shows you and your Mum at St Margaret’s Church: on the day of your Christening, of course. Ah yes, I remember it well. ☺️😃
This is a thread of a conversation with my Dad on Whatsapp that i dearly cherish.
Dad died on 26th May 2022

My family made me who I am. My parents came from very little. Both from council estates and large families. They worked from 14 and left school with nothing. My mum was a barber, my dad an electrician. When my sister was born he was a milkman. My mum was the strongest woman I’ve known. She made my childhood like a ‘ladybird book’ of childhood. We were inseparable. I spent my childhood along side her in her barbershop. Customers saying- she going to work here when she’s older… because my older sister had become a barber too… “not this one, my mum would say, she’s clever- she’s going to be a teacher”. When I turned 16, she got cancer, I left 6th form with 3 a levels, started uni but had dropped out by Christmas, too much going on in my life. My mum, my rock, having to close her business due to ill health. I struggled, but refused to ask for help, I got a job…worked, I married at 22, had my first son. 2nd when I was 25. My mum was gone at 29. Good going… she had lived with cancer 18 years…never fully in remission. I didn’t miss one appointment, not one chemo session, all of them-just me and her and lunch after. Motown playing. She was my best friend. After she died, I went back to university. I worked full time as a teaching assistant whilst studying part time, working late in the evening after work and putting my boys to bed, full time job, full time mum- part time student. I graduated in 2021, I won the university’s award for Humanities and Arts as an exceptional student, I got my PGCE and then my qualified teacher status. My mum, my lovely beautiful mum, didn’t live to see it. But without her, the backbone to our family, not only wouldn’t I be here but I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I left teaching earlier this year. I now work for a charity, helping care leavers and homeless young people. Making sure they have a place to belong. To give to them the opportunity to feel the love of family I had whilst growing up and how without it, I couldn’t be who I am today. My parents made our family full of love and dreams and ambitions and hope. I was so incredibly lucky. They taught me to never judge, to always be kind and to remember “there is always someone worse off than yourself.” My family taught me the importance of love and that’s one thing I do in abundance! Thanks Mum. Thanks Dad. Thanks Lucy, my crazy older sister. I’d have been lost without you.

When I was little, Sundays were pure magic. The crackle of vinyl records spinning on the turntable, mum would be preparing our Sunday dinner. The irresistible smell of her home cooked food would drift through the house, enveloping our family in love, care, warmth and the safety of family. Later my Dad would play his organ, melodies that wrapped around us like a blanket. Those Sunday mornings filled me with such joy, simple moments that made our family utterly content.

Blending Families, Cultures and Communities
My Grandpa, Antonio, born in Venezuela in 1902 came to the UK in 1922 as an immigrant from Trinidad. His father spoke out against the then Dictator Gomez in Venezuela, was imprisoned and the family moved to Trinidad when Antonio was 8 years old. He became a doctor in London, only returned once to Venezuela, and had a huge sense of belonging to the UK. He married Molly, a descendent of William Shakespeare’s mother Mary Arden and one of very few English families able to trace descendants back to the beyond Domesday Book. Molly was a nurse and her choice of husband was not in keeping with what her family wanted for her. My Grandpa was a GP until he retired in 1967. He was fiercely pro British and during the war coped single handedly as a GP serving his community, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for 5 years. He remained committed to the NHS from its inception in 1948 until his retirement in 1967 and his UK legacy lives on through his 8 great grandchildren and 4 great, great grandchildren. I am profoundly proud and grateful to both my grandparents for their sense of family and community, standing up for what they believed in and for the strength of their love in the face of adversity.

I am single mum to two wonderful boys. A fantastic lil team and family of 3. Just ourselves to please. Trips to the woods in my lil Corsa, Teas on knees, movies and music in the kitchen. My happiest days. When they were little I read somewhere that if you hugged for 20 seconds it released happy endorphins. So that’s what we always did. My youngest would say “mummy we have to hug to release the dolphins”

Hello
So call me weird. I’ve never been married and not had children. I find the not having children really difficult. I would have loved children. I’ve just not met the right person.Strangers assume you have children…and that is hard…
Or ask …do you have children. I say no…and then feel i have to justify it. And what can I say…
I guess I’ve accepted it now but just sometimes, just sometimes I’m sad. Please just have empathy and perhaps think before you assume in not just this but in all life’s situations.

I am the youngest in a family of 13 this photo is my oldest brothers wedding. I am 2 years old at this time 1976.

My mother was in her late 40s and my father mid 50s when.
We lived in a 2 bed council house, which i now live alone in.

Grown up I choose friends most of whome are only children or have one sibling at the time I though this was because they had ….. space and I loved that I would often be asked along on days out or events for company of them.

I realised later it was because they made me feel seen , they included me and that was I would always have this strong connection to “choosen” family for the rest of my life.

My mother had a stroke when i was at primary school, I was a child just expected to adapt like my older siblings. In my first year of high school my father died and the loss hit my whole family the realisation that this pain was going to be repeated again and again when we would loss another member change the dynamics completely.

When my brother age 24 died from cancer the gap in closeness widening even more. My other brother battled addiction issues and as I was at home caring for my mother , I was also having to deal with this.

My closest in age sibling is my brother the one with past substance use. He is 4 years older than me. We didn’t have much in common and during the heaviest substance use days I felt burden by him and by having to keep this hiden from my mother.

My other siblings used this to not be around the family home as they did want their children or partners to know.
I had lost one brother to cancer and was watching another almost kill himself with drugs or the violence that his substance use entrenched him in. After my mother death his substance use spiralled for a few year before he agreed to anykind of treatment. He is currently free from substance for almost 10 years. He also got married 2 days ago and is doing well.

As a child I was very attached to my older siblings especially my oldest sister she at time in my teenage years had fill the role of parent for me.
She died 10 years ago days before my 40th birthday she was only 56. I attended her funeral with all my other siblings as i did my parents and brothers but I felt so disconnect from them all.

I realised that I had chosen family of friends that had been my support, escape and connection with them ment so much more to me. These are the people I go to, celebrate with, embrace and confide in.

So when one of my sisters said to my niece that we all have each others backs, that we love you but if you hurt my sibling their father we will be by him. I laughed out loud I wasn’t going to pretend anymore that the image they presented as a closed big family unit existed.

Communication these days are mostly over WhatsApp. Limited face to face at the family christening, wedding & funerals. Geographical we live close all within the Central belt of Scotland but economically, and value based beliefs we are worlds appart . We all grow up on a council house estate and we all went onto higher education but along the line somehow some of them lost the principle and values that our parents gave us and so are like strangers in my world.

After my brother substance use challenges and challenges with the system.
I changed my career and now work within Addiction Services.
I live alone as I have realised i like the space , the quite and the feeling of home this no empty house gives me that when living here as i child was missing.

I see a few of my siblings every other month but i see my friends my chosen family every week. Once I let go of the pretending, the belief that I had to feel attachment to this idea of family, I no longer felt lonely, I no longer felt the pressure to be available for them.

Sometimes big families can be too much obligation too much compromising and so much judgement by people that appart from gene now have so little in common with me.

I am content being me and not some ones little sister as my identity.

My Great-Grandparents were Irish. They met in New York and returned to Ireland in 1923 to see their families and get married. My Great Gran(Sissy) was pregnant with my Grandma at the time. On the way back to America, they visited Liverpool to see (and say farewell) to other family members.
It was whilst they were in Liverpool that my Sissy went into early labour.
Sissy gave birth to my Grandma Sarah and sadly died shortly after.
The nuns thought my Grandma had also passed and placed her in a basin. My Great-Grandad (Billy) was obviously distraught at the loss of his wife and daughter.
A Nun noticed that Sarah was breathing and immediately removed her from the basin and began to feed her. Sarah was tiny…about 4lbs in weight and no one expected her to survive. She did.
Billy was told to place her in a Barnados home and carry on back to his life the U.S. He did this and then went to visit a cousin to ask if she would look after Sarah until she was old enough to join him in New York.
The woman I knew as Nanny Mcelroy, took Sarah home to Haydock and raised her as one of her own. She adored Sarah, as did her adopted brothers and sister.
Billy went on to the U.S but wrote to Sarah regularly and when my Gran was 16 he requested she go to America and live with him.
Sarah didnt go. She loved her family and her life in Haydock. She told me that America was alien to her and although she loved her Dad, she didnt know him and knew she would miss the parents who had raised her.
After such a traumatic start to life, Sarah remained in the UK. She met and married Bill, my Grandad and had 11 children (4 didn’t survive and she buried 4 babies).
Sarah was a tiny, resilient, auburn haired legend and I am her granddaughter. Her life story has been told to me many times and I never tire of hearing it.
Sarah passed away in January 1994 after a long illness. She will forever be the woman who instilled strength and resilience in all of us and I miss her every single day.
I see her in myself, my Mum and her siblings….even in my own children.
A true warrior of a woman.

My mum was born in 1936 and her father died in 1943, his plane being shot down over Cologne. My grandma was not a very warm woman and my Mum was shipped off to boarding school with her older sister aged 3 or 4. Looking for affection she got pregnant twice, once in 1959, and once in 1961. Both babies were given up for adoption. I was the first baby she was able to keep, by this time she was happily my married to my Dad. I found her suffocating and my little sister perhaps didn’t find her suffocating enough. She was a nurse, which she was so proud of, and I’m a nurse too, it’s all I ever wanted to do. Mum died in 2012, I miss her every day and wish I’d been different with her.

Family can…

…and I can’t…

…it’s the most accurate algorithm I ever learnt…

…days and weeks and months and years…

…indulging in the delicate, drastic, manic, fantastic, most tragic, elastic fears…

…I will return…

…to take part…

…in the beautiful art…

…

…

…with kindly intended tears…

When me, my brother and my mum get together, one of us will say something stupid and it starts us off. We laugh so hard. We laugh so hard it hurts. Our jaws and sides ache and that makes us laugh even more. The utter joy and lack of awareness of anything else sparks some kind of grief or regret and the tears of laughter turn into sadness. The full spectrum of emotions in seconds. I love them both so much.

My parents came over to the UK from Hong Kong in the 60s with their respective families. Both of them worked hard in whatever jobs they could get; my dad as a waiter and my mum making circuit boards, sewing shirts and making wine gums at the Maynards factory (eating the still warm sweets from the conveyor belt was a favourite perk). When they met and married they opened their own Chinese takeway in Levneshulme, Manchester. ‘The shop’ as we called it was our lives, a family run business that my parents, brothers and I worked in. It was stressful, hard work with long hours, all while each of us negotiating childhood to teenage transitions, racism and conflicts between western and eastern identities.

Throughout it all my mum endured. She learned English, made a success of her own career, even met the Queen twice. I wote this poem to capture her spirit:

Me mum
Viv Bell

None of er cups match
She’s got a degree in lecturing
Even tho she’s never bin to uni
A feisty little thing
She can ave yours
And yer dad too
Thinks she’s a queen
Shopkeepers scurry
Receptionists keen
Ain’t no messing
When Mrs Lee walks in
She’ll only eat out
If she’s seated and served
But back home
The kitchen’s her space
But she int a patch on nigella
She’ll make gravy and rice
Deep fry turnips
Weird experiments
Untouched on the plate
She’s got posh bags
That go on er left
To free up the right
To shake hands
She’s ard to get
But makes herself heard
Ain’t no messin
When mum walks in

On Maundy Thursday evening, my son Josh went out for a motorbike ride. He was going to pick his three young children up for his half of the Easter Holidays on Good Friday. Then, we were all going away.
A car jumped a crossroads that night killing him instantly. To say our hearts are broken, is an understatement.
Josh was larger than life and the most loving and loved dad.
The hole in our lives aches immeasurably.
We have our faith, and that along with memories gives me hope, and his children gives me purpose.

My family dont care about me or my sister. Our father left our mum when i was 11 ( im 46 now) and he never bothered with us after that. His girlfriend and her son took priority, and he gave up his parental rights. Our mum has always preferred my brother (the youngest) and she ‘ just prefers boys’. Ive been relatively on my own since i was 19. I got married and had a child, but she is now 20 and im divorced. My mum has never bothered with her because she is girl, but my brothers son is a nannys boy. We have no other family. I have friends, but no one really close. I have one of my mums friends who looked afrer my daughter and has always been there as a mother figure for me, she is older now and is the closest thing i have to family. Once she has gone, there will be no-one. I would love a family that cared, did birthdays, sunday dinners, messaged…anything. Family is a strange word for me. If someone described themselves to ke as part of my family, i would dispute it as apart from my sister, i dont have one. Im not sad or unhappy, Its just how it is, but sometimes when i see people with their grandkids and going on family holidays etc, i wish my daughter had had that.

It got to a point in my life where I realised I just wasn’t going to be able to have children. I had languished in an abusive marriage for too long and my clock just ran out. It was a deep and penetrating sadness. I left the marriage. Then you came along and found me, you needed a Mama and that’s what I became. When I first held you in my arms I looked at you and it was as if we recognised each other. All that had gone before no longer mattered. My daughter is proof that some of the most beautiful things in life arrive when you don’t even realize how much you need them. She doesn’t know it, but she healed parts of me she never broke. She gives purpose to days that once felt heavy and meaning to places inside me that had felt empty for far too long. If I spend the rest of my life trying to give her even a fraction of what she has given me, it still won’t feel like enough.

Natasha,
We lost you to meningitis when you were just 13 days old, 32 years ago today. Not a single day has passed when we haven’t missed you.

It’s not just the birthdays, anniversaries or special occasions you are in our thoughts every single day, in all the ordinary moments of life too.
After losing you, we went through many unsuccessful IVF treatments, hoping and praying for another child. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be, so you will always be our one and only precious daughter.

You would be a beautiful young woman now, and I often wonder what you would be like. I like to think we would have been the best of friends, as well as mother and daughter. That is one of the many things I miss most , the life we never got to share.
You are loved beyond words, missed beyond measure, and remembered every single day.
Forever our precious daughter.
Love always, Mum and Dad ❤️

Where I First Saw God

This is my dad and me celebrating my first birthday. My father was a doctor. He could have chosen the comfort of city life, but instead, he chose a different path. He traveled across rural Ethiopia, opening clinics and serving communities that had little access to healthcare. I vividly remember him living in places that were difficult to settle in because of the harsh weather and challenging conditions. Years later, I found myself traveling for work to one of the very places where he had once served. Even after all these years, I saw firsthand how difficult life there still is. I was only there for about an hour, yet it made me wonder how much harder it must have been for him back then. In that moment, I understood his sacrifice in a way I never had before.
He was a kind and loving father. Some of my happiest childhood memories are of us playing card games together while he filled the room with funny stories and laughter. Even today, people still tell me what a genuinely kind man he was and how deeply he cared for everyone around him.

When I was nine years old, everything changed.

The man who used to return from his travels carrying gifts and exciting stories became confined to a bed by an illness I was too young to understand. But even as his body grew weaker, his smile never faded. He never lost the light that made him who he was. I still remember him giving me money to buy biscuits because he could no longer take me himself. Even in pain, he never stopped being my father. My mother left her job to care for him until his very last breath. Her love was not spoken in grand words but shown through unwavering devotion. After losing him, she never remarried. Instead, she dedicated her life to raising her children with strength, dignity, and unconditional love.
Although I lost my father, my mom never allowed us to feel abandoned. She carried responsibilities that no young widow should ever have had to bear, yet she faced them with remarkable courage. I never saw her cry or give up, even when life placed an unimaginable weight on her shoulders. She held tightly to her faith, always believing that God would make a way and that tomorrow would be better. Her strength became the foundation of our family, and her hope became ours. Because of her sacrifices, I graduated with three degrees, including two master’s degrees.
The second photo is of my mom and me on the day I graduated with my MBA with highest honors. That moment belonged to both of us. Every achievement I have is rooted in her sacrifices.I know I can never fully repay everything she has given me, but I hope my life reflects the love, resilience, and values my parents planted in me.
When people ask me where I first saw God, my answer is simple:
I saw Him in my father’s compassion. I saw Him in my mom’s sacrifice. I saw Him in the family that raised me.

After suffering devastating pregnancy losses, in July 2024 I became pregnant – a miracle I had hardly dared to hope for.

Just four weeks before my due date, during a routine scan, our world changed. We were told that our son was missing part of his brain, a condition called agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC).

The subsequent appointments with specialist doctors were heartbreaking. We were told his prognosis was uncertain but initially told that there was a 75% chance he would have severe disabilities and an extremely poor quality of life. At 36 weeks pregnant, we were even advised to consider terminating the pregnancy. The following weeks consisted of MRI scans, tears, test results and more tears.

Our son was born two days after his due date, on 12 April 2024.

Today, Shea is the happiest, funniest, most curious two-year-old. He continues to meet developmental milestones and has now been discharged by the neurosurgery team.

We were told he would never be able to ride a bike or a scooter. Yet his bike and scooter are his favourite toys. He rides them daily. He even has a skateboard.

We don’t know what his future looks like, but we are not worried.

He is my inspiration, my greatest teacher, and my whole world. It is hard to describe Shea. He has a sparkle in his eye. He is special.

And now, he’s also the proud big brother to his little sister, Mara.

In 1997 my 5 year old son and i moved from our hometown of warrington to the golborne area. I was doing an art degree at salford uni, my son was starting his education. Fast forward a few years and we moved to Bryn , Ashton in Makerfield. My son got into to Byrchall high school – a decon school of excellence and i was super proud and happy. All my sons primary friends went to another local high, so he knew nobody. He was super sociable, he was the class clown and soon had a bunch of mates that he would have for life. He also was always in some kind of childish trouble at school. He was always the one , out of the group that got caught out. From conkers to catapults , it was always me called into school. I joked that i spent more time in that school in the final years than him. But he was kind. He was loving. He was so friendly, he was the life and soul , the light of my life. As his education came to an end, i finally found a partner, got married and had another son. At 17yrs my youngest now had a baby brother. When that little brother was 8yrs old, his big brother was killed. He went out on bonfire night , and never returned. The next time we saw him was in the morgue. The light of my life , my firework had gone. My son had lost his big brother, id lost my best friend. No price was ever paid by anyone for the death of my son, the only people left suffering were us three left behind. The family. My family. Forever missing the shiniest member.

When my grandfather passed away we found a notebook of his. As an ex-bobby (policeman), he always kept a little notebook to hand, despite his hands shaking from 30 years of fighting MS. His wife June had passed away some 10 years prior.

The most beautiful note was very short, it said: “On my death, you can take any part of my body except my heart, I gave that to June years ago.”

Beautiful. Heartbreaking.

Messy, brilliant, frustrating, exhilarating, sad, joy….these are just a few of the words that come to mind when I think about family.

My family, the one I have created for myself, consists of me, my husband (technically civil partner as we don’t like the history of ‘marriage’), his daughter from a previous marriage and our daughter together. This family, that I choose, that I helped to create, is the most comfortable place I have ever been. It is also the place that challenges me; my beliefs and attitudes are constantly under scrutiny (from myself), so that can also make it the most uncomfortable place I have ever been – but growth causes friction.

I think of my family in concentric circles, the next ring out is the family I was born in to, my mum, stepdad and two older sisters. That bedrock is the foundation stone for everything. It wasn’t always easy for my mum and stepdad while we were growing up, there was a distinct lack of ‘spare’ cash but we were always fed, warm and safe – I realise how lucky that makes us. We were, and continue to be, loved in abundance – again thoroughly lucky.

The next few circles are less easily defined, they consist of the wider family tree, the family trees of my siblings’ families that they have created, friends that I have taken as family of my own, families of ex boyfriends, birth father and his family…Messy, brilliant, frustrating, exhilarating, sad, joy

Family is all of the above!

My brother came to stay and we spent a morning reminiscing about our shared childhood in Lancashire. We remembered things that we hadn’t thought about for years: childhood adventures, inside jokes, family traditions and moments that seemed ordinary at the time but which made us who we are. No matter where life takes us, I love that there is someone else in the world who carries the same memories.

This is my dad Harry. He would have been 90 years old today on the 24/06/26 but he died aged 49 after a vicious, and hard fought, seven year battle with alcohol addiction. Dad was a warm, gentle , loving, and caring family man. He loved our mum and my two sisters and I very much. He had a deep abiding love for nature and the natural world, leading us kids on adventures through forests, beaches, hills and dales in the best childhood ever. All he ever taught us has been held in our hearts for ever and is now being passed on to the grandchildren who he never met, but would have adored. Happy birthday dad we never knew you as an old man but you are at peace from the horror of your addiction, and often felt nearby in the visit from a bird or a butterfly.

Our family camped from the time our children were in diapers. Play pens, crawling in the red rock desert, sitting around the campfire, even our dog, Jordan, had her own camping chair she climbed into.
Every season found us headed to those favorite spots we had curated over the years. We were the visitors among all kinds of wildlife. Deer, bears, eagles, rainbow trout, moose, scorpions, bats…
Camping became our glue, holding us together, when the world desires to pull everyone in various directions.
Forever grateful for the land which continues to hold our family.

And on the subject of community here is one of my very best friends in the world ‘Lemn Sissay’ who is now family, solidified even more with him becoming a wonderful Godfather to my son.

My dad lived in Ireland and England all his life. He never wanted to travel yet he knew what was going on in the world. He was a simple man, no desire for new clothes, if things worked, why change them. He was a happy man, he loved people and story telling. The night before he died, he told me stories of his early days in London. He had a phrase and he said it that night “It’s nice to be nice”. A few weeks after his funeral, my son Charlie, 15 years old at the time, who has my father’s build and humour, gave me and members of the family this key ring so we always hear my dad’s voice saying this simple but profound saying “It’s nice to be nice”

My Amma suffered a lot in her life; a mother who mistreated her, siblings who bullied her, in-laws who verbally abused her, a husband who verbally abused her and also didn’t know how to show his love, a son who is a drunk and physically assaulted her. The list goes on. Despite this she was one of the kindest people you could meet. She did a lot of good karma. She never had much money, but she never turned anyone away empty handed if they came seeking help.

All she wanted was to be a grandmother. She saw her first grandchild on WhatsApp video but never got to hold her. She said she started lactating because that’s how powerful motherhood can be.

2.5 months after her first grandchild was born my mother died. Cancer took her away. Aspiration; too clinical, not peaceful. Died in a hospital with a stranger next to her. A daughter thousands of miles away still seeing dreams where she wished she was with her mum in her last days. When nobody thought they were going to be her last days.

Other than a searing grief I feel so angry at the world. At life for doing what it did to her.

On the 20th March 2015 my family was changed for ever. My beautiful sister Ayesha decided that she no longer wanted to be alive. Heartbroken and beaten she made a decision that changed everything. She’s my half sister, officially but we don’t consider ourselves to be fractions in this family. She was, is my sister. Ayesha and I didn’t grow up together, she was 4 years old and I 18 when we met. She was beautiful and wild, a free spirit full of love and mischief. She lived with our dad who I had seen since I was 9. We were reunited after being kept apart by ‘family’. My sisters Emma and Ayesha were wished for on a shooting star. One night I saw hundreds of stars shooting across the sky and I wished for a sister. Then my mum gave birth to Emma and unbeknown to me at the time my dad had Ayesha. I was so happy to have two beautiful sisters. One blonde and blue eyed and the other brown haired and brown eyed just like me. I had someone who looked like me and she was my sister. The day Ayesha died was the hardest day of my life. It wasn’t fair and still today I miss her terribly. We didn’t have enough time together and if I had known she would be gone by 20, I would’ve done so much more. Suicide changes everything, the suffering inside of Ayesha exploded like an atomic bomb. What she felt the caused her to believe death was the answer, is like a ghost haunting me and my family every day. They say suicide in a family increases the risk of further suicides by some percentage. Every day I think about Ayesha and wonder who she would be today if she was still alive. If the police had reached her home earlier, if the 3 door rams had worked at no1 . If her boyfriend hadn’t been cruel towards her, if she’d called me and asked me for help. But it’s all pointless, because nothing will bring her back. I feel great sadness when I see and hear about others dying from suicide. I know that family will never be the same again. Although it gets better with time is a scar you can’t hide.

I am one of three siblings. Our parents were both only children, so we grew up without aunts, uncles, or first cousins. We also believed we had a fairly unusual surname, and we didn’t know of anyone else who shared it.
That changed after our father died, when I began to explore our family history. I initially focused on my mother’s side of the family, spending several years trying to trace my grandfather’s adoptive family and understand more about that branch of our story.
More recently, I turned my attention to my father’s side. To my surprise, I discovered someone with our surname who had also been researching his own family tree. Through him, we found that he is our fourth cousin. From that connection alone, we have since discovered hundreds of relatives sharing our surname, although with some variations in spelling over time.
He has traced our lineage back as far as our 11th great-grandfather, and the scale of it is still unfolding. In total, he has identified around 9,500 people connected to the wider family tree—people who are, in some way, part of our story.
Among the most unexpected discoveries is a possible connection to Welsh royalty, including King Ithel ap Morgan, born circa 690.
What began as a belief that we were “the only ones” with our name has opened into something far larger and more complex than I ever imagined: a vast, interconnected family history that continues to unfold!

My grandad George is my hero. He was a D Day + landing boy and saw things he never should have. He was traumatised by his memories but he spent his life thinking of others, always in public service. He stood in the 1970 General Election and here is baby me on his pamphlet. I am beyond proud of my Pudsey Mayor super hero grandad!

I’m the youngest of four children. My brothers were fun to be with and did cool stuff with me when I was a child but I had little contact with them in adulthood. They both grew up to be pretty irresponsible. My sister was somewhat domineering and bossy. I was a bit frightened of her. We are still in quite close contact but I’d rather we weren’t, as I don’t actually like her. She is caring but is also overbearing. It has always been important to her to influence me and others me people.

This is Cees, my baby brother
With me
A selfie taken on an April evening
We share a mother
No
We shared a mother
She was stern and fierce and phenomenal
We buried her in April
She binds us forever.

Dad.

I could ramble on for a while about how much I loved my dad. I really could. I could then explain in detail his last few months, weeks, days; from diagnosis to prognosis and blah blah blah but that’s not what this is about. It’s about those last moments, what it looks like, sounds like and feels like. How the main protagonist takes their final bow, so to speak (I did say we use euphemisms in extremis.) Acute Myloid Leukemia. But actually a chest infection. I suppose I could condense it into three key memories.

The paramedics had wanted to rush him hospital. I’d called them that morning – not knowing what to do. He had been freezing cold and shivery. Poor mum, she’d struggled with him all night feeling so feverish. Key moment one:

“It’s quite serious Kevin. We will have take you in to Whipps”. In the hours previous to this he’d been almost delirious, not fully taking in what was going on around him, calmly complying; muttering gentle responses to the concerned enquiries of those around him, not making a fuss. However, at this point, a sudden and physical reaction, eyes wide above oxygen mask, “What? Hospital?”. Immediately alert, more like the assertive man who was my dad. I instantly knew that he was not going budge, he was going to die right here in his bed, quite soon. He can have been in no doubt either that in not going to hospital, his next journey would be to meet his maker (this particular euphemism is one that he would have relished using himself.) “He won’t go back to hospital, he said this, he wants to stay at home.”

The paramedics left. The rest of us gathered. Mum did not move from his side. Key moment two:

“A little help!”. Mum’s voice cries through from the bedroom of the small flat and the three daughters jump in unison and cover the ten feet that has separated us all.

He’s coughing-or trying to-slumped at an uncomfortable angle, listing off the bed, mum’s hand still holding his. I get behind his shoulders, try to heave him up to ease the passage of the cough and at some point it becomes less like his recognisable cough and is more like a gargle. In my head, what we are doing is less about helping him to get comfortable and stop coughing, but more about hearing him die. In my head, I think ‘this isn’t right, people don’t come back from this, it’s not a cough it’s a death rattle’. I don’t know if he’s conscious. Mum, who is in front of him, is trying to wipe his mouth, I think she’s saying ‘help him’ through her sobs. There are other sobs in the room. Time has all at once slowed and sped up. There’s a tumult of voices, crying, questioning, shouting, sobbing, commanding. No-one really knows what to do but we all know what is happening.

