WISDOM AT WORK: : Older Women, Elderwomen, Grandmothers on the Move!
WISDOM AT WORK: : Older Women, Elderwomen, Grandmothers on the Move!
Louise Lamothe - Reflections and resonance: from healing, to the dancing lens and bringing colour to colour-less spaces
Join me for an intimate conversation with Louise Lamothe, a Swampy Cree grandmother and great-grandmother, whose story is a testament to the healing journeys and deep insights older women and Indigenous ways of knowing and being have to teach us. There is so much to learn from Louise, as she shares stories of her work as a palliative care nurse around the world, integrating Indigenous practices to nurture spaces of compassion and reciprocity. Her profound wisdom on ceremony, connection, and respect for the land offers invaluable lessons on bridging gaps created by historical trauma from colonial harms, and creating the possiblity of healing.
Louise's travels alongside the many lives of those she has touched, whether in palliative care, or the study and practice of Indigenized expressive arts therapy, and the reflections she shares are deeply moving explorations of love, loss, reclamation, and the enduring healing power of older women's wisdom for all of us, now and into the future.
I'm Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, your host of Wisdom at Work. Older Women, elder Women and Grandmothers on the Move, the podcast that kicks old stereotypes to the curb. Come meet these creative, outrageous, authentic, adventurous, irreverent and powerful disruptors and influencers older women and grandmothers, from the living room to the courtroom, making powerful contributions in every walk of life.
Speaker 2:Welcome back.
Speaker 2:It's Ilana, and today I have such a pleasure with a new friend and comrade and mentor to me, louise Lamott, who is a Swampy Cree mother of three children, the grandmother of 11, and the great-grandmother of 19. She's a member of the Pimichigamak Free Nation Treaty 5, cross Lake, manitoba. She was born and raised in Cormorant, manitoba, and Louise was a palliative care nurse for 25 years and facilitates powerful conversations in group settings around grief and loss. Everything Louise does is from her Indigenous perspective, considering the elements, moon cycles, medicine wheel, the four directions and the whole cosmology of her nation. She is a gifted and inspired speaker who can bring calm and focus to any group, large or small, and I know from personal experience recently with Louise that, working in retreat settings and at conferences with healing organizations for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, louise speaks humbly and directly from the heart and from her deep wisdom. A seeker and lifelong learner, a creative artist and crafter, louise graduated from the Wheat Institute with a dual diploma in Indigenized Art Therapy and Expressive Art Therapy, the only such program known of globally.
Speaker 2:Louise, it is such a pleasure to have you here today to have a conversation with me on the Wisdom and Word podcast. Welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you, alana. It's such a pleasure to be here and to share some time and space with you, and I want to take this first part to introduce myself from my territory. One of the greatest things we've learned in rematriating our culture, for myself in particular five generations of not being connected to my culture and I'm the first in my family to step into my true teachings. Now my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother and the two generations before were totally disconnected, and we have a way. Everything like this is ceremony. So this morning I began my day with ceremony and I included us in that space yourself and I that our space be caring, compassionate, supportive, a reciprocal kind of space where we can share our knowledges with each other as working in these fields, with grandmothers. So I held us in ceremony this morning, grandmothers. So I held us in ceremony this morning. The next part that's important for me as a Cree woman is to introduce myself to you through my lineage. The introduction I want to share with you was gifted to me by a wonderful elder in the Mi'kmaq territory, where I'm a guest right now. This elder has gone ahead to the spirit world. Her name was Mildred Millier elder has gone ahead to the spirit world. Her name was Mildred Millier and I didn't meet her in person. I was invited by her son to come and witness her as she was sent on her journey and this is how she introduces herself, which I do now, and I honor Elder Mildred Millier for this. I honor Elder Mildred Millier for this.
Speaker 3:My name is Louise Lamont. I am a swampy Cree woman. I am the daughter of Annie Evans. She is the daughter of Bella Moose, who is the daughter of Bella.
