Hi! I’m Amy from LightWriter Media.⚡ I write about creativity, recovery and healing through storytelling. If you are new to this page, drop your email below to ensure you receive my posts.
This week, my family have been healing from the unexpected death of my nanny, my dad’s mum: the woman whose plastic high heels I would wear as a kid; who I would watch for hours putting on her makeup in the mirror; who would walk with us for miles and miles around Royal Parkland with her dog, Sam, teaching us about the deer in mating season.
As someone who has dabbled (just a little!) in therapy, we can spend a lot of time over-analysing our own parents and the role they played in shaping our personality. We spend less time, however, contemplating the people who came before them, especially, I think, when it’s your own father’s mother… and their mother.
And yet, when it comes to my Great Grandmother (the mother of my nanny who just passed), she and I bear startling similarities:
My Great Grandmother was widowed at the age of 23…. as was I.
Her husband, my Great-Grandfather was 36-years-old when his ship hit a mine… the same age as my late husband when he passed.
She was tenacious and spirited, and interested in the full spectrum of people.
She didn’t care for social convention and had a ‘war child’ out of wedlock. When I published my first book, Wife Interrupted, she read it (sex scenes and all!), and proudly proclaimed that she loved it.
After the war she rescued a German puppy and called it a very, unusual name. Over 60 years later, when my daughter was born, I chose the same name. I had no idea. I have never heard of anyone with that name before (human or puppy!). I only discovered the link this week, when my parents were going through old paperwork.
What’s the point of all this?
Well, it’s easy to think of people as so individualistic, even if we belong to the same family, but there are no coincidences and we are all interlinked. I have always felt like, my great-grandmother and I shared a sparkle of the same soul, and I suspect she felt it too.
She was the one who gave me money when I was robbed whilst I was a young backpacker, and could no longer afford to buy a camper-van. She loved making it happen for me. She is still the one I look to when I worry about facing more trauma in my future (she was widowed again, early, but she continued to live a life filled with love and community, and she was adored by all).
Well, it’s easy to think of people as so individualistic, even if we belong to the same family, but there are no coincidences and we are all interlinked.
In some spiritual belief systems, it’s said that our mother’s aura effects our ‘internal light’ (boosting our immune system and elevating our emotional state). Whereas our father’s aura effects our ‘external light’ (the relationships we attract and the opportunities we draw in).
When it comes to the women who raised the men who raised us… I think it can be a little of both.
When I connect to my great-grandmother in meditation, she lights the fire in my belly to keep living out loud, and loving with passion and courage. I can see the sparkle in her eye. I can hear her say: “Keep going! Don’t worry about anyone else. Be you!.”
How are you grateful for the women who raised the men who raised you?
I’d love to hear below.
x Amy