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My Nana and the MeToo Movement

By on July 4, 2018
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By Pam Del Franco

Sitting in her favorite chair, Nana listened to me as she watched my hands gesture furiously while talking about the importance of the #MeToo movement and all the changes that are going on with women today. My heart was filled with gratitude for being alive at this time in history because our stories will be re-written as these movements continue to explode, and when the dust settles the change can’t be undone.

I loved my Nana dearly and always felt close to her. She supported my dreams of being a princess when I was a little girl, but she’d always add something I didn’t understand like, “there’s nothing wrong with being a princess as long as you stand up as well”.

When my hands finished flailing, she quietly said, “I’ve been down that road before”.

I looked at her, self-assured with my awareness and said, “Don’t worry Nana, you wouldn’t understand, but my generation will make it work. We’re not going to put up with the crap that you did back in the day; this isn’t about the right to vote or even making it ok to be a working mom, it’s beyond that”.
I have to admit I was a bit frustrated with her because it felt like she was dismissing me a little, but I couldn’t stay upset with Nana as my memories of her bear hugs and famous spaghetti sauce wafted through my mind. She always offered me something else to think about because most of my friends didn’t seem to care about any campaign for women’s rights, they were more interested in telling me what they wore last night when they had forgiven him, again.

I’m sure that my Nana saw a sweet girl with pigtails wearing a princess dress and thrashing the air with her plastic sword, but now that little girl was 5’9”; a fierce beauty and dedicated to a future beyond gender where we all moved towards the unknown side by side as humanity.

“Come and sit with me darling”, she said, “And let me tell you about dirt”.

She gave me one of her famous bear hugs and then I sat there wondering if she was at the beginnings of dementia. I’d heard old people start to speak gibberish when that happens.

“Imagine a glass of water with a layer of mud on the bottom”, she said. “If you’re just looking from the top view, it’s easy to miss all of that dirt at the bottom, but then when you start to stir it up, it all mixes together, and it looks like you’ll never have that clear water anymore”.

I was still listening but with the added sadness of the possibility of dementia, and she continued.
“With time, the sediment settles back down to the bottom, and although it doesn’t actually leave the glass, it has created enough of a disturbance for people to choose to acknowledge that the mud does exist”.

“These movements are about that acknowledgement. Many women are coming forward speaking about things that happened to them 20 or 30 years ago, and I hear comments like, “that it was so long ago just leave it alone” or “what’s the point in bringing it up now?”

She took in a deep breath, and her eyes told me she was reminiscing.

“The point is” she continued, “is that heartbreak, sadness, or fear don’t operate on the same timeline as our minds do on a day-to-day basis. Just like years from now when you smell pasta sauce, you’ll be transported back to your memories of me and re-experience the love of our moments together”.
She paused, “but you can also be transported back to a time where the experience made you feel scared and alone, and it won’t matter that it was 20 years ago, you’ll still feel it”.

She took my hand and said, “The #MeToo is the mud at the bottom of the glass that’s being stirred up. We experienced similar ideology in the 1960’s when we burnt our bras, but now with the power of social media and technology in general, it gives you a much needed and wider platform, and you can reach women all over the world as quick as the next Tweet”.

How would she know about tweets? I thought.

I couldn’t know as I sat there, that although she saw me as a little girl, she also saw the woman I had become and that her heart lingered with her little princess, but her wisdom saw the warrior woman in me.

When I left later that day somehow I found more strength knowing that she was on my side as she’s always been even in these modern times of tweets, posts and blogs. I didn’t have to worry that it was an untested movement because it has been percolating for some time now and my generation has brought it front and centre. We were going to do this together, all women of all ages and it will accelerate until the future generations think this movement is nothing but old history.

As I drove home, I reflected on my childhood years around my Nana, and I could see she was showing me the power of this movement each time she made me feel heard, spoke up to the burly renovator who tried to rip her off and never retired into quiet and solitude. She always asked me to speak up, do what I love, be kind to people and above all she reminded me that nature abhors a vacuum which meant if I kept saying “I don’t know” when asked a question, choices about my likes and dislikes would be made in absentia.

I didn’t know Nana in her youth and had no idea of the life she had led, but now as the days move quickly towards starting my own family, I know when they are grown, and when I too am becoming a grandmother, I will remind them of how these days were the end of a major revolution in women’s issues and the changes that it brought about.

Hopefully, they will look at me as if I’m a bit strange because their lives will have been wiped clean of the gender bias and will have to be reminded that it wasn’t always that way.

 

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Screen-Shot-2018-03-28-at-11.14.56-AM-245x300Pam Del Franco, S.S.W, Spiritual Medium/Counsellor, Contributing Author to the best-selling book, Simply…Woman stories from 30 magnificent women who have risen against the odds.

Pam is also a member of OACCPP (The Association of Registered Psychotherapists & Mental Health Professionals)
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