Calling in the grandmother medicine

& the plants they embody

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My paternal grandmother was not a warm woman. I have no memories of her laughing, joking or doting in any way. She lived with us for a year and I don’t think I got to know her any better in that time. Even the priest at her funeral couldn’t help but mention her cold nature.

At holidays and family gatherings she would sit on the edge of the room, not conversing, but simply observing. I often wonder now what she thought of it all as she looked upon this family she created. Was she satisfied with what she accomplished? Were there still things that haunted her? She was a closed book even to her kin.

But it never really bothered me to be honest, it was just who she always was. In fact, I feel like I’ve grown closer to her since she passed. She was the daughter of a coal miner, a job that hired immigrants and paid them very little. Most years they couldn’t afford shoes for their seven children. They made their pierogi dough into squares instead of circles (an outrageous act to be sure!) so that not even a scrap was wasted.

From her I learned it is not simply the passing of time that shapes a grandmother. To be a grandmother is to be strong enough, cunning enough, lucky enough to rise to that status. And sometimes that means growing cold around the edges.

I’ve also learned the passing of time does not determine where a grandmother begins and ends. There is something about the grandmother that defies the linear movement of our lives. She is untouchable even after she is gone, laughing at the slow march that determines our years.

There was a pivotal moment in my life when I found myself in the middle of one of the most traumatic situations I could’ve imagined. After it was over, I somehow managed to get myself through the day, but at night the panic and anxiety would bleed and spread into the darkness.

Then one night I started reciting the names of my ancestors, starting with my parents and going back as far as I could. I would picture their faces from the photos I had seen, recalling the tiny tidbits of their lives that remained. Dorothy Varga, Rose Schefka, Mary Kowalski, and on and on until the thread ran bare.

Chanting their names in my head over and over again was like an incantation, a summoning. Suddenly in the deepness of the night when there was no defense from the heavy energy that lingered, they were there. I felt held in a way no earthbound human could hold me. I felt their strength and their history seeping into me, and for the first time in weeks, I was calm.

Even today when I have trouble sleeping, I will go down the line in prayer, in remembrance. This is how I know a grandmother doesn’t end. She may not knit you sweaters and bake you cookies while she’s here, but she gifts you with something much more valuable than that. She gives you her spirit and her resilience if you seek it.

To be a grandmother is not just to be the matriarch to human children either. She is carried into the plant and animal world as well. These could be plants that old village women work with, those whose medicine strengthens and comforts the body or mind, who have persevered through destruction, or those who simply feel like home. Often these are our own ancestral plants.

For me, the first that comes to mind is chamomile. I’m not the only one who sees this hardy herb as grandmother either. For context, in Soviet-ruled Poland, black tea prices were outrageously high. So the act of growing, foraging and trading herbal teas was brought back from the oppressed folk culture. It wasn’t just an act of nourishment for the body, but as a symbol of resistance to the colonial powers that attempted to break them.

My grandmother brought up 12 children under the shadow of war, armed only with an arsenal of chamomile…My grandmother and grandfather knew what these herbs could do as easily as they knew how to breathe. So when I make a herbal tea, it feels like breathing with them.

~ Kasia Tomasiewicz

Indeed chamomile is a close companion of Polish grandmothers. It wasn’t so much a mystical plant like rue or wormwood, but it was a practical plant that carries its own sort of magic. Perhaps a bit of that human grandmother DNA was shared with chamomile somewhere along the line for their close companionship. When I interviewed Sophie Hodorowicz Knab, she also told me how her mother drank chamomile tea, especially in her grandmother years, even thousands of miles from her homeland.

In my own life, chamomile was the first plant to show me that herbs could heal. I had a terrible stomach ache, and unknowingly consumed a drink infused with chamomile. I was shocked to find my stomach settle almost instantly, as if it had been quietly soothed from within. It was a straightforward cure from a common herb, but it did feel like some sort of small divine act had been performed.

Since then, chamomile has appeared at crucial moments of my life when I didn’t know I needed its medicine, but it was there just the same. When I grow it in my garden (a Polish variety called Zloty Lan), that heady floral apple aroma invokes every song that was sung during its harvest, every cup of tea that was brewed for health and for freedom. And now, as I journey through the final stages of pregnancy, it is here again, softly whispering encouragement between sips.

It is a plant that was called upon for every stage of human life. Babies were bathed in chamomile infused waters as a blessing and to soothe sensitive skin. The old folks drink its tea to calm aches and pains. It is soft but sturdy in its medicine.

The grandmother plants are extensions of our human grandmothers, and vice versa. How many generations of grandmothers brewed the same herbs for the same purpose in your lineage?

Since leaving Poland, my ancestors settled on Anishinaabe land where I still reside. Here, they call white cedar Nookomis-giizhik, or “my grandmother cedar”. Like chamomile, the Anishinaabe work with cedar from the first breath to the last. Cradleboards are made from its wood and and its bark lines their final resting place.

Much of their physical and spiritual medicine revolves around cedar. The great medicine woman Keewaydinoquay said this as explanation:

When humankind was in trouble, Bear and Otter asked for and were given the cedar tree, to open up the line of communication between man and the rest of creation…Grandmother Cedar has within her very growth pattern the symbol of balance…the upper shape of the cedar tree is a mirror image of the root structure…she ties the four levels of our physical world to the four levels of the Spiritual world.

~ from Plants Have So Much To Give Us, All We Have To Do Is Ask

I think this is the key to understanding the spirit of a grandmother plant, person or otherwise. At her very core, she is a line of communication and connection to all things seen and unseen, even after, or maybe especially after, her physical form is gone. Her medicine can be called upon in times of need because her roots are deep and wide and unconcerned with the notion of physical boundaries.

If we need her, she is there in the plants, the women, the songs, the stories that are passed on as proof of her love. She knows that the healing we need isn’t always a warm embrace. Sometimes she offers soft words of encouragement, but other times a swift dose of bitters or a bucket of ice over the head is more warranted. Grandmother medicine does not coddle you, but it also does not abandon you.

As I inch further along in my own journey towards grand-motherhood, I’ve come to realize that the progression from Maiden to Mother to Crone is not what I had though either. The Crone, the grandmother, once again refuses to be confined. The Crone is still both Maiden and Mother. These versions of ourselves don’t just fade away as we move from one stage to the next.

As with cedar, the Crone is a scale that balances all past and future selves.

The dreams, fears, and magic that blossom within the Maiden is carried over to the Mother whose own dreams, fears, and magic are gathered and given to the Crone. The many lives we live are not lost, though sometimes they do get buried. It is this accumulation of things that creates grandmother medicine, not time.

Grandmother Medicine Prayer

Grandmother remind me
that sitting on the outskirts
gives you better perspective
than being in the center.

Grandmother tell me
that my face is just as perfect
without a smile
without a laugh.

Grandmother hold me
when the night closes in
with your steady hands
and your steadfast gaze.

Grandmother show me
how to work the dough
how to dig the soil
just as your hands used to.

Grandmother grant me
the medicine I need
to bring me balance
and open my ears and eyes.

Grandmother bring me
the plants that
remember you that
feel like you.

No matter where you are on your journey, I hope you call in your own grandmother medicine.

Much love,

Val