Grounded Grandmothers a New Book by Aukje Kapteyn

This generation of grandparents has a unique challenge to be engaged, relevant, familiar with social media while still offering a calm and grounded presence to a world that needs exactly that.

We don’t want to just be conveniently close to shops and medical care, but also to recreation, parks, and cafés; we choose to be next to school playgrounds, hiking trials, and places where active young and old gather. We are not interested in seclusion, where everything is done for us in one facility. We like our self-sufficiency, as long as possible, while enjoying natural, spontaneous interactions with everyone, not just our peers.

Having raised our children, we are now being challenged by these very same children to engage in adult relationships with them. Our children want their independence, and the authority to make their own mistakes and yet they want us to be unconditionally supportive and very much present in their lives. In a healthy adult child and parent relationship, there is hopefully a happy choice between being over-involved and being distant. It’s navigating a new way of being that is often not painless.

While we may have set aside our dreams to raise our children, we now may still have the vitality and creativity to launch something that comes from us and is not dictated by societal and familial expectations. We can legitimately throw ourselves into something to fulfill some aspect of ourselves that we previously set aside. We seem to need more time reflecting and processing our fast-paced world for letting things sink in, to clear a clutter of memories and old ways of doing things, to have a new clarity, for a new kind of problem. This takes, work, contemplation and engaging authentically with others. It takes adjustment to realize that our contribution to another’s health, inspiration or well-being has great value without us even knowing exactly what we did. Someone may just feel good being around us and that is pretty important. Many of us have the experience of losing our peers, good friends, partners, and co-workers to illness and death. We straddle wanting to be fully alive, while not being able to ignore our own mortality.

Fortunately we have more access to body-mind practices than our predecessors did. These can help us look at our limitations in a new way. It is not mind over body, or spirit transcends body, but an embracing of our whole selves in love and acceptance that shows us the way. In my book: Grounded Grandmothers, I write about a common ground that enhances our lives: joy, gratitude, and authentic interaction. The book is full of stories, anecdotes, and practical suggestions, such as physical movement and journalling exercises to guide us forward. Feedback from a diversity of readers have indicated that it resonated, they felt seen and understood, as if the book were a gentle companion. I hope you find it that for you.

The book is available locally at Ten Old Books.

Ten Old Books in the Duncan Garage 330 Duncan Street Downtown Duncan 250 715-1383