We Are Each Other

A moving memoir about loss, grief and motherhood from Jess Mills, daughter of Tessa Jowell MP.

'This raw and fearless exploration of life, loss and mostly love - it is totally unforgettable.' Elle's Most Hyped Books of 2026

'Beautifully written' - Telegraph

'Stunning, lyrical and deeply felt.' Clover Stroud

We Are Each Other tells Jess' story of becoming a mother while losing her own to a sudden terminal diagnosis. It's about loss, yes, but at its core it's about how we love when we are living on the threshold of life and death with someone central to our being and place in the world.

Jess' mother was the beloved Tessa Jowell MP. She lived a public life, but this is not the story of a public person - it's the story of a mother and daughter, walking both sides of life and death together.

The writing began as a way to metabolise her own experience, it tells the story of the way they loved, the way Jess grieved, and the way she renewed in that life-defining year. But the long and enduring journey of completing it over several years sharpened and galvanised its ultimate purpose to be about so much more than Jess and Tessa. It is ultimately for anyone who has loved and lost someone at the centre of their world and identity. That is its purpose: to give language and greater articulation to this most universal human experience.