I heave dad’s body more upright. I now want to ensure that he is in no pain in his last moments, as I now know them to be. I’m muttering close to his ear ‘It’s alright dad, it’s ok, you can go, you’ve been a wonderful dad’ but it’s almost like he’s fighting it, the loud gargling has now materialised as a dark brown froth bubbling forth from his mouth. I’m still pushing him forward – am I hastening his death? Does he want me to? Is he even there or is this just involuntary muscles spasming and ejecting the last vestiges of oxygen from his lungs? I just know we have to be close to him in these moments, doing what we can even if it’s no use.

Key memory three: When the noise stops someone says ‘Is he gone?’. We call for him and there is no response. He looks undignified, naked torso twisted awkwardly, brown frothy mucous at his mouth, eyes open. He looks tired and cross. He left this life as he lived it, surrounded by emotional women, and panic; a confusion of knee jerk responses, with him at the centre making a big noise and mess.

When he has gone it is silent and the room seems empty.

Mum.
Not an extraordinary death. But no death is ordinary for those who experience it I suppose. We all know it is coming, after all. In all the years, for me forty-nine almost exactly, one never can predict the circumstances, and that’s what is extraordinary, as banal as it is, it still has the power to shock.

It’s hard to condense Mum’s death into key moments. It was such a protracted affair. Whilst dad’s final moments were hurried, hers were a nine week odyssey, an indirect and slow, suffering shuffle that twisted and turned towards an inevitable conclusion.

Her death certificate is testament to the complex and contrived nature in which she left. “Acute respiratory distress syndrome, congestive cardiac failure, Ischeaemic heart disease, atrial fibrillation, pulmonary hypertension, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, tissue mitral valve replacement and tricuspid valve repair surgery.” It is tempting here to revert to Shakespearean euphemisms, and talk about ‘the deep damnation of her taking off’ but I am not sure who to damn as there are so many players.

It was a death in a hospital bed. ICU in Watford General Hospital. An ignominious end. Her entire life she avoided hospitals, like her own mother before her, the dread of being powerless, perhaps a gloomy and ominous presience of her successful surcease (Shakespeare again). Whatever, it is bitterly ironic that the thing she (and dad actually) dreaded the most was visited upon her. Death in a hospital bed.

The decision was made and she did decide, (the one thing she was allowed to do for herself, eventually) to make it all stop. The tubes, the masks, the machines, she wanted it all to stop and to be with dad (only 6 months previously).

We stand around her bed and a middle-aged, kindly and very busy consultant explains the options.

“Sonia, we could carry on, all this might work, but if you want, we can take out the tubes and it is very likely that you will not be able to breathe alone, do you undestand what I am saying?”

She nods.

She cannot speak. Has barely spoken for nine weeks owing to the tube in her throat.

Then the question.

“Sonia, would you like us to carry on?”

She nods.

My sisters and I hurriedly glance at one another. This is not what she wants, she has told us this in so many ways. Her angry staring eyes, her occasional ‘conversations’ with us all. One of us speaks up, and strangely enough I can’t remember which one of us it is, but it hardly matters because we all knew and felt it as one.

“Mum. Are you sure? That’s not what you said before, the doctor is saying do you want them to keep the tube in and keep trying to fix you? Do you want that?”

She shakes her head vehemently. Behind the oxygen mask she is saying something “Go”? Maybe?

“Sonia, you know that it is likely that if we take out the tubes you will not be able to breathe alone?”

Nod. I cannot be sure, it’s an old memory but she may have muttered “Had enough”, from behind the mask. If she didn’t at that point, I know she had, many times, previously.

And that’s it. The wheels are set in motion. Doctor mutters to nurse and suddenly they are gone.

It’s just us for quite a while. We stand around the bed, holding her hand, touching her arm, watching her. We wipe her dry mouth and squeeze water in. She’s so thirsty. She’s been begging for a cup of tea but the nurses have not allowed it. The waiting seems endless. Should be a good thing, more time, but she’s in so much agony. In the end, she irascibly mutters something like, “Well when are they going to do it?” or “How long does this take?”

Then the nurse is back, gently explaining how things work and it is not long before they begin to remove all the equipment that has held her captive for so many weeks. The thick surgical plaster is removed from her nose and the oxygen mask comes off along with the hard white plastic tubes that are removed from her nostrils. The nurse leaves, says to to call him if we need him. It might take some time. “Thank you.” we say.

She looks at us one by one, and then her face creases in pain. Her heart. Her broken heart. One of us calls for the nurse who comes and says he will bring her something. He says he will be back. Again an eternity of waiting whilst Mum’s face is contorted in agony.

“Painful” she says.

“He’s coming back Mum, with morphine, the good shit!”

She tries to smile, or maybe that is what I want to imagine happened.

The nurse comes back and administers the good shit.

Slow breathing. Looks around at us. one by one. I know she says things to my sisters, but I don’t remember what, that’s perhaps their personal memory. I do remember her words to me though as I stood at her left and held her had, stroking the paper soft skin of her fingers, “You alright?” and I smile and nod. Her face is relaxed now, “Does it still hurt?” I say.

“It’s better now”.

She says nothing more. Just breathes. The spaces between the breaths grow longer. The inhalations, when they come, are more spasmodic. Rasping. And we wait and listen for another eternity.

Finally, there are no more.

In this curtained and dark space, with all the cacophony of beeping machines and humans struggling to live, we experience the greatest loss of all. The most beautiful soul, the most caring and loving person we have ever known as she dedicated her entire life to us has breathed her last and never will again.

She left this world as she lived it, the centre of our universe, complicated but simple. Herself, unadorned and triumphantly free.

It is fitting that she died of a broken heart. She missed dad so much and she left to keep him company.

This is my Dad Jim Dennison in 1976. Tonight is Midsummers night. It is always a day of reflection and often sadness for me. The morning after midsummers night in 1986 I woke to let the dog out. At the kitchen door I found him lying dead. This event has effected every feeling and emotion that I have had ever since. He had retired 10 years previously at the age of 36 around the time this picture was taken and proceeded to drink himself to death by 46. I think about him every day, I also feel anger towards the massive mess he made. Not to be here as a Granda for my 3 beautiful boys is just tragic, never mind leaving my brother and I as teenagers. He did however leave me a very large gift, he showed me what not to do. I have gratefully just celebrated 30 years sobriety. Without watching first hand what could have been in store for me I probably would not have found the path I have trudged for the past 30 years. Yesterday my youngest son told me that I will be a Grandad next year. The world keeps turning!

The older man in this picture of 1907 is my 2G grandfather, Georg Adolf Alexander Mede.

Born in Göttingen, Germany, in 1843, Georg failed to turn up for his conscription interview for the Hannoverian Army. After making his way to New York he eventually became a stowaway on a ship to Southampton in late 1863. He eventually settled in Birmingham, fathering 8 children.

Georg was a maverick and I admire that in him. His story reminds me constantly that we are all immigrants somewhere down the line.

My wife taught me what unconditional love is. We grew up very differently. I didn’t really live with my family from my early teens and spent several of those years living in a home. I learnt to rely on myself. I was 38 when we met and still fiercely independent, always expecting to be left. But she hasn’t and she doesn’t. No matter what. She stood by my side as we fought for the right to marry, then she married me. She continues to stand by my side.

My nan has a special guardianship over my brothers and previously me. Family are the ones who choose to be with us, the ones who step up not just because they need to, but when they can’t imagine a world where we don’t.

Where to begin? Over the past 4 years Losing my Dad, older brother and best friend all under traumatic circumstances. From a fractured femur to alcoholism to cancer.

Nothing prepares you for their loss, it doesn’t matter what happened, who, how, why, where or when. I just know that a shared history, dreams and hopes disappeared into the ether, like ashes dispersing into a flowing river never to return.

So now, I say Yes to everything from art, music, theatre and anything in between so I can feel again and appreciate what it is to be alive and connected to those around me. Making core memories for my dotage and living life with friends and family who do not steal my joy but edify it with their joy, love and presence.
That’s what family means to me.
🫂🙏🏽❤️

I was placed in care at birth because my mum ran away and left me in the hospital 6 months later I went home and remained on the at risk register – after years of neglect I was taken into care and a full care order was granted – I left care at 15 for a difficult 2 years back at home – I got my first flat at 17 and was out in the world alone- with no support – I struggled with adulting as most in-supported care leavers do. I finally met my partner at 36 and we settled down and got married and became foster parents – a few placements into that Journey – we got a call – a little girl had been born and her mum had left her alone at the hospital – would we like to foster her – yes we did and lots of court hearings later and no contact at all with mum – skip forward 2 years and that little
Girl became our adopted daughter – and I understand her on so many levels as our journey into this world began in such similar circumstances almost 40 years apart – she will never become the unsupported lonely care leaver that I once did

Face to Face with Napoleon
“Can Simon come out to play?”
It was a simple request to the father of a boy along the modest terrace of houses where we lived, way back, probably 70 years ago. The father, like my own dad, was a young police officer, and the police houses were part of an estate where the big estate house served as a training establishment for the force. My father and this neighbour of ours would both have been instructors at the Police College.
“I’m sorry”, came the reply “, he’s busy reading ‘Face to Face with Napoleon‘ so he cannot.
I went home and told my Mum, and she struggled to keep a straight face as she comforted me in my disappointment and suggested a jam sandwich ( my favourite snack ) might ease my pain, muttering: “I’m sure he’ll come and play with you after he’s finished with Napoleon”.
A simple “No, sorry, he’s busy” would have sufficed from Simon’s father, and the response involving Napoleon was a not-so-subtle reference to their family’s aspirations for their young son. Perhaps even a dig at their less-than-cultured neighbours who might lead their literary boy into the wild wilderness of the Beano, or the Dandy, which we had delivered every week, plus the occasional worthy addition of the Eagle comic with its fabulous drawings of spaceships and a chubby spaceman called Digby: Dan Dare’s down-to-earth partner. Or worse, young Simon might have been tempted to go with us roaming the local fields playing ‘army’ and making damns in a nearby stream out of mud and stones, or even worse, he might have got to know Daphne ‘Pots’ Percival, the slightly older rather forward girl who came out with us and who it is thought eventaully matured into Blackpool landlady on the Golden Mile. ‘Pots’ was regarded as somewhat advanced in her years for a ten-year-old, something of an exhibitionist, but slightly terrifying.
Approaching November each year, we built a huge bonfire for Guy Fawkes Night, and before the 5th would try out the odd banger or flapjack ( a firework that bounced by your legs, crackling as it went in a plume of smoke ), making everyone squeak with apprehension and dance around to avoid sparks or worse coming up our short trousers. Surging through the serge.
I hope that Simon ( if that was his name, it might not have been ) managed to get to the end of his weighty tome. I don’t recall seeing him again. I suspect that aspirational parents had made it clear that he was not to make friends with us from that day forth.
We’d all faced our own Waterloo.

My eldest son Christopher was handsome, clever, funny, kind, adopted and alcoholic. I thought we would always lurch from crisis to crisis, with periods of joy and relief between.

I was at your gig in Gloucester, Lemn, on 27th February 2025 singing ‘How do you do it, said night’ and next morning, on the train home was humming it to myself thinking how apt it was for me and for Christopher.

When collected at the train station, I learned that Christopher had been found in his bed during that evening, his life over. Every day since, 446 days, Light has continued to keep it simple, creeping in and I have cried. It is very hard. I thought you should know. Somehow you are now woven into my family.

In a state of flux families expand and stretch their blurry edges pulling in the other halves and new to the worlds, the chosen members and those of miraculous life giving chance. Each life an individual with an unbreakable connection to someone who loves and supports them; threads that can strengthen and weaken but only come asunder when hope and love is truly extinguished. The old and the new constantly mingle in a dance between tradition and modernity – a tug of war between a past and future which meets in the beautifully untidy present. We are all connected in our disconnect; loved inclusively with our individuality.

Families are complicated, ever changing, an amorphous unit. I say unit because it does have shape but it’s loose. Depending on who’s family it is and what family means to them.
To me mine is all and nothing. All because that’s what my mother drummed into me. Nothing because she is no longer here.
She told me our family is everything. Her family was not. In the 1950’s she, a white woman, married a black man and went on to have 6 children. Her family abandoned her. Ashamed. I am the youngest of those children. She taught us to hold our heads high. She literally fought so that we could. And she taught us to fight too. Physically and mentally. She knew that success was the best form of revenge. We all went on to do well for ourselves and I hope we’ve made her proud. Sge taught us to be proud of the family we were born in to. That our family name meant something. When anyone called us names or treat us differently she’d say ‘you’re a Taylor. Go out there and remember who you are’. When she died, even though my Dad was still alive, for the first time in my life, I felt totally alone. I felt like an orphan. I had brothers and a sister too but I truly felt alone for the first time in my life. I was 40 years old. My family wasn’t gone but it wasn’t there anymore. It was different. It will never be the same.
It’s almost unbelievable to think that one person could hold the whole lives of their family in their hands and their heart. I’m so glad that that person for me was my Mam. Joyce Taylor. She was my family, is my family and all of the people, my brothers and sister, nieces and nephews, who experienced her endless love, laughter , wicked sense of humour, who share the same genes, who remind me of her when I look at their faces, are my family and I am grateful that she left me that gift. Because of her, even though she’s gone, I can still see and hear her whenever I need to be grounded and reminded of who I am.

I was adopted at six weeks old by a narcissist grew up having to be someone I wasn’t
Have overcome this and written my memoir the most cathartic thing I have done it really helped me move on An adoptee’s journey letters of my life.
I have just taken early retirement and am enjoying life. I have been married to my best friend for 36 years he has been my soul mate and seen me through many difficult time we have brought up four amazing kids now adults with their own lives and family we have six grandchildren I am an avid reader and loved My name is Y. No regrets if I had stayed with my birth family who are great 👍 I would not be the person I am today and would not have met my husband.

This photo is of my mum (in red), her father and sisters. My parents moved to Australia from England in the 1960’s. They intended to travel for a few years but are still here. I have only met my extended English family a handful of times over the years. I miss them, even those I’ve never met. My mum rarely told me she loved me or laughed with us. She now has dementia and I have a stage 4 cancer. She misses her sisters but doesn’t remember I am unwell. I don’t know which of us will live the longest. I raised my three, now grown up children mostly on my own and they are my everything. I tell them how much I love them every day. I am not afraid of dying but I’m very afraid of missing out on their lives.

I called the psychiatrist to section my mum on Boxing Day, I still love her, she was damaged by medication for glandular fever

Family is flawed, family is fragile, family is forever and not at all.
People in our lives play a multitude of roles and sometimes the wrong actor gets cast. They are thrust into the spotlight and demands are made – they can’t perform because they were never given the script and were denied the opportunity to watch others treading the boards.

In the late forties my dad, a South African Jew, moved across the world to the cosmopolitan centre of London. In the late fifties he met my mother, a French woman who was born in Shanghai and who grew up mostly in the UK. They married but because my mother was told she could never have children, they adopted a beautiful half-Lebanese girl. Then the miracle happened and three boys followed, me being the first. This picture was my mother’s favourite photo of us. Although she’s not in it, I can see her in our responses alongside our four totally different ways of being in the world. This photo now hangs in my house in France and encapsulates how a family is assembled from the raw earth.

We are a mixed race family of 4 – Kal(dad) Ros (mum) Milly (24) Joti (18) who moved from London to Brecon, Wales 13 years ago. 6 years ago in 2020 Kal became seriously ill and for 4 years we watched him deteriorate with severe heart failure. He was receiving supportive (palliative) care but simultaneously waiting for a heart transplant. As a family we lived in limbo between grief and hope. Kal couldn’t do much anymore but he cooked delicious food, as much as he was able, telling us that he was trying to help us keep going and show us how much he loved us. In November 2024, early one morning a Robin flew into the Kitchen (a first!) and set the dogs off!. 4 hours later we had a call to say they’d found a heart. That day Joti did her GCSE maths resit, knowing her dad was in the operating theatre, she told her teachers, “If dad can do have a heart transplant, I can do a GCSE”. 10 weeks after his transplant he got to watch Milly graduate . Joti got an A too! A family kept together by love and now thriving thanks to the kindness of a stranger.

I knew from early on that I would not have children naturally, and that my route to a family would be through adoption. This finally happened for me in my late 30s when I met the partner who was ready to make that journey with me. We adopted our son 14 years ago, and his biological sister 11 years ago. It has been such a rich journey so far, challenging and beautiful. The depth of love I feel for my children is like no other. What I now know about family is that it is made of shared memories and felt safety.

I am blessed to have grown up in a loving and united family. My parents have three children – I am one of them – and five grandchildren. I raised my daughter as a single mum, but really it was a team effort. When growing up we regularly had visitors and people popping in. Usually welcomed by a cup of tea and a plate of fresh scones and jam. We all three studied languages, and had foreign students to visit, and some have become lifelong friends. My parents have just marked 60 years of marriage and among the messages were some from France and Ukraine describing us as their ‘English family’. I love that idea of international family.

I had a job interview last year. One of the interviewers asked me that standard question: “Tell us about yourself…” so far, so normal. But then she added: “…tell us about your family.” I was thrown. I can’t even remember how I answered. I didn’t get the job.

I hadn’t expected to be asked about my family when being interviewed for an admin role in the UK. Apart from anything, it’s potentially discriminatory to be asking a woman about her family situation in a job interview, it could be grounds for sex discrimination, discrimination relating pregnancy/maternity or caring commitments for disabled family members. Totally out of line.

But in my case, I was in care as a child. It’s a struggle I face every time I’m getting to know new people or they’re getting to know me. People ask about family because they think it’s relatively innocent and harmless small talk. When someone asks about family, it’s not really benign chit-chat when you end up explaining that you were removed from your family and taken into care as a child, which often begs the question, ‘Why?’ and I have to explain that I had been physically abused by my father. It’s a bit of a conversation stopper. It’s #awkward.

There are so many care experienced people who are keenly aware that their experiences of family life weren’t/aren’t ‘normal’ and don’t need to be reminded of that in casual chit-chat with relative strangers.

But it’s only only care experienced people. It struck me that it was a terrible question to ask in a job interview, not least because it’s contentious due to bringing potentially illegal discrimination in question, but because so many people might have problems talking about family. The person interviewing me had no idea whether I might have recently been bereaved, might’ve had a parent or partner who’d died, or even child who’d died or been stillborn. They had no idea whether I might’ve had fertility problems and might’ve struggled to conceive or been unable to have children.

So there are other potential problems with an interviewer asking questions about family in a job interview, it’s really inappropriate and I can’t understand how and why they thought such a question was acceptable in this day and age, especially given the potential to discriminate against candidates on the basis of their answer to the question.

My dad just died.
It’s hard to describe this feeling of losing being so very loved. He was not an easy man for any of us but I was his favourite. Which isn’t right, of course you should not have favourites. But I was. And he told me. And all the time he was alive that love was buoying me along in the dark times. And now it is gone and I am gathering up the scraps that are left, Christmas cards, t-shirts and trying to keep him here x

A few years ago, I signed up to participate in a course. I received a confirmation email with instructions for where and when to attend, and also a request for me to send a baby photo of myself for an icebreaker exercise on the first day, the idea being that they would share the baby photos and we would have to match which baby photo matched which course participant.

I had to explain that I’d been in care as a child and so I didn’t have any baby photos. They replied saying it was okay and they had changed the exercise to something different. It was a good job, really, because while the group on the course was mostly white British people, there were a couple of people of Middle Eastern heritage and one woman who was of Afro-Caribbean heritage. If they had gone ahead with their icebreaker exercise, it would’ve been very cringeworthy, having to ‘guess’ the only black baby photo with the only Afro-Caribbean course participant.

My being a care leaver who didn’t have any baby photos wasn’t the only thing wrong with that exercise.

It gets to me, that after all these years, having been in care as a child is still something that impacts me, even though I’m now in my fifties, it’s still something that crops up as an issue from time to time. I think I’m doing something positive and moving on with my life, and then out of the blue I receive yet another knock to my confidence and sense of self, have to provide explanations and justifications in the present about issues from my past, yet another reminder that I’m an outlier, that my experience isn’t ‘normal’ that I didn’t and don’t have a ‘normal’ family.

Just finished reading My Name is Why. With a son at RL Hughes, and myself originally being from Atherton I found it so sad what happened so close but so amazing how you have come out on top. Thank you for sharing your story x

Sisters – 3 years and 3 months between us all. Different but the same and unconditionally supportive.
An outstanding mother who worked full time in the 80’s when others stayed at home, who taught us to work, bake, knit, sew, tile the bathroom, paint the house, build a legacy.
Lost to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s in 2018 – but pushing us forward in our continued hard work and independence. And missed ❤️

My mum is 80. The photo shows her sitting in the middle with two of my uncles who are a tad bit younger. She loves life and is the soul of any party. The photo captures it so well, her grabing the hands of the fellow family seniors and starting to sing and move on the chair. She was the first person on the dancefloor at my wedding and despite old age aches and pains firmy states: “I can’t really walk or even sit without pain, but I can still dance, so it’s not too bad”. Or: “God’s creation is great but the old age is a shoddy concept”.
Professionally she was an accountant – for a long time the only female at a fire station in a provincial Poland. She once told me of a “me too” moment when she pulled trousers down in public off a man that used to grope her at work. My father was consistently jealous of her. When he was drunk he would beat her, threw her out of the house so she had to beg to be let back in. I knew she begged for us, not herself, worried that in drunken anger he would turn on her children. He died when I was 10. Such a relief. Can I say that? One isn’t supposed to talk badly about the dead… But we were safe. Not healed, just safe, healing took longer.
She is a daughter of a peasant woman with just primary school education. Self-subsistence farmer, orphaned in early childhood, windowed like her in her forties. Grafter like her. A grand daughter of another young widdow, a peasant, not significant enough to count in history.
My mum’s life experience spans three centuries, despite living in two. Her early childhood with non-mechanised farm work was probably not much different to what XIX century children had to do, but now she has a smartphone and is embracing XXI centrury. Non-typically for an older Eastern European she has a very liberal worldview.
Her name is Barbara, a daughter of Genowefa, a granddaughter of Paulina.

My location is Belfast, Northern Ireland but my family location is rural Co. Tyrone in NI. I am one of 12 children who had a wonderful upbringing by our parents – life was not perfect or not even easy – we were not well off but we were/are extremely fortunate with everyone in good health, and we had our parents until they were 90 and 95 when they died. Both our parents came from poor backgrounds but both were intelligent. They instilled in us a strong work ethic and strong morals and values. We were never influenced politically despite the Troubles going on around us. Our parents valued us equally regardless of our work/careers and were proud of us all, and of the next two generations – our parents were humble, perhaps too modest, but created the foundation for a very fortunate, healthy, and successful large family group. We were able to look after our parents at home in their old age and my mother died at age 95 in the same room in which she was born, with her 12 adult healthy children around her – I think that’s pretty unusual – and a blessing for us.

Sister Sledge comes to mind , a tune from my youth that resonated with my emotional journey as I grew from an individual to a member of my tribe , not my biological family but the people who accepted me and encouraged me to grow as me , a very different experience from the family at home . Now many years later as a parent of a family I recognise that we are all novices when it comes to building a family and no one can teach us how . As the world shifts around us the way we support and nurture has shifted and changed to meet the challenges of the world that feels so much bigger for our children. All that said my mantra is love , trust and evole with acceptance all your child want to experience with no judgment and this will build your family core values that give you the purpose and legacy of life that create joy in your heart, and we need no more than that …, ps no matter the relationship always be available for each and everyone .

My first child was conceived through non-concensual sex.
My experience isn’t right for all survivors but, for me, they are the thing that saved me. Being a mother to them and their siblings is my lifes work. I’ve broken generational cycles and learned that sometimes we need to understand ourselves so that we can understand them. My family is chaos & kindness.

My parents moved to the UK from Mauritius in the Sixties. My dad was a quiet, gentle and private soul. He taught me generosity, kindness and how to feed people until they pop. He died when I was 16 after battling a terminal illness for 4 years. I think of him every time I see the sea, a robin in the garden or look at the shape of my son’s head.

My Mum became very sick last November. She was in the ICU on dialysis when she turned 79. We cried when she signed the DNR and then I spent hours with her in the hospice afterwards. I sang to her the night before she died. After she was unconscious I sat sketching her. Then I held her hand as she died. She was so shocked by how fast she faded and was often confused by it all, but she had her happy moments which I suppose is all we can ask for at the end.

I had some of my grandma’s ashes delivered to me today, almost three years after she died. For the first fifteen minutes or so, I couldn’t let them go and held them to my chest as though they were stuck there with magnets. Until they are scattered, they now have a temporary home, alongside photos of my grandad. These passport photos made us all laugh so much at the time, and still do. You can see him failing to fight off the giggles as my grandma tickled him under the photo booth curtain. My mum, my brother, and I each have these photos framed in our homes. A daily reminder of my lovely grandma and grandad.

My family mean the world to me. Me and my husband were relatively young parents, sooner than we planned but for all the world the best thing we ever did. There were times we worried financially and our party days were largely behind us. We’ve worked hard to create a life that is entirely ours – we work hard for what we have and we don’t need much. Our daughter turns 21 and will graduate from uni over the summer and we are just so proud of the woman she is. I’m so grateful for my husband, our parents who have supported us every step of the way and my sister and her family. I also choose my lovely friends as part of my family and we have been lucky to have three gorgeous dogs that have formed part of our family over the years. We are so blessed xx

My Mum was a single parent in a Catholic family in 1967.
I know so little of her story and no idea who my father was. I suspect she went to one of those mother and baby homes to have me.
She returned to her family with me, a deed poll and a fake wedding ring.
She died when she was 58, the age I am now, and I was only 24. I watched her die for years and never managed to have the knowledge or strength to ask the questions I would now like to know.
I think she loved me. I have to tell myself that. She struggled to protect me or care for me. Her family were cruel.
I know she was happy and carefree for many years before me. She must have been brave to have had me.
I miss her.
I don’t miss her family.
I have made my own from my friends and the different groups I interact with in my work and my hobbies. They give me the love and safety I never had and I am grateful for them every day.

Hiraeth. A longing and homesickness for a place we can’t return to.

My Bam, the golden thread at the heart of my childhood. Endlessly creative and imaginative in the way she made the ordinary magical. A cornerstone in the making me, as a woman, and as a mother.

How I dream of sharing another custard slice with her. And how lucky was I to share her with my own children for a short fraction in time.

My chosen family mean everything to me 🩵

I love my weird and wonderful family, my grandfather ran away from his parents in India to join the British Navy and become a Dr. He met my Mormor (mothers mother in Swedish) in Japan, where he was in a ménage a tois with a Japanese couple. They settled in Bermondsey, where my Mum met my Dad, a proper south londoner, with some German in there but that’s a long story. I love all the Aunts, cousins, grandparents on both sides and feel little bits of me carry them. I have two brothers one has a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, both brothers live with my parents. My parents have never stopped being there for any of us and they are the example that I parent too. Parenting, daughtering and the privilege that is family is forever. We’re not perfect but we don’t stop trying and we make each other laugh.

This is a picture of me and my twin sister with my big sister over forty years ago. Alongside it is a picture of my daughter now.

My big sister was sixteen and a half when we were born. That meant that by the time we were two we had an exciting adult to do lots of fun things with.

When we were younger she took us everywhere with her, even on dates. She said she could not be with anyone who did not treat her little sisters well.

We had sleep overs at her house when we were teenagers where she would cook waffles and ice cream and we would go out for snacks and more ice cream at 3am in the morning in the school holidays.

We once went on holiday together just the three of us when we were seventeen. We went to Victoria falls together and stood at the very edge of the barriers shouting into the beautiful gushing water below.

She made me feel invincible and that it was impossible to be that excited and that happy. But we were when we were together.

My big sister died suddenly when we were twenty two. She collapsed on a Friday was admitted to hospital and died at 5am on the following Monday morning before we could get a flight to get to her.

