Grandma Magic Podcast Episode 17, Gwen Johnson: Channeling Mamaw Magic
Gwen Johnson defines the role of female elders as being a source of wisdom and comfort to younger generations by guiding rather than prescribing advice. As the Executive Director of Hemphill Community Center, located at the site of a former coal camp in central Appalachia, and an BSc. and MSc. in Psychology, Gwen has been an important anchor within her community throughout a number of difficult challenges experienced in the past decade. Listen to hear more about Gwen’s Mamaw magic as we discuss the importance of passing down folklore and traditions, the proactivity of grandmothers during devastating flash floods of 2022, and the value of an inclusive and tolerant community for raising younger generations.
Learn more about the work of Hemphill Community Center at http://www.hemphillcommunity.org and read about the Mamaw mentors here: https://cogenerate.org/economic-opportunity/mamaw-mentorship-in-eastern-kentucky/.
TRANSCRIPT
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Welcome to Grandma Magic, a podcast from the Grandmother Collective. We are a nonprofit organization that supports and advocates for a world where a grandmother’s power is seen, cultivated, and activated for positive change. The Grandma Magic podcast is an opportunity to learn more about the unique positions that grandmothers, aunties, and other older women around the world can play in advancing positive social development by talking to and learning from grandmother changemakers. We hope this series inspires you, brings you joy, and helps you recognize the enduring magic and wisdom that comes from grandmothers everywhere.
My name is Lynsey Farrell, and I’m your host. Today we meet Gwen Johnson, the executive director of Hemphill Community Center located at the site of a former coal camp deep in the mountains of central Appalachia. My co-founder met Gwen at a symposium on social connectedness. And it was clear from the beginning that Gwen was exactly the kind of social change maker who recognized the role she could play in driving change in a community that has experienced a number of hard challenges in the past decade and more.
Her academic background with her Bachelor’s and Master’s in psychology informs the very grassroots work she does at Hemphill, which includes running a social-enterprise bakery, after-school programming, traditional music and handicrafts workshops, and now, a grandmother project in the local middle school.
Every time I talk to Gwen, I learn something new, and I’m so excited she’s with us today. Hi, Gwen!
Gwen Johnson: Hi, glad to be here.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): So this season of the Grandmother Magic podcast, last season, I asked people to talk about a grandmother that was important to them, and this season I really want to, you know, dig into what we think is something that grandmothers hold very tightly, which is rituals and traditions and so I thought maybe we could just open up by you sharing some rituals or traditions that you find important, that you find important to make sure that you’re sharing with the next generation.
Gwen Johnson: So, we’ve always, planted and canned by the Zodiac signs and observed, different things like, I’ve always trimmed my hair in the new of the moon because in the new moon, when the moon is on the increase toward the full, it causes your hair to grow stronger. and then, in canning, if we were going to pickle corn or make mixed pickles, when you all visited us, you got to sample some mixed pickles that has to be done when the signs are, between, the thighs and the feet, as the signs are on the decrease. If you plant things that grow above the ground from the new to the full, they grow better. If you want to get rid of something, such as poison ivy or poison oak on your property, you take care of that between the full and the dark of the moon when the moon is on the wane.
So, there’s just lots of, folklore around here and worldwide, I think, about planting by the signs, and canning, and preserving food by the signs, and then if you’re breastfeeding your baby, when, the signs are in the knees, you wean the baby and by the time the signs go out of the feet, then your milk has dried up and the baby is weaned and then you, transition them to more table food.
So that’s just some of the traditions that we’ve always observed here that I think’s really important and it’s something that we’re focusing on in our, after school program this spring, is planting by the signs and [00:04:00] canning by the signs and those kinds of things.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): It’s so interesting because we’re recording this three days before the full eclipse is coming. I don’t know how close you guys are into the, trajectory of that.
Gwen Johnson: I think the path is more like in Western Kentucky, but I’m sitting here in the bakery and today we’re baking star cookies and moon cookies and we’re doing some galaxy celebrated cupcakes.
And so we’ve got some little, sprinkles that are moons and stars and, things from the galaxy. So, we try to be very observant, But I don’t know that we’re going to be able to see anything except the dark, maybe for a few minutes, but that’ll be cool in itself.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): When, when do you think it is about paying attention to the zodiac or paying attention to the signs and paying attention to the moon, that is an important thing to make sure the next generation understands.
