09/29/2026
The reason why it’s so hard when a grandmother dies is because we don’t just grieve the woman who raised our mother and us. We grieve a lifetime. We feel her life in a way that is so much deeper than memory.
Our grandmothers have carried us. Before we were ever born, we existed inside of her as an egg, and that egg existed inside of our mother. There is something almost impossible to comprehend about that, that we have been connected to these women, their bodies, their lives, their experiences and their lineage long before we ever took our first breath.
So when we lose our grandmother, of course it can feel like we lose a part of ourselves. We are losing someone who has been woven into us from the very beginning. We grieve the woman we knew, trusted, leaned on, the woman she was, the woman she became, and all the parts of her life we will never fully know.
And yet, a part of her doesn’t leave.
Her knowing lives in us. Her teachings. Her wisdom. Her strength. Her softness. Her sovereignty. The things she taught us intentionally, and the things we absorbed simply by being near her. We carry pieces of her forward without even realizing it.
This is why the passing of the matriarch can feel like such a profound rite of passage. She is more than simply the oldest woman in a family. She becomes the keeper of stories, traditions, memories and wisdom, the living thread connecting the women who came before and those who come after.
When she dies, the shape of the family changes. Something shifts. We are no longer only the grandaughter. We begin to feel ourselves becoming one of the women who carries the lineage forward.
And there is grief in that. So much grief.
But there is also something deeply feminine and divine in realizing that the women who came before us are never entirely gone. We inherit their ways and their instincts. We carry them in our bodies, our choices, the way we love, mother and move through the world.
She leaves the physical family, but she does not leave the lineage.
She simply moves from being the woman who carried it, to becoming one of the women we carry within us. 🤍
Rip sweet sweet gramma, forever and always❤️💛
Xoxo
Kristin
