it can be good again.

That’s always been my headcanon, too - that they disowned her.  I think it’s telling that, at the age of five, Peeta has already figured out how unusual it is for such a marriage to take place.  There is almost certainly a class element to it.  But this is one of the hanging threads that drive me crazy, and while I don’t want Collins to go into Rowling-levels of detailed backstory, it would be nice to get a small family tree. It’s odd to think of Katniss going to school with cousins who never acknowledged her - of some unknown number of relatives dying in the bombing of Twelve.  (For that matter, she might have had some relations still living on her father’s side.  But perhaps the disowning happened on both sides.)  I guess, given the lack of reference, it’s most likely that Katniss’ parents were both either only children, or at least the only children to survive to adulthood/have children.  Both sets of grandparents could have been gone prior to the opening of the book, as well - life expectancy being not too great.  Also, it took awhile for Katniss’ parents to start their family.  After she “ran off with a coal miner,” Peeta’s father met and married someone else and had two kids before Katniss was born.  So, her grandparents might have been quite old.  All speculation of course …

I think Mrs. E leaving her family, knowing she’d be ostracized is a glimpse of just how headstrong and willful she was. Had her emotional constitution been weak or had she been more co-dependent, she’d have never done it. And she never talks of them. Ever. She walked away, never looked back, and probably never forgave them for turning their backs on her. And if she did forgive, it probably took a good long while. Katniss thinks she’s so much her father’s daughter because hunting, but she’s got a lot of her mother in her too. Mrs. E’s character is most often discussed wrt her depression, but we do get glimpses of her fire here and there (when she fussed at Mr. E for teaching the Hanging Tree to his daughters, when she has a patient, in D13 where even the men are cowed at the invocation of her name and her ire w/ their dealings w/ her daughter). Mrs. E had to deal w/ being an outsider in Seam. She was probably fairly heavily ostracized, but I’d bet she never once went back to ask her parents for help. I think it is one reason why Mr. E’s death hit her so hard. He was her world. It’s a blow to lose a spouse at all, but when you straddle a place between two worlds, not fully Seam, no longer fully merchant, and you lose your anchor, your best friend, your lover…I cannot imaging how hard that would be. And she came out of it, began working and contributing to the household again and eventually rose as a leader both in D12 prior to the bombing and afterward as she assembled triage and care for the victims and tried to help Gale keep everyone alive and had a significant role in D13′s hospital.

I’ve always been curious about this topic. I have a theory that the split between Mrs. E and her family was about more than class division. Mr. E sang those rebellious songs, and Haymitch said Mrs. E was the person who used to treat folks who were flogged by peacekeepers. Even their marriage made waves. Her family might have thought it too risky to associate with her and her husband. 

I!!!!!!!!!!!! MISS!!!!!!!!!!!! KATNISS!!!!!!!!!!!!! EVERDEEN!!!!!!!!! AND!!!!!!!!!! PEEETA!!!!!!!!!!! MELLARK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@joshua-ryans the fact that they used this gif