Ode to my Great Grandmother
“Love Warrior.” That’s what my mum used to call me. Her voice carried both pride and longing, as if she were naming something in me she wished she had been allowed to be.
In so many ways, my mother has been my greatest teacher. She has imparted wisdom so deep it lives in my bones. And though our relationship has been shaped by both love and loss, I hold nothing but tenderness for the little girl within her—the child who, more than anything, needed a mother.
You see, when a mother is still searching for a mother, she cannot fully be one. The ache of that absence echoes through generations, shaping the way love is given and received.
🌸Without the foundation of nurturance, we learn to seek safety in places that cannot hold us.
🌸We contort ourselves into shapes that fit others’ needs, forgetting our own.
🌸We become masters of self-abandonment, mistaking it for devotion.
In many ways, my relationship with my mother was a reflection of hers with her own mother—a lineage of longing. She, too, was raised without a mother, placed instead in the hands of her grandmother, who did her best. But something was missing—something so primal that its absence left a wound too deep to name.
I remember a moment in a Breathwork session when love—pure, expansive love—filled my entire being. And in that same moment, my great-grandmother, Bubu Lalokau (whose very name means love), came through my heart. This was the woman who raised my mother.
With her came a pain so ancient it felt woven into my DNA—a sorrow passed down like an heirloom… carried by my grandmother, then my mother and then me.
But my mother, in her own way, taught me something invaluable:
I do not owe her my becoming. 🦋
She showed me, through her actions, that it is not my role to be her healer, her security blanket or the missing piece in her story. And yet, for so long, I tried.
I quieted my needs, hoping she would finally mother me in the way I longed for.
But the more I shrank, the louder her demands became.
I see her pain. I see the little girl inside her, still grasping for the love she never received. I see the wise woman she could be—if only she let go of the sabotage, the fear, the belief that she must earn love rather than simply be love.
We come from a lineage of healers. My mother is a healer—her words and projections carrying the power of incantations. You see a healer doesn’t fix you—they remind you that the healing was always within you.
But she is afraid—afraid to step into the birthright that whispers to her:
✨ You are already worthy. ✨
Afraid to stop seeking outside herself for what has always lived within.
Maybe she will awaken. Maybe she won’t.
But that is not my burden to carry.
I am not the bandaid. I am not the fixer.
I am the cycle breaker.
It is not easy to create distance from the woman who gave me life, the woman whose voice echoes her wisdom to me. In a lot of ways my mother has always inspired me. I cherish our long conversations, the way her wisdom flows effortlessly, how she sees the world through eyes that have known both struggle and beauty. Her and I always had a gift of speaking in multi-levels, which I now know is how our minds work.
I adore her. And yet, I know that love does not mean staying tangled in cycles that are not mine to carry.
Perhaps this is only a season or perhaps it is a lifetime of learning to love from afar. Either way, I surrender it to something greater.
A Prayer for My Mother 🙏🏽✨
May peace find its way to her heart, gently and without condition.
May she release the patterns that no longer serve her and may joy take their place.
May she remember that she is already whole, already worthy, already enough.
May she no longer seek outside herself for the love that has always lived within.
And may she know, always, that I love her.
Big Hugs,
Lamisha 💛
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