Speaker 3:I don't know that third generation, but I come from a long line, a matriarchal lineage of Cree women, and that Cree lineage goes right up the right side of me. They witness me at all points that I'm doing and sharing in this space also, and that lineage of Cree woman leads right back to the first Indigenous woman that stepped onto Turtle Island and that's who I am. On my father's side he was a Métis man, his mother was Cree, his father was French-Canadian and the Cree lineage is in there also from the matriarchal side. So I want to also say that I'm a guest here on the land of the Mi'kmaq people.
Speaker 3:I've done my responsibilities as a swampy Cree woman. When I arrived here, I visited the three chiefs of this land and I offered them tobacco, I offered them the four colors of my nation and I let them know who I am. I introduce myself and let them know that I understand that I'm a guest there and that I will do no harm. My intention at all points while I'm on their land is to do no harm and I stand by that very, very strongly. I wanted to introduce myself that way.
Speaker 2:I'm so pleased because I felt such a deep connection to you in many ways the first time we met not so long ago, and part of that was because art therapy and expressive arts therapy is close to my heart, so I look forward to speaking to you about that. But also as someone who had the privilege of working with grandmothers, in particular, at the front lines of the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, I learned so much about palliative care, so much about that part of life's journey and what a critical role, in particular, elders in our communities play in these moments. And I thought, louise, that I'd love to start there, although where would you like to start?
Speaker 3:I think I can start with the palliative care. As an Indigenous woman, my palliative care career was very necessary, very important for me to grow into the woman that I am today. It was very important and I went back to school when I was 30 years old. I took a licensed practical nursing program in Manitoba and at that point during our last six months we had to work in preceptorship areas in the hospitals and one of the things that was very important to me was that I could not work with children Because of my own traumatic spaces where I grew up. I knew that I would have difficulty there, but I also didn't want to work where people were dying, specifically in palliative care. They did the best that they could to support me in that space.
Speaker 3:I never did end up working with children, but my very first step into working as a nurse I ended up in a space where it was an end-of-life situation was the end of life situation and the space, how it affected me, was so profound that from that day that's all I did. I knew that was my space to go and work. There was such an energy that was happening during that time that I recognized At that point I didn't realize I was being taught by spirit. I understand that now, 30 years later, but at that point I didn't know, I didn't understand. I called, very attuned to that space, my instinct became very, very strong and very focused. And because I didn't know that was happening, I was affirmed by families where they would share their spaces with me and tell me well, nobody really knew about that. For example, you know, when it was time for me to bring music, there was no verbal interaction between myself and the patient and I just attuned to the music that was important for that person. And when the family member would come in, they would tell me that was the music that he would always listen to. And I remember a man, itzhak Perlman. I was really drawn. I thought what an interesting name, Itzhak Perlman. I'd never heard of this name, I didn't know anything about it.
Speaker 3:And then I went on a place, the secondhand store to look for these cassette tapes to play. This was in the late 80s. So I found them and I took them back to him and I put that on the music. You could physically see him relaxing. You could physically see the minute movements of his body just settling. We're there for comfort measures and pain control. So we're always monitoring. But I could see his body just physically relaxing. And then his family members came in and they were just shocked that I had found this music. So I began to learn that there was a language there.
Speaker 3:I felt then and I don't know if I feel it still today I felt then that myself, as an Indigenous person, a Cree woman, I felt like we have that skill, we have that way to attune to those spaces, and so I really became very vocal in speaking up towards that space being open for Indigenous nurses. And where it's shifted now for me is that there's been a shift, I feel, in the universe itself. Things are moving very fast, so there's more spaces open for us that we can attune to when we pay attention. But that's a whole other. That's a whole other. I'm going all over this because it just leads me when I go there. But working as a palliative care nurse gives back. It gives back fully with energy, it gives back fully with knowledge, it gives back fully with compassion. There's a gratitude space that can actually re-energize you so much that sometimes you can't sleep when you've gone through that space. And I think there's much more that can be shared in that space. As far as knowledge sharing, oftentimes I was very afraid to share the things that were happening with me, what I was learning. I was very afraid because I thought they're not going to believe anything what I'm saying, so I didn't say very much. It wasn't until when I began to get my cultural teaching and I understood from the elders, after going through many fasts and now sun dancing, that these are parts that are open, that are there for us. They know that, they've always known that, and there are many tools for us that we can carry in that.
