Honoring my creative lineage: Babushka Lida

This month, I will write a series of vignettes honoring my creative lineage, which includes the people and forces that have shaped me, prayed for me and dreamed me into being, so that I may walk my own empowered path guided by them and the gifts they shared with me.

Babushka Lida  

My paternal grandmother was a feisty one. If she wanted something done one way, you couldn’t change her mind. She had a laser focus and an unbending will.

There is a story that gets retold in my family every once in a while. She decided to get special type of chickens for her garden that, as her thorough research promised, would eat the Colorado beetles that were destroying her crops. Finding these chickens during the Cold War in Soviet Union Ukraine, when the Iron Curtain had the lock and key on everything, would be quite an ordeal. Somehow, by the grace of whatever black market she had access to, she found a farmer to sell them to her. By the time the chickens arrived, they had absolutely no interest in eating bugs, let alone the Colorado beetle. The things she would do to get these chicken to eat the damn beetles. At one point, she collected the beetles herself and, one by one, feed them to the chickens!

Poor chickens never caught on. 

I think her personal motto was “exhaust every option first”. She was either hardheaded or determined beyond anyone’s expectation. She never did anything mediocre. 

She was an avid embroiderer using traditional Ukrainian cross stitch methods. She made many vyshyvankas (embroidered blouses), some of which would be shown in art museums in Kyiv due to their incredible detail and artistry. 

She was a Reiki Master healer and a self-taught herbalist, both modalities she used to treat mild, chronic and untreatable conditions. As a highly disciplined person, she took great responsibility for those that came to seek her support. 

I remember opening up a tall closet in the hallway of her apartment and seeing shelves upon shelves of glass jars filled with dried flowers, berries and other herbs. It was probably around this time that she showed me the intentional practice of giving and taking energy; with her hand on mine, she moved my palm in circles (clockwise to give and counter-clockwise to take away) over her houseplant. 

 I must’ve showed interest in her work. Maybe she saw in me someone who might continue what she started. I can’t confirm for sure but I believe that she attuned me to Reiki before she died in 2009 so that two decades later, I would come upon this healing modality and remember her calling.

Reiki helped me to tune into my intuitive and psychic knowing; it would help me to connect to my ancestors and especially to her. I feel her often nudging me toward something i might not be sure about in her unbending ways.

Thank you for seeing the curious student in me, Babushka. Thank you for guiding me to take steps toward my highest expression in service of our family and collective healing.