What Matters Most

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What Matters Most    Laughter fills the room where four generations of women gather together: mother, daughter, granddaughter and great granddaughters.   They share the same twinkle in their eyes, wisdom and sense of humor.

Sharon Sand speaks plainly and simply about their relationship.  “I think that women are incredily strong, and I think that women are the glue that hold things together because as part of our nature we see things from a more global  perspective.  We see how a situation or an event is going to ripple out into the family, how everyone is affected.”

At this particular point in American history, Sharon believes that women make a significant difference.  “I think women are really important right now because I think the global view actually goes out beyond our families to seeing from a different perspective.

“The one thing we have as part of our nature is our nuture and that compassion.  So, I think that women, right now, are really going to have much more influence because we can’t muscle our way through things anymore.

“I think that the world has been driven by a masculine energy for thousands of years.  Now is the time when the feminine energy is going to make the difference.  Women are very good at compromise.  Very very good at compromise.  And, I think that anything we care about, we think about it, and we think about whatever it happens to be, whether it’s something personal, how that’s going to play out and affect others that are around us.

“Not from a place of needing to take care of everyone but just from a consciousness.  The world, right now, really needs that feminine energy, not just within our families. 

“I mean, ‘Who makes things okay?’  When momma’s not okay, nobody’s okay.  So, momma does it!

“And, within my family of the four generations, the women in my family are very strong women.  We’re just more of a stabilizing force.   I love the relationship that we have…four generations of women.”

Collaboration and Communication

The four generatons of women–mother, daughter, granddaughter and great granddaughters–know how to get along with others and each other.  “For Page, she just really loves people.  And, she’ll say, ‘Well, that person was mean to me but they’re probably having a bad day.’ 

“It’s not that she doesn’t come into conflict.  She does.  But, I think that there’s a lot of allowance for allowing people to be who they are.

“Some days we’re on and some days we’re not, and some days we’re bitchy and some days we’re not and some days we’re more caring and more thoughtful and some days we’re not.   And, so it’s just an allowance for the humanness.

“We have a tendency to want go to that place if somebody’s rude to us, there must be something wrong with me.  I don’t think that Page takes that on that way.  And, I know that Hannah doesn’t, either.  I think there’s just this solidness in them. 

“I think they choose also how much they’re going to participate with someone.  Shannon used to say this to them when they were really, really little and complain when playing and say, ‘So and so did this to me!’ or ‘So and so did that to me!’

“Shannon would say to them, ‘Hannah, you’re a sovereign nation.  They can’t make you do anything.  They can’t make you feel any way.  You are a sovereign nation, so you get to choose how much you’re willing to take on or how much you’re willing to participate.  If that person is mean to you in some way or it’s just not fun to play with them because you have to play with them in whatever they want to do, you get to choose.  But then, you can’t complain.’

“So, I think that there’s a self-responsiblity there as far as how much you’re going to allow someone else to affect how you feel.  And, I’d always love that when Shannon would do that, she’d say, ‘Page, you’re a sovereign nation.’  And, both of them do have this very strong sense of self.”

Coming from a Place of Abundance

Great granddaughters, Page and Hannah are teenagers.  Granddaughter Shannon is in her mid-thirties.  Sharon is sixty-two.   Sharon’s mother is eighty-five.  Their ability to share their thoughts and feelings with one another is the foundation of their strength. 

“When we are all together, eventhough Hannah is seventeen and Page is thirteen, my mother being eighty-five, we just have fun. 

“They can talk to my mom in the same way they would talk to me or they can talk to their mom or they can talk to a friend and so there’s just a connection that is a camaraderie whenever we get together to do something. 

“My mom listens to what they have to say.  She’s not caught in the mindset of the time in which she grew up.  I think my mother’s values were always very different than what society’s values were portrayed. 

“I can remember when she was on strike in the fifties working at Boeing, coming home from school and seeing commodities on the kitchen table, and it was like, ‘Whoa!’ 

“And, I said to her, ‘Are we poor?’  And she said, ‘No, that’s a mindset.’

“The values she gave to me, that I gave to Shannon, that my daughter gave to her daughters, is that you can come from a place of lack or you can come from a place of abundance and it doesn’t have anything to do with what you may have acquired in your life.  It’s an energy, it’s a feeling.  That’s what my mother gave to us, and we didn’t grow up with a lot, that’s for sure.  But, we were happy.  We were happy.

“We can’t get that from someone else.  We can only get it from ourselves.  But, our families can help us to belong because we do belong to our families no matter how diverse and different we may be, we belong.  That’s what we have those families for.

“No matter where they go, no matter what they do, they always have someone to come home to and that’s generationally.

“If I”m gone tomorrow, they have their mother.  They have their great-grandmother.  If their mother’s gone tomorrow, they have me and they have my mother. 

“But, most of all they have themselves.”