What inspired me to make this session was a TikTok in which the Judd sisters were discussing family after their mother’s tragic death. She died by suicide. They spent time together reminiscing about the past. They realized that they were now the elders in their nuclear family and that their children really didn’t know all of the family stories, or their superstitions, or their habits, and traditions. It got them to consider passing those stories on to the younger generation despite running the risk of them not caring.
Now, that got me thinking about my personal situation. I am an only child of immigrant parents who are divorced. I grew up with a very small number of family members consistently around me, but there were so so many memories nonetheless. There are so many little things I’ve never shared with my daughters. Then I started to think, like Wynonna and Ashley, how much does this matter, really? Who cares? What will they do with the information? What will they do with the knowledge that their great great grandmother used to make dolls out of Palmolive soap bottles and sell them?
The truth is, I don’t know. But, to me, the Memory Keeper of that particular piece of seemingly ridiculous information, it is heavily laden with subliminal messages of my relationship with money. Realizing this blew me away. My great grandmother’s handicraft allowed her small freedoms in this foreign country. She didn’t speak the language, she was too old to find work, and she lived with her son, my dear uncle. He was one of six children. She was always raising children, keeping house, and caretaking. Who was my Abuela outside of this?
I remember seeing her dolls lined up in her Brooklyn apartment. At some point, we must’ve had one in ours too. She knitted colorful dresses and bonnets, sewed on lace trim and buttons, and perhaps glued dolls heads onto the soap bottle. I think eventually, the dolls were designed to fit over toilet paper rolls in bathrooms. She brought her creations to the practical side. I can’t remember what she charged or how much she made, although I’m sure it wasn’t a lot. But the point is, she had an artistic and creative imagination and she was industrious enough to see her projects to fruition and have the courage to sell them. Aside from the dolls, she was the neighborhood babysitter and cooked from-scratch meals for the younger Cubans in the neighborhood who did work, long hours at that, and could afford to pay her a little in exchange for the convenience. Abuela Mercedita was a business woman at heart. She was fiercely determined, brave, and talented.
Fast forward to me and my life and what those memories mean to me in changing my life to represent my desires and hopes, my dreams. Had her “hustle” to keep her head above water financially, trickle into my grandmother’s and mother’s psyche, and inevitably into mine? Did a lack mentality (not to ever discredit their very real hardships) become part of my emotional inheritance unbeknownst to me? And the answer is YES!
When I began the endeavor of reversing all the stagnancies in my life, of starting my healing journey, memory keeping was at the forefront of what I needed to address immediately, if not sooner. Where are all these perceptions about money coming from? Are they coming from lived experience (some of them were) or are they tenets of lives lived by my ancestors that I carried without question? Supporting yourself is a difficult struggle that leaves you exhausted and never having enough. That was my relationship with money because that was their relationship with money. No questions asked. It was our family identity. We are hard workers living a hard-knocks life.
Once I reckoned this to be my self-imposed truth, I came upon the next obstacle: how dare I abandon their story to write my narrative and change my reality? Ah. Enter GUILT. She’ll charm the pants of ya, that one. Did they really go through all that suffering so you spoiled-rotten American can turn your nose up at them and just make a right hand turn at breakneck speed? You really can’t be that ungrateful to the sacrifrices they have made. You can’t become someone different and also pay them homage. What a mockery.
But I am doing just that.
I trust deeply that they hear me pray every day.
I honor them out loud and in silence.
I am what they dreamed of, like I dream of my own daughters’ lives.
Their blood is in my veins.
I lived in my grandmother’s body before she carried my mom.
I know I am the alchemist of my life in part because of them.
This is where I am at at this very moment.
I have loved and have been loved.
My family is always near me.
I am a mother.
I am educated.
I have a career.
I have my own business.
I’ve traveled.
I make my own decisions and change my mind when it suits me.
I am doing all the inner work they weren’t allowed to do.
When fear sets in, I envision them walking behind me.
I remember that they have been through worse and so have I.
I promise them to keep the memories but only in the capacity that they will help me manifest, with the light and love of God and the Universe, into the healthiest version of all our dreams.
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