Redefining family... on Mother's Day

Today can be rough for many. I say we seize it back.

Mar 10, 2024

The snow was so white it offered a blank page. The fire in front of us crackled, the heat of the orange-flames almost inconceivable in -20 air that saw our breath, and words, emerge from our mouths in smoke.

“First,” she said, “we must acknowledge our ancestors.” We had to then go around the circle and first introduce our grandparents, then our parents before introducing ourselves. I didn’t expect to find it so difficult. How saying my grandparents’ names, out loud, to strangers, would pull deep at something in me. Something I didn’t know was there.

I was standing with Meta Williams, a Yukon First Nations member, who – at Long Ago Peoples Place – was teaching me, and four other writers, about the history and culture of the Indigenous people of Canada. Meta herself is a grandmother, mother, auntie and niece. Her family is a large one, of 11 siblings. Her mother is from Southern Tutchone and her father is English/Scottish.

When I said my own family is both English and Scottish, she held my eye.

“Ah,” she said. “My sister.”

A few days later, my hands were slippery with rose-scented soap. I was tugging at strands of felt and wrapping each layer around the bar. The aim was to, eventually, coat it with the felt which, when left to dry, would create a swirling pattern that doubles up as an exfoliating wash cloth. I’d chosen the colours of the Northern Lights: blues, and emerald greens.

I had just cried. I hadn’t expected to cry at a soap-making workshop. But, like earlier in the week, I’d dug into my roots, and thought of the women of my past. Joella, who runs the Yukon Soap Company was, like Meta, educating us on Indigenous culture. Only this time, unlike at the camp where we saw traditional housing structures and learned how food and medicines were harvested, Joella uses her soap-making to spread the messages of her ancestors.

“These soaps were crafted with plants our grandmothers once harvested following cultural teachings,” it reads on the back of one. “We honour the joy, the knowledge and humour brought by our grandmothers. Wherever our grandmothers walk there is brightness.”

I read it aloud. I thought of my grandma Jean’s face. The only grandma I have ever known, smiling in her lilac jumper. A picture I struggle, even now, to look at.

My grandma liked to tell me about my family’s history. I’ve inherited various albums, with pictures in them of great uncles and aunts, grainy faces that I should be able to match up with medals, and pin-badges that belonged to these people: items that sit tangled within my cheap high street jewellery. They gather dust in China tea-cups and saucers, that also once lived with my grandma… but now live within my chaos.

I’ve never been big on the whole ancestry.com thing. My family, I believe, is made up of, yes, my blood-relatives but also those who I have chosen. Those who have seen all of my faces, and, like a crystal, hold me up to the sunshine, recognising the shards of my rainbow that dance on their walls.

We can sometimes be more ourselves with friends than we ever can with family.

It’s Mother’s Day today, or, at least it will be when you read this. And, because I have just returned from the Canadian Wilderness, I have been entirely disconnected from all the marketing surrounding the day.

Marketing that has, in the past, both angered and upset me. (read last year’s post offering advice on coping with the day)

Mother’s Day promotions make assumptions. Assumptions about our family, about our ancestry. They decide that everyone is a mother, or has a mother. They push an ideal vision of what motherhood is, of what family is and it leaves so many people feel lacking, and sad, and wrong.

Even before I lost my mum, I wasn’t particularly keen on either of the ‘Days.’ The cards offered on Mother’s Day were saccharine, often based around cliches that didn’t represent my hard-working, fiery, feminist mother. And, of course, the family’s represented on both didn’t match my own: my dad, now living as a transgender woman, was always feminine, with long hair and dangly earrings.

Perhaps this is why I’ve never bothered to look into my family tree. I’ve always felt that my ancestry began with my parents. My mum rebelled from her strict religious upbringing, pulling herself far away from the traditional wife and mother she was expected to be. My dad can tell you her own story (she writes beautifully about her life here.) They were both rebels, who, when they decided to have my sister and I, also wanted to begin new, parenting in the opposite way to how they were parented.

I see that echoed in how my sister raises her kids. I see that echoed in my decision not to have any.

Like Mother’s Day promotions, both of those Yukon women, you could say, made assumptions. That we knew where we came from, that we were grateful for our grandparents and parents. There are many people who do not know who their families are, many for whom the generations above them were not “bright.”

But, I was not, in any way, angry with either of them. In some ways, despite meeting them just once, and never seeing them again, I loved them. Meta called me her sister. She said, wherever she goes, she feels connected to family, to strangers, those who are connected to First Nations. Joella spoke of drumming with local women, how singing songs together connected her, deeply, to those in her neighbourhood. Women who were not bonded to her by blood, or clan, but by connection, by love.

When we first had to introduce ourselves in that way I felt as if I was flailing in the air. Grasping at my roots and discovering that they, through my total lack of nurture, had rotted. But, now I’m home and thinking of all the people in my life who have built me, I feel more grounded.

I can often, on Mother’s Day, feel lacking, in many ways. The obvious is, of course, I miss my mum, I wish I could take her for lunch. But the other is more complex: I am now happy to be child-free. That’s been an adjustment as, in a world where parenthood is thrust upon you as “a love like no other” I fear that I’m losing family, I’m losing roots. I’m losing unconditional love…

This is why I get angry. It’s not fair that something born out of marketing can make those of us who don’t fit that mould, or who have had it snatched away from us (both in terms of people who have lost their mothers, have difficult relationships with their mothers and those who are child-free by circumstance) feel this way.

There are so many different ways to be part of a family, to be a mother. They’re just as valid as those we see painted on cards.

I want us to redefine family, motherhood, the bonds that tie us.

Many of my best friends are now mothers. Some - those with and without children - I feel, through their guidance and wisdom, mother me. Perhaps, in a wilder, more hectic, less grounded way, I mother them. My sister is a defiant, rebellious, wonderful mother, my own mum’s fire blazes through her. My grandma was so soft, yet bright. She smelled of lilies and roses. My dad fought through her shame to redefine womanhood and live on her terms. My mum, Susie, swims through my blood, and is beside me in everything that I do.

I think, had I added in a few more names, names of my friends, friends who I feel rooted to, during my introduction round that fire, Meta would have smiled and accepted them fully, as part of me.

This Mother’s Day, I acknowledge them. I acknowledge these women.

They made me.

Thank you for reading! Please do tell me how you’re feeling today, or about the people in your life who you feel make up your family. I also don’t want to exclude the wonderful men in my life (but this was a mother’s day post after all!) who have also played such a huge part in my wholeness, so below is an old poem I wrote encompassing all of the themes of the above post…

Crocuses in the snow

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