Learning to listen to the matriarch within has been a journey of grief, love, and spiritual awakening, and I want to share it with you.
Dedication
For MaryAnn, Kathy, Patty, and Rachael—the women whose roots hold me steady and whose love keeps me growing-each story is a testament to resilience and spiritual bonds.
It’s been almost two years since I put words on a page. In that time, I lost the rhythm of my own life, redirecting everything to my mother as her body faltered. She warned us, “Keep an eye on me,” and pressed keepsakes into visitors’ hands—like time had already tipped. After months of pain and puzzling scans, the doctors found a basketball-sized tumor swallowing a kidney and crowding other organs. She learned this the same weekend that we buried her oldest sister, MaryAnn—the family matriarch who had once mothered my mother like one of her own.
MaryAnn wasn’t soft around the edges when her seven children were young. Cleanliness was holiness; Sunday meant church in pressed clothes; work at the family business never ended. But age loosened her grip. The rigid lines blurred into laughter and open arms—especially for grandchildren. She reminded me of Grandma Rachael then: delighted in visitors, barely fussed with showers, and had a candy drawer Sawyer could find blindfolded. Because of a nearly 20-year gap, my mom and MaryAnn didn’t truly know each other until later in life. Then they became friends, and later still, a pair. MaryAnn wouldn’t always get out of bed for family or her husband. But for her sister Patty, for me, and always for Sawyer, she swung her legs to the floor.
Love makes its own medicine, and grief can be a powerful catalyst for transformation, opening new paths for growth and healing.
Loss gathered quickly that year. One year after MaryAnn’s funeral, Aunt Kathy—the new matriarch who had been bravely navigating a rare cancer—passed away too. Three sisters gone within one year: MaryAnn, then my mother, Patty, then Kathy. Now, Susan is the only Redmond sister who remains. It’s a sentence that still knocks the breath from my chest. I think of them like pillars of a house—now so much light pours in, I sometimes mistake it for emptiness. Maybe it’s just a new way of being held.
My relationship with my mother, Patty, was complicated. After college, I left, and I didn’t come home for good until I was 34. While we had moved from coast to coast and Alaska to Kentucky, Ryan and I were finally ready to grow some roots in one location and start raising children where they’d know their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins by heart. For my mom and me, proximity gave us time but also a lot of friction. We got on each other’s nerves. Maybe that’s what safety looks like—the person you can be your worst around, who loves you anyway. Mom wasn’t particularly affectionate when I was young. Later, she told Ryan, “I’m so sorry I didn’t show Meghan how to love. I don’t think I knew how to love myself. I don’t think my own mother ever told me she loved me.” She described an early emptiness with her mother that’s hard for me to square with the woman I knew.
Because my Grandma Rachael was all kiss and clutch and praise, her hands cupped your face with a pride that felt like sunlight. She could watch my mom change a light bulb and proclaim, “Oh my, my daughter is the most brilliant in the world!” Maybe that’s the mystery of matriarchy: how it shapeshifts across generations, the same river with different banks. My mother experienced scarcity; I experienced overflow. Both can be true. Both live in me.
When my mom first heard the word cancer, she said she was too weak to fight—that it felt like a ticket out. Her children and grandchildren were not ready for her to be gone, so they formed a circle anyway: You are strong. You are not alone. We will hold you up. Surgeons did the miraculous—the tumor came out clean. We built a scaffolding of care: meds, hydration, exercises, steady encouragement, breath by breath. She had one wish—to get strong enough to visit family in California, to see Kathy while there was still time. She made it, and they wrapped each other in the kind of tenderness that only sisters can make.
The day Mom returned, everything swung wildly: a fall, an ambulance, a grim ER, a rally—and then a stroke. When I saw her—intubated, her right side swollen and still—I slid under the blanket, into the oldest shape my body knows: daughter to mother, heart to heart. With her left arm, she gave me the strongest embrace with a little 1-2-3 pump: I love you. I just lay with her and cried while she held me. Four days later, she was gone.
After, I searched for a sign that belonged to us. My brother chose the owl, and they arrive for him in impossible ways. My mom believed in signs—she gave Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe to anyone grieving. She chose lilacs for her own mother—then, in the dead of winter, a seed catalog arrived with a lilac blooming on the cover. I was afraid to choose wrong, to lock myself out of wonder. Still, I kept her old wireless earbuds on my dresser. I couldn’t pair them for months, but they’d chirp to life when I walked by—a small, stubborn hello. One day, Ryan heard them. “What was that?” he asked. “My mom,” I said. He knew.
Grief recalibrated me. If I want my children to feel fully mothered—as I was—I have to be here for the long haul: strong in body, clear in mind, anchored in spirit. I tried the earbuds again. They paired instantly, as it had never been a question. I was ready to be still so that I could listen. Podcasts, audiobooks, music, and meditation filled my ears. Ryan and I made the plans we kept postponing: the beach, family visits, live music, and teaching yoga. I felt myself stepping back into my own skin.
We booked San Diego—the sun my mom loved, the desert gardens, her sister, the nieces and nephews, a gathering to celebrate Grandma Patty; to honor MaryAnn and Kathy, too. To be with Susan, our new matriarch of the Redmonds. When the last detail clicked into place, I looked up from my phone, giddy as a kid, and there she was: the old granny deer in our yard, tongue lolling a little to the left—maybe from a stroke—still devouring the foliage of my yard like joy has a taste. “Oh, hello, Grandma Deer,” I said with a smile. Ryan peered over my shoulder. “Oh, hello, Grandma Patty.”
For a beat, I thought, It can’t be her; this deer was here before she passed. Then the knowing: both have always been here. Both will always be here. The universe isn’t stingy with love. It speaks in owls, lilacs, and earbuds. In yellow butterflies, hummingbirds, and cardinals. In a grandmother’s class ring, warm from years of wear. “Aloe you Vera much” slippers. The sight of delightful clover sugar cookies. A succulent mug. The smell of banana bread in the oven. Wind chimes with no wind.
When I listen, I return to my roots—the quiet place beneath the noise—where the earth steadies me, the women before me rise through me, strength hums low and ancient, memory runs deep, and I find my ground again.
By Meghan Nelson
Lumin Therapy provides integrative health and education for the mind, body, and spirit to those who are suffering or struggling to step into and live their heartfelt mission and purpose. Through the practice of physical therapy, medical therapeutic yoga, meditation, mindfulness, and resiliency mentoring, Dr. Meghan Nelson, DPT, and Dr. Ryan Allen, PhD, bring their more than 40 combined years of knowledge and experience serving individuals, families, and organizations to learn, heal, and live without boundaries.