Last August my daughter was born. As I was wheeled from theatre into my hospital room, one of the first things I wanted her to see was the framed picture of my big sister that I had bought with me.

I imagined my sister arriving at the hospital to meet her niece and I thought about how loud and joyful she was and that she would probably have thrown her head back in the characteristic way she did when she was happy and her screams of excitement at her little sister’s baby would have shattered the hospital windows.

In our family we firmly believe that during the six years it took for me to have the miracle that is my daughter, that my big sister kept her safe until she was ready to come through to me, just as she kept me and my twin safe right up until the day she died.

Her unconditional love for me has affected the way I parent and I find it comforting to know that my daughter will continue to be a beneficiary of her love.

I was part of a family of 5; my mum, my dad and 2 older sisters. Sometimes you take family for granted don’t you? I mean, they will always be around right? Well that’s what I thought. Even when my parents died, I thought my sisters would still be there to grow old with, do things with and go places with. Unfortunately for me, that didn’t happen and both my sisters died, one at 45 and the other at 59. I was the youngest child, I am not married and I don’t have kids and now there is nobody left who remembers me as a baby. Nobody to chat to about the things we did as kids, the programmes we watched or the places we went.

Sometimes our families annoy us or we take them for granted one way or another. If you have a family make the most of the time you have together and most importantly, make time to be together.

I have learned that family is not always about blood connections, but about those who show up and choose you, unconditionally!
I lost my parents in my early 20’s and their lives were marked with significant trauma, so those relationships weren’t easy! Through solid friendships which provided me with love, hope that developed my own resilience and self determination I have somehow managed to break intergenerational trauma and built a life I’m happy with, one that I am proud of. It’s cliche but true for so many of us, friends are the family we choose. I would choose mine 100 times over.

My family are all growing up and often off in different places. My son is in Vietnam and eldest daughter away at uni. This was a moment group call where we all got together virtually. I miss having them all in one place but all having their own adventures in life is what I hope for. Our youngest is now learning to drive which is another step towards her independence. I have pictures at our gate of every trip they went on from first day at nursery to going off to travel the world.

I remember the closeness that I felt with my youngest daughter after she was born. I always had her close to me, frequently sleeping on my chest in the baby carrier, lulled by the closeness and my heart beat. All the times in the night when she slept close by, and I”d wake as soon as she started stirring, to perform the sleepy semi automatic motions of breastfeeding. Maybe it was because she had so recently been inside me, that I didn’t feel any of that jangling of the senses that usually comes from contact with someone else’s skin, touching and holding her felt so much like touching and holding myself that it seemed hard to tell at times where one of us started and the other ended.

My mother died when I was 25 & my father 7 years after. Many years later I realised that because of the way they were brought up, & the fact that they went through the Second World War, they found it difficult to express their love for their children, my mother left behind a young son with her first husband & my father left behind a young daughter with his first wife. I have always struggled with emotions & I think this is a sad family legacy.

I am the product of an affair between an english woman and a somali man. I was adopted as a baby into a white family with three birth sons. They were a good family, except they never understood how their ability to think of me as part of their family meant that I was never encouraged to think about my birth father and the part of the world he came from. All he was to me was the source of all the racism I encountered. I’m 63 years old and it’s only recently that I have come to appreciate his stubborn presence is accompanied by a line of ancestors I grew up thinking didn’t matter in the least, but who actually matter more than any other thing about me. The weirdest thing is I came to this recognition through somali tiktok. I follow a lot of energetic girls who talk about their relationship with islam, family and belonging. I frequently see reels that are only in somali and I am beginning to understand some of the things that people say. I am becoming familiar with something that I thought was impossible because of an app on my phone. Until recently I didn’t know how to look after my frizzy hair, but again, with the help of those girls on that app I’ve now got curls that last all day and when I touch them, which I find myself doing a lot, I realise that all the time, the people that I thought I could never have contact with, are intimately tangled in every cell in my body. They were there all the time and it was my somali phone fam that showed me.

My parents are from the first wave of the Windrush generation and came to the UK in the early 1950s. They saved for their passage and it took them three weeks to get here from Jamaica. My father was 18 years old and my mother was 21. They were attracted by the promise of a great life in exchange for supporting the ‘motherland’ during post-war rehabilitation. My father was a trained carpenter and even brought his tools with him but was told his qualifications meant nothing in England. Instead he could only find his first work, filling plastic moulds, cookie cutter style in a children’s’ toy factory. He was cold, lonely and missing his family. He wrote his memoirs during lockdown and I learnt that my father, who never showed much emotion when I was a child, lay in his tiny bedroom openly weeping.
He met my mother when he started working as a ‘clippie’ on the buses, a job that he enjoyed but was bullied by a senior member of staff during his early employment. Plagued by a childhood fear of mental arithmetic (snap, same here!), he struggled to work out the correct change to give a customer once under the spotlight of on-the-job training. He was jibed and mocked and made to feel less than, he didn’t belong and what was he thinking, applying for a job where people ‘like him’ shouldn’t be. Well he passed, much to the annoyance of the said manager.
My father is still alive at 87 and so is mum at 89. They eventually married in 1962 and had three kids, me being the youngest. Their stoicism and stories of their home and consequence survival of racism helped shape me, my personality, my outlook and my tenacity.
I am, because of who they were,
I thrive, when I strive,
Change is scary, but change is good, We think we cannot fight but it is, within our sight.

My mum was a trainee pharmacist and fell in love with the pharmacist. She fell pregnant – but after she told him, the next time she went into work he wasn’t there. She was told he’d moved with his family to another branch. In the early 50s having a baby out of wedlock was a crime and she was given a probation officer, and forced into an unmarried mothers’ home, where her baby was forcibly adopted. When she was dying, she kept crying to the nurses, I will never sign the papers, never. She was the most loving mother to me and my younger brother. My dad knew but we were never told. In her last year she phoned us both up to tell us as an agency had found her daughter. We were amazed and thrilled – and so sorry we had not known earlier. Mum met her daughter (who had registered to find her mum 15 years earlier) a couple of times before she died of cancer. After her death I found all the letters she had been writing over the years, desperately trying to find her baby. So I have an older sister – and how sad that society made her feel so guilty and ashamed, when all she felt was love.

My husband’s family are from Poland. My mother in law was in a labour camp during WWII and my father in law was first in Siberia then India. He came to the UK as a refugee. My MIL was helped to find her sister and then travel here across land from Krakow after the war. My family recent sncestry is from Lincolnshire. Although, one side of the family go back to Dutch prisoners of war who helped to dig the fens.. The other side have Northern France ancestry. We are an international family, with cousins marrying people from Italy, Uganda/Asian, Romany and others. A big melting pot of love 💕

I am a second generation immigrant. My grandfather left his wife and young son in Dublin to find work in England. The son was “educated” by the Christian Brothers in Dublin, and left school with no qualifications.

For several years my grandfather lived in a shared house with other working men and sent money back to Ireland until enough was saved to move the whole family across to England.

When that young son grew up, he met a local girl and they married.

That girl, my mother, grew up in a working class family who were one generation out of a workhouse. My grandfather, was a machinist in a local metalworking firm and had the kind of practical intelligence that meant he could make or build virtually anything. My grandmother had passed the 11+ in the 1930s but her family couldn’t afford to buy the uniform so she left school at 14. She was fiercely intelligent, resented that lack of opportunity all her life and was determined to ensure it wouldn’t happen to her family again.

Both halves of the family were actively involved in politics – the Labour Party and Trade Union movement. At the Young Socialists club in the early 60s, my mother and father met. They soon married and had children.

They brought us up in a small terraced house full of books in a working class area of town. We were encouraged to try anything, to not let anyone ever look down on us because of where we came from and to treat everyone with respect and kindness.

My sisters and I all went to University. I went to Oxford, where I met a girl from a similar social background. We married and have two wonderful children. I have lived, travelled and worked around the world, in the US, Japan, Australia, across Europe and down to South Africa.

And now I live back in my hometown in the beautiful Yorkshire hills.

My story is about immigration, class and education. It’s about being Irish, being a Northerner, being an immigrant, being working class, being an Oxford student, being a successful businessman, being a father, husband, brother. Trying my best to be a good man who treats everyone with respect no matter their background.

This is a poem about my relationship with my mum, who has severe mental health and addiction problems

Waiting in the Frozen Aisle

Some days, when my children are at their friends’,
And my husband is away
I’m seven again
And lost in a supermarket
Pacing down the central aisle
Trying to catch a glimpse of you
I have my methods
Start at one end – check left, then right, then left again

I always find you
Unless, of course, I time it wrong, and you are passing by the aisle’s other end,
Until, of course, the day I couldn’t

A day I don’t remember – although you’d think I would…
You’d think there would have been a tin-voice tannoy to call me back to you.
Even if the voice was distant, cracked with interference.
Surely there was an announcement?
Instead, it seems you left me there
Unsure, scared.
I am still here.
Staring down vinyl-floored corridors
Near closing time,
In a frozen aisle,
Between shelves stacked with discounted, discontinued lines.

You called me yesterday.
The first time, in forty years,
That you were looking for me, and not the other way around
You’d seen my name in a TV guide
Some celebrity whose name is mine
You thought I’d like to know
You didn’t mention that once, you’d lost a child by that name

I see now
Why I never found you again
I was looking for a mother standing sturdy by a trolley
When you were always just a little girl
Already lost
Beyond the aisle’s end

This is me and my son in the delivery suite. He was my comfort in my tummy and when he arrived as my dad died when I was 6 months pregnant. Dad felt my son kicking in my tummy before he left us and that connection to him through my son has never gone.

I was born in Leigh in 69 in Firs maternity and two years later my brother followed. We had such a happy childhood with great neighbours and family. However mum had kidney disease and was travelling to Manchester for treatment at least three times a week so we moved to the other side of Leigh into a council house so that she could have a kidney machine at home. It was 1977 queens silver jubilee but her health declined and the following year we were lucky enough to go to pontins with families in similar situations as they had a hospital block set up but from there she went to hospital and never came home. We were at her sisters with our cousins when they came back to tell us the news (we had been watching it’s a knockout). We didn’t go the funeral it wasn’t the done thing then. Dad stepped up and with the support of our grandparents we were loved and cared for. He did remarry but that was a disaster and then found a life long partner. We both left home and married and had children of our own. He loved his grandchildren and now I’m a grandparent too x we have been very lucky in our lives and family means a lot. Some may say unlucky losing our mum but because of the way we were brought up this hasn’t affected us as dramatically as I see it in some these days where they haven’t got family close by or in a situation to care. I know how lucky I am x

My dad, Steve, gave me the greatest gift anyone could. He taught me people can change and be the best, most light, generous and caring parts of themselves. He taught me we each get a finite amount of energy in this life and to use it how we want to on what matters to us.
After my dad sadly passed away of sudden illness, I found something handwritten in his belongings. I still don’t know if it’s a quote or something he wrote himself. I remind myself of it regularly and of how family can reach across time and space, even life itself, in the most wonderful ways.

You do not need some great happiness to bring you back joy in life.
The little things will do that as soon as you have eyes to see them.

My Great Grandma once ran from a german bomber plane with her child in the pram. The man seemed to be teasing her by flying low down as she ran away. My family have always been a close family but we’ve had ups and downs just like others. My Grandma was a twin but she said when her and her sister was born, her mum had said I dont think much of that one, referring to my Grandmas sister. My Great Grandma definitely had her favourite which was my other Aunty. My Great Grandma would always give me a pound coin when I visited but would say bad things about other family members to me as I was sure she said to others about me. Me, I was the youngest of 4, with three big brothers. We’d joke saying we were the Adams family. My brothers have always been talented with music and have a close bond because of that. Sometimes I feel like Im on the outside looking in. But I know they do care. My Dads Scottish and my Mums a Lancashire girl, they met when my dad was 21 and my mum was 15. They were married by the time my mum was 16. Which would be seen differently in todays views but theyve just celebrated their 50th Anniversary.

My wife taught me what unconditional love is. We grew up very differently. I lived apart from my family from a young age and spent several years living in homes. I learnt to survive and rely on myself. I was 38 when we met and still fiercely independent, always expecting to be left. But she hasn’t and she doesn’t. No matter what. She stood by my side as we fought for the right to marry, then she married me. She taught me what family means.

I used to think Mam would be there forever.
I used to think her warm breath and soft voice
would always envelop me.

In the beginning we live in Grimsby
surviving on egg & chips and bread & dripping.
Jam gets mixed in the medicine
and I get a pretty dress if the money is in.

We even have TV for a bit, my favourite Rag Tag & Bobtail.
Me & Mam watch together.
Together we make tea for when the boys get home.
Mam waves her hair in front of the mirror
and smacks me when I piss her off.

When Mam gets sick me & my brothers get shipped off to the countryside,
fostered with a large family of doting aunts and a granny who loves to make rice pudding.
We pick wild flowers and gooseberries and scrump apples.
We go mushrooming at dawn and eat chocolate fingers before bed.

School is a tiny welcoming red brick,
juniors in one room, us infants in the other.
Slate boards & chalk are all we need.
I learn my alphabet & fall in love with books.

We visit Mam in a large hospital with white walls.
It has huge windows and dazzling light
I’m in a dream and I am in awe.

Mam gives me a little pearl necklace.
She gives the boys wristwatches.
We don’t see the gifts or her again.
I think dad pawned them.
The gifts. Not Mam.

My brothers go back to Grimsby, leaving me with
foster aunts and grannies and wild flowers,
leaving me eating chocolate fingers before bed.

Eventually dad rocks up to tell me Mam has died.

But I know he is teasing as he often does.
No! Stop joking! That’s not funny!
Josie, pet, she’s not coming back.
No! Stop it! I hate you!

I fold in on myself nursing my grief,
rocking backwards and forwards, falling off chairs,
trying to make something feel real.
Trying to make something untrue.

My uncle says he saw ghost Mam sitting on the end of my bed,
but isn’t Mam still at home?
Where else could she be?

Back home to Grimsby,
and my brothers meet me at the door.
Mam’s dead they say.
I know, I crossly reply.
That’s that.

First day of school I run home at lunchtime
Where’s me Mam? I want me Mam! Where is she?
I desperately want her to hold me and love me
to dry my tears and scold me.

But the house is empty.
The neighbours give me hugs and send me back to school.
What else can they do?

Mam has gone.
A raw hole remains.

As a young child in the 1970s, my father would ask me to “Say the magic word” every time he opened a new box of Brooke Bond tea. I would excitedly answer “Rabbit bandicoot”, to which my father would shake the box and two picture cards would appear in the teabags, like magic! I used to think it was absolutely wonderful. And it was.

Only years later did I discover all packets of Brooke Bond tea had picture cards in them. The true magic was my father’s imagination and boundless love for me. Perhaps all the more remarkable because he’s not my ‘real’ father; he brought me up from the age of three after my mother had the strength and courage to leave the violent man who was my ‘father’, a title he never earned or deserved. I would be nothing today without the love of that brave young woman, my mother, and the man who pulled rabbit bandicoots out of tea bag boxes. My father.

And why that particular magic word? Rabbit bandicoot was the animal on the first picture card we discovered together in the tea in 1978. I was four, my mother was 21 and my father was 26. Fast forward nearly five decades and I can love myself because they loved me first.

I’m convinced that my daughter was sent here to make me laugh. I’m a single mom with two kids, juggling multiple jobs at once and somehow in the midst of the absurdly she will find something to laugh about; and within seconds everyone around us is smiling or laughing with her. I’m grateful that this beautiful 10 year old girl reminds me, daily, to keep things fun(ny).

My siblings and I lamented over a baby lamb trying to latch onto his mother’s nipple while the entire herd was being driven to the grand Fasiga (Easter) market – doomed to be slaughtered. We turned to our father to rescue the baby lamb. He was a softie too so he yelled out, paid for that little one and brought him to us. Being the youngest, I felt this was my moment to be the older nurturing player. We all took turns bottle feeding him but I took over protecting his hooves by carrying him over any gravel. His feet BARELY cleared the ground – I was barely 5 years old. He was perfectly content being hauled around intermittently. He once followed me to church and announced his arrival. I remember the long gravel road back home with him in my arms, feeling proud that I had a baby. My father snapped this picture, feeling proud he had a tender hearted baby girl.

PS – will do my best to locate the slide and make a print and send it for this story.

My Dad was a wonderful, kind, caring and funny man. He once told me that since his own father died when he was two, he didn’t know how to be a father. I told him he couldn’t have been better. I am the youngest of seven children. I have five sisters and one brother. We grew up in a loving atmosphere and we laughed a lot, we still do! My Dad was called up in World War Two and he told us so many funny stories. We’d heard them loads of times and he often couldn’t get them out for laughing. He had this way of laughing with his mouth open but with no sound, even though we knew what was coming and well cos we knew what was coming they just got funnier.
It’s hard to portray them now as the way he told them was an integral part of the humour.
One story was when he was in Egypt after the war. His Sargent Major had a speciality dish of corned beef pie. There was a big do on for the Officers and the Sargent aske Dad to mix up the mash and corned beef in a giant tin. Dad said he mixed it up with gusto. Then the Sargent added it to the pie to bake. After all yhe Officers had been served the Sargent came into the kitchen with his piece of pie to reveal a rusty hinge along with 3 big screws! It had fell in the mix and Dad hadn’t notice. The Sargent couldn’t believe it! He was just grateful he’d got that slice snd not one of yhe big wigs!

This is me in my first year of high school and me in my last year of high school. My mum got breast cancer when I was in primary school and sometime between when these two photos were taken, she died. High school is a blur, my dad did not cope well with the loss and these were very dark years. One day which still stands out as a positive memory though was the day Lemn Sissay came to my English lesson at my school in Manchester, England. Lemn made poetry with our class. He made the whole class chant a rhythm and he read his poems as we held the beat. I was in awe! When he left the room, our English teacher, Mrs Elsender , ran her fingers through her Hair and said “What a fine figure or a man”. For the next English assignment, I wrote a poem about loosing my mum. I got an A. I discovered that I could turn feelings and emotions into poems, it was very cathartic and I loved the creativity of crafting words. After I left home and went to university, I started to process my childhood. I took a poetry class and my uni lecturer sent a package of my poems home to my dad. I didn’t know she’d posted them. They were very powerful and I think they helped my dad understand a little about the sadness and pain I’d been living with and the role he’d played in my trauma. May dad died a few years later. I still write poetry sometimes. Thank you Lemn.

We adopted our children. They’d already had a few birthdays by the time we were lucky enough to become their parents. The first few birthdays that I was their mum, I couldn’t understand the strange feeling that would pop in and out in between playing pass the parcel and putting batteries in new toys and reading new bedtime stories. I knew birthdays could be hard for adopted children for various reasons that aren’t my story to tell. But that wasn’t wholly the reason for my strange feeling. After a few years this birthday strangeness eased and I realised what it was that had caused it. I was their mum, they were my children and it was their birthday so my mind was repeatedly trying to access the memory of their birth day – the day they were born, which of course, I didn’t have ! My emotions knew they were mine so my brain kept looking for the memory to match the emotions. Over the years, as our memories built, the feeling eased but I always respect and appreciate the lives they lived before they came into mine

My family is bound by love

Ours is not a conventional Indian family. One dad, seven children, three mums. Too many stories, and twists and turns to count. I haven’t even met one of my sisters, I have only ever seen a picture, and she looks just like me. I love her without even knowing her. I love each and every one of my siblings more than they know. My dad arrived in England with £3 in his pocket, and he died richer than he could have imagined. 7 children, 12 grandchildren (and maybe more), and at least eight great grandchildren.

Family is complicated. I think I have felt very differently about my own family and what it has meant within the fabric of my life depending on my age and stage. I think often about how my own children see our family, the onion layers of meaning that they peel back as they move through their ages and stages. My hope is that I have helped to create a safe, soft, starting point for them to build their own meanings of what family is within their fabric of their own lives.

This is my sister Linda. She was the youngest of us 3 sisters and the one we all loved best. She was loving, fierce and everyone’s best friend. She would spend time with friends and family before any housework or chores at home. She died in May 2006 just before her 40th birthday. She was planning a party so she would have been really mad to have missed it. Since then she has not been able to celebrate her 50th birthday and her 60th birthday would have been on the 27th May – how we would have laughed about being so old! Her 3 girls love and miss her so much as do we, the rest of her family. We love and miss you Lin xxx

There is no street address for Katyn Forest, where my Polish grandfather was murdered in a war crime in WW2, but there is a museum in Poland recognising the tragedy of that massacre.

As he was forcibly taken away by Russian soldiers, my grandfather managed to write a note to my grandmother and my six year old mother on a matchbox. A friend gave it to them in secret, before they too were discovered and put into a labour camp.

It’s an interesting thing to miss a beloved family member who died before I was born. But my mother kept his memory alive. She told me how much she loved and missed him; how he polished her shoes each Sunday night without fail; what a wonderful sense of humour he had; how popular he was.

When someone you love is forcibly taken away, it leaves a chasm. But I think of him, and my mother, whenever I look at that matchbox. Yes, we still have it…

I come from a huge family – 7 siblings and rumours of an 8th. Nieces, nephews, aunts and uncles I’ll never meet. I was adopted into a small family at birth. I am loved by this family but not understood. I am intrinsically understood by my birth family but feared and rejected. My very existence sheds light on uncomfortable truths. I belong somewhere in between. My friends carry me and are my family too. Im not sure i will ever figure it out but hope that my beautiful son, who walks the same path as me, finds his own peace and acceptance when the time comes.

This photo shows me (l) meeting my third cousin, Kay (c), for the first time with my daughter, Izzy (r) when she visited the UK in 2024, after we connected through a DNA website. Kay was born in Michigan, as were her father and grandfather. Her paternal grandfather and mine were first cousins – they never met. Their fathers, our great-grandfathers were brothers, born in rural Donegal, from where one of them emigrated to America. Their father, our great, great-grandfather, Charles McDevitt, is our common ancestor. He was born in 1801. We have just booked our flights to visit Kay in October in East Lansing, MI.

I’ve lived with my grandparents full time since I was 5. They never had much, but gave us everything. 20 years ago Grandad had breathing difficulties and was admitted to hospital. My grandmother and I were by his bedside as the consultant told him that he had terminal small cell lung cancer. Grandad looked at us, eyes wetter than he had ever let me see them, and said 8 words that changed who I was forever; “You’ll have to look after each other now.”

That was how I learnt that hearts don’t break because they’re fragile. They fill to the point of bursting, and then wear out from being so well used.

He heard that he was dying and his first thought was that he couldn’t protect us from it. I realised what it really meant to be loved selflessly and without reserve in the very moment it was being stripped away.

I was twenty when he died, and in August will have missed him for half my life. I’ve been seriously ill since childhood, but if I had one wish it would be for more time with him rather than a cure for my own ailments. I can bear the pain of everything else.

I guess he taught me well, after all.

A week after VE Day, in May 1945, my Great Uncle Cyril is on a train heading towards Wellington, Shropshire, on his way home. He hasn’t travelled this route since he left for France as a soldier in early in 1940. Taken prisoner at Dunkirk, he had ended up at Stalag VIIIB – a prison camp in Lamsdorf in Eastern Germany (now Łambinowice in Poland).

By this time he has experienced five years of life as a PoW. A joiner by trade, he hadn’t told his captors as ‘I didn’t want them making use of my skills’. He hoped they might give him farm work out in the fresh air, but instead he was sent to work down a mine.

In early 1945 as the Red Army advanced from the east, most of the prisoners were forced by their captors to march hundreds of miles into the heart of Germany. Sickness and shortage of food meant that some didn’t make it. Sometimes the columns of prisoners were mistaken by the Allies – Cyril was fired on by the Americans before they liberated him. But liberated he was, and repatriated to the South of England in the second week of May. He was ‘deloused’, issued with a new uniform and allowed to complete his journey home.

By the time the train pulls into Wellington station, it is late. There are no more local trains up to Rowton Halt – six miles away – close to where Cyril’s family lives. He walks up a deserted Station Road towards the Square, not quite sure what to do next.

A policeman walks past, pushing his bicycle, and asks Cyril where he’s going. He tells him that he’s just come back from the war – that he’s been a PoW since 1940. He asks the policeman if he can put him up in one of the cells overnight and he can finish his journey the next morning. But the policeman shakes his head. He says ‘I think it’s time you went home, son. Take my bike.’

And so Uncle Cyril takes the bike and rides off into the night, heading north out on the country roads he hasn’t seen for five years.

When he arrives in Sytch Lane, Waters Upton, everyone is in bed. He knocks on the front door of his parents’ house and his mother comes down to open it. She shrieks and throws her arms around him. Lights flicker on down the lane as people come out to see the commotion. They bring food and drink out to him in the street and shake his hand, saying ‘Welcome back, young Cyril, welcome back.’

Every time I arrive in Wellington on the train, I walk up Station Road and think of him on that night.

On the eve of Lemn’s birthday, 21 May and the night before what would have been my Mum’s 78th birthday, 22 May, i write. My Mum gave birth to me, an only child, in Hope Hospital, Salford when she was 17 years old. She was beautiful. She was brave. She discovered she had Multiple Sclerosis aged 47. She died aged 66 in 2014. Her last words to me were ‘Are you happy?’. I honour her last words every single day of my life. LYL, miss you loads Mum. Xx

Our son Elijah died in neonatal care – despite the incredible skills of the NHS. 37 days of deep love and fear, surgery and hope, disbelief and shock. These are the ‘big boys’ holding him for the first and last time. No one can separate the love from the sadness. We learnt that family isn’t just about blood. ‘Family’ connections came from all corners of the globe – from all parts of our life. How lucky we were to have him and how lucky that he was ours. He taught us more in his lifetime than I could ever have taught him in mine. We are still learning.

I met my darling husband in Torit , South Sudan in 1975 when I worked as a Health Visitor and he was the Sole Medical Officer at Torit General Hospital. He was a Coptic of Egyptian origin , born in Khartoum . I was Welsh born in South Wales. We married in 1977 in Wales and had 2 beautiful children who are now 47 and 46 years old. My husband trained as a Radiologist in Uk .
He was the most beautiful , caring person I met in my life. He did everything possible to make me and our children happy. He was a humble and kind man and never thought about his own needs. We both worked once the children were old enough for nursery school as we had no family near . I worked nights when he returned from work ,to look after children after school. We were so happy as a family. My love developed a bone marrow cancer in 2019. He had chemotherapy, abdominal surgery and more chemotherapy. He never thought about himself, always us. By this time we had 3 lovely grandchildren. One aged 10 looks like a mini grandad, a girl looks like a mini me and our oldest grandson looks like his maternal grandad with my husband’s curly hair but blonde, also has his ears and feet. In fact all 3 have his big feet ( he was 6 ft 2-3 inches with size 12 shoes). My husband died September 2024, on our 47 th wedding anniversary. I feel he is still with me . I am so thankful for the love he showed me and children.

My friends are also my family and my home is wherever that family is. Three years ago my little family was ripped apart by lies, deceit, betrayal. A family that to me was everything I ever wanted. We ever wanted. But now I know that’s not true. Everything I ever wamted is still with me and those that chose a different path have left us closer and stronger. I would take that any day.

This photo is from a games evening we planned as part of our Care Leaver Forum group. All of us have some things in common and some things that are very different…thanks to the help of our amazing youth worker Debbie (standing up) we met as strangers and over time, sharing experiences, views, ideas and lots of lovely food we have become family!
Shout out to all Care Experienced people who’ve created family and all youth workers who have helped along the way

I live abroad and discovered ‘family’ late in life. My family, whilst here, are my friends who surround me.

Being a stepmum and a mum to these gorgeous humans also let me reparent my own inner child who has never felt belonging or being claimed.

