Credit where credit is due: The idea for this article comes from Rookie Magazine—specifically, their videos called “Ask a Grown,” where preteen/teenage kids seeking life advice send in questions to be answered by their favorite grown celebrities (names like Hillary Clinton, Stephen Colbert, and Karen O).
Much to my peer group’s dismay, I’m actually not at all familiar with Rookie Magazine. However, I am a devoted follower of This American Life, and one of their more recent episodes covered the magazine’s “Ask a Grown” videos, with hilarious and touching audio clips and all, and I fell in love. This launched me, involuntarily, into this project. But I didn’t want to stop at asking a grown. I wanted to seek wisdom and strength in its most pure form: the grandma. Maybe it’s because I recently dove into Golden Girls and never looked back, or because I have some exceptional grandmothers in my life, but the whole thing boils down to this: I believe in the power of the grandma, and I believe in the power of women helping women.
So I made and distributed a link where young women could anonymously submit questions about life/love/loss/sex/family/business/anything at all, and I asked a few friends of mine for their help. Respondents were encouraged to provide their age if they felt so inclined, but otherwise, there weren’t guidelines (and the Grandmas were in the same boat). I gave the women that agreed to participate a couple of questions and told them they could answer as many or as few as they desired, in whatever length or mode they chose. Some were short, others long, some funny, and some more serious. But I wrote each of them down with the intention of keeping them forever.
Marsha is sixty-eight and she has two grandchildren. When I asked Summer, her only granddaughter, to tell me about Marsha, she said, “I love my grandma because she is the most loving and accepting person I know. I come to her for advice or when I’m not feeling my best and she somehow always makes me feel better. She has the most contagious laugh and loves dogs even more than I do.” I received Marsha’s answers via text.
Q: What is the best recipe for food to eat when you have a broken heart? What is a good recipe to make for someone if you have love to give them?
Marsha: “If you feel like cooking, maybe a good soup loaded with Italian seasonings: onion, garlic, and orzo. Chicken in the soup, or a substitute if you are vegan. Apple pie for dessert.”
Q: How do you know when to finally end a long-term relationship? (Age 19)
Marsha: It’s time to end the relationship when the other person does not hold your interest or stimulate you in the least way.
Q: What has changed most since you were your grandchildren’s age? What do you wish had changed? (Age 20)
Marsha: The only real change is a broader understanding of myself because of my experiences in life––a knowing that everything really does work out.
Q: Is life always going to be this difficult and emotionally tumultuous? Does it settle down eventually? (Age 20)
Marsha: Life stays difficult and can be tumultuous at any period in life. It depends on whether you make a conscious choice to be happy and make best of a situation, or if you choose to allow a situation to steal your joy. You learn to do this if you make this decision early in life and stick with it. And never be afraid to ask for help if needed.
Q: How old were you when you had your first love? How did you meet them?
Marsha: I met my first love at the age of fifteen, at a neighborhood party.
Susan is seventy-one. She has two children and five grandkids. I’ve known Susan’s granddaughter, Sophia, since I was five-years-old. When I asked Sophia why she thinks her grandma is special, she said, “I think my grandma is special because she is the most selfless person I’ve ever met. But she does that while respecting herself and knowing herself more than anyone I know and she is able to do so much within those parameters. She is one of the few people I know I can always rely on to listen and support me without judgment and with unconditional love. My grandmother to me embodies the phrase ‘unconditional love’ and I believe that the people in her life really feel that. She is inspiring.” Sophia asked Susan the questions and recorded their conversation, so I got to listen in full (and my heart was spilling over!!). I think it’s imperative that I mention the birds chirping in the background of the audio.
Q: I’m halfway through my second semester of college and I’m feeling incredibly overwhelmed. How do we get through situations that feel hopeless or times where we have to make decisions that impact our future when we have no idea what we want? I know that this too shall pass, but do you have any mantras or wisdom to share that might help make the hopelessness feel less smothering and overwhelming?
Susan: I say to myself, is this really such a bad place, or so hopeless? And then I try in a practical way to identify steps instead of letting myself wallow in that. I need to take a shower, I need to take a walk. Exercise and the outdoors have been two strategies that I’ve used my whole life because I love them both. I love to move and I love nature. I think nature for me is a great equalizer, whenever I’m really down or sad I can always go outside and appreciate the beauty of a bird or a tree. Now I’m in a different state in my life… I have less future, so I really ask myself, what are the blessings in my life in this moment? And not focus so much on what will I have tomorrow, or what if this happens, or that happens? I think in some ways that is a good strategy actually whatever age you are, because you don’t actually have control of everything. So it’s living in the moment more, I’m not talking about partying all the time, I just mean being present and thinking about what are the things that you really treasure? I try to cultivate a spirit of gratitude and to be aware of the wonderful things in my life… then I deal with it by having an action, because you can get caught in that feeling, the “I don’t know what I’m doing.” I try to find the things, when I’m working or just trying to live my life, the things I enjoy, things that challenge me, friends that challenge me, relationships of all ages. I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do when I was your age, I never had a clue, and even now I have the same questions. If I can’t make a decision, I stop trying to. Because this decision isn’t ready to be made, and that’s okay, it doesn’t have to be.
Sophia: I think that even makes it a better decision because things fall into place and there are other circumstances going into it.
Susan: You see that more retrospectively. When you see that what happens is something you hadn’t decided, and it actually leads you in a different direction. I would say I trust the process now and when I feel very conflicted I don’t hammer myself about it and I just say that’s okay and continue on with the things that I’m doing. And when I look at my life, inevitably something occurs that pushes me in one direction or the other. Speaking to college kids I would often say, “it’s okay, you don’t’ have to know,” but there is a lot of pressure. And I think that pressure comes from values that aren’t really that important, like money. It’s about developing yourself, I like myself probably better than anybody likes me. That means I think I’m good, neat, fun––I have plenty of potholes, but all in all, I like me. And that helps. Because I’m my best friend in that respect, I want to have myself be in the situation that is most congruent with who I am. Trusting yourself.
Sophia: Yeah, allowing yourself the space to get to know yourself. Hearing you, with such a strong sense of who you are… for me, who doesn’t know who I am or what I’m doing, that feels hopeful.
Susan: Yeah, it helps to be brave. Because when you feel like that, it’s easy not to take steps, it’s easy to roll up. When my mom died, I was a senior in high school, and I left where I had always been to go to Arizona, to go to college. And I knew not one person there. A lot of that I did because I was hurting, and in some ways, I thought if I was in a different place… But in a lot of ways, it was a step… So, I think that’s the other thing, sometimes on this journey, you have to have the courage to kind of say, “okay, I’ll take this risk, even if it’s not comfortable.” You don’t get a Ph.D. and do things like that without taking risks. If you have a baby, if you teach, those are all risks and they can be scary. But if you have a fundamental belief in yourself––that doesn’t mean I’ve never been down, or that you never seek solace or help––but I felt a responsibility early in life, a responsibility to myself. This is a value I’ve had all my life, a belief, I believe your first responsibility is to you. Your life is your gift, that’s the gift you get, and so then it is up to you to enjoy it, challenge it, all of those things.
Q: What do you do when you start to feel very alone? What connects you to others and to yourself when you start to feel isolated?
Susan: I think about how I am not alone, I think about how we are all intertwined. I do that mainly through nature, and then I know I need to move. So even taking my dogs for a walk, I’m a different person when I get back. The other thing is reaching out, and I have, fortunately, many people. Your mom is my best friend, probably in the whole world, but it goes way beyond that. I’m a person that can get isolated, I like to be alone, but I know when to reach out. I make a date, send a text, take the dogs out, I get in the pool, I get down on the floor and do some yoga. Connecting to myself, the self that is more nurturing than that. Every age is challenging for different reasons. Seventy is challenging, you’re no longer a hot tamale, you have to reframe the stage you’re in. It’s our responsibility to be happy, it’s not up to others to make us that. But I think this strategy applies for whatever age you’re at, even for the different reasons you’re in that. Maybe there is one big reason for that, it’s just called life.
Q: Based on your life experiences what is the best age to get married and/or have kids at?
