Things Grampa Says, part 2

When I first became a mother, it was pretty rough on me. I was experiencing great trauma and depression, and everyone was telling me what to do. Usually, what they told me to do was in conflict with what my heart was telling me. I got especially upset after going with my baby and my mother to visit my grandparents. I didn't say anything at the time, but after I got home I talked to Grampa on the phone about how upset it made me that Mom and Gramma (and others as well) kept telling me what to do all the time, as if I weren't capable of being a mother in my own right, as if my instincts weren't good enough, as if I were doing everything wrong because I wasn't doing it the way they did it with their babies. Grampa got kinda quiet, then simply said to me, "Everyone's gotta kill their own snakes." He told me I had the right to make my own mistakes, and that he knew I wasn't going to do anything to harm my baby. I have found many occassions since then to use his phrase. I really like that one.