06/12/2026
Today I learned my grandmother died two years ago.
The grandmother I was named after.
The one who let me spend weekends at her senior community because it felt safer than home. The one who could turn twenty dollars of Social Security money into a trip to Hometown Buffet and somehow make me feel like the richest kid in the world.
Fourteen years ago we had a falling out when I was pregnant with my oldest. I was young, scared, and trying to protect my daughter the only way I knew how after going no contact with my mom (her daughter), who was struggling with alcoholism. My grandmother couldn’t understand it.
Maybe she couldn’t.
Maybe she wouldn’t.
Or maybe she was just trying to survive too.
So somehow we went no contact.
The last time I saw her, I was exploding pregnant.
She never got to see me become a mother.
But she never met any of my children.
She never got to see the life I built.
Long before that disagreement, she spent my entire childhood telling me the same thing over and over, and the truth is, even though we weren’t in each other’s lives anymore… it always rang in my head.
“It’s your responsibility to become something and no one else’s.”
To be more than what I believed I could be.
To be the woman she couldn’t become.
I didn’t get it then.
But here we are 14 years later, and I can finally see what she was trying to teach me.
I needed to leave it all to become who I am today.
A woman who stands on her own.
A woman who broke cycles instead of passing them down.
A woman who fought back against an abusive man without teaching her daughter to hate men.
A mother who protects her children, even when it cost her people she loved.
A woman who built a family from scratch.
A woman who created the kind of life she was told doesn’t exist.
And now, sitting here at thirty-seven, I finally understand that leaving wasn’t me giving up on everything my grandmother taught me.
It was me listening.
For fourteen years I’ve thought our story ended with rejection.
Now… now I think it ends with me carrying her words farther than either of us ever got the chance to see.
And if I could tell her one thing… just one…
It would be:
I listened, Bubba.
I listened every single day.
And you were right…
I became more than I ever believed I could be.
Rest easy, Bubba.
I’ll remember us and all the memories for the both of us, okay?
I’ll keep those safe.
You’ve got two little granddaughters up there I’d like you to meet…
Even though I’m really upset I’ll miss the first time you meet some of my children.
Take them to hometown buffet for me ok?
💔🕊️🥹
