6. Missing Matriarchs

An ode to the fierce female ancestors who shape(d) my world

There were 3 potential topics I contemplated sharing for this month’s newsletter.  I was noticing that despite the excitement to eventually share each of these pieces that are in various stages of draft, the energy wasn’t quite present to finish any of them.  On 10/22, I pivoted, inspired to share some writing I’ve done in response to various prompts and exercises guided by Jeannine Ouellette at Writing in the Dark (https://writinginthedark.substack.com/about) and Writing in the Dark: The School (Current cohort registration closed).  Writing that has helped me process grief that is both new and grief that has been long repressed, finally filling it’s lungs after years in a barely breathable cage within my heart and body.  Grief around passing the threshold where every single grandparent who ever claimed me as theirs is gone.  The last to go exited this earthly plane on 9/21/24.  

I am filled with both sadness and gratitude.  Gratitude that for many of my grandparents, I was able to hold hands,  hold space for their tears and fears, and hear the words “I love you” from a soft place reserved for granddaughters. Gratitude that for many of them (and many there were thanks to me my über blended family), I was the first grandchild, which granted me so much time.  Sadness for the finality of the last. Sadness for the hands I didn’t hold at the end.  Sadness of the most complex loss of them all, because I lost her three times, in three different ways.

In the way that the universe does, my decision to put together and share some of the words that have come through in this deep processing of grief was quickly solidified when I learned of the passing of another matriarch.  One whom I had never had the honor to observe despite several attempts to do so.  Grizzly #399, Queen of the Tetons was hit by a car and died on 10/22.  News of her death tripped that tender part inside me that has always felt safer grieving for animals than I have for humans, even when the cage was still in place.  The symbolism in the timing I decided to share some glimpses of my grief, starring my own missing matriarchs, was not lost on me.  As I honor the grief of the many wildlife watchers and photographers of the most famous grizzly to ever walk the earth, from whom humans will continue to learn to expand their beliefs on about the brilliance of mammals, I am saying yes to the energetic tug to use this space to honor the grief that has been pouring into my writing for the last month.

It is also not lost on me that it very well may come off as f#cked up that I am grieving the death of a bear, never having mentioned within my substack the horrors of entire family lines being murdered in Palestine for over a year now, with no end in sight, aside from what is looking like a clear path to unrestrained extermination.  Especially in the midst of mass murders in North Gaza at this moment.  If you know me, you know that my personal instagram is where I primarily express myself politically.   In this moment because it is incredibly relevant, I’ll name that I’m aware that I am privileged to have lost grandparents solely to age and disease.

One of the process related realizations I have noticed throughout this time spent with the craft of writing, is that there is something essential within me that both thrives within and rejects constraint. Like the way that I generally reject ‘shoulds’ and social norms.  Within the WITD writing communities, there are limits to the word count that we share, to make it digestible for one another and to be intentional about word choice.   Without constraint, my combination of propensity for hyper-focus and verbosity lends to VERY long newsletters 😅.  Within the practice of writing, constraint allows me to jump into the experience of creativity AND not get lost in it. To pull back out of the writing process (and recently, pull out of the deep and intentional grief process), leaving SPACE for all sorts of my other needs to be met. 

What follows is a collection of pieces reduced to similar word count accompanying the respective inspiring prompts and exercises.  Each is in early draft stages, tied together with the thread of grief.  One day, there will be shadows and hints and flavors of these in a memoir. Today, I share the originals.

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Inspiring Prompt: Writing in the Dark, The Letter Reimagined Intensive

Hi Nanny! 

It’s your grandy-girl <3

I’ve been traveling for just over two months this go-round.  As far from Florida as can be in the Lower 48.  I’m doing a lot of birding these days, go figure!

I was so jealous when you and Pop-Pop went on that viking river cruise.  Our little pod never got a chance to go further than day trips to the Everglades and Naples and Sanibel, before eventually even Bonita Beach was too far.  

I recently let the cat out of the bag about the night we got pulled over inside the gates.  I didn’t think twice before adult version of me told mom something the teenage version of me NEVER would have.  You don’t tell on an parent’s parents.  Grandy-girls don’t tell on parents to their parents.  Even when desperate, with nowhere else to turn. 

