Who Showed You Unconditional Love?

I was talking with a good friend a while back now about the time in my life when my grandmother died, and promptly burst into tears. While I’m known to cry watching a sad movie or hearing a sad story, my own life is usually something I can talk about quite freely, especially in retrospect, so I was quite taken aback at the wave of emotion I felt thirty five years on.

My friend asked what my grandmother had represented in my life, a great question. “Kindness” I replied.

​This memory came back to me today when I was talking with the wonderful lady who used to look after my kids when they were only babies and I had to go back to work. If it couldn’t be my arms they were in, I wanted them in familiar, loving arms each day; and we were very fortunate to find just the right person.

Living with her own daughter and grandchildren, my kids soon embraced her and her family as an extension of their own; and she became known affectionately as Nana. Although both her family and ours moved out of town before the kids reached school age, we have kept in touch and she comes to visit once a year.

Sharing with someone about her upcoming visit, they were remarking how lovely it is to keep in touch like that, and quite rare. She explained that the part of herself she gives to her own grandchildren, she also gave to the children who were in her care, and so they have remained in her heart.

​As she was explaining this, I felt that connection with my own grandmother. I wasn’t just hearing her words, I was feeling the way my Gran made me feel and I understood very well the gift my children have with her in their lives.

Instantaneously I was transported back to the feeling of arriving at Gran’s house on a Saturday to the warmth and smell of pancakes being made on the griddle, the thrill of making my own pancake man, and the challenge of creating something more than a smooshed up blob with raisin eyes.

Having someone in my life who embraced me with love and showed me nothing but kindness was a gift beyond measure. No one can take away the way it felt to be with Gran. My kids are very fortunate because, on both sides of their family, they also have doting grandparents, so they are getting a triple dose of something that is beautifully potent.

In this journey to me, my drive for authenticity, I talk often about the layers of self limiting beliefs I’ve adopted over the years, and those I observe in others. Most of these beliefs boil down to some version of “I am not worthy”.

However these special people in our life, whether grandparents or others who have chosen to give us a piece of their heart, they beat the drum of something else entirely. It’s a beat that speaks to my self worth in a language that knows no words, but my body recognises it.

Watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy last night, one of the characters was talking about finally meeting her real mother after being abandoned as a baby. In that one meeting, there was a moment where she reached over to touch her mother’s hand in empathy, and her mother drew away from her.

She couldn’t understand why she kept replaying that moment, trite in the scheme of things, over and over in her head. The therapist looked at her and said “you were five days old when your mother abandoned you, when she drew her hand away from you as an adult, it wasn’t trite. In that moment your body remembered the pain you felt in being separated from her all those years ago.”

I think, for most of us, there are so many moments of pain in our lives, and they add up to many self limiting beliefs, but there are also the moments of love, and these are the moments to cherish and to replay to find our way back to self love and self worth.

Even if we weren’t still in touch with my kid’s adopted Nana, the love she gave them would still be part of them. But for them to become consciously aware of that as they grow, and build on the relationship, is certainly a wonderful gift. Thinking about that, and the love I felt from my own Gran, made me think about whose lives I have and could gift that to.

There is one very obvious answer that is easy to miss, and that is the gift of unconditional love towards me. Instead of a voice in my head that is an echo of all the critical voices, I wonder how many more people I can gift love to if I can learn to love myself in that way?

What about you, who showed you unconditional love? How did it feel? And do you – or could you – gift it to yourself in honour of those who gifted it to you?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation …Until You Take Responsibility to Heal. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog