I grew up with a very big extended family, with a lot of aunts. We had about five or six houses on one street.
I had a wonderful family including my aunts, uncles and cousins but they've all gone to heaven.
My mother was born in Burma, but my grandfather on her side was Indian-Spanish. So I have this quite exotic mix, which is reflected in my earliest memories, in our Wiltshire country kitchen, of gran, and aunts, cooking spicy stewy, casseroley curries, a version of Indian food with a Burmese twist.
Parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles are made more powerful guides and rescuers by the bonds of love that are the very nature of a family.
The great thing about getting married young like I did and having a child so young is that he gets to know all the relatives. He knew his great-grandmother, and we sat down together and tied down the stories of our uncles and aunts. They were quite the characters, and we tied them to about 50 recipes. It's like a memoir-cookbook.
I come from an enormous and very close family. I have over a dozen aunts and uncles in Pakistan, dozens of cousins. I have many close friends. I have received so much love in Lahore that the city always pulls me.
Our house was always full of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.
We live in a world where we have friends, neighbors, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, people we journey with for years who are gay. And we need to love, affirm and all of us together work on the real problems that we have in the world.
Across the board, from my mother to my father to my aunts and uncles, everybody has always given me a lot of love.
When I give my jewelry as a present, I feel like I'm giving protection to someone I care about... I've given pieces to my mom, my aunts, my friends. I've even made bracelets for my dad and my uncle.