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This is a delightful book that should have a particular pull for psychotherapists. Grandmothers and therapists loosely play similar roles; they are safe, they are “there” and they listen. Grandmothers generally also have the role of telling stories which link back to “the old days” and past history. And, of course, therapists do the same while trying to make sense of present issues.
Grandmothers also vary. In this book Judith Edwards explores these differences while taking us on a fascinating journey with grandmother, told in eight chapters in a book of 139 pages.
It seems clear that it is the author's own grandmother who was the original inspiration for this book. Beneath the picture of her grandmother, Florence Alice Catchpole, was the moving dedication:
Tho’ Dead yet Dear, Tho’ Dear yet Dead to me.Dead is her body, Dear her Memory.
The author aims to “smash a few preconceptions” about grandmothers and hopes readers will discover something new. The book was written during the time of COVID so that many interviews conducted by the author were online. These involved personal and varied accounts of relationships with
grandchildren and grandmothers around the world from varying cultures. The author also focused on relevant myths and fairy tales, exploring how these too varied around the world.
Edwards asks: “Do all our lives go backwards, like a rewound film, to our beginnings?” Implicitly she seems to answer “yes”. As therapists, we are continually exploring personal histories in order to make links and understand present “issues” and knots with the aim of loosening complexes and freeing the Self in order to move on and go forwards. Edwards provides us with a wonderfully broad-reaching “take” on grandmothers and emphasizes the fact that in our modern age we can have three generations alive at any one time. This has implications for the preservation of knowledge going forward. Thus, of course, grandparents also influence our future.
Edwards asks, what is the received wi