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The Women Before Me - Journal entry
October 6, 2024
My daughter is away in the care of her father. I couldn't sleep last night and started thinking about the women who’ve come before me, those whose blood courses through my veins, and whose stories are etched into my life.
Great-grandmother Norma Jean Moore, a woman of the '40s, lived through a time of profound change. Born into the echoes of the Great Depression, she was a child when the world was at war. I often wonder about her passions, hidden beneath the surface of a society that demanded so much resilience. What was it like to fall in love amidst the backdrop of World War II? Did she ever steal kisses under the moonlight, dreaming of a peaceful future? She died in 2012, one year before I would experience my first time of intimacy with a boy.
Grandmother Jean Gamble was a child of the '60s, a tumultuous era marked by civil rights marches and the quest for freedoms, both social and sexual. She would have been a young girl when the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964, a time when the country was wrestling with its soul. I wonder if the spirit of that age, with its cries for equality and justice, shaped her idea of love. She died in 2021, having witnessed many loves in her own life and a few in mine. Her eyes always held a glint of understanding.
My mother, gone too soon in 2023, was a child of the '80s. The Cold War was coming to an end and the world seemed full of possibilities. Did the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 symbolize a breaking down of barriers in her own heart? How did she perceive love in an age where walls were coming down and the world was opening up? Her life, though far too short, was a testament to the strength and resilience passed down through generations.
And then there's me, Lauryn Jean, born at the dawn of the new millennium. My first love unfolded on a seemingly unremarkable Thursday, April 4, 2013. It was a day like any other, yet it marked the beginning of my love life filled with pleasures and sorrow.
What significant events will mark the chapters of my life in the eyes of my child, Ava? Will she look back and wonder about my passions, my loves, and the historical moments that defined my time?
These women gave me a legacy of love and resilience. I hope I can pass the good things to my child. The women before me faced their own challenges, their own moments of history, and through it all, they loved fiercely. It is this love, this unyielding force, that I cling to as I navigate the complexities of being a single mother in a crazy world.
My daughter is away in the care of her father. I couldn't sleep last night and started thinking about the women who’ve come before me, those whose blood courses through my veins, and whose stories are etched into my life.
Great-grandmother Norma Jean Moore, a woman of the '40s, lived through a time of profound change. Born into the echoes of the Great Depression, she was a child when the world was at war. I often wonder about her passions, hidden beneath the surface of a society that demanded so much resilience. What was it like to fall in love amidst the backdrop of World War II? Did she ever steal kisses under the moonlight, dreaming of a peaceful future? She died in 2012, one year before I would experience my first time of intimacy with a boy.
Grandmother Jean Gamble was a child of the '60s, a tumultuous era marked by civil rights marches and the quest for freedoms, both social and sexual. She would have been a young girl when the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964, a time when the country was wrestling with its soul. I wonder if the spirit of that age, with its cries for equality and justice, shaped her idea of love. She died in 2021, having witnessed many loves in her own life and a few in mine. Her eyes always held a glint of understanding.
My mother, gone too soon in 2023, was a child of the '80s. The Cold War was coming to an end and the world seemed full of possibilities. Did the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 symbolize a breaking down of barriers in her own heart? How did she perceive love in an age where walls were coming down and the world was opening up? Her life, though far too short, was a testament to the strength and resilience passed down through generations.
And then there's me, Lauryn Jean, born at the dawn of the new millennium. My first love unfolded on a seemingly unremarkable Thursday, April 4, 2013. It was a day like any other, yet it marked the beginning of my love life filled with pleasures and sorrow.
What significant events will mark the chapters of my life in the eyes of my child, Ava? Will she look back and wonder about my passions, my loves, and the historical moments that defined my time?
These women gave me a legacy of love and resilience. I hope I can pass the good things to my child. The women before me faced their own challenges, their own moments of history, and through it all, they loved fiercely. It is this love, this unyielding force, that I cling to as I navigate the complexities of being a single mother in a crazy world.
Published 6th Oct 2024
| Edited 7th Oct 2024
Author's Note
A long journal entry but I wanted to share it here. Top left is great-grandmother and her husband. Top right is grandmother. Of course, mother is bottom left. I love that photo and mother loved to share her beauty. Finally, I'm pictured with Ava when she was a newborn.
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An interesting share of family backstory. Like the cosy way your great grandmother is seated with her husband. Can sense the underlying warmth of that marriage. I doubt my own great grandmother Marion (born 1875) had that affectionate a marriage - according to my grandmother who found my great grandfather an unfriendly father in law (because she wasn't the woman he had wanted his son to marry), her lifelong husband was unfaithful and after she died in 1936 aged 60 he remarried to a much younger woman he had carried on with while Marion was dying. My grandmother Margaret, born 1906, married my grandfather when he was barely out of apprenticeship when she was then 19 - she told me she would have liked to have waited longer but my grandfather was unhappy in his parental home (due largely to his father). They were faithfully married over 40 years until his death, including through WWII when she had to bring up 4 children alone while her husband was in the army. She lived to 92, dying in 1998, long enough for me to pick up much family history in conversations with her..
Coincidentally April 4th happens to be the birthday of my own mother (now 91) who was born the year Hitler came to power in Germany and grew up through WWII as a farmer's child then trained and worked in nursery nursing into her marriage in 1956 until just before I was born. She did not embrace the shorter skirts your grandmother is pictured in when they came along in the 1960s nor the spirit of that decade. She is a strong willed woman typical of her farming background.
I don't disagree with your comment your own mother liked to share her beauty.
Coincidentally April 4th happens to be the birthday of my own mother (now 91) who was born the year Hitler came to power in Germany and grew up through WWII as a farmer's child then trained and worked in nursery nursing into her marriage in 1956 until just before I was born. She did not embrace the shorter skirts your grandmother is pictured in when they came along in the 1960s nor the spirit of that decade. She is a strong willed woman typical of her farming background.
I don't disagree with your comment your own mother liked to share her beauty.
11th Oct 2024 2:41am
