Moving always costs more than anticipated, no matter how carefully you research and calculate. A recent increase in car insurance rates triggered feelings of inadequacy and kept me awake. After multiple failed sleep strategies, I knew what I must do. I got up, saying, “This has got to stop.” 

It was time to let go of the triggering event.

Free journaling, I said everything I wanted to say to the greedy capitalists before turning to the actual spark that kept me awake. I noted how my body felt. I circled around and sought the source of my need for perfection in an imperfect world. Finally, I called on the ancestors for help. 

This longstanding need for perfection that I’ve carried with me my whole life is not my own. Sure, it is within me, but the source is not mine. This is an ancestral struggle with self-forgiveness. My mother worked herself to death to prove her worth. She never fully retired. Her father took on the blame for his mother’s death when he was but an infant, and struggled to find self-worth. In the process, he destroyed his family such that he never got to know me or his other grandchildren. 

And so, I wrote to the maternal grandfather I never knew…

I saw you when you reached out to me in the hallway. I was scared and screamed because I was only eight. When I got up to use the toilet, I didn’t expect to see the apparition of a man in a red flannel shirt. 

I wish I had known you. I wish I had hugged your leg and you’d reached down and wrapped your arms around me. You wouldn’t say, “I love you,” but I would know it from your hug.

We would’ve been thick as thieves, Grandpa Scotty and Timmy. I bet you would have had a special name for me, perhaps Mr. Tim. Your voice would drip with affection and pride when you said it.

I would have felt special and noble when I was with you.

I want to be that Granddaddy to my GrandOnes. I want to be who you missed out on being to GrandOne and GrandThree, to GrandFour and GrandTwo. I want to be who you ached to be but could not. 

They see me as worthy with their clear young eyes. So, I must be, imperfections, hard-won lessons, and your feelings of passed-on unworthiness notwithstanding. And if they see it in me and I see it in you, Grandpa Scotty, you and I must be.

You must be, and I must be.

Grandpa Scotty and Timmy must be worthy and lovable. We don’t need to prove ourselves. We are. Grandpa Scotty, you and I — Timmy and his Grandpa — just need to be and accept our worthy selves.

I slept really well after that.