Dear Betty

I have started this letter three times over in attempt to find some clever way to say what I am feeling.

The challenge is to write a letter to the strongest woman I know. Of course you came first to mind. How could you not? I tried writing this in form of a poem. It didn't work. I tried using fancy language like I would in an essay. It didn't work. And so. This time I just want to pour our words from my heart to yours.

I realise now that this letter is no longer about a competition. It is a necessary and cathartic exercise that I must complete. The tears that flood from my eyes and the choking feeling in my throat makes me aware that I have not grieved you. You were the last of my four grandparents to die. I don't think I have been able to grieve any of you yet.

For I don't know how to.

I need begin by telling you I am sorry. I am so very sorry that I was not a more loving grandchild. This fills me with deep remorse and pain to admit. More so because it is too late to tell you this in person. I do not understand life, or death, or the nature of reality. I do not presume to know that you can or cannot ever know what is now in my heart, but I will choose to believe that you do. 


I don't know how much you understood about my upbringing, for we never spoke of anything emotional or 'real' in our family. Always things stayed on a superficial level, never getting too serious. Oh how I resented this growing up. Always my feelings felt pushed aside and ignored. Always I would listen as the adults around me would judge and criticise others.

Did you hear how Janet had an affair?

Did you hear that John's nephew stole from him?

Did you know that Maybel's husband is in jail now?

Did you know that Jane fell down drunk in the pub at the weekend?

Y

You all seemed to have such time to discuss and judge everyone else problems, yet failed to see the damage you were inflicting on your own families. My father never thought much of you. He was another to judge and criticise. Except he had a temper on him which was utterly terrifying to a sensitive young child.


"Your mother's family are the 'type of people' who are going nowhere in life. They are quite happy working their little jobs and never amounting to anything." He would tell us. Always inferring that my sister and I should be better than them. Aim higher than they did. My father instilled the belief in me that I could be someone special if I wanted to be, while my mother would viciously attack this confidence he gave.

"Who do you think you are?" Was a common line from her. "You think you're someone special? Well you're not. You're no better than the rest of us, Kayleigh."

My dad wanted us to aim higher than settling for what he saw as being a life of struggle financially. He tried in his way to encourage us to be the best we could. Only he did it in a way that looked down upon my mum's family. This was far from ideal. It angered her, and it is my belief now that because she couldn't stand up to him, she took our her anger on my sister and I. I also know now that what people say to you is more about them as a person that you. Looking back with this perspective I can see that it was in fact my mum who thought herself better than the rest of the family. She separated herself in style, in the way she spoke and how she carried herself. Oh how I triggered her insecurities.

I don't know if you knew what home life was like for me as the youngest daughter of your youngest daughter. When I was small, I was doted upon. Dressed up like the perfect china dolls that were everywhere in our house. Only, once I became old enough to have a voice of my own and I stopped being my mother's plaything, I was soon pushed aside by her. There was so much coldness in our house.

You know I once woke up with Bee's everywhere in my room and bed, crawling on me when I was around 6 years old. I was too scared to knock on mum and dads door to waken them. Instead I climbed into my sisters bed until they woke up.

I could never understand this astmosphere.

Your house and my aunties houses were completely different, a much different world to what I knew as home. You allowed me to be myself. Not insisting for me to be dressed in some way, my hair styled in some way, to be silent in some shadow of the room. You raised me with more love than I had awareness of back then. Allowing me to always be myself. To laugh loudly, to scream and jump and dance and play. Oh how we used to play pranks on you and laugh as you pretended to be annoyed with us.

You allowed us to decorate your hair blue, pink and red.

We dressed you in all the make up and jewels.
You allowed our creativity to flow.

Always smiles, and jokes and fun.

And Ice poles in the freezer.

Around you I was all of the things I couldn't be at home. 


Never fearful. 


Always free.