Having a tough start never leaves you, no matter how safe you build your environment or surround your self with your own anchors – but in love and friendship you can take a chance on being vulnerable again.
They grew me as much as I grew them ❤️

Having been brought up in a convent orphanage, my Mam gave me everything she was deprived of – education, a strong sense of self and, most of all, love, love, love.
My Dad was 9 when his beloved father died suddenly; he was expected to become ‘the man of the house’ and provide support to his demanding mother and younger sister.
My parents therefore had a connection – premature loss, trauma, tragedy and being told to ‘get on with it’ when they were still little children. This could’ve made them damaged, bitter, destructive adults and inadequate parents, but they somehow managed to grow into a loving, supportive, modest and intelligent (although both were denied a decent education) Mam and Dad who gave their only child, a longed for daughter, everything. Sure, they made mistakes and I made/make mistakes. But a loving foundation set me up for a loving marriage with a steadfast, giving, intelligent and emotionally mature man. These three people, my parents and now my husband, were, in turn, my childhood crucible and he is now the co-creator of our precious love nest in adulthood.
Somehow, the ashes and the lack and the tragedies of my parents’ childhoods alchemicised into love, a love that has proven deeper than the grave and continues to sustain me. My husband’s love is, like him, unique. Sadly, I’ve known some truly terrible people and have found myself in very dark situations but these three pillars of my tiny (in number) family speak all of love, grace, kindness; the deepest hearts and souls are theirs

Oh where do I start… Ive always been fascinated by ‘normal family life’..id look at pictures and read stories about comfort, safe feelings and support. How would that feel??!! Where could I have gone with all that lovely stuff?? It took me to the grand old age of 50 to understand not only could it have been much worse but *pats own back* I raised me and what a grand job I did. Compassion for the humans that were having a tricky time when they ‘had me’ is a better place than anger, drugs, drink, PUNK!! as fuck 🙂 Family now means so much more. My birth family didnt want me at the time and couldnt cope..that’s cool… but I have experienced ‘family’ in so many more places since then. It wasnt on the dance floor or at a house party!! haha..although that was a hoot… I learned to mother myself and the community I work in now In my job. So beautiful to support folks to move forward. It is now in my nephew..who not only sees me as familiy but a mate who is someone he can talk to about girls/mum/life…its having him stay over and tell me he loves me before bed. He feels safe with me??!! who knew!! We have ‘cinema club’ days and I take him to Skegness for chips and laughs. That picture of me is of the one time my birth mother took me to the seaside but I dont remember it. I like it though. I remember her coming in at 6am after a night out and not looking/talking to me..and no toys in the house…i thought that was what family was. Nervous…bleak…cold bedrooms…ice on the bed quilt…no one taking care of me. The power in finding YOU AS THE MOTHER is great. I now have Xmas dinner with folks…see kids open pressies… be the cool aunt. I want to end this on a high but I need to say… the damage..oh the damage in not loving your children is so big… so painful for them… im damaged but getting by. Still looking for the coca cola xmas table..like a tramp looking in 🙂

Today, 21st May, is my daughter’s birthday. She has auditory processing disorder and oral motor dyspraxia so she couldn’t understand what we said to her or speak properly when she was a toddler. Her brother could often interpret what she said when we couldn’t understand. She also didn’t feel pain and could fall into a patch of nettles and not notice. As a family we all helped her with her speech therapy exercises, physiotherapy and much more. We shared books with her every day. She’s now working in a library having gained her MA in Children’s Literature. The support of the family ensured that she can understand everyone and be understood.

My mum passed away when she was 52 and I was 26. She was a smoker with high blood pressure and couldn’t stop. She died suddenly from a huge heart attack.

Time goes on but the heart doesn’t heal.
I’m approaching 52 in a couple of years myself and she has been gone almost as long as I had her in my life.

This is a photo of my mother holding my sister, and I am the child standing next to my mother; my father is taking the photo. We are saying hello to a donkey, on holiday in Portugal, in 1973. My mother is 32, I am 5 and my sister is 2. Somewhat oddly, the family dentist is on holiday with us, too.
Two months later, my mother is dead, from a rare form of bladder cancer.
In this picture, she already knew she had cancer. Our dentist was on holiday with us, because he was the only person that my parents knew who could carry the needles, and administer the drugs that my mother needed, in an attempt to shrink the tumour before an operation three weeks after this photo was taken.
We went home from holiday, and I was sent to stay with relatives. I never saw my mother again. I didn’t even know she was ill, until I was told that she was dead, by my 3 year old cousin.
These holiday photos make me so sad: all the things that were hidden. My father has never spoken about her since she died, over 50 years ago.
I was not allowed to go to her funeral; she has no grave: my grandparents believed that my father had killed her, and their relationship had broken down so badly by the time of her funeral, that my father paid one of the funeral directors to steal her ashes, and throw them off the edge of the moors, before my grandparents could get hold of them.
I am now nearly 60, and only just now allowing myself to admit how much I miss my mother. I have children of my own: I wish they could have met her.

My lovely mum, Betty. We called her Queen B. A strong, working class, Lancashire woman, she was funny and silly and maternal. That night, my sister called. 11 pm. ‘That’s strange ringing so late.’ I thought, as I answered the call. ‘Get to Horwich, Mum’s collapsed and the paramedics are here doing CPR, she’s unconscious’. I raced down the M60. ‘Please don’t let the ambulance be there when I pull up to the house. If it’s not there then she’s been taken to hospital and is still with us.’. As I turned the corner to my parent’s house, the ambulance was still there. My stomach sank. I shouted upstairs that I wasn’t ready for her to leave me yet. She was gone. My dad – her first and forever love – stood there looking lost. She wasn’t even unwell. But our Queen B was gone. Forever.

I miss her every day. When I’m worried, she sends the smell of her perfume through the air. It’s strange. I’m never scared. She’s saying she’s still with us. Still sending her love, from wherever it is that she’s gone to.

You understand how huge, how eternal, how important the love of family is only when you lose a part of it.

I was sad, bereft. Now , with the gift of time, I feel lucky. Lucky to have experienced that amount of love. Lucky that my mum was the one that destiny gave me. I’m forever grateful to have had a Queen B.

I realised at a young age that hiking could change your position in the family. I am the youngest of three, but I was the first to climb mountains with my dad and it felt like a secret power to go from the weakest to the strongest. My family are incredible, and my mum is who I want to be still as a grown up, but my dad made us all feel like we were each his favourite somehow. Now I love my children knowing they can overcome huge mountains and enjoy hiking and exploring and doing the impossible, whilst all being my favourites.

The photo is of the rose I planted for my mum after she died. She was born in a back to back in Stoke in the 1930s. All her siblings died of TB but she was a fighter.
Her new family adopted her from the TB sanitorium, changed her name to something more middle class and gave her a completely new life.
She always wanted to know where and who she came from but never found out. One day I will go to Stoke and see for myself.

My mother Rachael is my rock. When I was heavily pregnant with my first child, I found out that my daughter was ‘incompatible with life’ due to a rare genetic condition.

After we found out, my Mum drove around the hospital car park until she was able to stop crying. Even then, she wanted to protect me.

I woke up from a general anaesthetic and my Mum’s face was the first thing I saw. She told me my daughter was beautiful. She had been with her whilst I was being stitched up.

She stayed with me in hospital for five days after Katie died. The midwife would bring Katie to us. My Mum spoke softly, moved slowly, tenderly unwrapping the blankets she laid in. With grace, she took her into her arms, and rocked her silently.

My Mum had a photo of her holding Katie framed and hung on the wall in her living room, alongside all the other photos of our family.

The depth of her unwavering unconditional love and compassion is endless. She has seven children. She has rocked us all like this, again and again.

I am able to live with my loss. Because of her.

My Dad was the fun in fatherhood, the shiny part of the shield. He loved books, music, and people. We always fell into easy laughter together. When my son was born he got to to it all over again, making each other laugh, watching cartoons together. My son learnt the gentle, kind and quiet strength of being a man. Sadly, Dad’s illness took his voice at the end, a cruel swipe as he loved chatting. But he knew we loved him, and him us.

My Grandad came over to Liverpool from County Mayo when he was 12 in search of work. My Grandma came over aged 15. They’re not here any more but I often think of their courage and bravery when things get hard. They spur me on, like they have a hand on each shoulder, pushing me forwards. They had 7 children, the third my dear Dad. They had 12 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren. They made so much out of nothing. Immigration made us.

My family is my wife & our cat. I’m forever grateful for meeting my wife. My childhood was complex & painful. My mum died of cancer when I was aged 10 & I was sexually abused by my eldest brother for several years. So family back then meant sadness, fear & confusion. I fought to build a good life for myself. True love means I have found peace. We may not look like the “normal family” but we are a unit which only gets stronger.

This is a photo of me and my parents, Laura and Simon, in about 1970. I love this photo because it is just us. I have three brothers and most of my childhood photos are of me with one or all of my brothers. My parents separated when I was seven so I hardly have any of them together after that. They are both gone now.

My parents were born just before the war. They spent their early years moving around a lot – my dad was evacuated from Surrey to the countryside and my mum spent time in Bermuda with her uncle who was in the Navy. Neither knew their biological fathers: my mother’s father was killed in action in 1940 when she was a baby and my father was illegitimate and was fostered for a while. This photo was taken in Haywards Heath in West Sussex, in the garden of my dad’s foster mother Mary with whom he stayed close to for all her life. I think my parents married and had children young to try and create the families they never had growing up.

As a girl with brothers, I was quite a tomboy though I had long hair in pigtails till I was in secondary school. So I like that I am wearing a dress with ribbons in my hair in this photo. I like it also because my parents look young and happy. For a while, they had the family that they both wanted and needed.

This is Gus! He was a very good boy! Tw: grief
here he is waiting for my Dad to return home from hospital, 3 days before he died in the Intensive care unit. I took this photo to show my dad in the brief moments he came off sedation and opened his eyes in the hopes he knew that Gus was looking for him. Before my dad was put into a coma the nurse placed a canula in his arm. His delirious response was “Good boy Gus!”. The nurse was confused but it made us giggle. I hope dad thought gus was there until the end with him. I hope Gus knew that my dad never wanted to leave him or say goodbye so suddenly in an ambulance. Incase anyone elses family ever goes into ICU and they want to say goodbye to a pet our wonderful doctor there said this actually was sometimes possible if controlled. It sure would have helped Gus.
My dad passed on my mums birthday in the afternoon. Mum took this as a sign he wouldn’t want her to be alone. My dad was nearly constantly home with Gus. Gus sadly got a rare disease last year which we tried our best to manage but sadly took his life just 11 months later. I don’t believe in any kind of afterlife but it is nice to imagine them chatting on the sofa together. My dad sneaking him bits of his food when he thought i wasn’t looking. They both had very difficult lives towards the end but i hope the bits before the difficulty were enough to carry them through those hard times.
( this happened in the uk but i live in Germany now. I’d love to tell my dad about it).

I really struggled with family throughout my life. From the copious amounts of foster families and children’s homes. To the corporate parents that were meant to be there to guide me. My care file costing over 10k to print on paper. And so many redacted pages. The page that stood out was the poster like I was a campaign. I remember it saying appeared white so could go with either black or white family as dual heritage. Struggled to find a place with schools as I had 3 primary. 3 secondary. College and uni. Slipping in fake relationships in vulnerable states naive to think they cared. I found family in the people that gave me more than their time, but gave me in to their hearts. I found my home where ever I found that spark. At 18 even though a care leaver they were still my advocates in many respects. I had just had my son, struggling with uni accommodation and my first house of my own. On a course that I wasn’t meant to be on facing eviction. I became homeless and found family through the people I let in to my core. Who understood my reason and my fight for the security I was so desperate to find. Allowing my self to gravitate to their customs and routines feeling that familiar sense of family. That alluringness that drawn me in which was just a facade hidden behind smiles. I fought for years for my son with little support being told there was no doubt in their minds that I’d be able to give him all the love in the wkrld. But I have got a suitable accommodation and no family support. The social workers being friends with the family. I fluttered from place to place never really finding my clan but still fighting for what I wanted. Being told things of resilience and that I’d make a great father. Being the man I know I can be to others and their kin. Showing the love and devotion as I would my own. Knowing I was filling a void. A lot of lonely nights and believing I don’t belong. I rekindled with my son forming a stronger relationship inspite of what happened. Now 34 with my son at 16. My hearts starting to repair from this and sooo much more. Finding my clan the ones whos hearts are pure and want to see me win. Have my back through thick and thin.

‘Our father who art in Cornwall ‘
Deceased in 2021.
Left a legacy of fatherless children from the North to the South of England.
You taught us all what not to become as parents.
Your hedonistic ways were selfish and irresponsible. Depriving a generation of a father as you womanised your way along the coast of England .
You fathered a child in 1970,1971,1972,1973,1974,1975 in the North and took care of none of us. The young women you left had to take on the stigma of unmarried mothers. You carried on your loving in the South with children born in the late 80s , early 90s. You were present for some of them .
The family tree is a family bush of unconvention, dysfunction and challenges.
I’m 1971 , I don’t respect you.
I thank you for giving me wonderful brothers and sisters . We became some of the best parents because we knew how it felt to have a selfish , irresponsible one.
All 10 of us are meeting up in the summer in The Lakes. We all love nature, animals , travel, conversation and people with a story . You might have given us all some of these traits .
Rest easy you prolific shagger

My dad, Steve, gave me the greatest gift anyone could. He taught me people can change and be the best, most light, generous and caring parts of themselves. He taught me we each get a finite amount of energy in this life and to use it how we want to on what matters to us.
After my dad sadly passed away of sudden illness, I found something handwritten in his belongings. I still don’t know if it’s a quote or something he wrote himself. I remind myself of it regularly and of how family can reach across time and space, even life itself, in the most wonderful ways.

You do not need some great happiness to bring you back joy in life.
The little things will do that as soon as you have eyes to see them.

Grandparents! I was lucky to have all my both my grandparents for the whole of childhood, infact until my early 30’s. Such special times were shared, the fun we had in London watching the USSR gymnasts, then somersaulting on the beds in the hotel! Olga Korbut was inspirational! But the small things I also remember with love, like Grandad teaching me how to tie a lace using a story about a rabbit! Well now I am the Grandparent. Nannie to two boisterous, loveable boys and we are building memories they will treasure, little things they do with us and no one else, ‘it’s just what we do at Nannie’s’. Blessed to be creating memories that will live on … special times ✖️

This is me and my father, John. A Major in the Second World War, and one of the most extraordinary men I have ever known. I was his youngest child, born just two weeks before his 61st birthday, a beautiful beginning to the final chapter of his remarkable life.

He stood beside Princess Elizabeth on VE Day, long before she became Queen Elizabeth II, and over the years he travelled the world, gathering stories, wisdom, and unforgettable experiences wherever he went. Yet for all the incredible things he saw and achieved, it was his kindness that defined him most. He was gentle, generous, and endlessly devoted, the kind of man who made you feel safe simply by being near him. Everything he did, he did with love.

He passed away in 2000, on the very day he was born, just two weeks after my own 18th birthday. There is something deeply poetic about that to me. They say that when someone leaves this world on the same date they entered it, their life cycle is complete. I believe that too.

Our boy, Nihal was born in July 2010 after a long labour, complications and surgery after I had delivered him. He was 4lbs 12. He was in special care for 2 weeks until he was able to stabilise his blood sugar by himself. I was sent home from hospital after a week, while he remained in hospital. Finally 1 week later we could take him home!
My daughter was born 2 years and 1 week later, her birth was better and went well! We didn’t have a name for her for a week, I woke up one morning thinking she is my little ‘Jasmine’ and was named!
Nihal is nearly 16, sitting GCSE’s and Jasmine is 13 about to start her GCSE’s! Those early years feel like so long ago but remain closer in my heart ❤️

Family means love and connection to me. It connects me to my past and I think of my dad who died 9 years ago often. It connects me to the future through my children who I adore and I want them to have a happy and fulfilled future (and present) more than anything. I worry about the future for them with all that is going on in the world but if they can carry the love that our family has for them with them I think they will be ok. My happiest memories are with my family.

Family is being free to be who you are with those who love your differences and enjoy your similarities.
It’s creating new words or phrases together, and learning what will raise laughter and what will ring out discord.
Family is a back to back circle of care and love, it comes from God and flows through the world without need of blood to tie it together.
It’s the quiet mornings making all the different breakfast arrangements just right, praying together on the way to school, it’s phoning to check you still feel part of the pack even if you haven’t seen each other in a while, it’s being sure to say ‘I love you’ at the end of each interaction, it’s the little piece of heartache that is shared when things are hard on one or the other of us.
It’s cuddles, and cupcakes, and car rides, and a collection of close encounters that cumulate like weighty clouds – always ready to rinse us free of loneliness and isolation and feed the flow and sparkle and delight of our delicate, precious, entangled lives.

My mum had 4 babies in 4 years. A power house of a woman who raised us as a single mum. Sometimes it felt like it was just us and her against the world.
Although surrounded with love and lots of joy, things haven’t always been easy.
But there’s something precious in being part of such a close sibling group – A group of people who share your story and that know the best and the worst of you and love you unconditionally anyway.
My brothers are like a secret super power or a very special security blanket and being their sister is something i’ll always be imeasurably grateful for.

My Father’s diagnoses of Dementia has really changed our sometimes strained relationship. His loss of memories means that he can’t remember when either of us was badly behaved, or hurt each other. He doesn’t remember the arguments, shouting, or the bad things we did. He just knows that he likes me to visit, to sit together, to chat and drink tea. Any anger or upset has gone. You can’t be resentful for what you no longer remember. However, it has taken me some time to relax my grudges and resentments towards him. I think of what he said to me as a teenager, but if he can’t remember it, what is the point of me holding on to it? And also does it really matter nowadays. It’s weirdly comforting to be in the moment with him with none of the baggage. Even if that moment doesn’t always make sense.

I was born in Scotland and lived there with my parents and little sister until I was 7, then we moved to Ireland, where Dad was from. It took me a long time to make peace with being ripped away from everyone and everything I knew, to a strange place that seemed so different. It was hard for me to make friends, to fit in. I’m in my 40s now and have made a great life for myself here, I wouldn’t change anything about my past or present. But sometimes I close my eyes and I’m back there, in the happiest part of my childhood; it’s the 80s and my grandparents live around the corner, and my cousins aren’t too far away in Newcastle, and my Dad is still alive, and I’m still safely rooted in the comfort of my birth land.

I became a stepmother (officially in brackets “wicked” ) aged 30 which changed my life completely for the better.
I knew I had done something right when Emma my beautiful and unique step daughter made me mother of the bride at her wedding .
She then asked me to be at the birthday of my gorgeous grandson and to cut the cord. This happened only six hours after I held the hand of my beloved father in law as he passed away following a long and adventurous life (but that’s a story for another time).

Blended families take work but I do believe that love is often stronger than blood.

Jackie – official wicked stepmother and supernan

My mum died nearly two years ago. We all miss her unbelievably but me and my sister are doing OK. Because she was such a good mum she gave us the grounding to be able to go on without her. Because she was able to love us so well we can try and love our kids the same way. Which is a gift. My Dad though is defeated now she is gone. They were together for nearly 60 years. He keeps going though. He’s a writer and he just keeps writing, every day. He doesn’t leave the house anymore, he stays in the home they shared, surrounded by her photos and keeps writing and remembering. I am really enjoying his remembering at the moment, he shares a post every day on facebook and I feel I know him better now than I ever did through his ‘ramblings’. I love this photo of them, both lit up, in the centre of us and surrounded by love and curry!

This photo was taken in 2020 during COVID restrictions. I was experiencing first-time motherhood alongside the grief of losing my son’s identical twin brother when in neonatal care.

Expecting twins wasn’t the experience I had hoped for, coming from a family where twins are so commonplace (five sets including mine!) and I couldn’t bring myself to celebrate. I’d been told there was a risk I would lose one or both of my boys, or the survivor would be brain damaged. I attended the fetal medicine unit in Manchester (I called it the fearful mums unit) where they said “it’s not looking good for the little one”. The boys made it to thirty weeks when all hell broke loose. I thought we’d defied the odds at first, but I was wrong.

I cannot even begin to describe the emotions that come with raising a walking, talking carbon copy of my lost boy, yet he’s a child who is also a unique individual. He’s neurodivergent and we feel isolated as a family at times because of his struggles. I tell him every single day that he’s “the best boy in Wigan”.

I never knew what family was until my first son was born and I was overwhelmed with a roaring love, he was beautiful.
In the hospital bed next to me was a social worker. I told her I had spent my childhood in care. She looked sceptical, said with a frown I had taken to motherhood like a duck to water. Whereas she was struggling, the baby wouldn’t latch on…many nurses later baby still couldn’t… eventually she asked to be moved.
Three more sons and a daughter later: I’m a grandma now, nana to my beautiful, special grandchildren – we have such fun and the joy they bring is immeasurable. And now #wearefamily 🎶🎵🎶

My dad died this year, and it’s like an enormous weight has lifted. My mum, brother and I can breathe freely for the first time ever which makes me sad and joyous in the same moment. How is that possible.. ?

I’m adopted and family was just Mum, Dad and Me but my goodness, we were a strong and happy trio. The scrutiny of social workers as part of the adoption process was hard on both my parents and the reason why they never applied to adopt again after I came along. I’m not sure I would have wanted to share them if I’m honest but I did tell them – and wider family and friends at their 50th wedding anniversary celebrations – that they should have adopted enough children for a football team. More little ones then would have had the love and support every child deserves. It never mattered that we weren’t bound by blood or genes. Our connections ran deeper and after my own daughter was born I understood that that is what family is all about. It’s about the emotional connections we sow and grow and how one generation nurtures the next and models the love and care we can pass on. Mum and Dad are no longer with us, but they are in everything my daughter and I are and do. I miss them enormously but I’m so grateful that they were mine and I was theirs. And as for daughter Gwenllian, she is the light of my world.

Icelyn, who is Jamaican, my mother….never really knew her mother or father…her mother died when she was very young…her father didn’t want to know her. But my mother had a genetic legacy, family in Panama, Puerto Rico, Boston, North Africa, East Africa the Middle East. A product of colonial empires and yet she never knew of the beautiful history of her family she carried with in her…. Sadly I got to learn about this many years after she died.

I have been very lucky all my life that the family I was brought up with and told I should care about the most, is also the family that I choose to care about (equal) most. It took many years of hearing other people’s stories to learn that biological families, legal families, and the concept of “family” are not always one and the same. I have enjoyed welcoming in-laws and in-law-in-laws, as part of the extended family, and with the passing of older generations, their friends have become inherited, and also form part of that extension. In some ways I think that family is a status that requires something more than just reciprocated feelings or effort, because friendship is itself a powerful bond, family is weirdly both a choice and an inevitability, and I hope that for everyone, whatever type of family they have, it feels like home.

Mum is 93 now, lost her mum during the war years. Her and her sister taken from her dad as he was deaf and could not speak. The sort of thing they did back then. Later as they were being split up, she gave her little sister her only photo of them. She never saw them again. Brought four of us into the world with our Dad and gave us a charmed childhood and loved us all more than we could know. I used to go for lunch at the Deaf Institute in Manchester and always thought about her climbing the stone steps as a three year old to learn sign language. She can still sign the alphabet 83 years after she last saw her Dad. I cannot know what she faced but see the strength it took to endure and succeed every day. She is my mum but so much more, my inspiration.

I grew up in the system too, so I had a pretty fucked up perception about what family means. Then I met my boyfriend and his family when I was 15. They brought me into their traditions, included me in every Christmas, birthday, celebration that you can imagine and celebrated mine all the same. I learnt the family isn’t what your born into but the people that you meet that act like you’ve been there forever. My family isn’t those who I was brought up with but it’s Lisa who sends me health advice when I’m sick making sure I look after myself, Luca who I can call to ask how to fill out a tax form or fix a washing machine, Charlotte who will sit over a glass of wine with me while I celebrate or cry or anything in between and help me make the best decisions for me, Ms Bird who taught me that I am good enough for further education, Maddie showing me how to have a good time even when I’m broke and sad and Issy, my lovely boyfriend Issy, supporting me from behind, if everything else fails I’ll always have Issy, who takes on everyone else’s role day to day in and out loving me unconditionally. My family are these people. Thank you all for showing me that life wasn’t over when I was 15 and so alone.

Family is not so much blood for me its about caring and love, i was raised in foster care and me and my husband were foster carers and and birth children were lucky enough to have additional siblings who brought thier own uniqueness into our family and made it much richer. All the children, now adults, are still very much part of our family so if anyone asks I always say we have six children four sons and two daughters and two grandchildren childen. Family is care and love not necessarily blood. Thats the start of one of my poems, but please feel free to steal it (I should be so lucky) x

My parents divorced when I was 3 and my mum remarried when I was 9. My stepdad was the best person I’ve ever known and it taught me that family is not always about blood.
I also divorced and remarried when my daughter was 6 then we fostered when she was a teenager. We went on to adopt our daughter who was only 2 days old when she came to us and she’s now 10.
Life has taught me that family are the people you genuinely love and who love you nothing to do with blood ties. However those ties are still strong and have to be respected.
I’ve been blessed to live this version of family x

THE PUGILIST TREE
As I think back to how I viewed my dad when I was a kid, I remember he seemed to me to be as majestic and intimidating as a Canadian Sequoia. I knew for sure at that tender age that he was the tallest, strongest, oldest thing in the history of the world. Ever.

Like the tree native to his country of birth, my dad dominated the landscape – giving those who encountered his massive structure no choice but to either live in his shadow or to walk around him. He would not bend. He did not move. Not because he did not want to. Simply because he could not.

I grew up under the blanket of protection provided by his dense canopy – safe from the worst the weather could do – but his rough exterior offered little comfort and the cold, hard ground shielding his roots was no place for a child to lay her head. The broad spread of leaves also blocked out the vital warmth of the sun, giving me only dappled glimpses of what life might be like for those who were allowed to venture out into the light.

Alone in the forest since the age of four, by the time my dad was a sinewy seventeen-year-old sapling, he was a boxer. In 1930s Canada, boxing was a job, not a hobby. Maya Angelou spoke of black boys like him when she spoke of those who used fighting as a ticket to ride to the top of the hill.

He donned what would eventually become Golden Gloves and slugged his way to the top of that hill. In those days, heavyweight bouts lasted for fifteen bruising and brutal rounds and by the time he was twenty, he’d had fought for his life once a week, every week, in over 300 fights.  Then, when the blood spilled by Hitler began to contaminate the very earth beneath him, he was uprooted and sent across the sea to continue his fight, this time for others, not just himself.

After V Day, he took his war bride back to Canada with him, but life as the wife of a lumberjack was not as glamorous as it had been as the girlfriend of a GI. She soon became homesick. For love, my dad put his roots down once more in a new country and stayed here until the day he died.

Our hero began boxing again but only in exhibition fights. He sparred with and beat less impressive fighters who went on to win titles he could never lay claim to because giant brown Sequoias don’t often thrive in shallow English soil.

By the time I came along many decades later, my dad was with his second wife and still bore the scars of a youth spent chasing a dream and a life spent chasing love. Now I am older, I understand why my dad’s bark became thickened and rough, and his boughs eventually refused to bend to support the weight of others.

He did soften a little in the years before he died. His exterior worn smooth in places by children and grandchildren who kept trying to embrace him even though it always hurt.

I am made from the same strong wood as him, hewn from a limb torn off in the storm that raged relentlessly throughout the years he shared with my mother. Sometimes I discover deep cuts in my trunk, cleaved by those who wield their words like axes. I scribe around the wounds, trying in vain to prevent the keloid scarring unique to my genus. Eventually, I am forced to give up and accept what I am – the propagation of the original Pugilist Tree. The tallest, strongest, greatest tree in the history of the world. Ever.

