Skip to main content

Morgana - Remembering my Grandmother

Yesterday I held my grandmother’s hand and told her I love her while she took her last breaths. My cousin Angela held a phone to her ear playing Bach (her favorite). Grandpa, my aunt Lisa, my cousin, and I held her, stroked her, and told her how much we loved her as her breath slowed and stopped. I feel infinitely blessed to have known her, to have been loved by her, and to have been there for her final moments.

My grandmother has been one of the biggest influences in my life.

She invented the original Renaissance Pleasure Faire, where I was conceived and had some of my best childhood memories…

I can thank my grandmother for my own background in ballet. She was a groundbreaking dancer in the history of American Modern Dance and Ballet, teaching Alvin Ailey, performing in the premiere of Stravinsky’s “Firebird” at the Hollywood Bowl, and scandalizing critics with an interracial love ballet.

(That’s grandma, probably 15 years old, in the front row, to the right of the guy in the middle. I think the man with glasses is Stravinsky. My Russian-speaking grandmother translated for him. She had been in the U.S. for about 2 years, after growing up in Shanghai.)

She taught me to love art through her art. She taught me perspective, the color wheel, took me to museums and explained what made things art.

(Family portrait when I was 9 years old. You can see me 3 times. That’s my grandmother in the right corner, looking at the viewer. My mother with my baby sister on the left. My great grandmother at the top. My two aunts complete the family.)

The Buddha statue in her fireplace (she was born in China) planted the seed for my fascination with world religion.

Grandma saved my life when my brilliant, beautiful, borderline personality/addict mother made home unsafe. I moved to grandma’s house when I was 14, before moving on to my father’s house.

(One of my last birthday breakfasts with my dad, who has Alzheimer’s, and my grandparents.)

Grandma taught me to take no shit from men who aren’t kind (based on her first marriage) and she modeled Great Love with her second marriage… they were madly in love for over 50 years. Even when she was losing consciousness she would reach for Ron when she heard his voice. (She also taught me that couples in their 80’s still have sex.)

Grandma quit her job teaching geriatric water aerobics at the Hollywood YMCA about 3 years ago when the new manager told her she shouldn’t say fuck. She responded, “Fuck that!” and left. Her departure caused a near riot.

Grandma taught me love. My earliest human memory is of her singing me Russian lullabies when I was a baby.

She was there for me all the years I had to sneak phone calls and visits with her behind my mother’s prohibition.

And I’m in awe of the hundreds of hours she poured into painting portraits of me over the years. Wow.

(That’s of me on her couch.)

 

Renaissance Faire, Art, Dance, Feminism (of course she voted for Hillary), Love, and Grit: that is my grandmother’s legacy.

(This is grandma as a single mother with three young daughters.)

 

The post Remembering my Grandmother appeared first on Morgana Rae & Charmed Life Coaching, Inc..



via Morgana Rae & Charmed Life Coaching, Inc. http://ift.tt/2xX9bKz
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Allana Pratt, Intimacy Expert - My boyfriend’s messaging strange women

Question: Do you have any idea why a man would start instant messaging strange woman after being in a five year relationship. Said he was “stupid” and wasn’t physical with anybody. I guess you can say I have trust issues. Answers: Ouch! I am so sorry. Do I have any idea why? Here is what I have learned, first off I am really sorry because that really hurts. If you have trust issues especially, that would hurt and sting even more. So first something about trust and then something about men. Trust: When we trust, it’s not that we trust someone to be perfect. That sets us up for failure because no one is perfect and you can’t control anybody. That is insanity if we try to control another and put all of our power – making sure they be a certain way to so that we are safe. Instead, find that safety and trust inside you. That safety being that capacity to discern and know that come what may, you’ve got your own back – you can take care of yourself. It takes a lot of pressure off of other...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to Set Priorities Using the ABCDE Method - Brian Tracy

The more thought you invest into setting priorities before you begin a task, the faster you will get the important things done. The more important and valuable the task is to you, the more motivated you are to overcome procrastination and launch yourself into the job. William Matthews said,  “The first law of success is concentration – to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right or to the left.” Today, I want to share a method of time-management for setting priorities that I’ve been using for years, called the ABCDE method. FREE TIME MANAGEMENT TOOL: Download the ABCDE Checklist PDF The ABCDE Method The ABCDE Method is a powerful priority setting technique that you can use every single day. This technique is so simple and effective that it can make you one of the most efficient and effective people in your field. The ABCDE list is a to-do list on steroids when it comes to learning how to prioritize . The power of t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Morgana - Your Wealth is in Your Weirdness

When I first became a life coach I was really concerned about being taken seriously, sounding professional, and not looking like a freak. Not much has changed: I still care about all that stuff. But I discovered over time that the more professional and non-freaky I try to sound, the more INVISIBLE I become. The minute I start to talk like a professional coach and go into one of those elevator speeches I spent so much money to learn (you know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you?)… I can see the other person’s EYES GLAZE OVER before they start scanning the room for someone more interesting. I can’t begin to tell you how annoying that is. Then one day, years ago, I stood up at a large networking meeting of high powered female entrepreneurs, pulled out a magic wand and called myself a “witchy” coach, and said something about how “goddesses can be old or young, thin or fat, can do what they want, charge what they want (and Aphrodite sleeps with whomever she wants, and no one dares...
Post a Comment
Read more