When I was younger, I resisted the idea of having a role model. When I was asked to share my role model, I would always say: Mahatma Gandhi. This was my automatic answer, partly due to my eagerness to avoid follow-up questions and partly linked to my genuine alignment with Gandhi’s values.
For the people who were really interested in getting to know me better and patient enough to listen to my real story, my role model was truly my grandmother, Sultana. Last month, my grandmother, or Dada, as I called her, would have turned 98 years old. Unfortunately, she passed away when she was still in her sixties. What made my grandmother my role model? She had an asymmetric personality. She wasn’t the sweet and nice grandmother who would cuddle you and spoil you to death with sweets and presents, but she was generous, fair, smart, stubborn, and kind to the entire world, not just her own family.
When I think of the phrase “social responsibility,” her picture comes to my mind.
Dada wasn’t a banker, but she was the first person people in the village approached when they wanted to loan money for buying a house for their son or when they needed to pay for their children’s higher education and couldn’t afford it. She knew exactly how many people in her circle of influence had the extra money to support a good cause, and if she believed that the cause was just, she would become the chief fundraiser for the project.
Beyond all those extraordinary community roles she played, what I liked most about Dada were two of her talents that I mostly benefited from: her cooking skills and her storytelling skills.
Unfortunately, she didn’t pass her cooking talent to me. She cooked for 10 people every day, as she believed that we would always have unexpected guests who would need to be fed. I know of uncles who went out of their way to visit our great grandma during lunchtime every other day. I like to think that I inherited her love of stories. She had the ability to tell a good story with conviction and patience. After the evening meal, she would invite all of us children next to her chair, and she would start her daily story about the adventures of Nasreddin. Later, I found out that Nasreddin is the wise fool character present in many of the tales from the former Ottoman Empire.
Not everyone liked my grandmother, but everyone respected her.
She expected a lot from her family because she believed that we needed to uphold higher moral grounds than anyone else in the village. She was by far the undisputed matriarch in our family, and once she made a decision, after involving everyone in the decision-making process, no one would dare to go against her. Not her husband, my grandfather, who was a quiet and reserved man, and certainly not my dad, who was usually an opinionated man who didn’t get much pushback from his team at work. My mother was smart enough not to confront her directly.
The most important lesson that I learned from my grandmother is that:
‘you need to own your strength and that you need to stand behind your decisions even when the consequences don’t make you look good’
I also learned that courage and kindness can coexist in an authentic feminine style that can be very powerful and effective.
Rediscovering your roots and your early role models is more than melancholic family stories; it is about acknowledging and owning your natural strengths.
Nurture is important, but let’s not forget what nature has given us.
Here are some questions you can reflect on:
- Who was your early role model?
- What lessons did you learn from him or her?
- What are the genetic personality traits or gifts you inherited?
Warm regards,
Steliana
PS – If you haven’t had a chance to read the book Mothers as leaders, the upcoming American Mother’s Day would make a great excuse to buy it and gifted it. It is available on B&N and Amazon as well.