Gwen Johnson: Well, I just think, the Wheel of the Year is something that is very important. And so, the equinoxes, we try observe all of that here at the bakery because, we believe that the moon is such a powerful thing. And the sun, of course, is powerful, Like this eclipse is going to be really cool.
All the, schools are kind of focused on it and all the kids and, I just think that it’s something very ancient that the ancient people did and I, just think it’s arcane knowledge that needs to be passed on. And how to read an almanac is a very important part of all that, because if you don’t know where the signs are, how can you observe, the Wheel of the Year, or the waning and waxing moon, and all that, and so, I just think that it’s very useful knowledge.
Because the old people would say, if you canned things in the wrong sign, for instance, those mixed pickles, or dill pickles, or pickled corn, pickled beans, around here, people, pickle a lot of things with salt, to preserve them through the winter. And, in the old days, they put them in a big old crock.
And if that was done at the wrong sign of the moon, it would rot
and stink. And it’d have to be thrown away. But if you do it at the proper sign and do it in the correct way, of course, you’ve got something delicious to add to your table during the cold winter months when maybe fresh vegetables in the old days were not readily available unless you had a cellar or a tater hoe.
Around here, we called it a tater hoe.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Gwen, why don’t you tell [00:07:00] us a little bit about your background? I mean, you’re multiple generations back, descendant from people that have lived in that area for a long time. Can you share a little bit about your background and how you’ve ended up, the director of this center and other things. You’re more than that!
Gwen Johnson: So, my family is about eight generations deep here, within a 10 mile radius. So when the coal companies came and began to mine the coal, both sets of my grandparents and then my great grandfathers didn’t mine the coal, but they kind of moved across the mountain into the area where their kids had gone because my mom, described it as coming to the promised land where there was running water and electric lights.
And before that, my family had, just grubbed these rocky hillsides and raised corn and had self sufficient little farms [00:08:00] where they produce certain things that they could sell and one of those commodities was moonshine, which could be transported more easily than bushels of corn. And then the, womenfolk sewed and did all these, things and in the very early days, they would weave and spin and make cloth and make clothing for their families.
And so, the people have had to be very busy year-round in order to survive. And then the coal companies came and they had more of an attitude: We’ll take care of everything else and you all just mine the coal and raise us a new crop of coal miners. so, that’s kind of how that went.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): And that generation sort of lost some of the arcane wisdom or the traditional wisdom.
Gwen Johnson: Yeah, so coal-mining families have always had a vegetable plot to supplement their table, and, farming is nothing new to them, but doing it on a large scale to be a self-sufficient family, they no longer did it. Because, the premise was they’d make wages, they were living in company housing, you know, that song, Owe my soul to the company store, Tennessee earning forward.
That’s, where my people wound up, my mom told about coming to the promised land and then three of her brothers, she had nine brothers, three of them were killed in mining accidents. And my little brother was killed in a mining accident. My dad’s brother got his arm cut off in the mine. And then my dad died of complications of black blood.
And the women have just always worked in the service industry and the schools as, aides and so forth, we’ve not had any teachers any, elementary school teachers or high school teachers,
Lynsey Farrell (Host): in your family?
Gwen Johnson: In my family, no.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Mm hmm. But you’re a teacher. Ha ha!
Gwen Johnson: Well yea. I taught in early childhood classes for continued education credits and that sort of thing. So, we’ve just got a deep history here. And the way our people got here was Scotland and then America by way of Ulster. And so Scots-Irish is what you could call what I am. But my mom was Melungeon, which is, a combination of, African-American and Mediterranean and there’s like this mixture we’ve got a lot of Melungeon people around here. My mom came from that, darker line of folks.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): So how did you end up, taking a, a scholarly pathway to psychology? Cause that’s what you’ve studied that has sort of, prepared you for some of this more community work. What were you seeking to know?
