Wake Up, Human

Ep.29: Don't Let Anyone Step on You | Last Advice from a Grandmother

• Shannon M. Wills

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In this episode I share a message from my great-grandmother, the last words she spoke to me before she died: "Don't let anyone step on you." I'm reflecting on the precious wisdom of elders, and the power of standing up for ourselves in a world that often tries to hold us down.

Modern Western society has largely disconnected us from our elders and their wisdom, by separating generations from one another physically, socially, and spiritually. That is one reason so many of us are divided, misguided, and lost, and it's one of the roots of the separation sickness of modern culture. 

But deep connection still lives in our ancestral memory, and it's a path toward wholeness in a fragmented world. Reconnecting to the fullness of being human includes reconnecting our stories to the stories of those who came before us. 

If you still have access to your elders, listen to their stories. If they've passed, honor them by the way you live, knowing that their wisdom lives on in you. 

And don't let anyone step on you.

I honor your memory, Grandma Agnes, by telling your story.

Shannon W.:

Don't let anyone step on you. That is the wisdom of a a grandmother—of a great-grandmother— wisdom shared with me by my own great-grandmother before she died. And grandmother wisdom is potent medicine. When grandmother speaks, I want to listen. And the message is don't let anyone step on you.

Shannon W.:

My great-grandma Agnes told me this the last time I saw her before she died.

Shannon W.:

It was decades ago now. . My grandma Agnes was a woman of a very different time. She was a very hardworking and very capable and very no-nonsense ., And and when I moved away from my hometown after high school, I couldn't wait to get out of there and I moved to a bigger ., I moved to Denver, and each time I went back home to visit, back to Idaho where I grew up, I made it a point to visit my grandmothers. That was my grandmother Lorraine and my great-grandmother Agnes. Now, like many of us in our modern culture right now, I was not raised necessarily to give a lot of attention to my grandmothers. I was raised to give my attention to other things myself, my goals, my dreams, purpose, money, all the things that we are asked to give attention to in this culture but not necessarily our grandmothers. But for some reason, there was something inside of me that knew well, not for some reason, there was an ancient knowing. There was an understanding within me that I need to stay connected to my . And and don't get me wrong, in my . I was very fortunate that we did love our grandmothers and respected and revered and included them and loved them, them and something, even though it wasn't directly spoken, I would say something subconsciously, was instilled in me to understand that the connection with my grandmothers was important. So I knew I wanted and needed to maintain those . And and each time I would go home to visit, I would make it a point to look up my grandmothers and go and chat with them. And I visited on my grandmother Agnes a couple of times.

Shannon W.:

To be honest, I didn't know my grandma Agnes that well. I didn't know her nearly as well as I wanted to, and I understood that I probably didn't have much more time to get to know her, and I wanted to prioritize that. So I'm so grateful to my past self that I knew that I wanted to do that, and that I did it. Because, to be honest, my past self was making a lot of other stupid choices at that time, and maybe you can relate, right? We live our lives and fumble forward and make smart choices, and make some choices that are not so skillful. And then we look back and go, "wow, I'm so glad I made some good choices back then. Thanks past self for the good choices and thanks past self for the bad choices that made me who I am too. But I digress.

Shannon W.:

So, grandma Agnes, I went to visit her, I think the second to the last time or third to the last time, and she was still living in her house and she was 90 years old, possibly 91. And she was telling me about how she had just rearranged the furniture in her house. And I went, "Grandma Agnes, how did you rearrange? You're 90 years old. How did you rearrange the furniture in your house? Weren't you afraid that you might hurt yourself? And she just said I didn't even think about it, I just moved my furniture, it's not that big of a deal. And I just went wow, I'm impressed. I'm impressed. Here I am 20 years old or something and wondering if I could rearrange all the furniture in my own house or if I would, and certainly if I would if I were 90.

Shannon W.:

She was tough, she didn't wait for someone to give her permission and I respected her very much for that, and when I saw her the last time this is what I wanted to share in this episode when I saw her the last time before she died, she was no longer living in her house. She had told me when she was in her house here's some advice to you Stay in your house as long as you can, stay in your space, stay in your home. Stay surrounded by the home you have created and the things and the people you love. Stay there as long as you can. Don't let anyone tell you you have to leave. And she did that. And the last time that I saw her, she had I can't remember if she had fallen or something had happened where her health and mobility had been compromised and she did need to be moved to a care center, basically a hospice end of life situation. So she was not one of those people, one of those women who gets moved to a care center and languishes there for days, weeks, months, years. She was very fortunate in that way.

Shannon W.:

When I went to visit her at the care center, I realized I'm sure she did as well that this was very close to the end for her and that's why she was there and I also realized that because of that and because of my ability to not visit very frequently due to living in another state, I understood that it was probably going to be the last time that I saw her and we chatted and she asked me about my life and my work and my boyfriend and the city. She was curious about me and what was important to me and she always had been that way. And then I asked her about how she was feeling, a little bit about what her experience was, and she felt like she was honest. She said I'm doing the best that I can under the circumstances. I actually feel pretty okay, I feel clear, I feel good. And I said, grandma, best that I can under the circumstances. I actually feel pretty okay, I feel clear, I feel good. And I said, grandma, that's wonderful, I'm so glad to hear it.

