The Grandmother Blessing, Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Dear Brave Souls: For this day, onto you all....

THE GRANDMOTHER BLESSING

We have trolled all day for shadows,
and now we sort our catch.

From far off one would think we are only
fisherwomen sorting our nets.

But we have caught our grandmothers’ shadows
which they molted as they died.

Years ago, morticians were trained to throw these away.
People did not know the use of these then.

We have worked hard and we have reclaimed many;
some shadows are small as a waist,
some are big around as apple baskets.

We hold them up to our breasts and hips,
assessing the fit.
We work, we wait,
till every woman finds a match.

Then we climb to the highest jetties,
and let ourselves tip and fall,
our grandmothers’ shadows
opening like fabulous fans.

We soar to secret
women’s ground, the place where there are
rules and instructions for wise skin

and white hair that lights the way. . .

and how, as the eyes grow dim,

they see far,

farther,

farthest.

with love,
dr. e

CODA
Published 1993, The New Censorship Literary Magazine, "The Grandmother Blessing" © by CP Estés, all rights reserved. From La Pasionaria.

This poem is from the series about trying to track the points of the journey when moving out of mid-age toward what I have come to call “the farthest encampment.”

This as I conceive it, is that place where goals, ideas and attitudes change from being contained in whatever tiny bindle bag you once had put them in, to a far more vast conveyance, one that has cognitive sturdiness and the transmission capacity to not only carry, but to broadcast the soul’s life to the self, --to others-- throughout the years yet to come.

This transition is tradition for many of us—although different descriptors might be used—a change in attitude and behavior that causes one to seek to follow the enormity of the soul’s sight and insights, rather than the often too-confining ego’s view alone