Speaker 3:And you mentioned being in Africa. I went there, I think in the mid-90s. I did volunteer work there with the Grey Nuns. They wanted to create education with the local people because there was so much death and dying happening. There were no services there, so they wanted to create some booklets on how to care for family members at home. That space marked me for my life in a good way, in a very good way, because I didn't know when I went there and began doing some teaching and caring, I didn't know that there were parts of our world that they could have the full-on signs of cancer, that they could have the full-on signs of cancer, yet didn't know they had cancer. I didn't know that I had never seen where the breast could be fully sick. It was fully enveloped with cancer, but the woman didn't know. She didn't know. That's what was there didn't know.
Speaker 3:That's what was there. So there's something that happens when you see another human being that is so extremely vulnerable. It calls you to just stop and ask permission in that space. What can I share here? Should I tell her that this is cancer, or should I not? Which one is going to do more damage at this stage of her life right now? How do I work in this space? It allowed me to learn so much about myself, or I can just depend on the wisdom that would come through.
Speaker 3:And at that particular point I could see just by her respirations, her breathing, just by her color, that it was not very long. So I chose not to speak about cancer, because I understood that just the word cancer is so harming, it's so filled with fear. So I chose not to say that and I chose to show the family how to help to cleanse her. And it was left until later that the nun spoke to the family so that they could be more aware, going forward for their own family.
Speaker 3:So many situations like that, alana, I believe they happen to us as human beings in so many places, and the world is going so fast right now we miss some of it, where we just don't stop long enough to question what is my responsibility here. Respect, I was very blessed to have been able to work in that field for 26 years. So many stories, so many beautiful people, so many cultures. The tenet of that care I remember so clearly being told when you walk into somebody's home, you leave your beliefs at the door and you let that person lead you. I benefited so much from that wisdom.
Speaker 2:Remarkable to think that at the very beginning you had such clarity that that was an area that you did not want to work in. Yes, you mentioned that there's so much knowledge that can come to you and there's so much that you get back through this practice and because you worked in so many different places with different peoples, there's so many different beliefs and rituals around death. There's so many different ways of going on that journey. There's so many different ways that our lives come to an end. Was there something that you learned that was sort of universal?
Speaker 3:That's a beautiful, beautiful question, Alana. And yes, when I started palliative care, this was in the late 80s and what was happening in Canada and Ontario specifically was palliative care became this huge kind of. It was the focus within all the systems that be. So it exploded into this space where the person that was beginning their journey you say dying, I say going ahead. That's what it means in my language. When somebody was getting ready for that particular journey, they had a personal choice they could do that in the hospital or they could do it at home. And Ottawa just opened up into this space where so many people were choosing to do that at home. So, as a licensed practical nurse, our scope of practice expanded so greatly, like because we became case managers. We'd go into the home and set up the home, counsel the family and then do all the comfort measures and pain control, and we worked hand in hand with a palliative doctor. So we were exposed to this whole space of nursing. That was just incredible, for you know, setting up pain pumps, bringing in oxygen, sitting with the family, navigating the difficulties that can happen during that time with families it was a gold mine of learning for us. So what happened for me in that space.
Speaker 3:It took probably about 10 years for me to begin to see something that was happening that was really special for me. What happened was I found myself in one particular place became very significant. It would be a space where the person that was getting ready to go ahead, they would find a space when either the spouse or the family were fast asleep and they would find that time where they could let go of things that they needed to let go and things that they needed to share and things that they wanted to talk about. In these homes, one of our first duties was setting up a diary, a notebook, a communication book for the whole family. You know what we were doing, but I instinctively knew that these things were not for that book, they were not to share. This was just somebody that was letting go of stuff that they'd been carrying for years and years, and some of them were very difficult.
Speaker 3:So when things get difficult again, you're in a space of putting your hands up okay, how do I navigate this space and be the best I can be for this person so that they can let that go? And so many beautiful responses came through on how I could do that and what I learned from that was there were men, specifically, that weren't able to do that, and the reason I knew that they were carrying things because they were still lashing out. They were lashing out at family members, lashing out at me. You know, they weren't ready to go. They never got to that place of acceptance and what would happen in those spaces is that they would really struggle and I would know when that was happening that we were going to have breathing issues, we were going to have pain issues. So I knew ahead of time what I had to do to prepare for that, what I had to be ready for.
