We are family

Even if we're not

There’s a famous cliché: “It’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.”

But how true is that when it refers to more than just the loss of one person, but the loss of an entire family unit?

A truer turn of phrase for this feeling would be: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

I know exactly how that feels as someone who grew up with a large family, but now has just a handful of people to rely on.

What happens when one person is holding it all together?

I’ve written before about my mam’s passing back in 2019 from pancreatic cancer. I won’t call it a battle as she stood no fighting chance, having died just a few weeks after her formal diagnosis with no time for any treatment.

Growing up, my mam wasn’t the easiest person to be around. At the best of times, she was neurotic and, at the worst, controlling. However, there was never any shortage of love— she just showed it in a different way.

This weekend, my mam was at the forefront of my mind as I organised and hosted my daughter’s 3rd birthday party at the local community centre. Over the years, my mam hosted many parties and gatherings, which might seem odd if you knew her in later life, as she was far from sociable.

But the thing was, she loved to show people how much she loved them. She made excellent birthday cakes, well into my adult years. She adapted all of her recipes to vegan alternatives as soon as she realised I was going down that path. She hosted family teas, she handmade pies, and bought presents and wrapped them. For my siblings and me, even well into her fifties, as she became the guardian of my nephew, she relived our childhoods and showed him the same love I took for granted from the moment he first came to live with us when he was six months old.

Every family has a person like this.

They are very special, but you likely won’t notice how much they were actually doing until they aren’t here anymore. My mam was a lynchpin. She held everything together, often to her own detriment.

I wonder how many families have a matriarch like this (sure, it can sometimes be a man, but more often than not, it’s the women who keep things going). If you’ve not lost a parent, perhaps you’ve felt the grief of a grandparent who was more than just sweets and cuddles.

In some ways, a grandparent’s house is the original third space. A place where you can go with no obligation. This is where you bump into family; without that, you risk not seeing them for years. We visit my maternal grandma multiple times a week. Her house is an extension of our own.

I have this photo on my desk of my 4th birthday, which is a family tea at my paternal grandparents’ house. I can taste the scones, smell the quiche… I can feel the warm of the blasting gas fire which left mottled marks on my skin because I insisted on sitting too close.

My paternal grandma, known affectionately as Oldie Grandma, who will have knocked up this spread, passed away in 2017 at the ripe old age of 89.

This photo encapsulates what is missing when the lynchpin of a family dies.

While my daughter’s 3rd birthday was one of the happiest days I’ve had recently, I can’t help but grieve because she will never get to experience this. She won’t get a family tea of sausage rolls, breadsticks, pineapple on toothpicks sticking out of half an orange covered in foil… Because my own mam is gone and, as a result, the family has dispersed.

That being said, I did have a positive revelation on Saturday. Running a party was hard work, and while Craig and I were flapping about, it was hard to keep track of what our daughter was up to. Several times, I walked back into the hall to find her talking to one of my friends. A mother of her friends, whom she only knows because they are so special to me, and we’ve come to raise our kids together.

Kate, who I know sometimes reads this, plated up my daughter’s party tea. Another friend helped her when she slipped on the floor from running too fast. My ridiculously talented pal April baked her cake and picked loads of amazing presents, including handmade scrunchies. My daughter knows my friends so well that she trusts them implicitly.

They are her family, too.

And that’s pretty magical considering they have no blood relation to her, and don’t owe her or me anything.

So, I guess this piece is dedicated to friends who step up when family can’t or won’t.

Thanks to you, my daughter is having the childhood of her dreams. Even if it’s different from mine, she is never short of love.

In the comments, tell me about your childhood birthday parties, or a person who held everything together.

What people said about the newsletter this week:

• “You’re actively trying to lose subscribers.”

• “Turning out a good post every single week is pretty much impossible (unless you're Ellen.”

• “As someone who's previously complained about Ellen’s seemingly endless ability to turn out flawless essays every week, I support this sentiment.”

• “Crackin’ read.”

A new section where I summarise topics that I nearly wrote about but didn’t. This will typically be a round-up of talking points in the left-wing media.

• Gregg Wallace is the latest boring white man to use his autism as an excuse for sexual harassment allegations, including flashing and verbal harassment. Wallace, who starred as the ‘cheeky greengrocer’ on the BBC’s Masterchef for many years, was sacked recently following allegations from 50 (!) people. I wrote about men who blame neurodivergence for poor and abusive behaviour back in February, you can read that here.

• Joe Rogan had Bernie Sanders on his show, again. Back in 2020, Rogan endorsed Sanders for the Democratic nomination to his seven million podcast listeners. Then, Rogan flipped back red in 2024 when he showed his support for Trump. Rogan’s latest interview with Sanders come following the human gamon’s condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza was “fucking insane” just a few weeks ago. In some ways, this is a window shift— like when Piers Morgan spoke out about the genocide a month or so ago. But, the cynic in me can see that Rogan lives and dies by FOMO. He doesn’t really care about any of these issues; he just knows it’s what people want to hear.

• Recent blockbuster The Saltpath is in hot water after The Observer found the memoir upon which it was based is allegedly the tale of two con artists. Read the full exposé here.

As well as hosting a birthday party, I also ran the Great North 10K this weekend. Every year, I complain about this route, and it’s definitely getting harder as the organisers have added more hills to bring the finish line forward. Even then, I managed a course PB (and my second fastest 10K), so I’ll take that!

Substack is shouting at me because this email is too long, so I’ll do a round-up of books, films, and TV next week.

That’s all from me,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

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