Shannon W.:

And then she spent a little bit of time just talking about her life, her son, her daughter, my grandmother, her grandchildren, all my cousins, and she just talked about who they were and how they were doing and how proud of everyone she was. It was quite a sweet exchange and she was leaving this life with some peace and after some time it was time for me to leave and I said goodbye to her and it wasn't emotional. I said goodbye to her and we just said love you and we hugged and I was getting ready to walk out the door and she said hey, hey, shannon, and I turned around and she said don't let anyone step on you. And when that happened I paused it was probably like a dramatic pause, with me with my hand on the doorknob and I felt those words land for me hard and I felt the gravity of this grandmother's wisdom and advice, this core nugget of guidance that she didn't want me to walk out the door without receiving and I felt how important that was and I said thank you so much, grandma. I won't, I won't, I won't let anyone step on me. And I, full on, meant it and we both smiled and I turned and I walked out the door.

Shannon W.:

It's emotional for me to think about it now, because I realize how many years have passed and how many times people have stepped on me or I've allowed people to step on me, and there's a few things I want to say about this now. It's been on my mind because I'm in some situations right now where I feel I am allowing myself to be stepped on, and you can probably relate to this. It's very common. Sometimes life just puts us in situations and then we realize, like wait a minute, this is not good for me, this is not okay, actually, how I'm being treated. Something needs to change. How am I going to address it? Am I going to address it? And then we sit with that and maybe we address it and maybe we don't, and then we receive the consequences of that.

Shannon W.:

Whatever that decision is, and being on the precipice of needing to make some decisions like that sometimes, I will go back to what my grandma Agnes said and say Shannon, don't let anyone step on you. What is this? Let's just unpack this for a minute. So, first of all, I'm talking about my grandma, my grandmother Agnes, the wisdom of a grandmother, the wisdom of an elder, the wisdom of a strong woman, two generations before me, connected to the generations before her, and giving her last advice to her granddaughter before she walks out the door forever. And what did she say? Don't let anyone step on you.

Shannon W.:

So, first of all, what I think is really important to share here is this was a grandmother and the way that we treat our elders in our society and the way that we respect or don't respect the wisdom that they give us. It can be a litmus test for the health of our society, and we all know, listening to this, I'm sure, that in our society we have shut away our elders, we have put them into sick care, we have put them behind doors of care centers for many, many months or even years. And I'm not saying this with judgment. I'm saying this as a recognition of a structure of culture that we have right now, where our elders are separated from our working generations and from our children, whereas if we go to, for example, guatemala, where I lived for a while and so many other cultures that are more closely linked to their indigenous roots, we see grandmothers and grandfathers, mothers and fathers and children living in the same home and often even a larger, extended family than that, and we see that the grandmothers and grandfathers are respected, they're loved, they're cared for, they are lifted up and they are never cut from their role in the family as a parent transitioning to an elder, transitioning to then the caretaker of the children, while the working generations continue to work to support their families, and they're part of this sort of unbroken cycle of birth, life and death that continues and perpetuates itself on as part of a larger connected web of family. We have lost a lot of that in our modern culture and in this podcast.

Shannon W.:

When I say this podcast explores the ways we humans have become disconnected from our native ways of knowing. Well, guess what? One of our native ways of knowing is to be able to receive, in unbroken lineage, the wisdom of our elders, seed in unbroken lineage the wisdom of our elders. So this is very relevant when we're looking at what have we lost and what can we gain by coming back into wholeness. Well, for a lot of us, we have lost the connection to our lineage, our connection to the knowledge that our ancestors received from their ancestors to be able to pass it on to us. So even something that might be so simple as don't let anyone step on you, I want to take that very seriously because she has wisdom she wants to share with me.

Shannon W.:

I wish I could go back and talk to my grandma, agnes, and say, grandma, tell me the stories, because I'll guarantee you that nugget of wisdom from a 90 plus years long lifetime, lived, did not come out of nowhere. She had stories behind that nugget of wisdom, and oh, would I like to be able to talk with her now and know what those stories were. But what I can do is I can keep her stories alive by making them my stories, and that is another way that we can honor our elders in this culture. Yes, I wish I would have known my grandmothers more, all of my grandmothers. I wish I would have been able to know them more. But by speaking to lineage and speaking to ancestry, I get to honor them in a way that if I can't know their stories, at least I can remember and be very sure that their story lives in me.

Shannon W.:

So, as I've been thinking about Grandma Agnes and her words don't let anyone step on you and I wonder about her stories and I think of my own and I realized that I have let people step on me many, many times without speaking up, without pushing back. I have witnessed people stepping on others without speaking up, without pushing back, without making a change. I've stayed in situations way too long with someone's foot on my neck without even screaming in pain, let alone standing up, pushing back and saying no, I will not let this be. And there are reasons for this, lots of reasons. There's a lot of cultural fear or there can be to push back, to say no, especially when someone is in a position of power over us. There's fear of retribution, there's fear of failing or being seen as a failure if we don't stay and stick it out in something that used to work but doesn't work anymore work but doesn't work anymore. There's fear of letting go of something that might be hurting us and yet somehow is still holding us in some sort of security or safety. And, as women, there's also the cultural trauma and the generational trauma that women have carried over centuries and millennia of being silenced and needing to be subservient in order to save our lives, in order to be safe, in order to not be killed in some situations. So this is another understanding.