Speaker 3:But there's these other ones that would unload and give away all these things, would either just fall asleep or just be as lucid as they could possibly be and just gently leave. So there were these two things that I began to be aware of and I began to learn about and at the end of it, I came to the conclusion that, as I'm heading towards that myself, I won't bring regrets there and I won't bring secrets there. I can do that now. I can take those things and I don't have to be at my deathbed and, you know, be trying to navigate that space. I can do it very well now.
Speaker 3:I can do that through my ceremony, I can do that in my lodges, I can even do it just writing and I can give that away. I don't have to carry those things. So that's one of the things that I share, that within my own communities, and I had the beautiful experience of guiding my mother, witnessing my mother and doing the seven-day ceremony with her and guarding that space, and she just fell asleep. That kind of teaching is doable everywhere. So the more we share that knowledge, the more we can have these good deaths that are often spoken about. It's quite important. That's so potent. Thank you for asking me that.
Speaker 2:Thank you for that extraordinary piece of knowledge. It's hard to move from that. There's so much to think about For me when I hear that there's such a connection to art therapy and expressive art therapy. In a way it's elite, but in a way it makes so much sense because it's all about the senses and the different ways of experiencing and working through our lives. So to me, when you talk about regrets and secrets and all of the deep things that we carry within, the fact that you combined palliative care and all of the knowledge and learning, what brought you to this space? How did that happen? What brought you to this space? How did that happen?
Speaker 3:Yes, it came by so wonderfully when we think of our transitional spaces in our lives as women. When I finished nursing my husband and I, when the first year we got married, we made a promise to each other. He said this is our plan going ahead, you and I. And we stuck to that plan. And he said now, what do you want? He said I know what I'm going to do. What do you want? I said, well, I'm willing to contribute to your plan to the best of my ability. But when it comes to 60, I don't want to work anymore. I want to have those 20 years where I'll be still able to run and jump, that I want them to be mine. So we agreed on that. Well, he forgot about it. But when I turned 60, I called him one night from work and I let him know. I said you know what? I'm 60 now, I'm going to finish working. And he's like oh, oh, yeah, okay, you know, and that was it. But you know what happened? I grieved my work. I went into deep grief because I stopped so abruptly. But I went into a grieving space and I had to find my way out of that space. I was there for about a year and a half. It was a struggle. So then I decided well, I don't think I'm ready for this, to just not be doing a lot of things. So I began to try different things traveling a bit, getting involved in the community but I still wasn't feeling that passion that I had been so used to for so many years. And then, serendipitously, it just opened up one evening, I guess when I was ready, Somebody passed me a book in a crowd we were doing an art show. I opened the first page and it talked about Wheat Institute in Manitoba. Oh my, that's amazing. It was incredible. So I came home that night and I googled that place. I phoned and I spoke to Darcy, phoned and I spoke to Darcy. She owns that whole space and just like that I was starting class in three days. She arranged everything around me going and three and a half years later I graduated. And it was a passion. I began at 64 and I graduated three and a half years later. I was 64 and I graduated three and a half years later.
Speaker 3:But what is special about art, therapy, education and training? It is like being three and a half years in therapy. That's what it is. It's all about experiencing.
Speaker 3:Then, when we went into the indigenized art therapy, where what it was, it was art therapy, and we were obliged to shift the idea to how do we indigenize this? What would work for our people? How would they receive this? How could they come into this space? How do we make it safe? And what I learned so wonderfully in that space is I had already had the teachings within my cultural lodges, but what we've been learning in our lodges for all this time is that we have everything in our bodies to heal ourselves. We just have to learn to communicate and be with our body. And I'll give you an example I fast, spring and fall, and then I go and dance in Manitoba.
Speaker 3:So when we go fasting, we fast for four days. We go in on a Wednesday and we don't eat or drink water for four days. We come out on Sunday, we're singing, we're praying. Out on Sunday, we're singing, we're praying. We go into sweat lodges and we go into spaces that are very spiritual for us.