Yet it was conflicting for me. My mother told me how you used to leave her, her twin sister and older sister alone in the house with your violent second husband. I always knew my step-grandad as a kind man, yet I heard stories from my father about his temper and how violent he used to be. I was around 7 years old when my father warned me not to trust my grandad. He changed my perspective of both of you that day. Hearing that I may not even be alive today because my grandfather tried to punch my mother when she was pregnant with me was devastating. My aunt had protected my mother and taken the black eye instead, and all of them good this at the time from my father. Trying to work out how a mother could be with a man who hurt her and her children, at my age of 6 or 7 was overwhelming. Especially when I knew on some level my mother had repeated this cycle.

Yet my father had no idea of how you had suffered, nor did he seek to find out your story. No compassion or understanding. If he had to endure what you had, he would have made the same choices. A wisdom I wish I had known years before. For my judgement and disapproval of your choices stood in the way of my love for you.

 A truth I only fully understand now that you are gone.

And how this breaks my heart,

I retreated from you. I remember you asking me how school was and I couldn't answer you. I didn't know how to talk about all of the things that were in my head, so I looked at my feet and ignored you. You told my mum and dad and I was shouted at, smacked and sent to my room without tea. I was called selfish and a horrible child for ignoring you. This left me so confused. I didn't know how I was supposed to act around you now. I felt angry on my mother's behalf. That same mother who was now cruely punishing me and leaving me alone to deal with all of these big emotions.

I know you didn't know any of this. You knew my dad had a temper but you told me you only ever saw him smack us once. This was so far from a one off. I couldn't tell you how many times I had to pull down my pants and bend over my fathers knee to be smacked so hard it hurt to sit down. How many times did that same hand hit me over the back of the head, or grab a handful of my hair alongside my sisters and smash our heads together if we argued? I lived in perpetual fear as a child. I couldn't even show emotion without angering my father either. If I dared to cry he would tell me if I continued he would "give me something to cry for". Perhaps this is why I have cried ever since I escaped living under his roof. A waterfall of tears released after 18 years of holding them back.

I grew angry with the adults in my life. At how much hurt you all caused me. I was angry with you, not for how you treated me, but for how you treated my mother. How you didn't protect her. Knowing what I know now I can see that all of the anger I felt towards her for not protecting me was projected onto you. I'm so deeply sorry for this. You never knew what my father had told me. We never spoke about it. All you ever gave me was love and freedom, and you probably never understood why I couldn't show love in return.

I wasn't allowed to be angry with my mother, you see. It wasn’t safe to show any anger in our house. I wouldn’t have dared show anger towards either parent out of intense fear of consequence. I desperately sought the affections of both of my parents. My logic told me that if you had been a better mother - my mother would have been a better mother and my life would be so very different. So the blame stayed at your door. Yet of course it doesn’t. It goes back to your parents, and their parents, and theirs and so on to eternity.

Oh Gran. What I wouldn't give for just one day in the past with you.

Just one day to sit and talk. Perhaps to the garden of your council house where I grew up. Where we sneaked in to set off fireworks one night as a prank. Do you remember that? Of course you would. How you loved being surrounded by us children. How you would cherish the memories of us growing up. Memories you held tight to. Now I understand why more than ever. Why you went to such lengths to allow us to enjoy our childhoods. All 7 of us grandchildren had your unconditional love.

For you were never gifted one of your own.

Innocence was robbed from you when your mother grew ill. You were barely 6 years old when she died, leaving you with a heartbroken father who spent his days in the coal mines and evenings in the arms of a woman who resented your existence. It seems that is another repeated generational trauma, for my mother resented mine too.

Oh how you could have bonded with Cinderella over a stepmother so wicked. Such a lonely child, scolded for emotions you had no outlet for. How I could relate to you gran, if only I knew then what I do now.

You worked a minimum wage job as a home carer. You saved hard, every year on trips to Blackpool we would go, every year for the light show. It was all you that saved hard to take us. Grandad was happier in the pub. Not that back then we knew.

You had left your fathers home as soon as you could,

Marrying young, birthing a daughter then twins. You fell pregnant once more and this time your husband was staying out later and later. You were completely alone. The stress took its toll. Your fourth baby was born without a heartbeat. They asked if you wanted to hold the baby, but you refused. Having to close off your heart a little to survive this trauma.

