It was a ruthless process capturing everything I wanted to share about working grandmotherhood into the six minutes of the TEDX talk. So much glorious advice from the women I spoke to had to be cut out and so many stories from my own experience silenced. I hope I kept the essentials, that working grandmotherhood is a combination of leading and following, understanding where the power lies and focussing on being interesting, brave, fun and above all, loving.
I wanted to use an adaptation of the word we invented on the first Women Emerging expedition: ‘Motherness’ (recognising that motherness is not limited to women who have birthed children themselves, it is in all of us). I wanted to coin the word ‘grandmotherness,’ but there was simply not enough time for it. I am convinced that ‘grandmotherness‘ is evident everywhere, Radhika Lee in Kenya has without doubt grandmothered every child in the school she leads!
What else did I cut? The story from Susan about seeing the world through others’ eyes, such an essential piece of leadership which can get left behind as age sets in. For Susan, it became center stage as she took her grandchild for a walk each morning. She had ignored birdsong all her life. It was listening intently with the five-year-old she loves that made her realise what she had never heard.
The learning is not all new though, Motherness and grandmotherness have much in common.
- Ingenuity is challenged
- Time is squeezed
- The imposter syndrome is ever present, as you ask yourself what could possibly qualify you for this role
- The competition never ends, with other mothers, and now other grandmothers eying your position
- You are visible one minute and invisible the next
- Everyone continues to have an opinion on everything
- The relentless sense of guilt continues relentlessly
- Pace must pivot, one minute it’s high work pressure, the next it’s the pace of a toddler
I still put my key in the lock at the end of the day and forget to leave my work pace outside, within minutes the response is screaming or crying or hiding.
To these familiar working motherness challenges, I listed many working grandmotherness challenges in the TEDX and I can add three already;
- All my children all parent differently, so my grandmotherness must too
- I must remember that I am always being scrutinised for any favouritism
- Being patronised is a constant, especially for my technical skills which are assumed to be pathetic
I have no doubt there are many more challenges. It is after all not easy to combine leading and following and jump elegantly between the two.
Especially when you know that the price of failure is astronomical. I watched my mother-in-law for years, she didn’t understand the power dynamic. She didn’t see the inevitable reality that I had ever increasing power. Even if I didn’t want to monopolise it. Unbending, she wasted years of grandmotherness joy trying to maintain her power. Until the last twenty years, then it was beautiful.
Today I watch other mothers-in-law across the world who do have all the power as the all-important mother of a son. If they choose to wield it, they destroy potentially beautiful partnerships.
As I look back at the TEDXtalk , I do wonder if grandmotherness really matters much. Was it frivolous – as the world burns – to talk about grandmotherness? Almost certainly yes. Though the process did convince me that we are who we are because of our grandmothers. I pray that our granddaughters do a better job than we have at leading a less grim world.
PS: I should have ended my talk by revealing what was in my pockets. A toy in one, my old age bus pass in the other, and the back pocket always has a large battery pack for recharging, I am never in one place for long enough to recharge properly.