Speaker 3:And I didn't struggle the first year, but the second year I struggled with hunger. What happened? I was so hungry, my stomach was making noises and I went and I sat down to do some praying and then I realized I must talk to my body, and all I did was tell my body we're okay, we're not starving, we're not in danger, we're doing this for a good reason and I need your help to get me through this. We're going to eat, we don't have to worry about that, and, alana, it was like magic All the hunger stopped. So what that told me was that everything is in this body. Everything I need to heal myself, to be a good person, everything is there and it's like that for everybody and it's like that for everybody.
Speaker 3:So when I applied that same space to my training in art therapy, what happened with me is I began to bring up all these things because I come from a very difficult upbringing, so all that stuff began to arrive. I was very fortunate to be in those spaces where I could learn how to be, in those spaces where I could learn how to work with those spaces. And now, going out into the world with art therapy, I already know I'm not the kind of art therapist that's going to go into an office and, you know, do three or four people, one after the other, and that's not a space for me. I need to be in the space of heart, connected to the mind, connected to my voice. I need to be in that space. So there's a calling right now. We need to step in strongly into our Indigenous spaces. So where I can do the best that I can is with groups of people. So that's the space I've chosen.
Speaker 3:So I've begun to create different offerings that I can go out into the community. They're received very well and I come away from them feeling very well that I've accomplished what needed to be accomplished, and yet with all that passion and that goodness and happiness again. So here I am in that space. I haven't yet married it to any of my palliative care training. I'm doing some work with the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples and they have a new mandate at this time where they're focusing on palliative care for the Indigenous communities, because we don't have very much of that right now. And I think art might play its way into that also because there are many art practices that we can use within palliative care. Some of it, for example, is called third-hand art, where I'm the artist and it goes with our conversation. There are so many possibilities. I'm just letting it flow, letting it flow.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. I love it because you can see that there's so much creative energy and creative juices flowing. You can hear it when you're speaking just in terms of the possibilities, and now you're a grandmother and a great-grandmother, so there are echoes and circles of children and childhood all around you in these stories, and you've talked a couple of times about having challenging experiences as a child. And then all of this healing. And I wonder, as a grandmother, as a great-grandmother, someone who works on healing, to me I feel like you're holding hands with so many pasts and so many present and so many futures yet unrealized, you know. So I wonder, where does that sit with you?
Speaker 3:First of all I want to say Elena, that word echoes. I really like that, the echoes around us sharing our stories. That has a real beauty to it. It beckons me to work with that word. But I think in one word responsibility. I have to say responsibility.
Speaker 3:One of the gentle ways that the elders have trained me is I don't need to be immersed in the spaces where I was raised. I didn't understand so much of what was happening to me, so many traumatic experiences and so much hardship. But what I've learned is that my parents did the best that they could. They didn't know how to be parents. They were young, two young people and we came fast, one right after the other young people, and we came fast, one right after the other. So it must have been very difficult for my parents. But what I see when I look back there it must have been so sad for my parents that they weren't able to look after us the way that was important for us. It must have been so sad for them.
Speaker 3:So, having said that, the five generations that we've been disconnected from my culture now I have to build a bridge over that. I don't have the time or the inclination to go get stuck into this space of all that trauma, all that oppression, all that historical difficulties. I don't have the time. Maybe one of my great-granddaughters might have the time, but I don't. So I've been taught by my elder to build a bridge over that. Taught by my elder to build a bridge over that connect with my well ancestors that were living the good life and come over here and begin to bring the medicine over that trauma. And how it shows itself is I now can bring the ceremonies to my grandchildren. We never had our naming ceremonies, we never had the birthing ceremonies, we never had the placental ceremonies, walking out ceremonies, the strawberry ceremonies. We never had any of those ceremonies. But now I can bring that. So there's that bridge, that and I wrote some shadow work on that where I am building on the backs of those that were oppressed, those that went through the hard times, those that didn't even know why their life was so hard. I have a responsibility to bring healing, bring the good life back, and I'm the only one in my family, so I don't have a lot of time to just waste and be worried about all that stuff. I picture it like a sled and I have all these bundles on there. You know the naming ceremony and the walking out, and I'm bringing those and I'm bringing them to my grandchildren, but at the same time, with my parents who have gone ahead, I created a ceremony for them because they didn't have that.
