And one of the most beautiful aspects of this wonderful movie is, I think, the relationship between Moana and her grandmother.
I watch this movie as a parent and therapist, feeling touched by the love between the two characters, the wisdom Moana’s grandmother imparts and seeing how Moana internalizes her as a source of wisdom, comfort, and strength.
Would that we all had grandmothers (or grandfathers or elders) like Moana’s grandmother in our lives!
Someone to turn to during life’s tough times. Who can hold a wider and deeper perspective than, perhaps, our own parents. And certainly more so than us.
Someone no longer burdened by day-to-day parenting who has decades-earned wisdom and mindsight to share and to guide us.
Someone to call on those days when we wake up, feeling like adulthood is a mountain in front of us that we don’t feel equipped to summit.
Few of my readers who come from relational trauma backgrounds in which there was intergenerational trauma, abuse, and dysfunction have someone like this in their lives.
And so today’s post is meant to fill in that inner parenting gap, to be another essay in the pep talk series that you can bookmark and turn to on the days when you’re so overwhelmed but can’t pick up the phone to call a member of your actual family-of-origin for comfort.
Read these words when you need some extra support, and internalize an imaginary elder, a wise inner grandmother as part of your own re-parenting and re-familying on your relational trauma recovery journey.
What Your Grandmother Would Say To You If She Could…
My dear one.
Talk to me, tell me what’s going on. I’ve been thinking about you.
Sweetheart.
I know you feel overwhelmed and worried and worn down.
That makes sense. Anyone who holds what you hold would.
I imagine you feel like an overly full cup of water, getting bumped and rattled and spilling over the edge every day.
You feel like it’s too much because it is too much.
That probably doesn’t feel helpful to say because there’s no clear way out of it all… you can’t quit all your obligations right now.
But my goodness I understand why you’d want to!
I hope what you’re hearing me say is that I get it.
That I get what you’re going through. I remember it well.
I remember it well and I want to tell you something:
A long chapter of your adult years can and will often feel like each day you wake up, and you don’t feel strong or capable enough to do all that you have to do, all those adult responsibilities, but having no other choice but to do it anyway.
