My last living grandfather just passed. Both my grandfathers were not great men. I’ve told you how my dad’s dad threatened to bomb a school over a broken heart. My mom’s dad wasn’t much better.

But, even as I write that, I’m reminded of how proud I am to be who I am and what I went through. It’s the same stuff that today makes me know, better than most, what I stand for and why. What a good man looks like. What I will and won’t tolerate with distinction. What I want for my own kids and what we need most in the world.

When someone passes

I’ve never been too sad around death. I’m just not sad about it. I have a strong concept of death. A worldview that includes death as a natural part of life. Death as transformation. Death as the next step in the cycle. How exciting. The ones that die, they get the next journey. We’re left here to continue to manage life, and in a lot of cases, whatever they left behind.

I grieve, just like anyone else, but I have a lot more peace about death than the culture I’m a part of.

Although with my grandfather’s passing, I am in an odd space.

I hadn’t seen him for years. I honestly can’t remember the last time. And my family became largely estranged from him and Grandma (we called her Granny as kids). Why is truly hard for me to admit. I have more tension about that story than I do his passing. It might not be that hard to guess, but it’s horrible nonetheless. My grandfather sexually abused or molested all of the female granddaughters.

I didn’t even remember until I was like 25. I lived for years with a blank memory of time past. That’s what Truma does to you. Once I started EMDR therapy, I remembered a lot more. My sister and I remembered around the same time, and later that year, we would tell our parents, and life would change.

Both of us presented with signs of SA that I would never miss now as an adult. But we had so much else going on in the home, maybe it wasn’t easy to see.

You choose this life

My heart is heavy as I write that. As I recall the little girl who needed to be protected. Who lived with this event she didn’t understand. Who was altered by this and had it come out in weird ways. Who never felt very safe with any adult. Who got her period earlier than any of the other girls in school.

I’m also proud of who I am today. Very proud. I love my life and I love who I am. I love who I’m still becoming. I love what I know and what I don’t, and for who I want to be in the world.

I have a view of this past that most probably don’t and may not like to hear. But, I believe, with all my being, that you chose this life. You chose the hardships you get, the trauma, the horrors, the good and the bad, even before you get here. Your soul knows what it wants to go through.

I believe in reincarnation. Which means maybe I was an Indian man in a past life, and in this one, I really wanted to be a white woman with big tits. I laugh, because you have to.

It’s one of the concepts that’s helped me heal over the years the most. That I chose this. That I chose to experience this and to learn and grow from it. Flowers can’t grow without soil. Roots need pressure and tension to expand. You choose the things that transform you because that’s what you’re here to do as a human.

Forgiveness

A mentor told me, Forgiveness is giving up any hope for a different past.

And it emphasizes that forgiveness is about accepting that an event has occurred and can no longer be changed. It's not about condoning the event but about releasing the desire to alter history so you can move forward with a clearer perspective.

And too often we hold because we want something to be different. Like if we can hold hard enough, produce enough anger and energy then something will change. And it won’t. And so the harder part actually becomes to just soften. To just feel it. To just grieve it and let it move through you.

And so I don’t hold any anger towards my grandfather at this stage, because I won’t let the anger control me. I’m not gonna hang out in the same room with him (mute point now) and I didn’t have much empathy in his last years, and I didn’t need to have a relationship with him. Forgiveness isn’t about that. Erika Kirk showed us that recently too. How incredible and brave and tough and challenging it must be to publically forgive the man that shot your husband.

But, I forgive my grandfather, too. I forgive him for what he did and for whatever reason why. Not because I’m even at total peace with it, but because that’s at least the first step to coming to more peace. And my life will be about peace, balance, harmony, and love. And I must do what’s hard to get there. And sometimes, the hardest thing to do is to just let go.

And guess what? I have stories for days because of it. And I’m a writer. That’s a good product catalog if you ask me.

Forgiveness to me can sometimes feel like the white flag, and it is. It’s the moment when you do surrender. You surrender to God, to life, to happening. You can no longer will your way, you’re no longer facing your fears, and you just surrender. Forgiveness is the part of the grief process where you accept what you have been through, and you lie down in wait, with your white flag flown.

And you start what you need to hold that posture of forgiveness and surrender. Maybe just writing it over and over helps. Maybe speaking about it with God. Telling your story to others helps. Always ending it with, and I forgive. Say it outloud. Hold it as the truth you’re choosing.

Somatic processes can be really critical for grief too. For any big trauma. Trauma gets stored in the body; we know this. Grief is the same.

So that means you just do something in the body. Massage, acupuncture, dance, sauna, yoga. Just go move. You might cry as you do it. Great, it’s working. Writing helps too. It’s reminding me that sometimes we need prompts to help us and I’m making a sheet to do so. I’ll add it on Instagram when I’m done.

And in the end, I don’t see my grandfather’s death as the close of a chapter so much as a reminder of what I carry forward. His passing doesn’t erase the harm, but it also doesn’t bind me to it. What I inherit isn’t his sin, but the strength to turn it into wisdom, to keep choosing peace, and to keep choosing love. That’s the real legacy I’ll build for my own children, for my own life.

Death strips everything down to what matters: what we’ve learned, what we’ve forgiven, and what we choose to create next. And for me, that means writing, living, and loving in a way that proves the soil of pain really can grow flowers.

Love,
Val

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