Meri's Musings

One of the challenges that most women face is learning how to gracefully wield their power and let their light shine. Some of us were lucky enough to find great role models and learn from their examples. Others of us acquired power but never learned to use it wisely. The rest of us still struggle with expressing personal power. What lessons have you learned that might shine a light for other women? Share with us, please.   

Don't you wonder sometimes about those people up your family tree? This young woman, Wilhelmina Blomgren, was my great-grandmother. She was almost 81 when I was born and died in her 90s when I was a teen. She lived in the town where my mother grew up. a place where we visited a few times a year. But as for my great-grandmother, I really have few memories of her. Except that her hair was white and thin, she wore old lady shoes, she wrote phonetically spelled letters to my mother, giving away the fact that she'd come to the U.S. as a young woman and gave up speaking her native tongue to become an American. Oh -- and the place that she lived always smelled like coffee. We went to her funeral. I don't remember the funeral particularly but I remember the wake that followed, primarily because my grandmother's elbow got bumped when she was carrying a lemon merengue pie. I happened to be next to her and wore the pie on my head. I was the only person who didn't think it was ...