Coming from Backwater Jack’s.  Forbidden tastes of whisky on maraschino cherries you’d begrudgingly pluck for me from your manhattans, even though you loved them.  In an autopsy, how many of those cherries would they find? Would they also find a bag of memories squirreled away?  Too precious to be lost to the gradual and then rapid eating away of time and place and face that is dementia?  How old am I in that bag?

I’ve been so focused on the hummingbirds that I didn’t even notice there are at least 6 chickadees in the tree.  Actually, I just used this app that you would LOVE and the little birds are called Bushtits 😂!

I have so many questions for you.  When did you stop wearing bras and how did you know your comfort mattered the most?  What did you do with the watercolor paintings you finished?  I never found any with the supplies.  Can you remind me the names of your cool Crone pen-pals from the AOL chat rooms?  The ones who came to visit when you were alone in the condo in Bonita.  When for a while it seemed like you might live your best life yet as Widow. 

I wish I knew you couldn’t remember and that you weren’t avoiding impossible conversations.  So I could have been there to remember for both of us.  Or not remember and point out birds with names like Bushtit.  Just to feel you swat my arm, a farce of disapproval, winking conspiratorially before cackling maniacally.  

Love,

Cassidy

Nanny Pat, from whom I inherited my connection to nature and a tendency to thrive in the joy of showing love through being an absolute goof.

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Inspiring Prompt: Writing in the Dark, misc prompt, featuring the singular time I have utilized AI.

Strawberry Moon

As a kid in a massively blended family, I had many grandparents. I have one left and she is lost in the mire of dementia. My second to last grandmother died a few weeks ago. She only liked coffee ice cream her entire life until that last week earthside. That week she asked for strawberry ice cream. We fed her tiny bites that last night. Maybe that was the closest she could think of to the berry sauce she’d serve with the traditional Norwegian Riskrem, a tiny bit of her famous holiday traditions seared into our tastebuds.

She asked me to rub her arm. Then her forehead. Relaxing into the touch. She apologized for being so tired. Her body small and finally comfortable with the cocktail of meds. She rallied her strength to tell us she loves us. Voice small, A WHISPER, unlike the strength and boldness of the woman who raised 3 children and then remained the counterpoint of the 14 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. Despite the joy she experienced being a great-grandmother, as the second-oldest grandchild and a girl, I’m realizing that she was one of the first people to accept my choice to be childfree.

The way she claimed me over 30 years ago as hers and loved me until the very end, is such a small representation of the immense love she gave freely throughout her life. When people suggest the challenges of being part of a blended family which has shape-shifted countless times, Grandma is the face I see, and I am filled with gratitude.

She died that night after we left, under the strawberry full moon. 

Grandma Amon- Food as a love language to a T. Top left she is marrying Grandpa Carlo, who I assumed she was already married to since they were together the entirety that I knew them!

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Inspiring Prompt: WITD: SCHOOL, September, 2024, on thresholds. 

Congratutations!

The girls’ screams reached across half a football field from stadium seats to the stage. Adding volume to make up for the missing matriarch. The source of the tears streaking through meticulously applied makeup. They had swept in, put me together, keeping me upright so I wouldn’t wash away like the waves I stepped into the last morning I saw her. Hours before cancer took away her words. Days before cancer took our everything.

Fish were rotting in the harbor, encased by humidity. A soft blue maxi dress skimming over 27 year old skin. A white spotted pattern on the trim, not yet spoiled. Yet to collect grime from the bar floor and familiar cobblestones and sidewalks covered with invisible trails of footprints between the Dead End Saloon and Fleet Street, between Dogwatch and Pratt Street and Wolfe. Familiar cobblestones soon to hold the blood from the pistol whipped face of a friend who left the party alone.

A flaky, creamy cake, topped with misspelled ‘congratutations.’ The chef’s error unnoticed by the smitten dress wearer. One oblivious moment in the spotlight. The warm cashmere wrap of my humans filling the space incompatible with her particular gnawing absence. Oblivious that the chef would soon join those forever absent.

