How was your weekend? Mine should have been one full of celebration. My youngest daughter turned one, my mum celebrated her birthday and my grandparents had their 60th wedding anniversary. Yet these celebrations were unexpectedly tarnished as a huge cloud descended over us all, in the form of a barrage of articles flung out by national newspapers linking me to a 2015 “gangland” killing. The link? My mother had a relationship (never married) with the offender’s father when I was two years old – I’ll be 38 in January.

I have never dismissed or denied my connections, but I find the fact that I am always used as the peg or promotional tool for these stories to be both damaging and careless.

Let me set the scene. On Friday I was due to deliver a speech at a local school about an initiative I am launching to inspire and empower inner-city kids like myself – just one of many I have done in recent months. At 2.33pm I got a call from my manager asking me to urgently look at an article about an awful crime that had been committed.

The chilling part? My name is the first name in the headline – not just for that article but every single article on this story.

Now, while I understand reporters want their stories read by as many people as possible, just paper-clipping my name to something like this is extremely insensitive.

I have never attempted to justify or play down the magnitude of these crimes. I have on several occasions condemned it. However, these articles cause me to live in fear that someone may seek revenge on me or my family due to these “apparent links” – despite my being completely oblivious to, and disassociated from, all aspects of these cases and those involved. One paper even created a chart, which regurgitated past stories with which they chose to associate me.

They don’t print stories about the speeches I do, nor the initiatives I have launched and participated in for schools and young children up and down the country. They don’t cover my charity work, or my appointment to a House of Commons panel helping to create positive community change.

Yet something I have played no part in whatsoever, other than to have been the “stepdaughter” (in the loosest of senses) of someone for two years of my life, and who I have not laid eyes on for decades, gets me prominent national newspaper coverage.

These articles have a direct impact on my children. I kept my 13-year-old daughter away from the internet on Friday, but on a supermarket visit with my husband on Saturday she flicked through the papers and saw her mummy. Despite having a difficult conversation, and me answering her multiple questions, she is embarrassed, confused and extremely upset.

These articles have a direct impact on my relationships. My mum doesn’t want people to know I’m her daughter. She literally does nothing with me outside of our homes. She never attends my appearances or shows, because she doesn’t want to be associated with me publicly. Not because she isn’t proud of me, but because she doesn’t want people to associate her with the constant barrage of bad press I get.

These articles have a direct impact on my mental health. I was diagnosed with depression, which began in 2005 after the first article of this kind appeared on my daughter’s fourth birthday. I still feel a very real threat hanging over the lives of me and my children when these “links” are rehashed and recirculated.

Every time I am mentioned in these articles my job prospects are damaged. I have been in talks with three major channels about different projects, all of which have now expressed that this news has tainted my profile, and they will have to “change direction”. Please understand that this is how I pay my mortgage, insurance, and bills.

I do not deserve this. It’s unfair. And all in the name of selling more papers and generating clicks.

I have always attempted to “prove myself” to people, tried my hardest to show who I really am, and yet there is a constant weaponisation of things beyond my control being used to demonise me. I have even chosen to more or less hide my husband – an incredible father and partner – because he has been to prison in the past. I’ve always feared these vultures would use him as a weapon too.

It’s funny, because people such as TV personality Ferne McCann receive sympathy for her inadvertent criminal association, receiving opportunities to give her take on her “ordeal” – and from what I can see she continues to enjoy an unharmed career. I won’t state the obvious here.

I remember the song I used to sing in the playground when people tried to bully me: “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” How ironic. The words in these careless articles are my biggest source of pain.

• Jamelia is a British recording artist, television presenter and actor

• This is an edited version of a blog that first appeared on her website jamelia.com