A Tribute to My Grandma

Don’t you think it is time for our joy?

Each morning is a new opportunity to recreate ourselves. We get a blank piece of paper every single day, on which to write the story of our lives. Let us make positive choices that empower ourselves and transform our community. Let us release all self-hatred and despair and make for ourselves a better day!

Grandma used to tell me about the work she did with her friends. She called the tight-knit group she worked with a ‘Margaret Mead group’ and said that Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” She and her friends made a commitment to get their lives together for the sake of the community, and they encouraged and were accountable to each other. Together, they noticed a need for adoption and foster care advocacy and passionately made it their group focus. Over the past several years, Grandma and her Margaret Mead group distributed brochures, gave presentations, and canvased their neighborhoods for the sake of promoting adoption and foster care. As you know, through their service, they doubled the number of new adoptive and foster care families in their community.

My grandmother’s pastor always advised her of how important it was to not only tithe her money, but also her time. It was because of him that she gave at least eight hours a week to organizations like the NAACP, Boys and Girls Club, and The Balm in Gilead which supports and advocates for African Americans living with HIV or AIDS. These were the causes that she passionately supported for as long as her health allowed.
I’m proud of Grandma’s service and I’m also proud of her friends who tithe their time for the betterment of our community. I truly believe that it is your love for God and neighbor that has made this church such a healing community of love and I hope that your example will inspire others to do the same.

Today, I am honored to give thanks for Grandma’s life. She taught me that I am a strong, capable, proud, creative, energetic, force to be reckoned with. She told me that nothing is impossible for me. She reminded me that “to whom much is given, much is required,” and before she died she made me promise that I would do my best to share the lessons that I learned at her knee.

In closing, Grandma told me that she once heard a wise man say that the secret of life is this, “Love begets love, and evil begets evil. And love will always overcome evil, when love acts to. Yet evil always acts while love often waits. Yet a life is but a moment in time without a proper name; while those we enhance or harm, enhance or harm, enhance or harm, for countless generations.”

We must heal our community by looking in the mirror and deciding to BE THE CHANGE we want to see!
We must let ourselves love enough to be responsible for the progress of our communities. The power of love can only win if it acts, and when we act with love, we can save not only ourselves along with our families, friends, and neighbors, but also our future. Everyday my Grandma’s words of wisdom remind me that feeling stuck and powerless never stopped my ancestors from moving beyond circumstance to overcome.

Grandma told me all the time, “Honey, you are my immortality.”  I think I finally understand what she meant.  She enhanced my life and the lives of so many others.  She was firmly committed to aiding me to realize my potential as an empowered adult.  I am her immortality and I will BE the healing of our community.  She knew that we can heal our community and the time for transformation is now.

Thank you for allowing me to reflect on Grandma’s life and legacy.

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