Lavender Wands

I was excited to have Avery and Mabel come to my house and make lavender wands last week. We had planned it while the lavender was in full glory, burgeoning blooms from my two huge lavender plants.

Avery, my granddaughter, has been making wands with me since she was six years old. She is now the lead, making them with precision and a professional touch.

She brought her cousin Mabel, and we talked as we worked, mostly about school ending and what comes next year. They were polite and well-mannered. Avery thanked me for the snack of sparkling water, cherries, blueberries, and the Trader Joe's Unexpected cheese.

I wanted to go deeper, but something in me hesitated. There seemed to be a wall of politeness between us, these two beautiful girls on the verge of their teen years. I knew I was not privy to their world. I felt a slight distance I couldn't quite put my finger on. The politeness was real, but it wasn't the realness of them.

I found myself thinking about my grandmother.

On my grandparents' farm, we woke up early in the summer to help get the fresh vegetables ready. MaMa would rise at the crack of dawn, before the sweltering heat set in, and pick the corn, butterbeans, peas, and tomatoes. When my sister and I made it to the back porch, we'd find huge aluminum tubs full of the morning's harvest waiting for us. Our jobs were to shuck the corn, shave it off for cream corn, shell the butterbeans, and shell the peas. I remember shucking corn, wincing at the worms.

My grandmother never had deep talks with me. She was working, and we were right there alongside her. I'm not sure I knew then what I was learning. But I loved being part of the workforce. I loved eating those fresh vegetables. I loved summer on the farm, where things were growing and we walked barefoot, our feet always touching the earth.

My grandmother never planned activities for us. We just followed her around, whatever she was doing. When she went to Aunt Annie's house, who was bedridden with rheumatoid arthritis, we tagged along. When she cut Aunt Annie's hair or made her a rug out of rug samples, Maie and I played on the front porch, making up stories and games, sitting in the ocking chairs.

It was a perfect life. No hurry. Just being.

Avery, at 8 years old, picking lavender for her wands

I feel a little worried that Avery might not want to hang out with me soon. She's already so busy with lacrosse, Girl Scouts, and ballet. All the things.

My biggest wish is that she'll come to me when life gets hard. That I can be the one who listens without judgment.

I want her to know she doesn't have to be just polite. 

She doesn't have to please everyone. Because that is the pathway into losing yourself. I want her to know that's what I did. I wanted everyone to like me, so I behaved exactly as I was told. I didn't question anything. I followed the rules. I was told to be nice, no matter what.

I've spent a large portion of my life unlearning those messages. Be a good girl. Don't be angry. Say you're sorry. Some of it was role-modeled by the women around me, even though many of them were about as tough as they come.  Some of what I noticed was never spoken at all.

The other large portion of my life, my professional life, has been spent helping women let go of self-doubt, the need to people-please, and the habit of being nice at the cost of being real. Helping women learn to speak up instead of staying silent because they didn't want to hurt someone's feelings, or were afraid of someone's anger, or didn't know how to say what was true without exploding.

This is what I want all women to know. How powerful they are when they are in their true selves. When they actually know themselves.

This is what I want for all my granddaughters: Avery, Ella, Katie, Louise, and every other young girl I love.

That afternoon with the lavender wands was real. I wonder how they'll remember it, or if they will. How on a Monday afternoon after school, they came over, and we cut lavender stems and talked about their lives in a surface-level way. I will always want to go deeper. I always have. That's why I became a therapist and a coach. I want to find the meaning in things. I want to understand what transforms people from the inside out. And I want badly to pass along what I know. It seems like a waste of wisdom if that doesn't happen.

That's why I write.

My son once said to me, "Mom, I like that you're writing blog posts, because you don't know who will read them one day. Maybe Ella's granddaughter. And she'll know what you know, and she'll know what your life was like."

I wonder about that.

And I think about the women who I know...some of you are reading this. The ones who are grown and still unlearning what they were taught about being good, being quiet, being nice. The ones who are ready to go deeper.

This summer, I'm opening a small circle for women like that. Three sessions, intimate, unhurried. A place to be honest about where you are and what you know to be true.

I have three spots left. We start on June 16th, and doors close on June 13th. The women already in this group are remarkable, exactly the kind of women who are ready to remember who they are and what they know.

If something in you said yes while you were reading this, that's worth paying attention to. You can learn more and save your spot THE SUMMER VISION CIRCLE