And that's when he upped and left. Your husband. He decided that family was not for him. Leaving you for a woman you thought your friend.

Such a double betrayal of your trust at such a vulnerable time left you devastated. How I wish I could have been there as your friend, to help you through. You considered giving up many times but knew you could not. Those babies so reliant upon you. You told me of a night you wanted to end your life. You couldn't see a way through the pain. But then my mother got out of bed and came to you. Came to hug you. In that moment your mind was changed.

You sacrificed yourself for us, to give us all the very best start that you could manage. Your three daughters and 7 grandchildren.

You tried to cope the best you could,

Smoking was a crutch that I now understand well.

When you stopped you gained weight. People like my father mocked you, called you weak.

You were not weak gran. You are the strongest woman I know. I love you so much. I appreciate all that you did for me more than ever and how I wish I could tell you this. To ask you how you got out of bed everyday to work two jobs whilst being a single mother of three.

You must have been exhausted by time my grandfather came into your life. According to my father he was the town drunk. But knowing what I know now of his upbringing, no wonder. You both had the same attachment issues. Both suffered immensely and hoped to build something better. But he was an alcoholic. For that, everyone suffered. Another generational pattern that was repeated, for I too married an alcoholic. Thankfully I have the strength of your blood in my veins and I was able to leave him, mostly in tact.

After such a hard life for you, there was no fairytale ending.

You developed dementia. With a mind desperately avoiding the traumas you had endured, and no knowledge of how to heal them, you stopped caring for yourself. You were running on 4 coffees a day and very little food. By the time I realised what was happening it was too late. I tried to visit you often. It was so hard to see you this way. So much pain in your life that your memories turned to dust. Was that easier in some way?

My grandad was now in a care home, and you would cry for him and not understand why he had gone. Angry with the doctors, the nurses, the care home for taking him. You longed to go in with him but you didn't want to move out of the house. You were scared to stay alone and you were desperately lonely. Eventually you went into the care home and the house you worked so hard to save for all your life was taken from you.

Your memory declined further and you ended up in hospital following a fall. On a loop of heartache was where your mind went. Not understanding that grandad had long since died. When was he coming, where was he?

You hated being alone. Yet that is how you died, without your family by your side. None of us could be there because of a virus the world feared. You couldn't understand this. You died alone and thinking your family didn't care to visit. Which was so far from the truth.

My tenacity and strength was gifted by you, through blood that runs in my veins. Hard times that I endure are easier for me because of you, because I know that you survived so much worse. It was through your efforts that I have good memories of childhood to remember. It was through you that I managed to have even a little confidence about myself. Every night staring at yours was a night I was able to relax and sleep safely. Without fear of being woken and dragged from bed and smacked when my father got home for something my sister and I apparently did wrong during that day. He would come back from a long and stressful workday, shattered and running on nicotine to my mother angry and shouting about something us kids had done. He dealt with us in the only way he knew how. By hitting us. Just as his father taught him to.

You never stopped trying to love us.



I’m going to make it gran,

I'm going to heal the ancestral wounds inflicted upon our family.

They will end with me. I promise us this.

No more attachment issues, no more trauma. No more violence against children or abandonment.


You did everything you could to gift us all better lives, and I promise that none of your efforts were in vain. You succeeded more than I ever got the chance to tell you. You fought against your circumstances for better, just as I now do.

Never being in debt to anyone. Always being independent.
You will be forever my inspiration, Betty. I pray for your forgiveness and love, even though I know that I have it. I always had it. 
How about we walk this next chapter together?

After all, my blood is very much yours too.

Let's find what it means to experience true love,

A true relationship without conflict, addiction and trauma reactions.

We will combine your strength and tenacity

With my knowledge of health and healing,

Together we create a new world,

One inspired by your strength and love.

The strength to love ourselves as fiercely as we love others.

For that is the medicine that will change it all.

My sincerest love,

Kayleigh