Fancy Nancy to the very end. Hospital bed pedicures, the tap tap of your rings on a cat or one of your girls’ arms. Outrageous outfits that inspire me to wear an outrageous costume this weekend.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for witnessing me.  Leaving space for grief was an intention in my decision to go on ‘sabbatical’ last year, and being in this transitional space of gathering information about which of the infinite possibilities within this timeline I will choose to follow next, healing has felt infinitely more accessible when I don’t have to wipe away all evidence of tears to hop on a zoom call and play strong.

I shared recently that some changes are coming to this space in relation to my commitment to follow my energy.   Particularly when it comes to dedicating time to the craft of writing and my ongoing experiences learning from Jeannine Ouellette as a member of Writing in the Dark (Registration open, ongoing and HIGHLY recommended), and more recently joining Writing in the Dark: The SCHOOL (Registration closed for this cohort), that’s where the energy has been tugging me.  Most of the writing prompts lend to something memoir*ish.  Instead of spreading my writing too thin and forcing separate buckets for the children’s books, the newsletter, and the writing that’s emerging in WITD, I’m listening to the nudge to share bits of it all in here.  They all fit here on this soft lil’ stack because everything is connected.  The way I make choices, show up in all my various relationships, and the way I’m continually dancing with my dreams is wrapped up and informed by the many stories of my life and the many pieces I’m carrying of my ancestors, the places I’ve been, through the very particular lens of my perception.  

All this loss, and more, has lit the fire under my own ass to live like I am LIVING. I will no longer live like I’m dying. Ugh, that song got to me for years. Despite disliking most country music, the way ‘Live Like You Were Dying’ by Tim McGraw and I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack both resonate deep in my core with something like deep loss laced with a spark to follow joy and in that following, take every chance to love, leap, cry, dance, laugh, and BELIEVE. SO-

I went sky diving ✅

I went Rocky Mountain climbing ✅

I did not go 2.7 seconds on a bull (of any name) ❌

I have loved deeper and spoken sweeter ✅

I wholeheartedly gave forgiveness I’d been denying ✅

I became more of a friend a friend would like to have (including to myself #boundaries) ✅

I watched MANY eagles as they were flying ✅

Spotify playlist created while writing this newsletter:

I cling relentlessly to my sense of wonder ✅

I still feel infinitely small when I stand beside the ocean ✅

I run toward those mountains in the distance ✅

Steering clear of the path of least resistance ✅

Taking chances absolutely worth taking ✅

When I get the choice to sit it out or dance, I DEFINITELY dance* ✅

*Including this morning as I’m editing, listening to a playlist called SAD, that used to be the only way I could force myself to process emotions, by listening to every song attached to every heartbreak until tears would finally burst through their cage. This morning I hopped and swirled, smiled, bopped my hips around. There is space for this joy because I made a radical decision in part to make space for grief. Grief that the limited words selected for this newsletter can’t begin to cover. Grief that due to losing photos countless times, it took hours to source photos of these woman who informed to much of who I am. Grief around an honorary grandmother I lost suddenly this winter. Grief that I didn’t say ‘I forgive you’ out loud to my aunt before she too left the earthly plane this year, despite it being true in my heart. Grief around the grandfathers who are not the spotlight of this writing and will certainly get their time on stage, because those men each gifted me with their own beautiful connections.

Reader Invitation 💌:

Where are the places, spaces, people, and practices where have noticed your grief can surface with relative safety?  Do you desire to allow more of that (answer to previous question) into your life?  What would it feel like to pair grief with an intentionality around honoring this very essential part of our existence as living beings?    

Alternate invitation💌:

With death being the only guarantee in this lifetime, what is one radical act of committing to living like YOU are living? I’d love to particularly hear about the most unobservable ways. The things I might not know you were being intentional about unless you told me.

As always, feel free to share things that come up in response to the invitations in the comments!! Comments are no longer subscriber only, so review the community guidelines¹ for a container from which to base your sharing and engagement.

TLDR:

Allowing space for grief, particularly through the act of writing through grief around my grandmothers, has opened space for joy. More memoir*ish writing will be showing up in this space.

Land Acknowledgement:

I’m publishing today from the ancestral territories of Cayuse; Clackamas; Stl’pulmsh (Cowlitz); Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians; Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; and Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla Peoples.

1. Community Guidelines will be updated to reflect changes to the subscriber functions. AND, the info on perfectionism and advice giving apply. The most basic ask is to show up here with curiosity and generosity of heart.