My Grandma Is The Grandma Of Life!

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of MassMutual. All opinions are 100% mine.

I am excited to join MassMutual in celebrating Black History Month by sharing my personal #JourneyOfYou story of how my family’s history led me to become the person I am today and empowered me to create a legacy for tomorrow.

Both of my parents went to med school in Russia before relocating to Nigeria. But my dad graduated first, so although we all moved to Nigeria, my mom had to go back to Russia to finish up before finally joining us. Funny enough, I don’t actually remember my mom being away, but I do remember my grandma, mom’s mom staying with us.

As a child, I didn’t have much appreciation for my grandma because you know as kids, we are the most selfish people, so all I cared about was that on that one occasion, grandma mistook my Cerelac for powdered milk and put it in my Custard, and I was pissed. Oh, and another thing, I wasn’t a baby, but I loved my Cerelac, and you couldn’t tell me otherwise.

It was only when I got older that I began to appreciate and be enamored by the woman I was blessed to call grandma. I thought I was a pretty tough girl, but compared to my grandma, I was like soggy bread next to a hard boiled egg.

My grandma is a woman who bore 9 children, all of them naturally with no epidural. Of the 3 children, 3 were triplets. My grandma would later lose her first born child and one of her triplets. I am not a mother yet, but I have heard that no pain can be compared to the loss of a child, and this is not a pain that I ever want to know. My grandma is a woman who in the middle of the Civil War in Nigeria, had to transport herself and her 7 children to another (and the last baby was severely ill) to a safer part of Nigeria while her husband remained somewhere else, so he could fend for the family. With no job and barely any money, she survived the war and kept all her babies safe.

 

When her husband, my grandfather, returned home with only the shirt on his back, my grandma did not fail to rise to the occasion. She turned their spare piece of land into money by planting all their foods, raring farm animals, and selling them off. That was how she and her family survived, and that was how she raised her children.

Today, my grandma is in her mid seventies. Her walk is slower and her sight isn’t as sharp, but her strength hasn’t dwindled. I stare at her in admiration sometimes, and she doesn’t understand why. I admire her sense of humor, her sarcasm, her strength, and her high cheek bones – all of which she passed down to my mother who has passed it down to me. I know I’m a strong African woman, but I also know that I do not yet possess grandma’s strength and courage.

For me, every day is Black History Day, and every day, I celebrate the woman who bore the woman who bore me, and I look forward to having children, so that they, too, can be just a little bit like my grandma. Every day, I look for more ways to protect and celebrate my wonderful grandma, and that’s what Mass Mutual is here for: to help you (and me) protect who matters most. My grandma is my only living grand parent, and the only one I have ever had because the rest went to meet the Lord before I was born.

MassMutual reminds us of the importance of caring and protecting, not just in thought, but also in action. Building a Financial Legacy and a personal legacy has never, ever been more important. Connect with MassMutual on Facebook and MassMutual on Twitter.

So, what about you? Who is important to you? Join me and MassMutual in celebrating Black History Month this February. Share your own story in the comments section below or on Facebook/Twitter with MassMutual using #JourneyOfYou.