"Life Is What We Make It"
5 Life-Changing Matriarch Secrets from Grandma Moses
I don’t know what it is about Grandma Moses, but I have felt an inexplicable connection to her for years now.
Maybe it’s because, well before you learn that she’s was the most beloved folk painter in history, you first learn that she’s a grandmother, something that I find stunningly and beautifully backwards from current society.
Or maybe it’s because she had such a profound impact on the world so late in life. She didn’t begin painting until she was 75, really “peaking” in her painting career at the ripe old age of 90. (Although, really, she peaked over and over again in her life, in every single phase.)
Or, better yet, maybe it’s because none of it was too precious to her and she was truly unmoved by the fame and wealth. She valued her years working on their farm, being a wife and raising babies and grand babies equal to her painting career.
But it’s probably because, when I first learned about her, I was in the thick of an identity crisis as we were preparing to sell the majority of Solly Baby. I knew that I would be required to let go of a part of my identity in that process and that there were no guarantees of a rebirth and that worried me.
Hearing from my dear friend (also a brilliant painter) Eleanor that Grandma Moses had reinvented herself again so late in life gave me a tremendous amount of courage to let my intuition move me into the next phase of my life, not holding on to something that I knew had outgrown me and I had outgrown it. It was ready to be let go of, testing my confidence in the most real way that it’s ever been tested.
Having the confidence to do “big things” was one thing, having the confidence to let go of “big things” for … unknown things has required an up level in confidence that I am still working through, tbh.
Have I not mentioned how much I love her art yet? It’s the cherry on top to loving her, but her art - scenes of nature, community, domestic and rural life painted in the most pure and primitive way - stirs something in me that is both grounding and aspirational.
All that as an intro to this episode, which is the first in a new mini-series I’m calling Portrait of a Matriarch — stories of older women, past and present, whose lives have something to teach us about how to make the very most of the second halves of our lives. And how to do it with courage, creativity, humor, and humility.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever do it again because I genuinely can’t discern if this is just a weird preoccupation I have with grandmas because I miss mine so much or if it will speak to what we’re really missing in the world: the wisdom of the matriarchs.
I hope it’s the latter.
In it, I share five lessons I’ve learned from Grandma Moses — about motherhood, art, aging, grief, and what it really means to keep becoming.
If you’ve ever feared “starting over”…
If you feel anxious when you think of getting older…
If you’ve ever wondered whether you’ve already peaked…
This episode is for you.
Meet: Grandma Moses.
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🎧 Listen on Spotify / Apple / Amazon
🖼️ Watch on YouTube
P.S. I reference this essay in the video that Grandma Moses wrote called “Let Home Be Made Happy”. I couldn’t find it anywhere online so I wanted to share a photo of it here with a chatgpt transcription of it below the image.
Let Home Be Made Happy
Industry is a homely virtue and worthy of all praise. Even nature herself, reads us a lesson upon it. Let us go for a moment from the homes of men to the great out-of-doors. We shall find evidence in almost every tuft of the earth. It is silent, but look around and see what has been done by the busy hand of nature. Let us now look at nature and see her with industrious fingers weaving flowers and blades of grass and trees, and I blush to commend every part of the earth. And will you become so wise as to think there is no home more inviting than that in which the sun should shine as the morning sun shines on the flowers and permit it to be the scene of idleness, negligence and waste?
Will you permit it to be a naked shelter from the weather like the den of a wild beast? Will not adorn it by your industry, as nature adorns the fields and the forest?
If you say that this is somewhat fanciful and should be regarded rather as an illustration, then let it be so. Still are not the works of nature designed to have an influence of this kind upon us? Then let man be happy in adorning his home — in making his home the dwelling of happiness and comfort. Let him as far as circumstances will permit be industrious in surrounding it with pleasing objects — in decorating within and without with things that tend to make it agreeable and attractive. Let every man strive to make home the abode of content and order, a place which brings satisfaction to the mind. Let not the shame daily cast in his teeth by the fond memories of comfort and contentment be his. Let him so adorn the spot where he dwells that surely the song of beauty, order, kindness, and peace — the portion of those who have their interest in home — may assist in bringing them up in the midst of pleasure, a cheerful, a happy home.
There are many happy homes scattered all over our land: some in princely abodes in the city, others beautiful suburban residences. But among them all there are none more homelike and peaceful than those quiet farmhouses we find among the green hills and fields of the country. And more seem more deserving to be called dear home. In them, you find freedom from the many vanities of fashion. The wife and mother finds time to devote herself to her children, and her example and influence impress upon their minds those principles which will govern their whole after life.
Waste not your time in gathering unnecessary wealth for them but fill their minds and souls with seeds of virtue.
Let children join with their parents in trying to make home a happy place. They are not then so much exposed to fashion and dissipation if all around them is bright and cheerful.
Let every one feel it his duty to make home a delightful home, but leave it not when the lapse of years will bring about the time when you must leave that home to face the trials and temptations, the contentions and storms the day will come in which you are to leave the fireside of so many enjoyments, the friends endeared to you by so many acts of kindness. You are to say goodbye to your mother, you are to leave a father’s protection to go forth and act without an adviser — to rely upon your own good judgment and you will think of that dear relation no more to see them but on occasional visits at your home.
Oh how cold and desolate will the world appear, how your heart will shrink from launching forth amid its tempests and its storms. Then you will think of your happy home and say:
“Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.”
Farewell cheerful cottage, farewell happy home,
However so humble and poor it be.
This poor aching heart must be laid in the tomb.
Ere it cease to regret the endearments of home.