Speaker 3:My father was raised Catholic. My parents then turned to Christianity and I have so much gratitude because it gave them a good life and I always share, whenever I can share, that I love Jesus because I know that the belief in Jesus helped them to have a beautiful life together. That's what they have. They were afraid of our cultural teachings because they were trained that it was bad medicine, to no fault of their own, and I understand that. And now I'm responsible to bring that to my grandchildren. So they both they left within 11 months of each other.
Speaker 3:So what I did was I gave myself a year to create a memorial, first to my mother. I needed to grieve her, but I was having difficulty with that because I always took care of her and I was the one that took care of, you know, the children. I was the oldest and when they struggled with their lives, there was so much there, oldest, and when they struggled with their lives, there was so much there and I know they both had a hard time remembering how we were raised. I know that and I love them. I love my parents. They come to me in my dreams now and I can tell them all the things that are good and we share that time together and I feast them.
Speaker 3:But what I did for that year when my mom went ahead first I began to create a quilt for her and it was hard when I began. I was creating the quilt for her and this quilt took a whole life of its own. Took a whole life of its own Because as I worked, I started in December and then I made 13 squares to signify the 13 moons of the year. That's within our teachings. But when I got to March it became about me and my mother. And then all of a sudden my dad was getting ready to leave and he started showing in my quilt. There were times during that year where I just put it aside. I couldn't even do anything. I had to leave it and I had to start walking and just gently weeping. And during that year I never had any kind of hard grief like crying hard or meeting my parents or anything like that. It was all very gentle, because each month I was working on these squares and as I began to look at this quilt as it was coming together, I began to see a pattern. Look at this quilt as it was coming together, I began to see a pattern.
Speaker 3:I was quilting all the good stories of my mother. The first two were stories when she would take me picking berries just her and I, and I'd be sitting on the moss. The second, when I learned about the moose, was her clan. Then it became about me and when I had my first vision, my first medicine dream, and then it began with my dad and my mom and their stories, their funny stories, their happy stories. It was just my mom, my dad and me on that quilt. And then, as at the 13th moon in the center, I came back when it was time to finish that quilt.
Speaker 3:I didn't want to finish it, I wanted to keep creating it, but I knew that this was the time for me to begin to. Okay, now I'm letting go, now they can go forward. So my 13th square was a huge center with a moon and my mother is moose clan and I had a huge moose on a snowbank and my father was wolf clan and he was on the other side and then it showed these human footprints that were walking towards the spirits that I created. And then I made this beautiful spiral, uh, aurora Borealis, because in our stories when we see Aurora Borealis, that's called the dancing lens and that's where they go when we see them.
Speaker 3:So when I finished that, um, I began to understand that I didn't have any hard times. It was all these good stories. My parents came to me in spirit and they helped me by making me remember, you know, my dad catching this big sturgeon, you know, and they would be like lassoing it and me flying down the river when we went to our summer camps, you know, and they would be like lassoing it and be flying down the river when we went to our summer camps, you know. And all these stories of him calling the geese, and it was. It was such a beautiful gift from my parents. But now, like I told you, I come over this bridge carrying the teachings. But at the foot of this bridge, as I go forward now with my, with my grandchildren, my great grandchildren, my children, I have this huge storybook quilt of my parents, because those little grandchildren will never know my parents and it's important for them to know where they came from, not the part where I built the bridge over. They don't need to carry that forward. They're going to carry this quilt forward in the stories of their grandparents. So that's what I created.
Speaker 3:So, yes, there was great openings for me. You know, I began to learn to just trust the process and be vulnerable, to just go in there with everything. On that, on that, on that program of art therapy One of the things I wrote right at the beginning and I let my, my cohort know in that first week I said, guys, I can't worry about you, guys, I'm going to be sharing and telling all these things and I'm going to be doing a lot of work here, so I'm not going to be wasting my time being shy and being all this stuff. I'm here to work and I did, you did, I did, I had a great time. So I'm actually meeting them this summer in northern Saskatchewan. There's a land-based camp there, that's wonderful.