My Great Uncle “ Alf” or Alfonso was not a man of his time. Born in East Lancashire in the 1920s, he was a clever lad who went to grammar school but still had to do national service which he did so in the Royal Navy. He ended up training as a barber then after he left, he settled in London where he ended up as a hairdresser in Soho, then later as hairdresser for the swinging London set. As you may have already guessed, my lovely uncle was a gay man so back then it was very hard for him. I wasn’t born until 1969 but I always remember him at family gatherings with pink hair being extravagant and I loved him but not everyone did.
Fast forward to the 80s, he ended up in Bristol where he’s still been a hairdresser for years but his partner died then he ended up in a grotty flat where the neighbours bullied him as they knew about his sexuality. My dad took us to see him in 1981 and he was preparing for Armageddon- his flat was full of tins, provisions etc- he sent me away ,his favourite niece, with a 4 pack of 2,litre lemonade. Then we carried on to Devon for a holiday.
We got home a week later to the police at our door, my lovely uncle had hung himself on a coat hanger… I wasn’t supposed to hear but I still remember clinging on to those lemonade bottles for ages after,

Even before she was born I worked hard on their bond. When he put his hand on my belly I’d make a jerking movement and tell him that she always kicked for him and clearly loved him more than anyone else. When he came to the hospital after she was born he didn’t even glance at me but ran straight to the cot and couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Four years on and they’re very close. They annoy each other, as siblings do, but their love for each other is palpable. They’d do anything for each other.

I didn’t have unconditional love growing up but I hope that they will both have it, and each other, for life.

I recently overheard my Dad telling my niece ‘love you’ as we said goodbye. My Dad is of a generation that expressing feelings so openly is not easy. Many years ago, not long before our wedding my now husband overheard me on the phone to my mum, upset because of my Dad’s discomfort with making a speech at our wedding. I just wanted to hear him say that he loved me and was proud of me. 25 years later I realise that love is not what you say – it’s what you do. My Dad might not tell me he loves me but I know that he does because of all the things he has done for me. And thats what makes family.

Family is the strength you pull on in the light and in the dark. My familyare the first people you want to share good or bad news with, they are my safe haven and also sometimes a stormy cove.. only family really can be honest enough when you really need it, a good family does not avoid the difficult conversation or the words that must be said. Family are a safety net, enduring support… but sometimes also can feel like a trap.. a trap of caring…of duty of perfection… of wanting to not disappoint..of sybking rivalry…. But beyond all else family is hope, is forgiveness, is affection, is compassion… is laughter… is comfort…it is the ultimate understanding. Family is not saying a word and being completely understood ❤️

When I met my husband I joined his wonderful family and found my best friend, my mother-In-law Mavis. Not many people gel with their mother-in-law the way we did I was extremely lucky. She was an incredible hugely intelligent woman who had 3 children who have all been very successful in life. But her greatest accomplishment was her selflessness and the love she showed everyone. We miss her everyday but she taught me so much and hope she is proud of the people we have become.

Mum came to live with me in 2012 at the beginning of her dementia journey. I wondered if we could still create memories for her.
We took her on a 3 hour trike tour around Perthshire aged 91 years old. She fed reindeer, went up in a hot air balloon, went to all kinds of gigs – glam rock, blues and classical and met and had photos with the singers. She did like a handsome young man!
We made a memory book of photos; it proved to be a wonderful ice-breaker for my Mum who loved connecting with people.
So next time your arm is hurting from signing books and smiling Lemn … maybe you will bring light into the life of another person.

My grandparents were the most wonderful people. It was they that taught me the values I still hold to this day. Though they are long gone, I still shed tears when I think about them.

This image shows my mother Jenny who passed away in 2016. On the right is her birth mother, Elsie Margaret. My mother was born to Elsie out of wedlock in 1926. In service in Kensington, London at the time, Elsie was supported by her employers and my mother put up for adoption. My mother was adopted by a couple who, thinking they couldn’t have children of their own, took her in at a little over a year from an adoption home in Surrey. However, a few years later, Brenda, my grandmother, gave birth to a baby boy. Overjoyed with her boy, my mother was sidelined by Brenda and ended up being sent away to work in a hospital kitchen at little over 16 years old. Later on, she completed her nurse’s training becoming and SRN and while working at a private clinic in Queensgate, London, she met my father who was a patient. A true love story despite John being 23 years older, already with four children. Fast forward to the mid-70s when reading the personal column in the Telegraph one night, my mother spotted a listing from someone seeking information about Elsie Margaret Wheeler, one of the only bits of information she had about her birth mother. When she phoned the following day, she discovered the ad had been posted by Peter, a brother she had no idea she had. It’s a long story but together they tracked Elsie down, finding her in Oxford, only a few minutes away from when she was born and brought up in Garsington. They went together to her flat, unannouced. She was shocked and frightened at first as she hadn’t told anyone about her two children but her family embraced both my mother and Peter and they all remained in contact until Elsie died in 1986.

This is my Suduama, Sinhala for grandmother. She was the most gentle lady. I couldn’t speak much Sinhala and she spoke even less English. But she’d always ask me if I was hungry, offer more rice and stroke my arm. I spent a lot of time with her in Sri Lanka and we learnt our own way to communicate.

In 2013 when she died I was told by a text from my dad which simply read “Suduama dead.” I was a very junior doctor at the time and was so shocked and broke down. I cried so much that my seniors couldn’t understand what I was trying to tell them so just sent me home. I still cry when I think about it now. She was the only person with decency in my family.

We got involved in fostering in later life, to give something back, we were given 2 babies, we all loved them (us as a couple and our children and their families) for 2 years 4 months. They had contact with their parents for that time, which caused trauma! They were adopted to a lovely couple – adoption fairs are a real thing! The adoption process felt short and brutal with little explanation for the children! The whole process has left us shocked and heartbroken! We miss them so much xx

I’m 10 years old…
Family means having someone by your side, they pick you up when you fall, they’re a friend. They bring you happiness.
Nyah, my sister is one of the best things that ever happened to me. She’s funny, she’s happy and gives the mood. It’s hard to grow up in 2 homes, sometimes I want to stay with my mum and sometimes I want to stay longer with my dad. They’re both funny and nice. My cousins Ava and Eira are very precious to me. They’re really kind. That’s my family.

Unearthed just recently while hunting for photos to celebrate my sister Pauline’s 50th birthday, and what a find. There we are Mum, Dad, and three little girls outside the Grand Hôtel de Famille on our coach trip to France. Could the hotel name be any more perfect? I’m the eldest with the afro, Pauline with her poker-straight hair, and little Nicky — just two years old with that surprise blonde streak inherited straight from Dad’s mum. Three sisters, three completely different heads of hair and personalities! The smile on Dad’s face, Mum holding the world together on one hip – I just love the bones of every single one of them 🩷

Not lucky enough to be born into a loving and empathetic family, but I did have a loving, caring and thoughtful grandmother. Sadly, I lost her in my early 20’s (I’m almost 60 now) and miss her every day.
What I’d like to share with you about her are some of her sayings/mantras/teachings:

“Good, better, best,
Never let it rest
Until your good is better and your better best!”

“Do your best,
Your very best and do it everyday
For that is the wisest way”

Louise Agnes Lewis (nee Myers)
1908 to 1990
🥰

When I was growing up, I longed for a family who truly saw me.
Someone who cared, who worried, who protected me.

I wanted to be tucked into bed at night.
I wanted someone to notice how hard things were, to tell me I was loved, and that everything would be okay.

But that never happened.

I carried that longing with me into my early twenties, still trying to find where I fit in the world.
Then one day, something shifted — I realised I didn’t have to keep searching for it.

I could create it.

It started with my daughter.
I made sure she would be the girl who is seen, who feels safe, who never has to question if she is loved or where she belongs.

Then it grew — through fostering, through opening my home and my heart.

Today, my house is full.
Four girls.
Three sisters who get to stay together.

It’s loud, it’s chaotic, it’s full of laughter and tears… but above all, it’s stable, it’s safe, and it’s full of love.

And somewhere in the middle of all that noise and life, I realised —
I have everything I ever wanted.

And even more than that…
I get to give it to them 🩷

My dad Mick was a storyteller and a poet. I loved hearing his stories and poems as a child, and hearing memories he had to share. I remember looking forward to him getting home from work, giving me the last of his coffee from his flask while he told stories about anything and everything. When I was young he would also often joke he knew famous people (he also let me believe that he was David Byrne for a while because they both had ponytails!) He also told me a story about a young poet called Lemn Sissay who had recited poetry to him and his friends in his flat in Hag Fold, Atherton, and that he was brilliant then. I always wondered if he was “pulling my leg” (as he’d say) about that, although I didn’t mind if he was, the stories brought me comfort and happiness. Dad passed away just 6 days before what would have been his 60th birthday in 2022. I’d love to hear one of his stories again.

How you start your life should not define you. Finding your way to love and be kind is just amazing. When growing up could not allow you that. We spend years blaming and feeling ashamed. But when you see you can change your destiny. Learn to forgive and accept you become empowered. I am just that. With my three daughters my two grandchildren I have love in my heart. That makes me rich.

This is a family shot from my wedding, one of the happiest days of my life, a decade into a 30-year relationship with my husband, that most people assume ended with his death in the pandemic. All the other people in the photograph are dead too, just me left. But I’m not sharing this as a sad story, but rather to talk about different kinds of family. In addition to the large and growing group whom I collectively refer to as my #lovelydead, still very much present in everything, I have been cheered and lifted by surviving family, who include elective family. They say you can’t choose your family, but I’m (still) here to say that you can.

I wasn’t sure if I was cut out to be a mum, although I do think I wanted to be. I feel as though I was conditioned to work hard and do the things I could be good at, and I was maybe afraid I would fall short as a mother. I have three children now and they are absolutely my true loves. Nobody can really excel at motherhood, it is intensely relentless. My kids have taught me that my best is nearly always good enough. When people tell you to enjoy your children’s childhood, you should absolutely heed their advice. It really does fly by in what feels like an instant. I try to keep a record of how being their mum makes me feel with the passing of time. Recently, shoe size has been an unexpected source of reflection:
I remember your perfect tiny feet,
That emerged from within me.
Now we wear the same size socks.
Today you bought new football boots.
Another milestone: they fit us perfectly.
Do you care to share my fluffy slippers?
It won’t be a long-term agreement.
You’re only ten years old.
Plenty of growing still to do.

We are a fractured family experiencing loss that is sometimes difficult to bear. But we try to pull together when needed for strength and support.
But family is not just blood relatives, it’s also the friends that support you when needed, check in on you from time to time, grieve when you’re grieving and always have your back.
Together, they are all family.

My dad, Steve, gave me the greatest gift anyone could. He taught me people can change and be the best, most light, generous and caring parts of themselves. He taught me we each get a finite amount of energy in this life and to use it how we want to on what matters to us.
After my dad sadly passed away of sudden illness, I found something handwritten in his belongings. I still don’t know if it’s a quote or something he wrote himself. I remind myself of it regularly and of how family can reach across time and space, even life itself, in the most wonderful ways.

You do not need some great happiness to bring you back joy in life.
The little things will do that as soon as you have eyes to see them.

My family are amazing! I have 3 siblings and two of us are adopted. My mum had problems with pregnancy and after my eldest brother was born she was told she couldn’t have more kids. She adopted me and then fell pregnant with my sister. Mam told me she was terrified ‘they’d’ take me away when they found out. Then after having my sister it was a defo no more kids – back in the day things were trickier re women’s health etc. My folks adopted my brother – they were told they could only adopt a “problem child” because they already had three kids. That kid turned out to be an Olympic athlete and is now an advocate for adoption and fostering. We have amazing parents and are truly lucky and blessed. My parents are amazing and we are truly blessed – I only hope others find this love and support.

I am an only child. As a child in the 60s family was close parents, grandmother, aunties and uncles, we all lived under one roof. It was crowded, but it was home.
As time has passed family became scattered. Sometimes they would argue which made keeping in touch harder…. I was seen and seldom heard.
However I knew that I could trust them all.
Epilepsy was my curse though they accepted me, even if they didn’t quite understand. I was lucky I had love.
Through the years the family dwindled some moved away and inevitably died.
However I learned my values and beliefs the things that make me, me.
I owe this to my family.
Now I realise that family are not simply relatives however distant or close, they are friend and assosiates with share values and thought , a shared connection.
Through this my family has grown. Family is who you deem it to be. It ebbs and flows.
I have tried to contact relatives who I lost touch with many years ago. Only to find when I find them that they have been taken from us. I was just that little too late. I never give up searching my family is there. I miss them., bu never give up hope.

I would like to tell you about my mum. Today, 21 May, was my mums birthday. She died last year aged 95. A survivor of Polio when aged three – she was never expected to live so long, but then my mum never paid any attention to what was expected. She fought all her life for equality; first as a girl to get an education and qualify as a teacher; then to work with SEND children; then to co- design the first ever accessible school built in London for Disabled children. She fought local bylaws that refused children in wheelchairs from using their local park; she fought for her husband, my dad, to continue working when disabled; she fought for her brothers in law to have the right to live legally together. Mum was interested in everyone and cared about everyone. When she was dying in the hospice she fought for others like her to have access to the specialist food they needed. She never stopped fighting. We miss her.

I come from a family that taught me the meaning of resilience, sacrifice, and hope. Life has not always been easy for us, but through every challenge, my family remained united and supportive of one another.

Growing up, I learned that success is not only measured by achievement, but also by kindness, responsibility, and My family’s strength and love shaped the person I am today.

Over time, life changes. Homes may change, people grow older, and our paths may not always remain the same. Yet the meaning of family in my life has never changed. It is the place where I am remembered for who I was, accepted for who I am, and encouraged for who I can become.
To me, family is not only about blood, but about love, sacrifice, responsibility, and always having a place to call home.

There is nothing like a mothers love.
Proverbs 31: 28-29.
If not for mothers love there is no family. Mother is the fabric of family.

This is a woven photo of me and my Auntie Hilda. I never met Auntie Hilda, I was named after her because she died shortly before I was born. As a child of the sixties I never liked the name Hilda as it was old fashioned and reminiscent of Hilda Ogden and Hilda Baker, and changed it to Tilly as an adult. I felt a bit guilty for discarding her name, especially when my Mum told me I was born in the months between Auntie Hilda dying and my Grandpa dying of a broken heart. Years after I changed my name Mum told me that Auntie Hilda’s given name was Matilda but she didn’t like it as it was old fashioned so she changed her name to Hilda. I now feel as if rather than spoiling the memory of Auntie Hilda I am honouring her rebellion!

When I was 10 years old we had a project at school to write a biography. Everyone in my class chose a celebrity apart from me – I chose to write about my nan. My nan is a person who has always built community around her and is far more popular than I will ever be. For her birthdays she will have plans with friends every day for a week and whenever I go out with her she will undoubtedly see multiple people she knows – and they always want to talk to her! Her ability to instantly put others at ease astounds me. I'm in my thirties now and very aware of how lucky I am to have her still here when other people do not get enough time with their grandparents. She has survived a stroke, two heart attacks and single motherhood in the 1960s and I will always consider her to be the most interesting person I know.

People say they are lucky but I’m the lucky on.

We play hard.
We fight hard.
We family hard.

Son of a Dubliner, who’s dad moved to England in 1966, my father is more English than Irish, but I and my kids feel more Irish than English. Three proud Irish citizens born in England and a British citizen born in Ireland ! A strange brew. Erin go Bragh

I was born out of wedlock. A bastard some may say, but the conception that sparkled my life was made in love. I was adopted from Ethiopia to the Netherlands. Now, I have 2 moms and multiple father figures. Many siblings, though I am the first & only daughter for both my birth mother & father. They are both still alive.

As a child, my father was away a lot as a merchant navy sailor- I never realised how much he was away as presents used to arrive from all over the world on a regular basis; boxes of lollipops, jewellery made from Tahitian shells etc. When he did come home, he’d tell me bedtime stories about his travels; I had a world map on my wall so I could see where he went. I used to stand on the bed and point at the places I wanted to hear stories about, and he had one for every place on the planet! I think I was 35 before I realised he’d never been to them all as his stories enchanted me. I used to want to go everywhere with an “M” at the start of the word: Maldives, Mauritius, ‘Merica…. I’ve now visited them all just to see where he had been. My room was full of Japanese dolls and traditional costume dolls from Africa, Asia and everywhere his ships docked.
I now have a map of the world in the spare bedroom and I do this with my granddaughter xxx precious memories never forgotten. I’m 67 now, going on 35 of course!
Happy birthday Lemn, I adore your works xxx

Monica is my aunt. Following a stroke some years back she doesn't get out and about much. Most days are spent indoors, doing a jigsaw, watching quiz shows, word puzzles to keep her mind active. Each time I visit, we pop outside. And each time she's brilliant. She has to work to overcome her nerves to go out but then 'just to the end of the drive' becomes a visit to her friend over the road, 'show me the garden' becomes a navigation around the whole house, always going further than expected. The joy on Monica's face when back inside at what she's achieved is 'wow, look what I did!'. Makes me feel so proud of her.

I moved away at 18 to get the education and life experience I'd been desperate for. But I came home often to visit my parents, most weekends saw me up and down the motorway, and I stopped in to visit my sister each time too; always a busy trip. Every other Sunday, I called. As I found friends and work I visited less often but I still called. But I started to resent all that travel, and always being the one to instigate – it felt so one-way.
So I stopped going, to see if they would visit me. I stopped calling, to see if they would call me if I didn't pick up the phone.
They don't.

a family poem for Lemn Sissay

chosen by the heart
nourished through time
tested on fire and on ice
forged across borders and oceans
recognized by friendship and by surnames
loved into existence

My grandparents are in their late 80's and both live in supported living due to dementia and health difficulties. They've been together since they were 16 years old, married for over 60 years and still very in love.
They've survived crumbling houses, national service, bringing up 3 WILD boys under 4, and now unfortunately dementia.

My grandad can't communicate anymore, but when I take my young son to go and see him, his whole face lights up again and I can see that cheeky Salford glimmer come back to me just for a moment.
I am extremely lucky to have my grandparents, and even luckier my son gets to spend time with them.

Everything was about education growing up, whether it was museum trips, trains, anything. My dad was a biochemistry professor, he had to fight for his education growing up back in India. Every night he would sit with us kids to help us with homework and our handwriting. he used to give me and my brothers the models of chemicals to play with and he taught me the model of water when I was probably 6..I just thought they were interesting shapes to play with. I was never treated any different to my brother’s because my dad insisted I had the same education as them. I grew up with a sense of curiosity, asking questions and work in a STEM field thanks to my dad

My Nan. My mum married my dad when she was only around 17, and I came along a year later. Looking back, they were both very young.

My Nan was quite emotionally reserved in many ways, but she showed her love through the things she did. She taught me how to cook, took me food shopping along Streatham High Road, let me make rose-water perfume, and gave me a magnet to collect pins in her sewing room. She was incredibly strong and independent, and I think life had been challenging for her, especially raising two sets of twins.

She gave me a lifelong love of sewing, creativity, and making things by hand. I will always be grateful for the care and love she gave me.

I have always felt proud of my working-class upbringing, proud of the struggles and laughter we shared – watching Only Fools and Horses, dancing when our favourite songs came on the radio, hearing of the pasts we had survived, coal mine explosions, looking for food in bins.
I moved out of my estate when I was 20 and over the years I changed my accent; tired of it being mimicked and mocked. I used to say ay-up and ta-ra but I don’t now and I miss it. I miss the echoes of my family in my voice, miss hearing my grandma voice in mine but I wear her wedding ring now and I still say Righto like my grandad always did!

Happy birthday Lemn Sissay! Thank you for your work and your inspiring heart!

Family has not turned out to be what I might have expected but is quite wonderful in its unique way and greatly cherished by me.
Adopted as a baby, I grew up happily enough with my adoptive parents and brother. I’m now in my 60s and my closest family is a combination of my husband, my two nephews (children of my adoptive brother), my cousin (nephew of my adoptive mother) and my birth sister (daughter of my birth father who I got to know in adult life).
After our adoptive parents died my adoptive brother, incomprehensibly to me, decided to go off with his current partner and cut off from everyone including his two sons – one still very young. This very sad situation has left an even bigger role for me as their aunt and I have the most wonderful relationship with both my nephews. Unable to have children myself, this is is an unexpected even greater joy in my life. Being adopted left me with a fear of being alone and for the first time I truly know this will never be the case.
(The photo is the very first photo of me as a baby with my adoptive mum)

My brother, sister and I were really excited to welcome our Grandma. She was coming from Axminster in Devon and we were squabbling for room to look out of the letterbox, to see her coming.
Grandma was quite glamorous and a bit more posh than most people we knew. We lived in Gillingham in Kent. She was originally from Cambridge and she sounded like it.
Grandma was coming to live with us and our dad. Mummy had died, probably a month before. It had been sudden and unexpected, so now Grandma was coming to care for us all, including Daddy. She would live in our back room until the council rehoused us.
Grandma was really practical, powerful and good. She was a nurse and wore slacks; she tidied herself with bicycle clips when she rode to work. When we moved house and I had to start a new infant school (my brother and sister were in junior school), she introduced me to the teacher and told me what to do. She let us stay up late when our dad was out and bought us Chinese food, which felt really unusual in 80s Gillingham.
When our dad remarried, Grandma moved back to Axminster. It was seven years later when I saw her. She seemed old and lonely.

My mother, my big sister and I always sounded incredibly similar on the phone. My sister's boyfriend, Dave, would phone the house only to be relentlessly pranked by us pretending to be her, or my sister pretending to be us. I so miss the gales of laughter and his hapless pleas to us to stop messing about. Mum died in 2002 and my sister isn't in the best of health, and sometimes I long to travel through time and listen to that uproarious hilarity once more. This photo of us (I'm in the middle) was taken in Bristol in the mid-80s.

I spent my whole childhood being moved through 7 children’s homes, 4 foster families and 2 live in schools. I didn’t let people in or trust many people and at 53, the story is still the same. However, I did have the wonderful good fortune of meeting Mr Wilkes (David).
He was a teacher at the one live in school I actually enjoyed being at, I attended this school in the Hereford countryside from ages 9 to 12. David was a history teacher but most importantly a running coach. He noticed I had a talent for running, middle to long distance, I joke now, it was because I’d spent most of my time running from the police or social services lol 😂. This teacher used to turn up on weekends and after school time to train me and others, was firm but fair and always encouraging. I looked up to him and thinking back now, he was the only adult I trusted, an example of a good role model. I didn’t eventbown a pair of running shoes, he bought me my first pair of running spikes, they were adidas, I still remember that day when I receive this blue box with 3 white stripes across it, the classic 80s addidas design, I treasured those shoes for all I was worth and kept them in the box.
The school closed on my 12th birthday in 1984. I never got over that. David kept in touch by letter for my whole childhood and even came with his new family to pick me up for days out, I even went to stay at their home in Wirral where I was able to go running with Savid along the beach. He married Averil. They haven’t had it easy themselves, have lost 2 of 4 children and have had challenges in life but they’ve always stayed present in my life. They came to my wedding , to my 2 boys baptisms and when after 23 years I had the misfortune of getting divorced (due to the stains of mental health from inhaled childhood trauma) I ended up attempting suicide several times and being admitted into a mental health hospital for 4 months, they were there and still are. They lost their person at 30 to suicide, I couldn’t have been easy on them with me also suffering. However, they sorted and paid for my to see a psychologist(still ongoing) it was too long to wait on the ever growing NHS as I’d probably not be here now otherwise. They have me stay at their home whenever I need a safe place. They’ve become my proper family. I still run, I love running along the beach in Wirral, still get excited when I get a new pair of running shoes, still have a strong Christian faith, David introduced me to this in a way I understood, I class myself as a nuts and bolt Christian, a bit rough round the edge lol 😂
I still have a good friendship with my ex wife and so do Dave and Ave, I fostered for some years which meant I had my 2 lovely boys late in life, my boys are now 12 and 14, I love them so much and am so proud to be able to visit Dave and Ave with them, Dave and Ave have become my boys family as well as mine. My eldest, Seb, is also beginning the running journey, I go running with him, I bought him his first pair of proper running shoes, my youngest is now showing an interest and is also a good rock climber. So the circle of life continues.
My recovery is still ongoing and the struggles invisibly continue behind the scenes. However, thanks to my teacher and his family, I’m not alone. Thank you David and Averil!

I would like to tell you about my lovely mum, Barbara, born in 1935 in Edgware. And I would like to tell you the story of her three mothers, Elsie, Alice and Phyllis, and her one doting father, Robert.
Elsie, a single parent, domestic servant, probable teenager, gave birth to her in Edgware hospital, and although I don't know, I would like to think it was out of love (but shame and fear too I guess) and wanting to give my mum a better life, having named her Barbara, she gave her up for adoption moments after birth.
Within days she was adopted by Robert & Alice Grice, a childless couple, from Lancashire, who had been married eight years.
By all accounts they were a happy family, until tragedy struck in 1939 when Alice died of cancer aged just 36. My mum had lost her second mum.
Not long after it seems Robert met and found comfort and love with Phyllis whom he married in 1940. She was 32 and must have been a remarkable young woman being prepared to become a mother to a four-year-old girl, she had only just come to know. But she gave her love and protection and warmth, and having subsequently had two children of her own with Robert, my mum was then part of a very happy family of five. My grandma Phyllis treated my mum no different from her younger brother David and sister Pamela.
I am so grateful, and thankful to God, for not only for the gift of my mother enabling me to have life, but for her 3 loving mothers: Elsie, Alice and Phyllis; and Robert, the devoted father figure through it all – my amazing Grandpa.

My name begins with a J because my dad was raised in a family of Jays. His parents – Jim and Jacqueline – and their five children – John (my dad), Jocelyn, Jenny (my aunt I am named after), Jillian and Joanna – lived in New Zealand. In the summer they would take their donkeys to the local beaches and sell donkey rides to make a bit of cash.
They lived a simple life, a small holding, rural, magical. At some stage they moved to a place called Titirangi just north of Auckland and built a house at the bottom of a long, winding track. Because all the Jays lived at the end of that track, it was named Jays Road by the council and to this day you can visit it and imagine a family with gypsy hearts oceans away from where I sit, in Kilburn, tucked under a blanket with a cup of tea and the back door open.
My dad voyaged to the UK when he was a young budding reporter. He worked for the daily mail in Manchester briefly, and during that time was sent to cover a stable girls beauty pageant in a muddy field. It was raining that day. My mum (Kate) was also covering the event for the Yorkshire Post. She saw my dad across the field and knew she would marry him. It began when she offered him her umbrella as it was raining so hard.
Dad had wanted to continue the Jays tradition when he became a father. This went well – first Jemima, then Jenny (me), then Jack. When my little sister was born, mum rightly put her foot down. What about her legacy? Where was it? And so my youngest sibling was named Kinna after the lodger who was living in our house at the time. When Kinna grew up she discovered the word Kina is Māori for shell. This was a much more magical explanation for her name origin than the truth that she was named after the lodger. The real truth is I was envious that she got to be different.
My siblings will all attest – my lifelong motivation has always been to never be the same as anyone. Always wanting – needing to be different has been an act of defiance no doubt as a reaction against being grouped together. Or maybe it’s being a middle child. I’m not sure. That’s the thing with families, they shape you, don’t they.
I think it should be part of a growing up ritual to be allowed to choose your own name. Maybe when you’re nine, although if I had done that I probably would have changed it to something based on the kids from Fame, my favourite telly programme at the time. I might even have changed my name to Leroy cos he was the coolest dancer and I had a huge crush on him.
My surname isn’t part of my bloodline. It’s my step great grandfather’s name which my grandfather was urged to take during the war because his Dutch surname (Lakeman) and his blonde, blue eyes and Dutch accent implied that he looked and sounded more like a Nazi than was deemed acceptable (he was in the NZ air force).
Because of the war, dad didn’t meet his dad until he was about two years old.
My great grandmother was called Hedda. She was the founding editor of Woman’s Weekly in New Zealand. I think maybe now that I am fifty four and a writer myself, with a career that spanned editing magazines too, I might like my name to be Hedda. It sounds more interesting than Jenny.
There are lots of Jennys where I work. So many that I volunteered to be called Jeffrey instead. Only trouble is nobody would take a woman in her fifties seriously with a name like Jeff.
My favourite name is one given to me by my parents when I was a toddler: Joofy Battlecake.
Thank you for reading!
Jenny.