Gwen Johnson: Well I started out, I wanted to be a midwife, I wanted to catch babies. But to go to Frontier Nursing, over, a couple of counties over, you had to be a practicing RN for five years, so my first thought was, I’ll become an RN, I’ll make that big money that RNs make, and then I’ll, become a midwife. But I had such trouble with modern medical methodologies that I withdrew from the program, but, in taking the general classes that you had to have for nursing, I fell in love with psychology. And I think that I’m, probably what, Carl Young called a wounded healer. And so, I often tell people I didn’t have money to have therapy, so I took classes with student loans and got therapy that way.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): So you can sort of self treat.
Gwen Johnson: Yeah, so that’s kind of how that happened. I had to, be in the room where some little boys were circumcised. And, we bathed them, they were all snug in their blankets, and then they had to be circumcised. And I’m like, oh, you know, and I know that’s useful, and I know that’s culturally appropriate for some cultures, and that sort of thing.
But it just kind of tells you where I am with modern medical procedures. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like NG tubes. I didn’t like so many things that I was having to help with, and do, and take care of. And so I just withdrew. I’m kind of more of a faith healer.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Well, you began by talking about aligning things to the moon, so it seems like that is the knowledges that you care a lot about. So we met because you met my co-founder and she told you about the Grandmother Collective and us really thinking about the powerful role that older women can play in affecting change. Do you want to talk about that moment of how you realized, maybe we could be doing something together?
Gwen Johnson: So I met Jen in Toronto when I went up there for the Social Connectedness symposium and when I met her, she talked about the Grandmother Collective, and then I met some folks who were there who were from other parts of the world who were a part of the Grandmother Collective. And I was like, wow, how cool. But, you know, at the time I met Jen, I don’t know, if everybody’s like this, but I hadn’t slid into that elder play- shit, because in my eyes, I was still seeing myself as, uh, young, even though I had a grandson and a granddaughter. And so, when I started hearing about that, I started thinking about it and then, a few months later, after communicating with you guys, and then you all came, I had, been kind of teasing out the path into, eldership and, I want to be a good elder.
I don’t want to be a curmudgeon, there’s enough of those. So, I’ve been reading some books and looking at that. So last fall, I was at this gathering and after the gathering and it, kind of like went South really quick, in that there were some very negative things happen there.
And afterwards, there was a discussion about it and we even had elders with us and I’m like, what elders did we have with us? And then it dawned on me that I was one of those elders that the younger folks were talking about. And number one, I was really proud, that they saw that as a really positive thing because what happened was when these angry people came, then, the older ones of us kind of went into mother-hen mode and took the reins and said, okay, we need to vacate this place.
And get on out of here because these people are, angry so we just got our folks out of there. And then I was really complimented once it dawned on me that I was part of that group of elders. I thought it was really cool.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Does it mean? What does elder mean in the context you’re talking about?
Like, what’s the compliment there?
Gwen Johnson: The compliment for me was to be Mama Gwen or Mamaw Gwen, and to be somebody that in a time of crisis, that the youngers would seek me out to see what my thoughts were on it and [00:16:00] that, I would be able to take action or have enough, you know, wherewithal to say, let’s get our group out of here, so to me, the role of an elder is, a wisdom filled role, [00:16:13] kind of a mentor or maybe not advice, so much as a listening role, but, a sounding board, so to speak,
Lynsey Farrell (Host): maybe not a mentor, but a guide or a coach sometimes, somebody who’s just helping to nudge. That’s what I hear sometimes. And less about advice, less about prescriptive, like, do it this way,
Gwen Johnson: No, it’s not that way. When that particular thing happened, I was, in as much danger as everybody else was, it was a suggestion that led into, a collective decision.
Yeah, that’s what we need to do.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): So, one of the things that happened pretty significantly, That I understand for why you sort of recognized that older women can play a role, older women like you, but also, your older women in your community is that you guys saw, a pretty significant and catastrophic flood in the summer of ‘22.
Do you want to talk a little bit about, the role that older women started to play after that?
Gwen Johnson: So they call it a hundred year flood here. We had never seen that much water, even folks that are older than me, nobody remembered that much water. And so it had a devastating effect in that people lost all their belongings. Some people only got out with the clothes that they were sleeping in.
And everything else, homes were, what was left of them just had to be tore down. People lost everything that they had worked for.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): In a place that the majority of people don’t have that much anyway.
