Member-only story
You Don’t Own My Smile
And that’s ok.
As many of you have probably guessed from some of the subjects that I’ve written about, I’m a woman. I grew up in what felt to be a very matriarchal household where women, but especially my grandmother, ruled the roost as it were. She was a ballsy woman who lost her mother at a young age around the time of the Great Depression. She was left to raise her brother, who was four years younger, until she was about twelve. She and her brother lived in a tent with their dad for months on end in the Sonoran Desert, and I think it made her a tough bitch who I admired in a lot of ways.
She didn’t take no from anyone. Despite only having an eighth grade education, she taught herself to do a lot of things like accounting and running a business that were considered outside of the realm of “women’s work.” She never backed down from a challenge, and when it came to doing “men’s work” like building sheds and the like, she had the confidence of someone who believed they could do anything they set their minds to. She raised four children and multiple foster kids with the same principles of hard work and determination.