Speaker 3:No time to waste. No, oh my gosh, no wasting time. Let me tell you one last thing, because I turned 68 this year and I've created an adventure. I'm going to drive across Canada on my own and do art therapy and find out what's out there. I'm just going to go and experience, I'm going to touch base with all these different things that are happening and I'm so excited. I'm planning the trip now, getting my vehicle ready, planning workshops here and there.
Speaker 3:What am I going to take with me? Where am I going to sleep? Camping here and there? So it's a big excitement.
Speaker 2:This is exciting. I'm excited, I want to go with you. Yeah, that is a really exciting adventure and it makes sense. You keep bringing to mind what mama zod was said to me from. She was from south africa and she said she said this once to me many years ago grandmothers are guardians of the future and I love that so much because when you talk about the bridge and bringing things over from the past and the present into the future with these children and the next generations and I think that makes so much sense because we often think of our elders and our grandmothers as representing the past, you know, and telling us stories from the past but the way that she saw it was this guardianship, this responsibility that you talk about for the future.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was weaving all of the lessons and all that there was to give into the future and it wasn't about legacy. You know that's not. That's a different kind of language. This was about a guardianship which was not so much power over or guarding, but a responsibility. That's another echo for me that you speak about it with different words, but the echoes of so many grandmothers who I've had the deep honor to speak to and hear from and learn from. This is a theme of this responsibility, this guardianship, but also the beauty. There's so much beauty in it.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Even with myths like there's suffering and there's hardship and there's oppression and there's colonialism. There's just so many forms of oppressions and at the same time, so much beauty and so much hope. Just I hear it in your voice like so much powerful hope. You know that comes from this.
Speaker 3:Yes, I think humanity is going through some kind of evolution right now and I don't want to be the one that's giving that any more energy than it already has. The hard evolution part. I want to be the one that shares about my trip and how I fell in the lake when I was trying to get some water and sharing it with everybody, getting lost and ending up in an old forest. I want to share the fun part and be creating and bringing color to some of these colorless spaces. It's important.
Speaker 2:It is. It feels desperately important right now and I find this is one of the great reservoirs of resilience and knowledge and wisdom that I do find in grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Yes, I have so much gratitude for your time and your humor and you know, you know how to laugh and I love that about you but also just the gift of your time and your sharing and there's just so much to learn from you and with you. I just love it so much and I'm so grateful that you took this time to share and it feels like it's just the tip of what's there. You know there's so much. It's so beautiful and precious.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, galana. The graciousness that I received from my mother. I see that in you, I see that space of seeing somebody. We see each other and it's such a beautiful thing Just saying that is more than words can even say and I have so much gratitude that our paths intersected and you know these beautiful gardens can grow from what you're doing and bringing us all together like this. That is a beautiful, beautiful gift to humanity. We need that and to have you stepping into that space and bringing us is a blessing for me and I want to give you gratitude for that. Thank you, louise, thank you my mother and my dad. They would say your mother and your father did a very good job when they raised you.
Speaker 2:They do get a lot of the credit, Louise, and my grandmother too.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So I thank you and I love to honor your parents that way. Thank you for the words of your mother and thank you for all that you're doing. And can we maybe, perhaps we can come back after your grand adventure, because I feel like there's going to be so much to hear from them and I'm excited to share it with other grandmothers who I know.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:The world out there, this podcast.
Speaker 2:I'm sure they're going to ask for it.
Speaker 3:So come back. I love even just preparing for it. Already Things are happening. So yes, I'd love to. Anytime we can, we can have a chin wag.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. So this is it Until next time we meet and, in the meantime, good luck with all your preparations.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:And thank you so, so much for this beautiful time I appreciate that.
Speaker 3:Thank you, you have a great day.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. I'm Ilana Lansford-Lewis, your host of Wisdom at Work Older women, elder women and grandmothers on on the move. To find out more about me or the podcast, you can go to wisdom at work podcastcom, formerly grandmothers on the move, and you can find the podcast at all your favorite places to listen to them. Tune in next week. Thanks and bye. Bye for now.