Gwen Johnson: No. The housing was substandard before the flood and it about wiped it out, so we had never seen anything like it. And what happened was, to respond to it, the only thing we needed to do was to try to get goods and services for folks because cars washed away. If there is no public transportation and all the roads were washed out and the bridges, and the culverts.
For instance, right across from, the community center out here, it washed all the dirt away from under the pavement, and then the pavement just fell off into the creek. It was that way all over the place here. And, we were totally cut off from going out or coming in here, for about three days.
And then they began to get, the roadways opened up a little bit till, people could get here. At that time, we’re kind of across the track, so to speak, and everything was rolling into the county seat, but a lot of our folks couldn’t get into the county seat. So the people, who had lived here, and have moved away, began to gather things in their communities and in their churches and they started rolling in here, with convoys, of things like we couldn’t get a shovel and we had this mud, people’s houses if they were still standing, they were full of mud and we had to have shovels. And so there was a, big trailer pulled in here one night full of shovels and they got snapped up quick cause everybody was needing them. We started cooking meals here because nobody had any power and the water was out. We had water everywhere, but none to drink.
Somebody sent a tanker of water here and we had cases of water come in and people were coming and filling up barrels and, filling up jugs and, taking the bottle of drinking water. Home with them and we were cooking out of it and cleaning out of it because you can’t cook without cleaning.
And so we cooked hot meals here, every day for several, several weeks. And we sent that food out. I put out a call for four-wheelers and trucks to come to take things to people who couldn’t get out. The elders, and the sick and the shut in, and the young mothers with little bitty kids, you couldn’t drag them through that mud.
And it was the lot of the grandmothers who responded and really took an awesome role in seeing that people got what they needed. ’Cause we found out that if you put milk crates that hold four gallons of milk, if you strap them on conveyances, then those, covered trays, well, you can put about five of them in one of those crates, and then you can stack them without crushing the trays. But you could take a ton of meals out in a pickup truck, or you could take probably 20 plus meals out on four wheeler or an ATV. So, we had the grandmothers rolling in, and we had made it to get some jugs of gas.
So we would fill up whatever their conveyance was with gas when they get here, pile them with meals, and they would take them out. And, that’s how we were checking on the elders in the sick and shut in, in the community, was the grandmothers. It was the best of times, but the worst of times.
So they roll in in their big rubber boots. Get off the four wheeler or out of the truck, ready to go. it was pretty amazing.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Yeah. Well, I know that, it was that spirit and when we came to visit last summer, it was that kind of conversation of how do we harness the good that came from having to pull together like this in a time of crisis. The rest of the world unfortunately is hearing about the place that you come from continued to hear about it in pretty negative ways, that this was the center of an opioid crisis, or this is a place where, you have high levels of poverty or high levels of literacy challenges, or whatever the crisis might be. And it was a crisis like this, a natural crisis, that was able to bond people together and pull people together and people saying, we’re not going to lose this.
This is what I remember hearing a lot. We’re not going to lose this.
Gwen Johnson: No.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): So do you want to talk a little bit about how you’re trying to continue to keep that, spirit alive?
Gwen Johnson: We’ve got about 12 audacious grandmothers.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): What is the current name of your group?
Gwen Johnson: The Mamaw Mentors. We’ve kind of got a two part, project. So part of it is we bought a bench. It’s a little bit too cold right now, but we’re going to put it outside and the Mammaws are going to come and hang out and it’s going to be called the Mammaw Bench. And so the Mammaws are going to hang out and if anybody needs a shoulder to cry on or a listening ear, or a friend to just sit with them and not say anything, just whatever is needed, we’re going to try to supply that for the community, with that bench. The other part of it is, we’re going into the local middle school and connecting with, the middle school girls and, we’re going to try to build relationships with them and work [00:24:00] with them on, self-esteem and self-worth. And, our plan is to follow them through the rites of passage into adulthood and into a career, hopefully.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): why is that significant?
Gwen Johnson: During the opioid crisis, the very fabric of our society has been destroyed. And, relatives are raising the kids. And a lot of times, relative, will have three or four kids, and, just struggling to do homework and, be there for those kids and they’re not technically their biological, children. And we think that, we’re losing some of them during that time in their early adolescence, when they’re in their formative years. And we believe they’re at risk kids.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): You want to use some Grandma magic or some Mawmaw magic to keep them grounded, make them feel that they belong. The rites of passage thing is, specific for that, to make them remember that they’re part of this.