Shannon W.:

When we take into account ancestry, as not just people who came before us and people we came from, but actually the inner patterns and memories that we continue to carry within us as ancestral memory in different forms, we've realized that, a these patterns aren't a lot of times they're not even our patterns or only our patterns and B if we have a toxic pattern, a traumatic pattern of responding in a certain way to life, especially if it's culturally bound, we have the ability as women today and as men today, to break those lineages, to shift those lineages, to do something different, to stand up and say I am not going to let anyone step on me, not only for me, but for my mother and my grandmother and my great grandmothers, who didn't have the freedom to say no, that I do so. When my grandma Agnes, I didn't think about this at the time, you know, when I was 20 years old or so, I didn't think about her advice being something that not only could I take and live into for my own self, but also something that I can live into for her and for all the other women in the generational and cultural web that we share. Because she's telling me that advice, because in some way, she either wants me to do what she did that served her well, or she doesn't want me to do what she did that didn't serve her well, doesn't want me to do what she did that didn't serve her well, and I honor her and her memory and her advice and her elderhood and her wisdom by listening. So what does that even mean? Don't let anyone step on you.

Shannon W.:

Well, it could be a lot of things, as we know. It could be literally do not let someone in your life step on you, take advantage of you, hurt you, disrespect you. It could mean don't let the system do that to you either. It could be looking at the man, the proverbial man, and what is the system asking you to do? And where is the system traumatizing or injuring you in requiring you to show up in that system in a way that is inherently against who you are as a person or what you value?

Shannon W.:

That's another form of being stepped on, being caged in and forced to participate in a system that offends your spirit or your soul, or even just your dreams as a human being, or your body, your physical body as a human being, in terms of what we're asked to do, how we're asked to move, how we're asked to sit, how we're asked to eat, how we're required to eat, how we're required to fit our mealtimes into corporate nine-to-five structures, for example. And then there's also, of course, there are ways that we can step on ourselves, not only allow ourselves to be stepped on for some of the reasons that I was touching on before, but we can step on our own selves. I mean, have you ever heard the adage or the teaching that we are our harshest judges, that we are our worst critics, that we can treat ourselves worse than we would treat another person who we love, that we can kind of throw ourselves under the bus, and some of this is because life holds us. Culture right now holds us to high standards of things like productivity and perfectionism that put us in a position that hold us to a standard higher than it's even possible to reach, and then we beat ourselves up because we can't get to that unreasonable place. That's not even our goal, it's not even the place we really want to be. It's the place we're being told we need to be.

Shannon W.:

So I'm thanking my grandma Agnes. I'm remembering my grandma Agnes with much reverence and respect and love for her final distilled nugget of wisdom that she passed on to me, and I continue to learn what that message means for me. And I'm guessing you've received guidance and wisdom in your past that you are continuing to live into and make your own as well. And I'm guessing there's probably someone in your past who you loved and who was wise and had some stories to tell, someone who's passed, someone who's no longer in this plane and who you wish you could go back and talk to and ask more of their stories. And so what I'm remembering now and what I'm wanting to share with this message don't let anyone step on you is also let's not let the iron boot of modern, capitalist and colonial culture to hold its boot on our neck, such that we think that there's not enough time for our elders, that there's not enough time for stories, because those beliefs, that boot, is part of the sickness of our culture, and reconnecting to the wholeness of being human includes reconnecting our stories to the stories of those who came before us.

Shannon W.:

Let's follow the breadcrumbs of the elder wisdom, let's listen. Let's listen as an act of not letting someone step on us and committing to reconnecting to the collective wisdom that the elders are the embodiment of, so we can remember the ancestors. We don't have to do it alone. We're not alone. We come from them. They have our backs. Their advice lives in us. We don't have to do it alone In a culture that tells us that we're all individuals and that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and that we can do it alone, and that we should do it alone, and that it's each man for himself and that we win at life by competing instead of connecting. That's the cultural boot to give the boot.

Shannon W.:

As I share these words, a vision came to my mind. It's a story from my past life that not my past life, but a previous chapter in this life that really exemplifies how I let someone else step on me and how that turned into me, in effect, stepping on my own self. I think I'm going to tell that story in the next episode, because I'm sure I am not the only person who has done such a thing. You may be able to relate too. But for now, let me close by saying if you've got a link to the old school generations before you, whether they're in physical form or whether they are in spirit, hold that link, heal that link, be that link.

Shannon W.:

And if you still have a grandmother who you can visit, moving around her furniture in her living room or living out her last days, remember her, speak with her, listen to her, because grandmothers are the umbilical cords that tie us into life. They tie us into mother energy, they tie us into earth energy, they tie us into the memory of who we are. Let's not forget our grandmothers or our grandfathers either. That's all for now. Thanks for listening. Much love, and hey, don't let anyone step on you.