To All of Our Fairy Godmothers

A love letter.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a young woman was freshly graduated from college. She was wide-eyed and headstrong and starting her very own theatre company. Although it was difficult, she was driven by passion and would tell anyone who would listen about all of the good she would accomplish through her art. (For the record, she still believes all that art accomplishes good in some small way. Even if it’s simply a personal essay on a public website.) One day, while deep in conversation at a family function, her cousin commented to her that she couldn’t believe how brave the young woman was. She asked where the young woman got the courage.

The young woman was shocked. Her cousin was one of the fiercest, most independent women she knew. The young woman laughed in the startled way one does when caught off guard and thought about where the courage came from.

Nurtured by two extraordinary grandmothers, one who was widowed before the young woman was born and the other when she was five, she watched these matriarchs do things like mow an entire acre of land (including a hill) or figure out how to set up an email account, long before we lived in a computer age.

She thought of her paternal grandmother, her Grandma Sylvia, who had passed away not long before this conversation took place. The young…