Gwen Johnson: Yeah. if somebody remembers your birthday, They’re like family, right? It’ll remind you on Facebook. I’m not talking about that, but I’m talking about somebody who remembers when your birthday is, that’s, pretty magical in itself. It means they really care. that you matter enough for them to extend a friendship and love on your birthday.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Do you think that there’s something significant? I mean, you’re already running after school programs. You really have been focused at the Hemphill Community Center on, holding cultural traditions, quilting classes, music classes, whatever else you’ve got going on there. Why do you think intergenerational connection matters? Why do you think that’s a piece of this that is important?
Gwen Johnson: I just think the stability, it’s almost like having an anchor. You’re out there kind of drifting around trying to figure out which way to go. And there’s this really solid post with a rope. To it that you can hook to or tether to to kind of help you and I think that that’s kind of the role that we play.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Did you have that growing up?
Gwen Johnson: I did have that. And then, you know, a lot of my friends were really a lot older. There was a lady who lived right down the road here that people kind of thought was crazy and I would go hang out with her. She wasn’t crazy at all. She was just really eccentric and I’d go hang out with her. I wrote poetry about her.
I thought she was so cool.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): the thing I felt like when I met you was that you didn’t really fit into a community your bakery is called the Black Sheep Bakery. So you are, pushing against norms while also trying to revive or bring back, some of the, powerful traditions that you’re so rooted in a place and yet at the same time, you have aspirations for your community.
Thank you for listening. And those aspirations mean that sometimes you get yourself, I mean, you already told us the story of like being in a situation where things kind of went a little bit south because you were pushing at, some of the status quo, regular ways of doing things in your community.
What are your aspirations? What would you like? Beyond building up the social fabric again and, celebrating traditions, how would you like your community to change?
Gwen Johnson: We would like it to, once again, be, multiracial. Um, the things that are really important to me is for everybody to have a place they belong. another thing that’s really important to me is that we send off a crop of kids to college or trade school or whatever they choose, or if they choose to be an entrepreneur, that we send them off and that they are able to be a good neighbor to whoever.
If someone has a different whatever, I want them to be a good neighbor and a good citizen. That’s what I’d like for my community too
Lynsey Farrell (Host): You haven’t felt that it’s the most tolerant or inclusive community?
Gwen Johnson: No, at times I’ve felt spiritually bankrupt because, the so called spiritual-authorities, were, acting out against people who didn’t think the way they did a and a lot of times that’s been me.
Because I didn’t, conform. So if you don’t conform, I would still like you to be a part of my community because I’d like to hear what you got to say and let’s discuss it, not argue about it.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): So teaching that diversity is a value and an asset.
Gwen Johnson: Yes.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): why are you an asset for that community?
Gwen Johnson: Because I love place and the people, even though we got major problems. Tylor Childers has that song. I think I said it to you, “In Your Love” and it’s my song to my community. I think that we need to give back to the place that has given us, a place to be, a place to explore things, I just think it’s really important.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): I asked you, why are you still here if you’re getting all this resistance and you’re having to, fight for things and you said, I’m never going anywhere.
Gwen Johnson: Right now we’re fighting, a federal prison that they’re trying to bring here there’s so many other things. I mean, housing for one, that we could spend 5 million on. So many positive things without empty promises of economic development built on other people’s misery.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): It seems to me like you’ve honed in on, we start with the community. We start with like every single person just getting them connected a sense of belonging a sense of purpose, I think with the audacious Mamaw mentors, right that they now have a mission and a purpose that they’re heeding a call for.
Gwen Johnson: Yeah. We’re excited.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Me too. I’m very excited to see what comes out of it. I know it’s going to be awesome. All right, Gwen. Well, It’s so wonderful to chat with you.
I love how you wear your heart on your sleeve every time I talk to you. in this work I’ve met so many women like you that can’t help themselves but try to make the world better and support the next generation and I just, can’t imagine if we got everybody together, what could we do with all that energy
Gwen Johnson: It’s Mamaw magic
Lynsey Farrell (Host): It’s Mamaw magic. That’s probably now gonna end up being the name of this episode.
Gwen Johnson: Okay, cool.
