This has been a long time coming.

This digital journal.   I’ve been writing about things for quite awhile, and thoughts come and go.  But occasionally, I have a thought that might make sense to someone else.

I am not a professional.  I don’t have a communications or journalism degree. I am an elementary school teacher with lots and lots to write about just in that category.  But there is more to life than just degrees.  This blog is about family: imperfect, worn out, try-again family.  And I am part of all of that.  It’s about generational imperfection, and learning how to find oneself because of that imperfection. It’s about ups of learning to see beauty and making connections and downs of feeling lost.  It’s about the sparrow feeling like they have been forgotten on occasion, and trying to find a home….

As stated in my last post, my grandmother had a very difficult childhood and a difficult life.  She didn’t have any use for God;  He had abandoned her long ago and was too busy “worrying about the damn sparrows” to think of her.   She was referring of course, to the references laced throughout the bible about God not forgetting even the tiniest and seemingly insignificant sparrow (Luke12: 6-7, Matthew 10:29).   I remember hearing those words coming from my grandmother, and her mouth saying them.  I remember the tone in her voice, and I believed she meant every word.  Maybe God HAD been too busy to think of a little, dirty, unkempt prairie girl with snarls in her hair… After hearing as an adult, all that she had been through–it would have been natural for her to come to that conclusion.

As shown in this picture, grandma doesn’t fully engage with the photographer.  Her smile is noticeably cautious here on the left side of the photo.  I see myself in those eyes, and grieve for that young girl that wasn’t taken care of.  An aged mother in bottom right, Great grandma Burchell didn’t have the sanity, physical health and family to help her.

Later, a beauty, neither of her two husbands could offer her what she was looking for as they both eventually threw up their hands at her angry outbursts and emotional instability.

Through many struggles, my grandma–a brilliant nurse who didn’t quite finish Catholic nursing school—- because she got kicked out for putting a lit cigarette in the Virgin Mary Statue’s hand—-made her way in the world as best she could.   Her medical brilliance was undeterred– and though paid as a lower level nurse, she was the one whom all the doctors consulted about cases.  She made many diagnoses, and treated where others didn’t know how to cure the patient.   She was even hired regularly to do the difficult job of administering anesthetic with use of ether in the little farmtowns where she lived.  This was a difficult job, and grandma would monitor her patients with the adept skill of any expert of anesthetics by skin tone, pulse rate, and other markers of vital signs.  Grandma would have the talent to diagnose where others couldn’t figure out what was wrong.  My aunt told me that she diagnosed a patient that had gone into diabetic coma by the smell in the room.  And she was right on target.  The doctor who needed her there for help, was so relieved.

Grandma was a tortured soul, and had lots of unconnected relationships.  She felt neglected by everyone; especially God.  She had never been shown a normal life- and was too mentally and emotionally sick herself to know why.  Alienating much of her family, we learned later that grandma had spent some time homeless and living in a laudromat..
Later, my mother would bring my grandma to live in the same town as us.  Mom had a complicated relationship with her mother, and this would carry down into future generations.  She was so good to care for her mom, but I saw a disconnectedness there.   I didn’t know all the ins and outs of what an emotionally healthy relationship with a parent was.  As with her mother, my mom was unavailable to me emotionally.  Not intentionally— no.  She just lacked the tools to offer nurturing and stability  There was a codependent state between mother and child, and I saw my mom trying so hard to make grandma happy.  Unfortunately, this type of relationship would carry down to me and mom, and then to me with my children.  I will talk about this later.

As a child, I didn’t quite know why my grandmother was so wounded.   I spent some time with her.  I always knew she loved me.  But there was a part of her that truly didn’t connect with or love herself.  I remember being next to her in her bed with crisp white sheets (her training as a nurse compelled her to keep this standard),  and her telling me some stories.  But right in the middle of them, she would drift off and either curse at some imaginary mental figure that had done her wrong or experience tangible grief that a 9 year old wouldn’t be able to identify with or fix.  I was a “pleaser” child, and always tried hard to make better what I couldn’t; and like my own mom, this would carry into adulthood.

Even though I’ve had a wonderful life, I seek growth and new opportunities to lean into new challenges and ideas.  Life is about “getting in the arena” as Brene Brown talks about in this talk in reference to a powerful  TED talk .   Take a listen.

So here I am tentitively planting one foot in the arena…..