I wrote this poem after my sister and I completed a sponsored climb up Snowdon and we realised that I loved climbing the mountain in the middle of the night in the dark and she really didn't. She likes the poem, we are both proud that it was published by Atrium, and we have now agreed that our sister walks will mostly be on the flat.

MY SISTER WENT TO LIVE ON THE MOON

After we climbed Snowdon,
my sister went to live on the moon.

And when it was new I paced all day
knowing she doesn’t like the dark.

I am still here on Earth feeling the gravity
and faithfully recording
what the air smells like each week.
I guess she knows that when she returns, I am going
to ask her what it smelt like there
each Monday morning

I google to see how long a moon day is.
I wonder why I never learned this at school,
but I guess they didn’t expect sisters
to be going to live there then.

There are different answers, but it’s clear
a day is almost an earth month.

She’s been gone three weeks now.
So for her that’s not even a day,
but to me it feels like a lifetime.

I imagine her happy when it’s full.
Her with her big smile
and that laugh as real as the time she said
we should go to the park
and dangle bacons on sticks to catch the carp
the men in tents are always trying to catch.

But now I am confused whether she will even know.

All I can do is wait for unclouded nights
strap on my head torch
and wave and hope.

I don’t even know if she went there
because she still believes in the Man in the Moon
or to get away from me.

I met my dad when I was 6 years old. He was my mum's husband, not my birth dad. But he loved me and raised me beautifully, and he inspired me to adopt a child once I became an adult. If he could love and raise a child that wasn't his, I could do the same. He passed away many years ago, never got to meet his grandchildren as he passed away too soon, while he was still too young. But his light is always with us.

Growing up, we all had a designated seat at the dining table. It was an unwritten agreement. Mum and dad at either end, children between them. From my dad's seat, he could see his wife across the table and his children on his right. The left side was unoccupied, open to the rest of the living room and the TV. Sometimes we'd watch whatever was on and discuss. Most of the time we ignored it. It was great background noise for our catching-up.

Whenever I visit the family home now, in my 30s, that's my seat at the table. There is a new unwritten agreement. I sit where my dad used to sit. I watch my mum across the table, and my own children on my right. They laugh, eat, talk, sing. And I smile, like he used to, because he is there, in our minds, in our hearts.

I love this photo of my Mum (now long gone), two of my older brothers and me as a toddler. It was taken outside our house in Adelaide, Australia, probably in 1972. It’s a classic 70s snapshot, the colours and the clothes, its wonderful wonkyness and only some of us have a head! I think my Dad must have taken the photo. Love the photo, love everyone it. And I’d recognise my brothers knees anywhere xxx

I am one of five children, they all live down south. My parents are English. We were born in the West of Ireland.

My daughter is an only child.
I raised her as a single parent in Northern Ireland in the post war '90's.

Ireland is divided, still.
No more bombs just bonfires and national loyalties to separate us.
We are all family.

Family is conplex and changeable. I have happy memories of growing up in the North Esst. Of strong roots in Christianity with weekly church attendance and Sunday school. A family of chirchgoers. Elderly spinsters whose potential partners had not come back from the First World War watching out for me, caring.

I remember family Christmases with the Salvation Army playing carols in the street on Christmas morning. I remember on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day the extended family we really only saw on those days cramming into our house or my aunties with masses of food. Christmas dinners with plates piled high with hot food. Then a fww hours later after Santa had been again we had a massive tea where the table was laid with a huge variety of home made food : sandwiches, sausage rolls, cakes, trifles and mousses.

Small presents, big hearts with lots of love.

That’s not something we can do now in the same numbers. The presehts have got bugger while numbers have got smaller. Tje appetites have moderated and out table is generous but not overflowing!

Some traditions from my childhood live on: stockings full of little surprises, the tree decorations mixed and collected over years. I hope my little family remembers and continues them into future generations.

My parents both lost their dads when they were young, so they raised us (four siblings) with a strong sense of the importance of family. We now live in different places many miles apart — spanning Hawaii to Scotland — but since COVID we've had a weekly call and an active group text chain. I remember one summer day soon after we started the calls, sitting in the back garden talking with my family and just laughing together, as if we were all in person. We are very different people with busy lives and we're all quite opinionated so we don't always agree or get along perfectly, but I'm so glad we all still deeply value each other and our time together.

My wonderful Dad, David is sadly now bed bound in a nursing home due to vascular dementia. This is especially cruel as dads life has been an outdoors one. Born in 1937 in Salisbury, Wiltshire, David was epileptic from birth and told that he would never find a job in Britain. So at 18 he took a boat to Norway inspired by his childhood hero Roald Amundsen. There he found work in forestry, planting thousands of trees. He also found a society happy to give hime work and that didnt judge him in the way the UK did. 15 years later he did return to Britain where he married and started a family with my mum Daphne, a nurse. Widowed in 1985 by the horror of cancer, dad brought up 2 sons and taught us a love of the outdoors and the power of kindness and compassion for others. Like dad I live with epilepsy but because of him it has never stopped me doing what I wanted.

Rejected by my wealthy birth family but found true happiness and contentment with the family who graciously took me in , built me up from scratch and protected me in my darkest times .

I was adopted. I struggled with my childhood with my adoptive parents and I experienced abuse. The only thing that kept me carrying on was the hope that one day when I turned 18 I could find my birth mother and live happily ever after. The morning of my 18th birthday I reached out to adoption services to no prevail. I found her on Facebook after finding out my previous name as I applied for my driving licence. I met not only her but siblings, grandparents and cousins. They too would eventually show themselves to also be abusive and my sibling even attempted to sex traffic me. I experienced sexual assault because of this and the case went nowhere as my family refused to support me with witness evidence..and it ended with me being thrown out, running down my the road at 19 with my life in my bag, being called horrific names and being chased by dogs. It was the scariest time of my life with no one to turn to. The attachment disorder that I had somewhat inherited as a child was magnified. What was so wrong with me that I had had not one but two chances of being loved by a mother and neither of them did? I have children of my own now and it has made me see that I was not hard to love. No one is “hard” to love. Sometimes you just get a short straw (or two) in life. And you have to grow and take care of yourself. I am happy for everybody who has a strong sense of family. I don’t know any different, but I know loving families exist. ❤️

This is my son Joe. He went to Russia and met a cosmonaut. A month later he died of an accidental drug overdose. He was fiercely bright, endlessly curious and funny as could be. We miss him every day. I try and learn something new every day in his memory.

Family isn’t always through blood. It’s from love, time and compassion.

I am the grandchild of 2 WW2 Prisoners of war who were removed from their families as teenagers. A Polish Grandfather and a Belorussian Grandmother. They were both placed in Nazi work camps. After the war they met in a Displaced Person’s Camp in Wilderflecken, Germany. They spent 3 years there, they met, courted, married and had my father. They then chose to be repatriated via ship to Perth, Western Australia. There they lived in a tent camp with other WW2 refugees for a few years. They had my Aunt and Uncle in the tent camp in North Dandelup, a rural village. They then bought a house in Armadale, WA and were one of the first migrants to own a house and television. My maternal grandparents were of Irish and Spanish heritage who migrated to Australia. I am a first generation Australian. I left Australia aged 25 (1994) to backpack around the world on my own. I was a Dance Teacher at Camp America, a Showgirl in Las Vegas and a podium dancer in Ibiza. I settled in Bristol, UK to work to get money to continue my travels. I met my husband on my second day in Bristol. We have been married for 29 years, have 2 wonderful children and still work as Counsellors in a Drug and Alcohol charity. We live in a lovely, peaceful village in rural Suffolk and feel very grateful. I share a birthday with Lemn and am writing this on my 57th birthday.

My upbringing was confusing. I never knew how I fitted in and I felt out of step. In 2019, at the age of 48, I discovered a long buried secret which made sense of my feelings of being an interloper – I discovered who really was my dad. With that I have discovered a whole new set of relatives who have embraced me as a very real part of the family and I have recognised shared values and characteristics that are in line with mine, as well as strong Irish heritage that I had never known. Regrettably my dad had already died without the knowledge that he was a father but he lives on in me and my children.

It was my 7th birthday when I first boarded a plane with Mum, Dad and younger brother.
The plane had propellers, that’s how long ago it was, and it also gives an idea how very privileged we were as a family.
The holiday was a disaster!
My brother got German measles, and spent the whole time, very poorly, in the hotel bedroom.
Returning home it was of course my turn.
I wasn’t so unwell, just very bored.
I imagine by this time my Mother must have been exhausted, so my Father, who was often absent and working long hours during my childhood, read to me in my darkened room.
My love of books and now poetry carried to new heights.
‘By the shining big sea water’ Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha.
Every night I listened, hearing the joy in his voice from reading the words.
I was such a Daddy’s girl.
As a winter child my birthday party clothes were sensible warm dresses and jumpers and the annual event usually snowed off! Not that year.
It was a glorious spring day when I was well enough for my party to go ahead, my belated birthday brought sunshine, outdoor games and Daddy bought me a pink and white dress. I can remember it to this day.
Ten years later he died in a plane crash and family life shattered.
I still have his Hiawatha.

My immediate family includes my first Scottish partner, my eldest son we had together when I was 23. He moved to NZ 6 years ago, has a Spanish partner and is loving his life there. My husband is originally from Cumbria and we had our daughter together when I was 34. She and her Saudi/Swiss/British boyfriend are currently living with us pending a planned move to Scotland for her to do an MA. Our two middle sons were our very first foster children and arrived from Albania as teenagers when I was 43. The elder son married an English woman and they lived with us very happily until their son was a year old. We care for our grandson twice a week and he is a joy. The younger son married an Albanian woman ( we all went to the wedding in Albania!). They live an hour away and we see them and their two gorgeous kids pretty regularly. Our youngest two daughters are Nigerian and arrived as foster children aged 2 and 3 when I was 48. We became special guardians in 2023 and they are almost adults now.
There have been many challenges along the way but I am totally proud of our complex and beautiful family.

In 2021, my beloved big sister, aged 57, was diagnosed with Glioblastoma (an incurable brain cancer) and given a year to live; 95% of sufferers die within a year of diagnosis. Literature is one of her passions. So for her last birthday in 2022, we contacted her favourite poet Lemn Sissay and asked him to record a personal video recording/reading of her favourite poem ‘Invisible Kisses’. You did. We loved you even more for that. We played it on her birthday as a surprise with the whole family present; there was laughter, there were tears, there was love, there was joy.
2026 and her life has been compromised, but she is still with us; she is now in the 5% who live on. Life is a blessing, poetry is a blessing, your kindness and beautiful writing is a blessing. Thank you

Our family is its own country. We have a very mixed heritage and when people ask – where are you from – we can’t give a straightforward answer. Instead we stumble around saying it’s complicated. It’s not just the bloodlines there’s also the moving around with work when we were growing up. To fit in we picked up the local accents but we were forever outed as fakes. We didn’t grow up there so it didn’t count. Only my family has the same experience and understanding. We speak the language of the past, of shared books, the school days and the otherness.

T.W. (Please decide if this is appropriate to share) Our first born son arrived into the world like superman, with his arm up and his fist clenched. Moments later I had a huge haemorrhage which could not be stopped by the usual injection, so the doctor punched me internally for 20 minutes while I was looking down at my body. My son was literally thrown at my husband. I chose to come back, but that day changed our lives forever. It took me three years for my husband and I to be able to talk about it. And when I managed to contact the hospital to pay for my notes I discovered the life changing ordeal was summarised in just 3 letters PPH. I disconnected from myself, but connected more easily with people who were also facing challenges in their lives. In the winter of 2016 I went to Calais, with apples, bread and blankets collected from friends in kent. There i met courageous human beings whose voices had also been silenced, erased. A meeting with Omar The Poet, who shared his incredible poetry with us, was the start of a friendship and a humanitarian journey around Europe with my family – myself, my husband, our son and our dog Bo- I could never even have dreamed of. We loaded up our rug, teapot, sugar bowl and repurposed army catering tent into our van and cooked « recipes of hope » with everyone we met on our journey. Families from Sudan, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Syria, Kurdistan, Cuba and many others forcibly displaced sharing chai as « one big family ». It’s taken us 10 years to process the year that we spent on the road. The welcome tent was a sanctuary for all who entered and we documented everyone’s stories with the food we shared. So proud of my son now age 14 who has overcome so much and just submitted his oral subject for his exams and he will be talking about our journey around Europe with the welcome tent in fluent French. I had 80% heart failure 2 years ago, thankfully recovered, and I am now motivated to try again and get our book series out into the world. Recipes of HOPE, celebrating the shared humanity of one big family ♥️

within the space of four months, my immediate family reduced from 6 people to 4. my little brother – cardiac arrest; my mum – cancer that had invaded her bones and her brain. the spaces we jostled into and overcrowded as a 6 feel remarkably quiet and empty now. i miss the talking over each other, the three conversations happening at once, the driving each other crazy, getting frustrated, squabbling over small things. now the family that's left (battered and bruised, exhausted) try to stay afloat, try to smile, but we're sombre and the air is heavy.
my mum was the glue that held the family together – the one we'd go to with our problems, the one who took everything in her stride and carried us along with her. now she's gone we're renegotiating our roles. as the eldest daughter i've taken on some of her position as confidante and general helper, but as i keep realising in a loop, there is no replacing her and what she provided to us.
i went on a trip recently, and, as the plane landed, realised that my mum was the person who would be the most worried to hear from me to know i was safe. my partner, my dad, my aunt – they care – but my mum always remembered. the flight time. she'd ask what my seat was like. if i'd eaten. she wanted to listen to the details, as if her life was enriched by hearing about the places i visited and the people i met. when i try to tell my dad, or my aunt, or a friend, even when they show enthusiasm and interest, they don't respond in the way that she would have. mum cared intrinsically. there was no switching it off, there was no hoping for more from her, for she provided so much at every single point.
family is a complex, living, breathing jumble of expectations and emotions. care, resentments, memories. as you get older, decisions are made – to stay, to leave, to create distance or to draw closer. in the absence of two of my closest family members, i agonise over these decisions, all the while having the wind knocked out of me by the intensity of the feelings each decision entails. love and frustration, confusion and clarity, all at once.

My greatest joy is my family. My siblings and I had a happy childhood and always knew thst we were loved and that our parents loved each other. Our grandparents, aunts and uncles were another constant source of love and support and we were , and remain, close to our cousins.
My siblings are my best friends and as the family has grown we have become ever closer and all the in laws have become part of the fanily too.
I am thankful for a loving husband and for the gift of two wonderful sons who have grown into lovely, kind and loving men who I am so proud of and their partners are very special and I am so grateful for them. My two granddaughters are the icing on the cake – such a wonderful privilege to be a Grandma to such beautiful little girls. ❤️
Despite some great sadnesses, especially the death of my darling dad when he was far too young, my life has been truly blessed by the gift of my family.

I call family FOE….. family over everything.
Family has been a mixture of joy, tears, blood and sweat.
No matter what, family reigns supreme.
Family is the unseen foundation.
The rock that we built upon, at least my family is.

My family started from Nigeria in the great Benin empire and has now expanded all over to include Germans, Latvians, Italians, English and Ghanians. My family is the true rainbow.

I had a very happy, loving upbringing as one of four children, however I didn't become a mother myself until I was 42! It was a very unexpected and welcome surprise in mine and my partner's lives. Family life for us certainly has plenty of challenges, but we face them as team with love, courage and more than a little chaos and exhaustion! I wouldn't choose any life other than what I have now. ❤️

My family is like a huge comfort blanket behind me. My mum is the youngest of 8, child of a couple whose families ran a grocers and a butchers on either side of Deptford High Street, the Elstons and the Diggens. So I grew up with aunts, uncles and cousins, always someone there if I needed them. Mum, at 90, is the last of the siblings alive. She grew up in south London during the Blitz, with 4 brothers and a brother in law in the army. Amazingly they all survived, including my favourite Uncle John, a very intelligent but barely literate man who managed his own butchers shop. A brother and his wife were £10 poms who moved to Australia in the footsteps of a sister and her Australian husband (a love story of their own: he was a young naval officer sent back to the family house by my grandparents, who were running Edward’s Bar at the back of The Coal Hole, because he had nowhere to stay that night). I realise now how lucky I am to have this rich family history, and that’s just on one side! On the other is an aunt who helped make the Coronation robes of Elizabeth II, whose dad taught men to drive the first Routemaster buses. All of this roots me deeply in south London in all its glorious multicultural wonder.

Photo by Pat Pope: The Lewisham Matriarch

19 years ago we adopted 3 siblings, two girls and a boy, ages 2,6 and 8. Their experienced social worker said that their family of origin was the most damaged they had ever worked with. Our beautiful children were burdened with that legacy of abuse. Two of them 'remembered', heartbreaking. It's been the most incredible rollercoaster of a family life. Loving them couldn't prevent the legacy of that abuse being repeated. This pushed us all to a limit and our previously tight unit, exploded apart. Beyond the deepest rupture imaginable we love them, and we have all survived the blast. We now have two beautiful grandchildren and finally everyone has a chance, through love, to start from a clean slate. It's been incredible to see their babies being loved and cared for so well. It's also a wonderful joy to be grandparents!

I was 7 when I was put in boarding school with my sister who was 5. Our parents worked in Africa. We had 2 younger brothers, and a little sister. Over the next 10 years we were hardly ever together as a family. I left school at 17 in the hope of being all together at last. It didn't work. I met the love of my life at 17. We got married at 20. For me it was a chance to be really loved. We celebrate our Golden Wedding in a few weeks time! In my 60s I put together an anthology of poems I'd written over the years and a lot of new ones, mostly autobiographical. It was a very healing process. I never managed to get close to my mother, but I held the hand of my father as he died, a few weeks ago.

I am grateful for my family, and the loving, settled home I grew up in. We moved a few times and it was hard being uprooted but I always had my parents and my brothers, and we all got on very well. My dad always says he used to look forward to coming home after work and although that might sound obvious, I don't think it is. I think there are people who resent their families or the way their children have changed their lives. To think he would always look forward to coming home to us is lovely. We definitely had our arguments but mostly we were close and strong as a family.

I think I imagined all families were like ours. As I've grown up I've realised this is far from the case and I can see how deeply family affects everything in life, and how lucky I have been. My immediate family and extended family – those bonds can't be recreated. I have children of my own now but my mum died six years ago. One of her regrets was not getting to see them grow up and live their lives. She was an amazing mum, and family to her was the most important thing. She was clever but brought up in a family who were also very loving but she was not given the same chances as her brothers in terms of education. If she has been, I don't know if she'd have taken them because her absolute love and priority was her family. I know I was probably a slightly challenging teenager but we never fell out for long. When my brothers left home and my dad was away with work it would be just me and her and we were very close even when I was trying to find my independence. I miss her every day but I know how very, very lucky I have been, and I would wish for everyone to have had the family I have. My mum was a kind woman and I try to remember this and carry her kindness forward with me.

On this day, seven years ago, my lovely mum died. She was 60 and had cancer. We found out her diagnosis was terminal just over two years before she died and at the time I was living in London with my husband and had just had my second baby. We decided to move to Suffolk to be closer to her. So, with my 2-year-old, 8-week-old and my husband, we uprooted our lives and moved close to where I grew up. I had another baby, a boy after my two girls, 4 months before she died. In those 4 months, he showed her his full personality and they were able to have a real bond in the early months of his life. My eldest daughter, Ella, was almost 5 when she died and her sister, Rosa, was two. Ella, now almost 12, has some memories of her and Rosa tells me she remembers the feeling of being around her but can’t picture her face, other than what she sees in photos. In the first few years after she died I found it so hard to get rid of anything that reminded me of her in any way, or that she’d owned or even touched. I remember a few cups of hers breaking and feeling like little pieces of her were disappearing. Seven years is so long but also no time at all. I hate how far back I have to scroll in my phone’s photo album to find her picture. I hate that I can’t show her where I live now. I find it hard that my children’s memories of her are so vague and will perhaps fade more over time. But increasingly as my children grow, I see more and more glimpses of her in them. Ella has inherited her sassy edge, always ready with a comeback and every time she’s rolling her eyes at me, I see my mum. Rosa, now nine, is a sweet natured soul and will do anything for anyone. She cares for her friends and family beautifully just like my mum did. Ivo, my seven year old son, is silly and playful and takes each day as it comes. Before she died, my mum talked a lot about living in the present; not regretting the past or wishing for the future. Ivo is our daily reminder to embrace each moment we get.

Our family story begins with my dad. He was adopted aged 5 near the end of WW2. Adoption shaped his life, and in time it became part of the family he built too. With my mum they adopted two children and had two more. He loved us all fiercely. When one of those children died in a tragic accident, it changed him fundamentally. But it didn't harden him, in many ways he felt everything deeply. He had a way of making us all feel really special and was constantly cheering us on. Three years ago he had a stroke and died within the week. Heartbreakingly, it was the very same week that my husband and I were approved to adopt our little girl. Six short months later she exploded into our lives with so much love and laughter, she is treasured beyond words. When she came home to us, my mum said "your dad sent her to you". That has stayed with me. It gives me great comfort to believe he is still part of our family through her – that the love that began with him, and flowed through us has now found its way to her.

In my twenties I asked my mum for birthday present ideas; something money couldn’t buy that she would love. Next time I saw her, crying but in complete silence, she passed me some documents. They were her birth certificate and adoption certificate. We never knew. Her birthday request was for a connection to birth family. At best she’d always felt disconnected from reality, unrooted, at worst she felt shame. We spent years searching together, all dead ends. Until the internet came along and connected us to Canada then Ireland, then America. This photo shows the three Canadian cousins who came to visit and lit up mum’s world. We also visited the family farm in Ireland where her mum was born. She had roots for the first time and felt happy, and almost whole ❤️

Oor lass came to us aged 7. She is our
World. She struggles but survives, and is beginning to thrive again after all the difficulties of teenage years.

We support her by a mixture of love bombing, encouraging and engaging with all the services available.

I grew up in a totally normal family – mum, dad and older sister, just outside London. We played out on Saturdays, went to church on Sundays, and spent our holidays in a Norfolk cottage. Even though the kids in our local park teased me and my sister about looking so different, we just thought it was funny. Life went on… until my mum got dementia when I was about 50. She lost the capacity to keep her long-held secrets inside. They came out bit by bit. Turns out my sister was not my bio-sister and my dad was not my bio-dad. There's too much to go into here, but I ended up with three dads and at least 15 siblings (the number keeps rising). It's a different family – one that I never could have imagined. But it's all good. Actually, it's the most wonderful thing.

Marriage and my birth family is and has been my nurturing hearth/heart place.
My mother was brought up in an orphanage and creating something different for her husband and daughter filled her heart.
Sadly, there is no connection with extended family & in laws. I tend my cauldron and they are free to tend their own. Never the twain …

My mum and dad were born on the same day, 30th November 1946 in Manchester, a few hours apart…first my dad in Old Trafford, then my mum in Stretford. They knew of each other from round the way but properly met on their 17th birthday. She liked his hands. He liked her calves. They both loved Man U.

Aged 23 they moved to Lincolnshire to run a children's home together. I was born 2 years later into a family of ten. My brother came 2 years after that. I remember noisy mealtimes and feeling small in the throng, and cherished.

This year my parents turn 80. We're planning a party in Wales where they live. It will be full of memories.

They are amazing. They've survived. They've tried so hard. They’ve loved so much.

I once saw you write a poem which started with "Friends are the family you make". Whilst I do have family it is small bonded by blood and ancestry, we are happy, funny, disfunctional at times, loving, sometimes distant. I do believe that friends are part of my family and like my kids, cousins, parents, grandparents aunts and uncles (some long gone) make me and those close to me who I am today.

My family- not the 2.4 kids, Mum and Dad story that people expect. One Mum, no Dad and many half siblings. Not the normal storybook fairytale family but the family that’s normal to me.
A free spirit family, no ties and trappings. No bricks and mortar. The open road, the fields and forests, the land and the sky.

Me and my brother – the only sibling from the same assigned-at-birth grown-ups (I have 5 more from different mothers and fathers). A photograph holds us in a moment when closeness still looked possible: my arm around him, a smile that feels more like compliance than joy, him behind oversized glasses that already then seemed less like an accessory and more like protection. We were taken into care in successive placements and, over time, systematically pulled out of each other’s orbit—first through instability at home, then through different institutions that separated us just as we were still trying to understand what “family” could mean at all.

Early on, roles were assigned to us as if they were truths: he became the “problem,” I became the “example.” Those labels did more than describe behaviour; they reorganised perception, language, and ultimately our relationship to each other. They made it harder and harder to recognise ourselves as siblings rather than categories.

Our paths now run far apart—one shaped by precarity and survival, the other by relative stability. And yet he remains a fixed point in my internal map, not as an idealised memory, but as a real person whose life has been shaped by conditions that failed to protect him. Between distance and connection, something remains unresolved—not as an open wound in a dramatic sense, but as a quiet structural after-effect of how care systems distribute futures unevenly, even within the same family.

Our family tree starts in 1166CE, we hold a bi-annual Fong/Kwong/Louie (triad) family reunion in Sydney attended by hundreds of cousins, aunties and uncles who enjoy food, ceremony and presentations. Last year, Dr Andrew Kwong shared his book "One Bright Moon" a child's account of the Japanese occupation of Guangzhou and migrating to Australia to become a doctor

FAMILY: the word that glues us all together. I wasn't sure what to write or even where to start. As a family we have so many stories, good and bad. We've faced tradegy and loss, we have lost ourselves but we're still here.
Each of us unique in a way to be celebrated! We have welcomed over 50 young people into our family, sometimes for a few hours sometimes for a lifetime 🌻
Over the years we have faced so many barriers yet LOVE has guided us and last October we (alongside family and friends) gathered to celebrate LOVE eternal. It's not been easy, there has been tears (mainly of anxiety and frustration) but so much laughter! Sometimes we have to pause for a moment to remember why we have all fought those personal battles, it's always been for LOVE!

I grew up in Rhodes without a mother in an abusive household, and I never associated the word family with love and safety. Since having my son, my mindset shifted and the word family rings differently. My baby gave me the confidence to be the mother I never had growing up. I’m proud to be breaking the cycle and to be a force of good for my child who deserves unconditional love and more!

FAMILY: the word that glues us all together. I wasn't sure what to write or even where to start. As a family we have so many stories, good and bad. We've faced tradegy and loss, we have lost ourselves but we're still here.
Each of us unique in a way to be celebrated! We have welcomed over 50 young people into our family, sometimes for a few hours sometimes for a lifetime 🌻
Over the years we have faced so many barriers yet LOVE has guided us and last October we (alongside family and friends) gathered to celebrate LOVE eternal. It's not been easy, there has been tears (mainly of anxiety and frustration) but so much laughter! Sometimes we have to pause for a moment to remember why we have all fought those personal battles, it's always been for LOVE!

This is my maternal Grandmother, Nelly. Born in Wigan in 1909. My parents sadly died, before my third birthday. I have no memory of them. I went to live with Nelly. She was a tough lady, she had lived a hard life. My memories of her have always filled me with an overwhelming rush of emotion and love. She passed away in 1980, a few days before my tenth birthday. I went into foster care. I often wondered if I looked back on my life with her, wearing rose tinted glasses. Did I imagine that deep love, a love that I didn't experience again for such a long time? Earlier this year, I requested a copy of my notes from social services. An account of my young life, in faded ink from a 1970's typewriter. There it was, in black and white, everything as I had remembered, and they spoke of her deep love for me. It was an overwhelming read, and I felt her love once more. It will stay with me forever.

