My Grandfather Came from Poverty

My grandfather came from poverty.

His father committed suicide when he was a boy and he became the bread winner of the family at 13, working in a bleaching mill in Lancashire.

One day, when he was 16, at the turn of the 20th century, he was sheltering in a doorway of a shop selling newspapers, when Queen Mary passed through his village in a carriage.

In that moment, he had a vision.

He envisioned that one day he would create a club for disadvantaged children to inspire them to prosper, and Queen Mary would come and open it.  He even drew a sketch of the building on the wall that he would build.

Years later he did indeed build that building and created the vision he had been inspired to create years earlier.

This story and the story of how my grandfather came to bring this vision into being continues to teach me constantly.

It tells me about how despite the trauma, or perhaps, because of the trauma and the disadvantage, he faced, he refused to accept the structures of class, or the sense of ‘what was for him’ and instead choose to dream and allow his vision to take precedent over anything else.

He continuously used opportunities to keep stepping towards his vision.

He was a boy preacher and worked his way up though Methodism, challenging them to allow him to stay in one location, (not normally allowed in Methodism)to build his vision. He fundraised the whole building project himself, by going to Hollywood, and befriending the rich and famous to fund his ambitious project in the slums of South London.

He did not let class define him.

He did not let anything define him, he simply did what he was guided to do to make his vision a reality.

I’m sure he felt some resistance to asking for money, for knocking on the doors of the upper classes for challenging the religious institute he was a part of, for stepping outside of what was expected of him, but he knew something about the preciousness of life, creativity and the right to express capability and he fought for it.

His experiences in the first world war intensified his determination for these values, as he expressed witnessing the waste of countless lives being lost.

Walking his father’s body back from the lake aged 13, he wrote,

“It was then I awakened to a sense of frustration at the uneven fight against poverty and illness, which in my fathers case was intensified through lack of opportunities to express great capabilities”.

I see my grandfathers work as a fight for the human to have the right to express their capabilities, a right to choose life.

He was able to recognise his own capabilities and put them to great use in the world. He turned his life into an opportunity and showed others how to do the same.  He didn’t let poverty or circumstance, stop him from expressing what was being called in him to create. He used his charms, his ability to write and speak, and his fearlessness, to great success. He built Clubland (the name of his youth club and church) not just once, but twice in the face of it being bombed in world war 2.

I see his life as a battle against destruction, lack of choice and oppression of poverty and war but most importantly I see it as the modelling of how a human can turn any calamity into light and vision.

I feel his fight.

By no means did I experience his trauma but there are echoes of it in my life and I feel an urgency to help people express their capabilities, to cross societal limits and meet their creative potential.

I have lived life with this urgency as though I am also fighting against this pull into the submergence of the lake. Fighting for life. I fight for others freedom to choose their light.

As herbalists and healers, those who are connected to the land and its medicine I know that there is not only our personal stories but our collective one, which pulls us back, keeps us small and stops us from emerging fully.

I know something about realising visions as though it has been passed down through my ancestry.

I know something about the determination needed, the belief and faith. I know something about not letting hierarchical, human, made systems get in my way.

I think of my grandfather and how he was able to move between classes. He was as comfortable in the slums of south London as he was in the VIP spectator stands of his favourite football club, wined and dined by the ‘elite’ to fundraise his mission. You could say his vision required him to transcend class.

Our lack of freedom whether it is financial, creative, or professional, is simply a construct that we have been taught and never challenged.

I’m not saying it is easy to challenge our constructs, but my grandfathers story tells me it is possible.