It’s International Women’s Day so I’d like to ask you which woman has inspired you, helped you become stronger and cope better in your life?
I am so grateful to my “mormor” (my maternal grandma) and my mum. They showed me what true resilience looks like in practice. That no matter what happens, if you just put one step in front of the other, really take hold of the small joys and concentrate on a higher purpose, you will get through.
Humans are sense-making beings and so our brains are wired for stories. My mormor and mum successfully struggled through wartime, divorce and hardship. They lived their lives sometimes just through sheer determination, but many times with joy and always with hope and a purpose bigger than themselves. This has helped me many times in my life and maybe their stories can help you too.
My mormor (which literally means “mother mother”. In Swedish grandparents are called “mother mother”, “mother father” and so on so you know exactly who you’re talking about - very handy) married and moved from Stockholm to Copenhagen in the 1920s. They had two children, my mum and uncle, and they were still young children when my grandpa left mormor for another woman. Mormor had no family in Denmark, little money, and the stigma of being a divorcee with young children was heavy.
After trying to make this work somehow and not succeeding, she had to make the heart-breaking decision to leave her son behind in Copenhagen while she took her daughter, my mum, with her back to Stockholm. Her son would get a very good education through his father and grandma as he was their favourite.
My mormor and mum moved back to Stockholm in the middle of WW2 where mormor started working at the Swedish Embassy as a private secretary to the Swedish Diplomats. This helped as my mum and uncle could travel by themselves on the train between Denmark and Sweden on holidays with a bit of diplomatic protection. The thought now of sending your 8-9-10 year old children off by themselves on a long train journey across borders during a war is staggering. Mum remembers vividly the German soldiers walking through the train at the border of occupied Denmark questioning her as to why she was there.
Before my uncle came to visit, mormor and mum would basically live on porridge to save up enough money to feed a 3rd person, but the joy of seeing him made up for the sacrifices. There were also lovely joys of going to the opera as mormor would swap her alcohol rationing coupons with the doorman at the opera in exchange for opera tickets. Mum still talks of seeing “Gone with the Wind” 2 times in a row – if you wanted to, you could stay in your seat in the cinema and see the film again without paying extra, which mormor thought was a fantastic opportunity.
But it was poor, and it was lonely for mum. Mum recently showed me a letter from her godfather to mormor where he and his wife offered to adopt mum so she would have better opportunities in life than what mormor could provide. Instead of giving up mum as well, mormor worked very long hours to support them and to try to give mum opportunities that were equal to her brother’s. Mum, as a child of an embassy employee, was allowed to attend the same school as the royal children in Stockholm but was wearing hand me down clothes.
For a while, when mum was in her late teens, she was left in Stockholm while mormor worked at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow to earn some extra money. This was in the beginning of the Cold War. There were guards on every floor where mormor lived and whenever she walked anywhere, there would be people spying on her every move. But she lived with curiosity and hope, looking for the small joys, and she just did what she could do next, one step at a time, to support mum and my uncle when he visited.
Later, when mum had me and my brothers, grandma lived with us. She was always there to hold my hand at night if I had nightmares, she taught me how to knit and play cards, and took me out on the balcony at night to look through her telescope at stars and constellations.
She was a constant in my life with her smile and her filtered cigarette with an extra filter in the cigarette holder and a hardboiled orange or lemon sweet in her mouth because she didn’t like the taste of tobacco.
Mormor knew exactly what was important to her, and that was us. Every decision and step that she took in her life was guided by her dedication to us and evaluated by if it was taking her towards this. Then she just kept on going, no matter what life threw at her. To me that is true resilience, and I will always be thankful for having her as an example for how to live life with grace and purpose.