Our family started by accident. Our first son was a surprise pregnancy and we've never looked back. Otis Radford Greene was born on 30th January, 2017. He was instantly loved. Unfortunately he had a rare and aggressive cancer that was found after we a lump developed on his abdomen when he was just two months old. By the time he was diagnosed, the cancer had metastasized to many other areas of his little body and no treatment would have saved him. Otis lived out his final days at a children's hospice and died at just 20 weeks old. Obviously this devastated us and it took us a long time to heal. We truly believe that Otis was sent to show us that we could be a family, could be more than party people. We knew that after losing him we couldn't go back to not being parents, nothing could beat being Mummy and Daddy. We were getting on a bit though as I was over 40. We had no luck conceiving and after six months, the NHS agreed.to let us have IVF despite me being over the age limit. They gave us a 10% chance of it working and luckily, within a year, we welcomed Otis's little brother, Elys Otis Greene. Elys is now seven years old and knows all about his big brother who lives in the sky and talks about him often. I'm now too old to have any more children but am grateful to Otis beyond words for showing us that we could be a family and I'll always consider us a family of four. 💚

When I met my partner he came as a package deal. She was little; sparky, chatty, beautiful and wary of this new woman. As was the family.
She would go up to other children in the park and say – That's not my real mum, my mum's dead.

Her mum had been given a diagnosis of cancer when carrying her.
On receiving the news she delivered a 1kg baby and then got rushed to have treatment.

Her Dad-caught- The most precious people in his world both being held in the liminal space between life and death on two different hospital wards. She got almost a year to spend with her daughter and the pictures are full of Love and beauty.

And so in this new direction that their lives had suddenly turned -I joined them and we found our way.

I didn't always get it right.
But that's where we also understand more about Love as well.

And now her little brother is an adult and her little sister is her best friend.

And I hope I've made her Mum proud. I know she has.

This is me and my brother, Rob, shortly after his cancer diagnosis. We were standing on top of Great Gable in the Lake District, knowing it was the last mountain top view he would see.
He faced death with acceptance and openness. Each ‘last time’ – last bike ride, last concert, last trip to our home town – we could acknowledge and grieve and enjoy while it was happening.
I miss him fiercely still, 6 years on.
But as Brian Patten says in his poem ‘So many different lengths of time’
A man lives for as long as we carry him inside us,
for as long as we carry the harvest of his dreams,
for as long as we ourselves live,
holding memories in common, a man lives.

And as a family we carry Rob inside us. His sons. His partner. Me and my sister. Our parents. His friends. Death does not separate him from us.

My little brother and I are so different but are so close. I did really well at school and then uni, he is so bright but his dyslexia held him back. He has a wicked sense of humour and fizzy optimism and loves people. I’ve been more of a worrier I think.
He’s always been the life and soul of the party but his drinking was a problem for a long time, finally spiralling out of control after an accident and during lockdown. His alcoholism became so serious a specialist told him he would die if he didn’t stop and his body and mind were in a terrible shape. At one point me and mum were planning his funeral.
In the end we had a family intervention and somehow, magically, he stopped drinking. He’s two years sober now and looks better than ever. His joy and appreciation for the small things in life is wonderful and I feel so lucky he’s still here. I’m so proud of him and was he’s achieved and am so happy to have him in my life.

I had my daughter in the late 70's when I was 19 and single. One day in her mid teens she said to me, " I have been talking to my friends and just realised how amazing you are. You have got a house, a car, a job and have given me all the same holidays, clothes and opportunities that they have had provided by two parents. "
Now sadly she is in the same position and not only does she provide the same and more for her beautiful boy but she fights each day with crippling medical conditions . Despite all that she has a high profile job at a local homeless charity. I'd like to think I set her a good example but shes far exceeded anything I could have done. She is our Hero.

So, I probably didn't have the best start but definitely did not have the worst. Single parent family with five children, growing up in the east end of Glasgow. I am the second youngest, my twin sister being the youngest. My mum brought us all up by herself. Unfortunately, due to some very traumatic times in my mum's life, she was an alcoholic. I was so scared of the alcohol, I was very fearful during my childhood. We did have good times and we never went without food. Although I suspect my mum did go without food. I'm okay now with my slightly madcap life.

My family are a mixture of nurture and nature, at times the nurture relationships are the strongest, the nature ones are important but can be taken for granted 😔❤️😔

Growing up with 5 siblings and both parents in a three-bed council house, I’d always been aware of Pat, my parents’ first born who’d died in an accidental drowning as a toddler. Her picture was always there and the love my parents had for her always shone though but never diminished the love they showed us.
Three girls and three boys with ages ranging over 15 years in that small house, with little money to spare but given every opportunity and happiness they could afford. Life wasn’t easy but it was all we knew.
Now both my parents are dead, with their ashes buried with my older sister. Seems only right they should spend time with her now. We had them so much longer in life than she did.

I moved halfway around the world, initially in part to avoid living alongside my devolving family. My siblings and I were raised in a cult by an unwell mother. We are now watching our mother lose herself to an abusive relationship with someone who is using her for the last of her tiny inheritance from her estranged abusive father, who she idolised. Her long-lost siblings contacted her years back to offer her what was left of a deceased sibling's share of the inheritance – a kind hearted gesture.

Her abuser has a criminal record for domestic violence and she has been hospitalised and kicked out on the street but says she would rather be killed by him than leave him. She has lost her job and developed a drug addiction. He has threatened violence towards each of her children and as the only one too far away for him to pose any real threat, I'm the only one still in contact with her. We have contacted relevant abuse services and have put a plan in place should she choose to leave. Two years ago, before she met him and as she was receiving her inheritance, she got her passport for the first time and came to visit me. I hadn't seen her in nine years. We went to Wales, saw castles and forests.

She sent me £200 for my birthday in April, it broke my heart.

I am the eldest of four children born to parents of the Windrush generation. My mother and father came from Jamaica, carrying hopes, sacrifice, and determination with them.

My father answered Britain’s call to help rebuild the country after the Second World War. His intention was only to stay for around five years before returning home to Jamaica. Leaving behind his newly wedded wife could not have been easy, but like many of his generation, he came seeking opportunity and a better future for his family.

He worked hard while facing prejudice, discrimination, and the bitter cold winters of Britain. In 1965, my grandfather passed away in Jamaica. My father travelled home but arrived too late for his father’s funeral. The following year, in 1966, I was born.

My mother often tells me stories of how my father loved combing my hair beneath the heat of the Jamaican sun. In 1967, my father returned once more to Britain, leaving my mother with a young child and another on the way. Determined to bring us together, he worked tirelessly and ran a “Pardner” savings scheme to pay for the passage for my mother, my sister, and me to join him.

In 1970, my mother travelled to Britain with two small children — one on her hip and the other walking beside her holding tightly to her hand. She often said the journey was long and exhausting. Waiting for us at the other end was my father, some of his cousins, and a cold, wet Manchester.

My mother was shocked by the appearance of the houses in the North, blackened by the smoke and soot from the textile mills. Yet she always said that once you stepped inside those homes, there was warmth and kindness within them.

I cannot truly remember my own feelings on arriving in a strange country for the first time. What I do know is that my sister and I were fortunate never to be separated from our mother, and that security meant more than words can express.

At first, we lived with my mother’s brother and his family until my father secured housing for us. I remember having a very strong Jamaican accent, though it slowly faded as I entered the British education system.

My brother was born in 1971, and my youngest sister arrived in 1977. Discipline in our household was strict, and my father’s leather belt was never too far away.

Yet alongside the discipline came laughter, music, family, and celebration.

One Christmas, my parents held a party at our home. In those days, Christmas meant family and friends gathering together, sharing food, music, and joy. A tune must have come on that completely captured me because I found myself dancing in the middle of the room while adults danced all around me. I was shaking what my mother gave me and loving every minute of it.

Years later, my mother told us that my father was a skilled drummer — not with sticks, but with his hands.

Another Christmas memory stays with me. I had been left in charge of my younger siblings while my parents visited relatives. We played records on my father’s gramophone turning the light switch off and danced by candlelight. Feeling adventurous, we helped ourselves to some of his Jamaican Wray & Nephew white rum. Afterwards, we carefully topped the bottle back up with water to the exact line our father had marked on it with a pen.

Those were good days, though not always easy ones emotionally or mentally.

Today, I pay homage to my late father for his strength, his sense of direction, and his fierce loyalty to his family. We remain richly blessed to still have our mother with us, continuing to share the stories of her journey and our family history.

My Mum and Dad, both gone now, bless them, were quite the double act, and would have dined out on the stories that they delighted in recounting, had they been the kind of people who dined out.
My Mum, Pam, was an identical twin, thrust into the limelight when she married a John Sharp, whilst her sister, Doreen, walked down the aisle with a John Blunt.
They tied the knots in a double wedding on a snowy Christmas Eve 1955. The local papers had a field day.
Too proud to ask for hand outs, my parents survived for weeks on potatoes only, while they lived temporarily in Barry Island, Wales, during Dad’s National Service.
They went on to live a simple but beautiful life, bringing up me and my sister and brother to appreciate those simple things. A life filled with sunshine of their own making.
A true inspiration ❤️

Pusher

Born a ‘Ball of Energy.’
I have been a
Pusher of
Expectations.
Co-dependent with
‘Castles on Clouds’
‘Names in Lights’
#makingadifference.
My nature;
By Nature,
holding everyone to account;
myself included;
‘By the throat!’

Born a ball of ‘Erratic Energy.’
From whence does it come and
whither does it go?

I have been a PUUUSHER
of
EN / ER / GY.
WOOH!!

A life lived at max-speed.
Blazing a trail of
‘smouldering wood.’

Three decades of
Pushing.
Bashing a square- peg- self into a hole of ever decreasing circles.
‘Over and over and
Over and over,
Like a monkey with a miniature cymbal’
‘Hot Chip’ Simile.

I have been more ‘Animal’,
Wildly crashing around
Making a lot of noise.

Possessed of
The force of
Dynamo Dad
And
Memory Marvel Mum.

Adding a double-dose of stubbornness,
and wide-eyed innocence
makes a
heady, toxic mix.

Born with wild child energy.
A Whirlwind Spirit;
Not easy to manage.

Family is me being heartbroken my sister is telling me she does not want to die, that she does not want to be next. It is the memories of family life, how my brother used to loan things from friends, then sell them to me, wait until I got bored of them, then steal them back knowing I'd forget. How my sister Hazel loved animals, how we used to love our pets and share in the loss when they passed. How we were separated in the care system, but we had fun playing knock a door run.

How Hazel was so angry all the time, but how she had a heart of gold. And how relaxed she was, when the anger had gone, how I almost did not recognise her as she lay at peace. Family to me is seeing the trauma engulf their lives, all of them, my mum, my sister, and my brother James, and my uncle Rob, all now gone. Family, when I really think about it, makes me cry.

My grandmother had a simple wish that we are all educated because she believed education opens doors. Her motivation was also strongly feminist. She wanted the girls to be educated so that they could be independent. Fortunately, she lived long enough to see all her children and grandchildren do well. She also encouraged us to travel and see the world, learning from other cultures. She was always very forward-thinking. She credited her outlook in life to the two years of education she received as a child in a Dutch-speaking school in Borneo. Her father owned 5 shops and was wealthy enough to send her to school, but war broke out. Then her parents died by the time she was 17, and relatives married her off to a poor tea boy. It was, however, a good match as his resilience and her forward-thinking meant they grew wealthy enough to send their children to university. They ended up living abroad in Singapore. My grandmother was very posh. She dressed like the queen with her tweed skirts, hat, leather handbag, and pink Dior lipstick!

My parents met through my mum’s older sister, W, and my dad’s cousin, B. They were colleagues who later became best friends.

My aunt W and my dad’s cousin B decided that they wanted to become family, so they began matchmaking my mother with different men. My mum rejected all of them.

She even jokingly told W that she would become a nun if she failed to match her with a man she liked again.

And then she met my dad.

She says she fell for his perfume, and the way his shoulders danced eskista whenever he laughed. That was in 1996.

To this day, she still buys him the same perfume as a gift. And she still makes him laugh because, as she says, his vibrating and hoarse laugh reminds her that life is the gift that keeps giving.

She says that my father is her reminder to appreciate and nourish the little life she calls hers.
And that everytime she sees me, and my sisters, she is filled with warmth and instantly remember that she is rich, in every way that truly matters.

My brother, sister and I are like three circles in a Venn diagram. We travel around our circles, sometimes close together, sometimes feeling the distance. We are always connected. We live thousands of miles apart. We are bonded by the same memories through different lenses. We see things we don't know about ourselves, knowing each other in the context of our shared histories and heritage. There is unspoken magic between us.

I could tell you I have a large family and I could tell you that I feel like I have a small family, both are true. My fathers death was monumental in my childhood and, at nearly 40, I can still feel it in the back of my throat. Family taught me about unconditional support and enduring pain, providing closeness and leaving distance. A dichotomy of love.

It’s six months since we lost my lovely mum.
She was 84 when she died.
There was just the three of us – mum, dad, and I.

There are some days now when I don’t cry.
There are some hours when I can lose myself in my work – not completely – there’s a hollow ache inside me, even deep in concentration.
I feel so guilty.
I don’t want her to think we are moving on without her.
I don’t want her to think we are forgetting her.
I don’t want her to think that I wouldn’t stop the world from turning if I could, and keep everything the same, so that nothing moved on without her.
It seems incomprehensible that days have passed, months and seasons have been and gone, and she’s not here.
I have a recurring panic about moving away from her.

My dad talks about her as if she’s still with him.
He talks about “your mum and me” all the time – “your mum and I are sending you our love” he tells me over and over again.
It breaks my heart to think that maybe he can’t face her absence so is pretending she’s still there.

But then I hear her voice, unbidden in my head – dropping a thought into my mind. An idea that I’d long forgotten, something important that I need to do.
Her photos pop up unexpectedly on my computer; her music comes up in random selections.
My parents’ house is by a canal. We saw a kingfisher sitting outside the living room window – the first one in 17 years, the day after she died.
I have felt her guiding me to make decisions I was struggling with – providing obvious clues as to the way forward. Breadcrumbs from her leading me onwards.
The morning after she died she walked into the room where I was sleeping, looking tanned, younger, happy, and healthy.
I asked her what she was doing there. She said “I still have things to do Jane”.
I’m not sure if I was asleep.

What this tells me about family, is that the love between us is powerful and magical.
An unbreakable, unshakeable bond, that survives even death.

Do you have any family, new acquaintances ask me. I want to respond with how much I miss my son who died at 18, and my mum who died when I was in my 20s. I'm estranged from my father's family following the divorce in my childhood. I have a step family who live 30 minutes away whom I seldom see. But the truth is I have my husband of 30 years, I had the privilege of being mum to two fantastic sons, and I regularly see my son and his wife despite being 300 miles apart. Making the most of family where I can and looking forward to the future.

Family is everything. Family is love. Like love there can be strife, but as they say blood is thicker than water. Now retired and as I age I reflect on my family and families that have been created through my occupation as an egg and sperm donor coordinator. Modern families created many ways. My daughter has chosen not to have family, but my partners daughter’s, daughter is ‘totally my grandaughter’ in every way. My parents died, my Mum died young and my Dad died through alcohol abuse- he missed her so much. My childhood ‘family’ was chaotic, busy and fun. My now family is busy, chaotic and fun. I don’t know of the modern families that have been created but I hope they have the love and fulfilment that has filled my life. Family strife… it has been there but I choose to cast it aside. Family is love, family is everything even when biologically they are not yours.

I am from a big, messy family. He's from a small, organised family. We grew up in the same place, with some friends in common but not as friends. We met, again, in our twenties on a street 150 miles from home. I had been overseas, had plans and ambitions to go again. I went, he stayed- steadfast, reassuring and accepting, if not understanding, the need. We married, had two kids and survived both a pandemic and parent loss. Now my itchy feet are pulling me towards another overseas adventure. With children in the mix, he can't stay behind this time so he is coming. Still steadfast and still not understanding, but stretching for me. It is hard to make someone stretch, you hope that they won't break but the risk of breaking from stagnation seems a worse option, to me. I want our family to be brave and daring, to know that we can. I want our children to see their parents doing this big thing and know that the sky is the limit, we'll always have each other, no matter where we are.

This boy lights up the world like a beacon!

I burst with pride that I can call him our son.

We found each other 10 years ago!

It was a tough journey for all of us. We tried for a child for 8 years… and he never knew his birth parents. Adoption is hard and extremely sensitive, filled with so many emotions.

He has a lot that weighs deeply in his heart, but every day he jumps out of bed with a beaming smile ready to start the day! 💙

We love celebrating us as a family. We keep each other safe and keep our hearts full.

Love makes a family! 💖

Family is about knowing that there is someone there for you, no matter what. It's about knowing that you are not alone.
Family doesn't have to be blood related, family can be made up of anyone that deserves to hold that place.
I'm a lucky person – I have blood family and family of choice.
I wish that everyone had the same.
Family is a good feeling. It's the best.

Dad was divorced with a young son when he met my mum, a widow with no children. I came along quickly and, growing up, my older half brother was my hero. I loved looking at the old photos of him as a little boy that my dad kept in the drawer by his chair.
We were a tight family of 3 (4 at weekends when my brother came to stay which was the highlight of the week). I was close to my dad even though he seemed to carry a sadness I could never quite put my finger on.
One day – after I had been working abroad – he asked how I would feel if I had another brother? Told him
my answer depended on if this was an older or younger brother!
Luckily it was a (much) older half sibling who had been born soon after my dad arrived in the country, whose mother hadn’t wanted to get married and who had – against my dad’s wishes – had the child adopted in the US. Except that turned out to be a lie and several decades later when my ‘new’ brother (who had actually grown up with a family in a town we visited frequently) eventually tracked dad down, we didn’t just have the gift of a new family member (plus neice & nephew) but a new dad – a man whose secret sorrow fuelled by loss (& nurtured by photos which were actually of two different little boys) was lifted in his final years. The three half siblings all live in different countries now. Two make an effort to meet once a year. Maybe one day all three will get together and the next generation will share their own stories.

In our very blended family I'm the oldest child (of my mother), the youngest child (of my father), the middle child (in our huge blended family) AND an only child (of my two parents) – plus briefly having two Nigerian foster brothers when I was a baby. The age range is now 50+ for everyone. It's not an unusual story, nor has it ever been in history. We aren't all close, and we didn't all grow up in the same household. But we are all respectful and caring for each other; we share connections of blood and family culture that have taught us tolerance, and we have also learned that a relationship break-up does not necessarily mean that children have to be traumatised or stressed. We've racked up many divorces and break-ups, but the children of those relationships have always been included in our greater kinship group and we have seldom heard cross words. It's a large achievement, and has been the model for our interactions with the wider world.

Our family is close. We know where we have come from and it shapes us into the people we belong. Where we stay is a caring community and we look after each other. The story continues with the next generation.

Dear reader,

Sometimes it can be difficult navigating relationships, the main reason for this is because we are such psychologically complex humans with unique strengths, perspectives and ideas. Even when you are biologically related to your family it doesn't make navigating your relationships with them any less or more difficult — just because of that factor.

Personally, I struggle to connect with my Dad’s side of the family, I don’t like the characteristics and behaviour the majority of them have. From 0-14 years old I lived with my Dad, I was incredibly disconnected to him, never really and truly getting to understand him; as much as I tried. I suppose this lack of knowledge and dislike to the characters on his side of the family made me question my identity and who I was.

There were three people on his side of the family that I warmed to. One of my cousins, who had severe disabilities; he could not walk or talk and had impaired vision and hearing. Despite these difficulties, when I interacted with him, his character, his smiles, giggles and curiosity made me feel warm towards him. Unfortunately, he passed at 16 years old in 2020. In 2022, I connected with my great aunt (on my Dad’s side), she lived far from me so we would call once a month on the phone. She had such a beautiful soul, she was such a kind and empathetic woman. I was able to speak openly about how my Father’s behaviour impacts/impacted me. She was the first and only person on my Dad’s side to listen to me, respect me and offer insight. Unfortunately she passed in 2024. That leads me to the final person I connected to, my Grandma. My Grandma has been around all my life, I use to regularly visit her with my mum even though she was not nearby. She had dementia almost all of my life so our conversations were cyclical, despite her dementia, her brave and quite stubborn character never faltered. Unfortunately, she passed at the grand age of 99 a few days ago. This day was always going to come, I have been saying goodbye to her like it’s the last one for most of my life.

I didn’t think I would be as affected at her death as I am but I now know why. One reason is that she has always been there, present in my life. She was always elderly in my eyes but it was almost like she was immortal, I always joked that she was like Gangster Granny from one of my favourite books growing up. The second reason is the one that holds the most weight; after seeking a sense of identity I was happy associating myself with, on my Father’s side, it had quite suddenly all disappeared.

Before all three of these deaths I knew within my soul that family is not just genetics that runs through your blood. You can choose your family, choose the people you want to be around, connect with and build with. According to worldometer on 21st May 2026 at 12:16pm, UK time, there are 8,294,230,348 people on this planet. 1-10 of them will be your family. Ahhh ok so now you wanna know how to find them? That part is so much more simple than you think. All you have to do is live your life the way you wanna live it. Read it again please. So, strive for your goals, act on your dreams and they will all turn up along the way.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please carry yourself with strength, love and kindness as you navigate the world. Before I go to bed every night, I pray for everyone in existence — you matter and I love you.

Take Care,
T 🙂

My story is about unconditional love in motherhood, something I realise I'm beyond lucky to have had. My fabulous Mum died in 2014 and I miss her painfully, but that's because I know how much I was loved. She always had my back. I would've had to have done something truly horrific for that love to slip and, even then, I know she wouldn't have ever abandoned me. And that is how I try to mother my 24 year old daughter. I'm now 60 and these feelings grow more as I age.

I'll give a few examples. 1983 and I'm living in a bedsit. I call in to see her on a Saturday night on my way out aged 17. I'm clad in a tutu, fishnets, brothel creepers and a suit jacket covered in rips and badges. Bleached Mohawk. Make-up for miles. My godparents are there and take the piss out of how I look. Mum lets this go on for a couple of minutes then says "Enough. I think she looks beautiful. And do you know how much effort she makes to look like that? All your kids do is throw on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans and look like everyone else".

1982. 16. I love this letter from my Mum. I was living in bedsitland in Southend and hadn't seen her for a few weeks. Eventually I made it to a phone box to call her and then she sent me a letter, depicting all the things that she'd imagined had happened to me. I still have it. Seems so weird now in the age of smart phones when my daughter and I facetime most days. I couldn't imagine not speaking for weeks. She wasn't at all artistic so the depictions are all hilariously naive matchstick representations of the various tragedies she had imagined. My favourite drawing on the letter is 'reduced to begging'. Other highlights included 'run over', 'mugged' and 'in hospital'.

I only recall seriously falling out with her once. She'd met Thatcher in Southend and shaken her hand. She chased me down the road trying to touch me with the hand that had shaken Maggie's. We didn't speak for a week and when I went round I made her wash her hand in front of me before I'd go near her. She was beautiful, smart and funny, and loved me unconditionally. Mariel Lilwen Evans, you rocked.

When my brother died suddenly I realised that there was never going to be another chance to make our relationship ‘better’. At first this made me both sad and angry but now I have made peace with it because I understand that our relationship was the best that we could make of it at the time. So I don’t think we failed. All we needed was more time. Love you, bro

My father was born in 1909, he was the youngest of four by 20 years so I had an aunt and uncles born at the end of the 19th century. I too was the youngest of four born late in my fathers life in the mid sixties. By the time I was 16 he had developed Alzheimer’s disease. In my early twenties, after university and travel, I decided to move back home, to the peace of the countryside and to help my mother care for him. By this time the difficult confused time had passed and he was sweet and mellow, very different from how he had been when he was ‘well’. One day when I went to take him his breakfast in bed he greeted me with ‘Good morning my lovely bunch of wonder drops!’ I have never forgotten it, he died a few months before I got married but it was alright, it was his time, and, in a strange and beautiful way, it was his way of giving me away.

Me & my sister (5 & 8 at the time) were raised by my dad who was loosing his eyesight. It was a big struggle for my dad and we didn’t have much money (no washing machine or front room), but my dad made us his homemade version of MacDonalds burgers, fries and chocolate milkshake and my friends with wealthier parents were jealous!

Over the age of 12 we all shared the housework and shopping duties equally. I guess some children that age are getting piano lessons instead but I quite enjoyed it at the time, felt grown up and looked down on the mummy’s boys moaning by their mum’s shopping trolley that they wanted chocolate bars whilst I chose healthy, good value food that tasted good as I was in charge of the shopping myself!

Our mother died from cancer when I was 12 and my brother was 10. A friend of my older sister’s husband offered to take us to London to stay with him and his wife in the summer holidays. My dad, having to work shifts was grateful for help. Within hours of arriving, the ‘friend’ took us out to dinner and under the long tablecloth tried to touch me. I knew I was in trouble and that night told my little brother he must not leave my side. He didn’t question me and despite the ‘friend’ trying to separate us he stuck with me. There were more attempts but I made it through the 4 days until dad came to get us. My brother doesn’t remember but 57 years later I remember that fear as though it was yesterday. I am forever grateful to my little brother.

Family can be very different! I’m an only child who lives over 100 miles from my closest family. This means I have relied on others when bringing up my children: a beautiful, fiercely independent daughter who now lives in London and a gorgeous son who has profound needs. Friends and carers have been adopted by us and we have a huge multi-ethnic “family” that have supported us.

Our wonderful Granny played such a significant part in bringing us up. She gave us unconditional love and taught us about family. Born in poverty, many of her siblings died which drove her own Mum to take her own life with her youngest child. Her Dad was incapable of looking after his children. They were split between relatives and she was looked after. But she told us the only time she felt she wasn’t part of the family was when she wasn’t included in their family portrait photograph. I’m so pleased she got her own portrait photographed later for herself.

Big shoes to fill. Our mam is Mrs J an iconic Manchester matriarch. Her notoriety is purely for the love and care she gives. "I wish she was our mam". Friends say. Some even came to live with us over the years. Our mam has two daughters and we are loved beyond. A single mum, she provided everything we needed as children. She worked 5 days a week, leaving at 7am to get the 53 bus to work. Always home by 6pm. Breakfast ready, packed lunch ready and tea on the table by 6.30pm, without fail. Music and dancing lights up her house every single day. Her sanctuary is family. "You can't spoil a child with love" is her mantra. A mantra that now blesses her grandchildren and great grandchild. The image is my daughter and her son. When family comes first, when despite everything, all the toil, throughout the struggles and all the pains of life, Love wins. Our mam, didn't have the parental love she gave us. As a result, our mam ensures every single day we recieve love and know we are loved. We had big shoes to step into when we became mams – thankfully our teacher, our Gaia, our Mrs J, is the best mam there is.

I am the grandchild of 2 WW2 Prisoners of war who were removed from their families as teenagers. A Polish Grandfather and a Belorussian Grandmother. They were both placed in Nazi work camps. After the war they met in a Displaced Person’s Camp in Wilderflecken, Germany. They spent 3 years there, they met, courted, married and had my father. They then chose to be repatriated via ship to Perth, Western Australia. There they lived in a tent camp with other WW2 refugees for a few years. They had my Aunt and Uncle in the tent camp in North Dandelup, a rural village. They then bought a house in Armadale, WA and were one of the first migrants to own a house and television. My maternal grandparents were of Irish and Spanish heritage who migrated to Australia. I am a first generation Australian. I left Australia aged 25 (1994) to backpack around the world on my own. I was a Dance Teacher at Camp America, a Showgirl in Las Vegas and a podium dancer in Ibiza. I settled in Bristol, UK to work to get money to continue my travels. I met my husband on my second day in Bristol. We have been married for 29 years, have 2 wonderful children and still work as Counsellors in a Drug and Alcohol charity. We live in a lovely, peaceful village in rural Suffolk and feel very grateful. I share a birthday with Lemn and am writing this on my 57th birthday.

Emily Dowse was 3 when she was orphaned in 1899. Her brother Pete was taken in by relatives, her brother Dick was taken to Canada by Dr Barnardo's. Her older sisters went into service. Emily was sent to a massive orphanage where she forgot about her family, until when she was 13 her eldest sister claimed her. Emily was my great grandmother and kept us all very close to her, family was so important to her as she said she missed out on so much during her early years.