Looking back at my life, I am glad I had my two kids in my twenties after I graduated college because I had the energy and the ability to work and I had more degrees of freedom. That’s the thing that you have to consider when you’re going to make a decision to marry and/or have children. The marriage part, what does the partner bring to the equation? A lot of people don’t think about that. When you’re young it’s all about other things. I want to be with someone, it feels good, it’s sexually good, or whatever. The kinds of qualities that are needed to raise children have to do with the ability to make a real partnership with somebody whether your stay married or not. Make that decision and be committed to that, and I always was, but it never stopped my life. I was big and pregnant in both of my advanced degrees, and then when I had to do all the things like internships, I was able to because I had a good partner who made a good living. I never felt like my kids were strangling me… I was able to have my own life. That was always my value, too. I wanted to have a professional life, I wanted to experience the world. The age part has more to do with the fact that at certain periods of your life, you have more energy. The other thing I would say is that I’m so happy because it wasn’t just about my children, but also my grandchildren. I was always able to be very present in the lives of my grandchildren. And that’s been a great gift, I had a blast with all of them.
Sophia: Now you’re just waiting for a great-grandbaby to pop out.
Susan: And that could come, too. The one other thing, I guess because I know that this is for Emma, I have to make a feminist comment here because I think women really need to make this decision much more consciously than they do because it isn’t just about the moment of their life, it’s about all of their life. If you’re going to be partnered or to have a child, you have to really have the maturity to understand what that means. I knew I always wanted to be a mom, but I knew I never wanted to be a housekeeper and a wife, kind of thing. I never had that vision, ever. I knew I had to have some things of my own. It was important for me to get an education, to have work experiences. I always had things I was doing, I took a ballet class, I was always about developing myself and it made me a better mom and grandma because I was really interested, and then interested in all that they did, all that you guys did, going to the productions, it was all great fun. To capture all of it, I believe that life is just a great gift. If you can get out of your places of feeling so blue and desperate and just look around you, it’s so beautiful. I get a lot of that from nature. And that thinking is what spurs me on. I have this gift and I need to use it, I want to use it. For myself and then for all the people that I love, and the people that I will never meet. I’ve been blessed.
Sophia: Go life.
Susan: Go life.
The last of the grandmas to participate in this project are two best friends that teach me, challenge me, and inspire me. Even in casual conversation, these women are the kind of people that have you thinking, “I’ve got to write that down,” after each sentence they finish. They’re always up-to-date on the arts, leaving the rest of us to rely on their refined recommendations. I asked them to provide a little information on themselves, and this is what I got:
Hazel was born in Chicago in 1941, and Frances was born on a farm in rural Pennsylvania in 1934. Hazel attended the University of Wisconsin (B.A. in French) and went on to law school at the University of Denver. Fran attended the University of Paris, the University of Denver (B.A. in Art History and French), the University of WA Seattle (M.A. in Art History), and was a volunteer for the Peace Corps in Ghana from 2010 to 2012. Hazel has three grandchildren and Fran has five. I received their responses over email.
Q: How have you overcome discrimination in your personal life and in the workplace? Are there any strategies you suggest to young women? (Age 19)
Hazel: I am a grandmother and an attorney. Here are some strategies I suggest to young women: Focus on excellence in academics. Be available, open and honest. Concentrate on maintaining friendships as well as business acquaintances. Dress professionally in the workplace. Learn two additional foreign languages. Increase your English vocabulary and use them in the proper context. When you receive a new book, skim the table of contents first thing. Take time for physical exercise. Have fun.”
Q: Based on the progress you’ve seen in your lifetime, do you think women will ever reach a state of equality to their male counterparts?
Fran: “Ever”? reach a “state of equality.”? I cannot predict the future, but male and female equality has made progress in my lifetime. One area of inequality that women continue to “fight” for professionally is to receive equal pay in the same profession or job as their male counterparts. I’m not sure what “male counterpart” you are referring to. Professional? Social? If you are interested in a profession or career identical to a male counterpart, you should always ask for and receive equal pay. The issues of equality between men and women will change from generation to generation. “Equality” is affected by many issues in government, business, social structures, and religion. Women must continue to ask for and expect equality to their male counterpart.
I’m so grateful to these women who took time out of their busy days to share their wisdom and thoughts to help women they’ve never met and will never meet, and equally grateful to the women who took the time to send in questions. If your question wasn’t answered, it’s because our team of highly qualified grandmas truly believe that you already know the answer in your heart. If you still feel uncertain, what I recommend above all else, is to call a grandma in your life.
That’s usually just the thing.
Image Credit: Featured Image, 1, 2