"Ken's Daughter"

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(Trigger Warning: mentions of suicide, family trauma)

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I’ve been thinking a lot about family lately.About what it means to belong — and what it means when you don’t.

I wasn’t raised by my mother. She had two kids before me, two after, and none of us were really raised by her. We were scattered — to different homes, different people, different lives. I ended up with my grandparents, who were already nearing sixty when they took me in. Born in the late twenties, they were the kind of people who believed in tradition, routine, and keeping things quiet.

My mom was deaf and trying to survive. My dad… well, I only had him for four years before suicide took him away. At that age, you don’t understand what that means — just that he was there, and then he wasn’t, and people stopped saying his name like it might break them if they did.

My grandparents did their best. They gave me structure and warmth in the only ways they knew how. And for a long time, that was enough. They were the thread that kept me tied to family — cousins, uncles, aunts, the holiday dinners with too much noise and not enough space.

But when they were gone, the thread snapped.

I was eighteen and suddenly on my own, standing in the middle of a family that no longer knew what to do with me. Everyone had their own lives — their own kids, their own circles. And I? I was just Ken’s daughter. The one who used to come around. The one who smiled politely at Christmas but never quite fit in anywhere.

It’s a strange kind of grief, realizing the people who made you feel like you belonged aren’t there anymore — and no one else really steps up to fill that space. Not because they’re cruel, but because the connection was never really there to begin with.

So I drifted. Checked in once in a while. Showed up when it felt right. But every time, it felt more like visiting a place I used to live. Everyone still calls me family, but it feels like being a ghost at your own table.

I don’t resent them. They did what they could. But I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t hurt — that quiet distance, that polite indifference that makes you wonder if you’d even be noticed if you stopped showing up altogether.

Now, as they all get older, I find myself stuck in this in-between — wanting to protect myself from another inevitable loss, but also knowing I’ll still cry when it happens. Because I will. Even if I barely know them anymore.

I wish I could say I’m at peace with it — that I’ve found closure, or some poetic meaning behind it all. But the truth is, I haven’t.

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I guess this is what growing up in a fractured family teaches you: how to survive alone, how to build your own systems of care, and how to love carefully because you’ve learned that love is often conditional or fleeting. It’s realizing that belonging doesn’t always come with shared blood or a seat at the table—it comes from the people who choose to show up, consistently, no matter what.

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xoxo,

MJ