My mum Hripsik Yolande Sowerby came to the U.K. aged 17 from Iran to study nursing and midwifery. Her family are Armenians, a well respected Christian minority who have lived in Iran for over 400 years. At Liverpool Royal Hospital, she met my dad, a handsome blue-eyed footballer whose team, Grimsby Town, had sent him to have his knees repaired. They were total opposites but love won out and they went back to Iran after her studies, to marry. My brothers and I were born there and until the Islamic Revolution, led contented lives. We left Tehran on the last plane in Nov 1978 before they closed the airport for two months. The Shah left in January 1979 and Khomeini arrived in February. We went to Leeds and remade our lives. Mum died in March this year aged 90. Her first great grandchild Teo Cyrus made it into the world just in time to meet her. Here they are together.

A couple of days after my lovely mum Betty passed peacefully away aged 91 a dna test my brother had done declared him to be my half brother. The shock was like a massive slap in my face and everything seemed to just stop. A further test of my sister confirmed I was the cuckoo in the nest and for a while that is how I felt. Eventually we have peaced together a version of events and I’ll never know if it’s true but it gives me a sort of answer. I felt sad for my dad because I really don’t think he knew either ..but if he did what an incredible man. Either way my Dad is MY Dad, he always was and he always will be ..he is the one whose brylcremed hair I would put in ribbons while he slept after a long day working in a factory, the knee I climbed onto for cuddles and the person who helped me with extra cash when I bought my first house…I loved him and he loved me . Family is more than just DNA it’s home, it’s memories, it’s a setting of traditions unique to yours and most of all it’s love.

This is a picture of my parents, John and Audrey, and my daughters.

Mum has advanced dementia, which progressed rapidly over 5 years; she can no longer communicate or do anything for herself. Mum is still at home, and Dad is her full time carer, “so we can hold hands and be together”, as Dad says. We were not prepared for the devastation that dementia brought into our lives.

All the good parts of me are because of Mum and Dad. Growing up, they taught my sister and I the value of working hard and being kind.
If I can be to my own children just a fraction of what my parents are to me, I will have succeeded in life. I love you Mum and Dad xxx

My immediate family was a painful place to be growing up. It was unsafe for a number of reasons.
My grandma was my world.
Because of her, I spent 25 years working in children’s homes and have now trained to be a therapist.
Now I have my chosen family.

My Family is made up of parents, step parents, full siblings, half siblings! My family is made up of the children we have Fostered over 24 years as well as the children we have created ourselves.
My family includes blood grandchildren and borrowed ones, a beautiful great granddaughter and my family is fortunate to have friendships.
My family is built on love, trust and honesty!
Do we get along all the time? Absolutely not! Do we argue and fight? Sure we do but we forgive and we love!!! We are family and I’m greatful every day for everyone of the members of our family because families create memories and memories last a lifetime.

I was taken away from my birth mum- She was single mum in a religious country which also banned contraception. I spent 3 years in an orphanage before being adopted by a couple from the same cultural background. They told me my mum hadn’t wanted me and other things that a child already struggling with their self-worth shouldn’t hear. I was lucky in many ways, I had a life an orphan could only dream of but I never got over the lack of empathy and understanding from (and the disappointment of) my adoptive parents.

My family are amazing and I feel so lucky to have grown up in the family I have, especially as I currently work as a social worker and see all kinds of different families.
When I was 18, almost 19, I was diagnosed with Leukemia and needed treatment for about 6 months followed by a years recovery. I had just started at Uni so had to postpone my course.
My parents were amazing, they were able to arrange their work so that one or other of them could spend time with me every day when I needed hospital treatment, they sent me lots of cards to brighten up my hospital room, my mum read favourite childhood stories to me and my brother came to visit when he could, as well as a lot more in the background i would have been unaware of! Their love and our family Catholic faith in God got me through the most difficult time of my life. That was over 25 years ago but I will always be thankful for what they did for me.

As my family has grown with inlaws, my partner additional members i love them all and appreciate every one however, i have been built by three very amazing people – my mum, my brother, my dad and I. The McCorry’s.

My dad was the strongest man i ever knew. He was brave and always showed confidence and reassurance, he held our family he prtected us. Im my eyes he was undefeatable . As long as we had each other we 4 would be strong. However at 13 my dad became severely ill with cancer in his brain. He battled this with all he had but unfortunately in 2015 he passed away. My brother my mum and i struggled to find our feet once this happened because we all felt that we had to step into his shoes, to protect the others, to be the person who took charge with this came battles of their own, confusion and at times frustration but in truth that was love. The love we have for each other is what our drive is to follow in his footsteps, to stay a unit and look after eachother, to care and support eachother.

I was only 15 and i now 26. I have grown up with my mum, my brother and my dad. He shines in my brother’s eyes, in his voice, in his smile, in his hugs, in his big brother advice. My dad shines through my mums in her love , in her dedication to be both mother & father, he support, to always have our backs and to be the best parent i could ever ask for, to show me how to be brave and to have a heart as big as both of theirs.
My dad may not be here in person anymore but i always feel him close. But my mum and my brother and my rock and we will always have each other no matter where we are. We are no perfect family by any means but. They are a blessing to me.

This is a photo of me and my big sister taken on holiday in the 1950’s on the East Coast in Yorkshire. We come from a big family of 5 siblings. We were all born in Yorkshire.Three girls and 2 boys. At my sisters wedding, my first son was born in the evening, so it was a very eventful day. I think she may have forgiven me now for stealing the limelight!! Our parents emigrated to Australia when they retired, so we are a scattered family now…however I still feel very close to them all. I’ve extended my family with friends who I’ve adopted as brothers and sisters. Nobody can have too much family. I love them all dearly.

This is a photo of me and my big sister taken on holiday in the 1950’s on the East Coast in Yorkshire. We come from a big family of 5 siblings. Three girls and 2 boys. At my sisters wedding, my first son was born in the evening, so it was a very eventful day. I think she may have forgiven me now for stealing the limelight!! Our parents emigrated to Australia when they retired, so we are a scattered family now…however I still feel very close to them all. I’ve extended my family with friends who I’ve adopted as brothers and sisters. Nobody can have too much family. I love them all dearly.

My dad loved me in a way that never felt conditional. There was nothing to earn, no version of myself I needed to become in order to deserve it. I grew up with the quiet certainty that somewhere in the world was a person who was always proud of me.

From my mum, I inherited something different — a fierce determination and a sense that life is not only about following the paths already laid out for us, but about having the courage to wander toward the hidden ones. She gave me the feeling that a life can be shaped creatively and lived truthfully.

As a child, my world was small: just me, my mum, and my dad. But surrounding us were the families they had each had before me — eight older half siblings whose lives and memories stretched back into another version of our family story. To me, they were simply my brothers and sisters, and I loved them deeply. But I was also aware, even as a child, that they shared something forged before I arrived: a history, a grief, a fierce closeness shaped partly through the breaking apart of the families that existed before me.

I think, without fully understanding it, I carried some awareness of what I symbolised within that complexity. There was often a feeling of standing just outside something I longed to belong fully to.

Only recently have I begun to let go of that ache. In doing so, something gentler and more real has begun to grow in its place. The relationships no longer feel shaped by longing or absence, but by who we are to one another now.

To me, family is both shelter and possibility. The people who hold you when life breaks open, but who also help you grow beyond what you thought was possible for yourself.

And then there is the family I made. Falling in love with Ben was one kind of love — deep, chosen, companioned. But when Jude was born, something shifted again. There was a kind of oneness in it, an understanding that love is not separate from yourself at all. It felt ancient, wordless, tidal in its depth — as though some hidden frequency in life had suddenly become audible to me for the first time.

My childhood was not particularly happy. I was sure I didn’t want children because of this. Well I had two, now adult children and they tell me they love me every day. lm glad along with my husband I broke a cycle.

It’s like the girl with the curl. When it’s good, its very very good and when it’s bad it’s horrid

Driving back from my Mum’s funeral, my brother noticed that he was passing the street where he was born; a home birth in West London. As he pointed out the street to his children, they noticed a rainbow arching over the houses. I found this anecdote comforting, when grief was fresh and raw.

My cousins , aunts, uncles , grandparents took turns to help bring me up after my parents divorced when I was 4. I wasn’t there’s though, I was relying on their patience and good will. When these wore thin I was moved along. I learned to latch on to other people’s families too. Kindness and compassion and helping hands from strangers, teachers, neighbours, friend’s parents. This mosaic upbringing made for a multifaceted view of family. I had a beautiful baby boy 35 years ago and ploughed my love , learning and laughter into our life together. He is mine. My family at last.

I have never met my dad and my Mum was an alcoholic, who died when I was 21. I was raised by my Grandparents. My Grandad had a life changing stroke when I was 7 and then it was just me and Grandma. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when I was 15. In sickness and in health, they taught me the most important life lessons – unconditional love, kindness, work ethic, a dry sense of humour, to be comfortable as who you are, loyalty in friendships. I am now a doctor, having studied at Cambridge. My Grandma died in my second year of medical school, my Grandad in my first year of undergraduate studies. I am grateful every day that I got to have them as my parents. They looked after me and then I looked after them.

Families are about giving when you have nothing left to give, forgiveness when you are still angry and upset and being the responsible one you really aren’t. Being without family and not having to be any of this feels emptier, less and shallow. Whilst families make dig your own holes and empty your life, they also fill it at the same time

The gift of a brother.
There is a period of our lives that predates what memory can retrieve. The love that we experience then is woven into the intricate fabric of our souls. Beloved brother you lived the miracle of life for 23 years and 2 days. The latter 3 days being the hardest of the hard, softened by the kindness of strangers. I was so blessed to overlap my life with yours, sharing 16 years 10 months and 9 days with you. We basked in the haze of the same sun and breathed the same air. Walking forward without you left a lifetime’s ache. The love that lived then still flourishes today in all that I do, in all that I am. Most importantly the love that seeded before memory could form, grew and grew until it bloomed like the flowers in our father’s garden. It could not be contained and had to be passed on to others along the way. It has always been my hope that one day it would reach someone for whom pre-memory love had been in short supply. Thank you for that gift brother, thank you.

I joined a community garden in Edinburgh near where I was living in 2013. I’d been told that the print works for the Encyclopedia Britannica had once been situated there and that it’s editor, William Smellie, who was friends with Rabbie Burns, was my dad’s great grandfather five times removed. I felt I had a connection to the geography of the place.

My mum was the gardener though, she put on parties for the whole community when we were growing up in Bridge of Earn in the 80’s. I describe it as real community because it just happened. No funding applications, no risk assessments, no guest lists…everyone was welcome. It was brilliant! Our community garden was a bit like that for a while. I hadn’t realised but it was just round the corner from where my granny and grandad first lived together. Mum never said anything about it because it was a slum back then and most of it got torn down when they built council houses further out of the city. The shame of it all meant I had no clue about the hardship that mum grew up with till then. It sounded like a right burrach at their house. They made home brew and played the piano. Grandad grew roses in his allotment and was a painter.

At one stage when a bottle of my elderflower champagne exploded open, leaving a patch on the ceiling of my flat, mum was pretty miffed and said it was just like being back at the house she grew up in. Isn’t it funny how sometimes we do things that family we never met used to do. If I never made that champagne and subsequently exploded it, I never would have known it was something that connected me to my grandparents. If I hadn’t been in that particular community garden I would have never known I was stomping the same streets that my family once had. When my son was 19 he started sleeping in his fancy sleeping bag all the time. That made me laugh as his dad used to do that. His dad’s dad was in the navy so I wonder if he did it too. It seems such a strange silly thing to pass on but to me it’s proof that nature and nurture go hand in hand. Pictured is my son tending to my mum’s planter in the Grove Community Garden.

I wish I could do this but its your birthday. I started to write but I can’t give you the picture of a happy family you imagine and miss so much.

My family was not a happy place. We never talked about anything, let alone dealt with problems. Admitting to mental health issues was a sign of weakness. There was cruelty, violence, mental health issues, unkindness, and terrible neglect. But the need to pretend in public that we were a happy middle-class family came above everything. That is as far as I am going to go into it. As I want to leave it in the past and not rake over it. A lot of them are dead now so its history,

I can report it all turned out well in the End. I had to be so strong and work so hard to get by. I wanted to face the problems. This is something I have learnt. After spending a lot of time listening and doing my best to turn it around, I managed to hold it all together for my son and myself. I got us to the other side. My son became a psychotherapist. He is happily married to his lovely partner and I now have two beautiful granddaughters. So I am very pleased with the legacy I have created. We talk about everything.

I want to wish you a very Happy Birthday! I really admire how you have overcome the terrible time you had in such a magnificent way. Bravo!!

White male. From a mixed heritage of Irish, Scottish, English. Eldest of three boys; married with three girls – all under 20. Educated to degree & diploma level – I’ve undiagnosed audhd; work on my own & listen to audiobooks & radio 4 all day as a self-employed decorator..I’d like to ‘break-out’. My parents & grandparents had very full lives: amateur dramatics for 35 years; charitable organisations local independent politics; from both sides of the political divide. I tend towards the left. Their commitments toward their charitable activities right up into their 70’s, makes me wonder where their time came from. They all owned their own homes – we rent: despite earning relatively well. My immediate family of five get on very well – no fights or hair pulling between our daughters growing up; the opposite of my wife & her two sisters. Myself & my wife are qualified therapeutic counsellors and brought our girls up using a person centred approach: safe boundaries with freedom to express their wills-they’re experts in their field of self. We introduced them to a relationship with a God, but do not ‘impose’ this on our children. The cost of living has increased, so at 58 I find myself working 5-6 days a week most weeks – I don’t see an end to this problem. Love is evident around our family; and it expressed often thru words, actions, cooking & shared conversations; the phone is put down whenever a family member enters the room/space. I worry about my children’s future in relation to freedoms being lost through technological advancement: will the algorithms be the new government? I hope they never vote Reform or Tory. Am I happy? No. But I see life as a series of moment+moment+moment ad infinitum; so, I do have moments of happiness & contentment. Most days I experience emotional discomfort; hence, the need to break out via creative means …if I was young again I’d suggest to my younger self: give yourself grace, and cut out the weed earlier in life… believe more, and don’t live in fear of trying new things

We lost my mum 2 years ago and I miss her everyday. She was the most wonderful mother to myself and my sisters and was happily married to my dad for 49 years.

But in many ways the most defining role of her life was as a sister. She was the eldest of five and her youngest sister Colette was born with Downs Syndrome and a range of other health issues. My mum was her favourite person and they had a remarkable bond.

Mum was a special needs teacher but she only ever worked part time due to her caring responsibilities. After my grandfather’s death we moved to live nextdoor so mum could help out more with Colette and after my Nana’s death mum and dad cared for her fully.

Colette developed early onset Alzheimer’s and they cared for her in the most remarkable way until her care needs went beyond home care.
As she lost her connection to the world around her, the one person she knew and could be comforted by was always “my sister”.

At mum’s funeral my dad read Lemn’s poem Invisible Kisses. It could have been written for her it captured her so well . The most loving and generous creature ever created.

Family is the bedrock that formed me, and its dysfunction has impelled me to grow and talk and create a new type of family for my children. The family that I have made is built on constant communication and striving for understanding. My children know they can come to me with anything. Family is the loving arms around us.

Hard to remember before the age of 11/12, my brother and I didn’t get on. My happy place was my grandparents farm, every holiday here, cows, milking and haymaking, sheep, chapel, the river, Pendragon Castle, smells of cooking bacon, the organ, the stained glass window, vivid memories, my aunt, my cousins, my other grandparents, just lovely.

Growing up and I learnt something was happening to us that don’t happen to families like us, an affair.
Turbulence, arguments, separation, dysfunctional, sadness, world shattering. Everyone knowing but me, an impact that is lifelong, remembering sweet tea, tears, anger, hate, loss, a drunken parent, evil alcohol. Always trying to keep the peace, trying to please.
Before this some happy times, holidays, fun, never much affection, not much emotion, always silence and pretence especially at Christmas. A parent accepting the others affair but still living as a “family”.
Then a relationship of my own where his family, loved, hugged, shared, a different family, overwhelming, overpowering, wasn’t used to this outwardly display.
Then a child of my own, who is loved, was shown love, is told he is loved but again another separation for him to witness this time but I hope I did better.
Then the death of a parent, sudden, short and traumatic, then of the other a blessing, a relief, a worry and burden now at rest.

…they fuck you up, your mum and dad, Philip Larkin.

For me, having a family of my own fills my heart with love. It’s not always easy but it helps me feel needed and cared for.

I am estranged from my family. I left home at 17 and made my way. I am an old woman now, but as a child I was the scapegoat, the black sheep. What I was was the witness, the truth teller. Not unironically, I was a journalist for many years. I moved to London from New Jersey in 1987. Thrived in London for 15 years. But was homesick and moved back to America. Not my best decision. I understand now that those who endure a complicated family life always seek home. I understand now I am still seeking home. Birth family is as you say, “a collection of memories held by one group” or something like that. Keep saying what you say. Those who mistake family for biology need to hear your voice.

I took my daughter to meet up with my brother and his family and she commented that she felt accepted immediately. I said that’s what family is, you don’t have to earn their love or trust, it’s just automatic.
If you’ve ever watched Long Lost Family on telly, you’ll have seen how siblings who have never met love each other from the very start ❤️

I didn’t know about love in a family until 1999 when I gave birth to my daughter.
She was a miracle and is the biggest love of my life .
Even though we live in different counties now there is an unbreakable bond and it feels wonderful ❤️

Here is PENTAM Family on the Picture. Family, the word itself carries a warmth no other can replace. It’s where life begins and love never ends. Behind every smile we wear, every success we celebrate, and every strength we show, there’s a family that stood behind us, sacrificing quietly, cheering loudly, and loving us unconditionally.

They are the ones who believe in us even when the world doubts us. They give up their comfort to build ours, carry our pain in silence, and celebrate our smallest wins as if they were their own. Family doesn’t just support you, they shape you.

In a world that changes every day, family remains the constant, our safe haven, our reason, our foundation. Let’s never take them for granted. ❤️

#FamilyFirst #UnconditionalLove #Gratitude

My mum was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her father was Sri Lankan and Jewish with the darkest skin and the brightest smile I will ever know. Her mother was from Kerala, India. My dad is a cockney London born and raised in Hackney. They met when my mum came to do her nursing training in London, at the age of seventeen. She was a lodger with my dad’s parents and then she never left…

A unison of colonial worlds and possibilities in the early seventies.

On a semi-regular basis, my husband will burst into verse:

This Be The Verse

By Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

My family is many now , I don’t just think about my direct family in my household of which there are 3 , or my mother and siblings which are mum , brother and sister , I always think about the many that are now spread through out the world , either from marrages to GI’s after world war with their children , and grandchildren , or my wife’s family in the phillipines , everyone of them feels family to me , even thou years may go by without seeing or hearing from them … just knowing they are out there feels like roots

I was the only surviving child of my mum and dad. My mum made sure my friends were always welcome to come to our house and play so I would not feel lonely.

I am still working out what family means to me, but I know it means a lot. I feel very lucky to have the family I do, although it is a complicated shape and often defies expectations of what a family should look like, so is difficult to explain to others. This year I have thought a lot about my role in how a family functions. Because family relationships like any other are breathing, living things that change over time. Some for better some for worse. You have to work on all your relationships at times to keep them in balance. Family can be a big source of strength for me but it is also the biggest challenge in my life. All of the hardest things I’ve ever been through are all touched and shaped by ideas of family and what it should be or how it should come about. The way it shapes my identity can be a blessing and a curse. I can spend so much time trying to trace what bits of myself come from mum or dad I lose the me in it all. I’m more than half her and half him (aren’t I?) but how and why? I think the strongest families probably don’t live too much in the shadow of their expectations of each other. One of the closest, strongest family relationships in my life is purely chosen. Someone who is family not by blood but by pure love and shared experience and effort. In that sense it’s simple, family is loving someone so much you claim them as one of your own. But what happens when your family don’t want to claim you any more? So much of the pain in families comes from rejection, and families can reject each other in a million little ways. For my part, I do my best to be there when it’s important and love the whole person. Not who I’d like them to be to fill my idea of what society tells me someone performing that role should be. It’s disappointing when people don’t show up the way you expect (or need) them to, but likewise I often feel I’m not showing up the way others would most like me to because I just don’t know how. Maybe family is choosing or claiming each other over and over again, not the rupture but the repair.

For context, so much of my life has been shaped by the “brokeness” of my family. Even before it broke it was a fractured messy thing. So a lot of energy in my life has gone into trying to hold broken pieces together. They are jagged and painful but they can be reshaped into something better with patience and attention. I try and hold a lot of hope in that. I’ve seen that it can take twenty years to make even a small bit of progress but try to hold hope in the fact that progress can be made at all, where for a long time it felt hopeless that anything new could be built from the mess.

This is my mum with my grandma. She was about 14 here in the ‘50s. My mum was left on the steps of a nunnery in North Yorks by her dad, sometime after her mother ended her own life. She was there for about 8 years. My grandma and grandad could never adopt my mum as her dad refused to relinquish his rights to child benefit money, so they fostered her. It saddens me greatly that now, as a 53 yr old and my mum in her 80s, we have never got on. There is just nothing there except emptiness towards me and a total disconnect. But I know her scars from childhood are very deep and I just wish I could help to soothe them. My mum has survived, and that’s a triumph in itself. I loved my grandma so deeply and still miss her every single day.

Haiku #4.
Some family homes,
Have no love like a desert,
Mine’s a rain forest. 🌳

I often wonder if my family is mostly composed by those that are here, or those who have left? My son is 9 and get’s annoyed when he hiccups, just like my Dad, who died when my son was 2. He sleeps silently with his hands behind his head, and wakes instantly with a spring in his step, like someone flicked a switch, just like my father-in-law who died when my son was 1.

Like my Nana, I can’t pronounce millennium and I out too much butter on a sandwich. My husband has sadly inherited the ever-growing ears of his Grandad, but still never seems to hear if I ask him to wash the pots. Our hearts are full with the love for our son, and for the babies we never got to hold in our arms. We cherish those who walk with us, and those who live in our memories, who come alive in photos or videos, or who we never knew, who reside in our DNA.

The last few years, I’ve been somewhat forced to reflect on my time on this earth and on the structure of my family. It has been a hard realisation to accept that the root cause of my deepest traumas comes from them. I can remember, even at a very young age, telling myself that when I was a grown-up my life would be different. I don’t think I fully understood the chaos then, but I definitely felt it. Something didn’t feel right. It felt loud, busy, and sometimes scarily silent.
From the outside looking in, we appeared well put together… but on the inside, there were absent-minded, hellish moments softened only by band-aids disguised as acts of service, gift-giving, and declarations of love. My family was a collection of people carrying their own unresolved traumas—stories they kept hidden to convince the world that everything was fine. But that façade would eventually become their downfall. Their wounds would bleed into their children, then their grandchildren, and if we aren’t careful, into their great-grandchildren.
This is the story of how generational trauma quietly weaves itself through families—until someone like me finally says, no more. But I wasn’t prepared for what that “no more” would look like. It looks like exhaustion. It looks like isolation. It looks like correcting behaviors that one person sees as completely normal, while gently explaining to a child that this is not the way things should be.
In all my efforts to correct wrongs, to do better, to break curses, to stay emotionally aware, to stay one step ahead… I’ve been rewarded with a lifelong chronic illness, born from a lifetime of chaos. A parting gift from my loving, yet blissfully unaware, family.
You can love your family to death—but your family can also be the death of you.

I’m not very good at socialising, and find big family events especially hard. I often don’t know what the right thing is to say to people, and I feel bad and worry people will think I’m being rude. But I do like to look and listen. It amazes me to have seen family members at weddings, christenings and funerals and realise we look or sound alike, have similar mannerisms and quirks. So even though I struggle a bit with these family events, I hope I keep getting invited. I’ll try harder to talk more.

My earliest memory is banging on the window as my mum was taken away in an ambulance. I was two years old. My sister and I later moved in with paternal grandparents, into suburban monotony, while my dad took a job abroad. He visited once, with a pony which I rode around the cul de sac.

We visited our Irish-Scouser great-grandparents on the outskirts of Liverpool: full-on Victoriana in the basement flat of a run-down tower block; she read my tea leaves and had a crystal ball; there was traveller heritage in the family. After a couple of years, I overheard a conversation about a children’s home and thought of it as ‘exciting’ but we returned to our dad with ‘new mummy’, a house on a hill, fields, ponies, buttercups and dandelions, pheasant shooting and silver service. She had attended finishing school in Switzerland. What the fuck. The marriage flunked.

One night, I woke to find him urinating in my bedroom bin, trying to leave through the wardrobe. He drank most nights. When banned from the marital bedroom he would climb into my bed and shove me onto the floor. There were moments of joy; ponies, moors, dance routines to Boney M., Amii Stewart and Donner Summer. Though I didn’t feel much love. One Christmas morning, I found him with a stab wound in his arm.
Teenage years took me to Manchester, for dark music and heroin. Later, New York. Chicago and crack cocaine. A life passes. After he died, he returned in my dream as a black dog.

When my husband and I got together, we sought to blend our families. Our main priority was to make sure that our children from our previous relationships would feel safe and secure and loved in both their old and new families. My ex, the father of my children, accepted this, albeit reluctantly, and has always supported that for the sake of our children.
My husband‘s ex, the mother of his child, took the opposite view and sought right from the beginning to make it difficult for their son to continue to have a relationship with his dad. It got worse when we said we were getting married and it became a sustained increasing campaign of her applying emotional pressure and psychological abuse on their son, culminating in his son cutting off contact with his Dad because, in his own words, “you have no idea what it’s like” and “it’s just easier this way”.
Over a decade later and his son is a man making his way in the world. They have the thinnest thread of contact. My husband reaches out still, as he always did, with unconditional, non-judgemental love and care and understanding.
So family here means taking the long view, and being patient, and hoping that love will, in the end, break down walls built not in the name of love.

I love being a mum to my only daughter. I loved her from the moment I knew that she was growing inside me. The day she was born 45 years ago was one of the happiest days of my life. The love, the joy is indescribable. When each of my Grandchildren were born and I held them in my arms for the first time. I felt the same love and joy rush through my body. Now I love both being a mum and a Grandma. I treasure every precious moment I spend with them. It may be a walk in the woods. Taking it in turns to swing on the rope swing there and laughing crossed legged. Or cuddling up on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn watching a movie when they come over for a sleepover. I tell them I love them I love them and I feel their love for me. Recently my young Grandson drew me a picture. When he was asked about it. He said it’s my family. Mummy, Daddy, sister, me and Grandma. I will treasure that picture and it is proudly displayed.

Families are the ones we are born a part of. But I am also part of families that are created: the family of friends who combined and helped each other to raise our children; the work families along the way who support us. And the realisation that, as a teacher of nearly 25 years, I have nearly 5000 children who will always be ‘one of my kids’.
And while all of these come and go, the love remains.

After building careers, buying a house, getting married, and caring for a few pets, we finally felt ready to have a baby. Miraculously, we were pregnant on the first try, but we lost that one in a matter weeks. We were heart-broken, but pragmatic about the statistics – 1 in 4 pregnancies results in pregnancy loss. What we never could have expected, what nearly broke us, was losing another 5.

“Family” became such a loaded and painful word – the old question, “When are you two starting a family?”, negated the family that we already were. We tend not to think of a married couple as a “family” and that a family only comes into existence with the arrival of a child. It doesn’t.

We are incredibly fortunate that our dream finally came true – but I know that for so many couples, the label of “family” feels like it doesn’t apply, or worse, isn’t allowed to apply to them.

My daughter arrived in my life when she was 3 years old through foster care , she is still with me and nearly 16 . Shes black I am white I am English she is Irish . She loves to run I love to swim . I am lost without her she is lost with me . We love to spend time together . We seek it we plan it we love it . We travel together and the world stares . But I am her rock and she is my light . She’s an Ulster elite youth athlete . My pride could fill a room for who she is . My pride could fill a room how my family her and me love each other wildly through choice.

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.

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.