Ruthlessly Faithful

Grief, self-compassion, and daring to love without conditions.

getting a little deep as we discuss community and relationships this month. the most complicated relationships of all are with family. sending love to all of you who can empathize with this one.

---

You know how it sneaks in. For a couple of days, you’re just… off. A low buzz hums under the surface, you snap when the coffee shop line is too long, blame it on hormones, sleep, work.

Then something slows you down long enough to notice — for me, while filling out the date on an Urgent Care intake form — exactly what day it is.

February 12th.

She would have been 73 today, texting me prayers signed with the 😘 emoji from her big blue reclining chair in the condo we shared until she moved to a nursing home and I moved to New York City.

It’s safe (though definitely rude) to say no one in our family was closer than we were, as the eldest grandkid born to her sixteen-year-old daughter when she was just in her forties.

That is, until the Great Rift of 2020 (you can imagine the topic…), after which our relationship was never quite the same. I thank Jesus — the center of her life — every day that we reconciled and I could hold her hand again before she left us in July 2022.

I’m an absolute wreck today. I’ve spent the morning blasting the Beach Boys and sobbing on my couch, journaling in purple ink (her favorite color) and letting myself unravel about this for the first time in a while, maybe ever. We used to swing dance to “California Girls” across her trailer’s living room, one of the only traces of whimsy she carried from her short childhood. I don’t know what else to do with this delayed grief (likely intensified by day five of a mysterious winter cold that Urgent Care was no help in battling), but to write. So I will do my best to pay homage to the woman who raised me, if only so that I can breathe a little easier.

Naturally, I was the favorite grandchild. Sometimes it felt like the favorite child, too. When you’re born to a teenager and raised by her mother, the lines tend to blur.

When I wasn’t shuffling between my mom’s numerous college apartments, I slept in her bed until I was five (maybe seven, if I’m honest) and woke up to the sound of her walking at an incline on her treadmill every morning. “Good morning, precious!”

At night, she popped fresh popcorn on the stove in an old black pot while the kettle whistled and she poured us cups of Calm magnesium. When we moved to St. Louis, the alarm clock switched to her unloading the dishwasher as loudly as she possibly could to lure me into having breakfast with her. “Hi, honey!” she’d chirp, as I angrily stood in the doorway.

She always took care of me, taking me to work with her as a receptionist, singing songs to calm down my tears over the phone, maxing out her only credit card to move me into Northwestern.

I guess her namesake was a bit too apt, because like the Bible’s Ruth, she overcame countless tragedies throughout her life. A disabled woman whose abusive husband left her for another woman — jobless with full custody of five children — she easily could’ve become cynical, particularly when her teenager got pregnant (with a Black baby, oh my!). Sometimes, she was. But there was no one more dedicated to optimism.

She kept her small trailer immaculate, decorated with the Lord’s prayer and purple curtains.“Count Your Blessings!!!!” was her default response to everything. It’s how she survived: take care of what you have if you ever want to get more. Give your struggles up to God. Like her namesake, she was loyal, generous, and willing to do anything for the sake of righteousness. She’d pray for miracles — and get them. She told me I was one, helping to ease the shame I felt for just existing as a kid.

She told me to soar. To leave Missouri. To get educated. To stop worrying so much about my siblings. To try everything once. Go abroad. Fall in love. Grow as much as I could. She told me I was beautiful, intelligent, kind, and most importantly, loved beyond measure by Jesus Christ himself. Even in the most gut-wrenching life situations, the core she built keeps me strong.

I’m a smart girl, but grief defies logic, making it an Emotion I Don’t Want To Feel Because I Can’t Explain It. If I can’t justify a feeling, I tend to disqualify it.

We live in a time where the dominant moral logic equates being flawed with being completely unworthy — of love, of sympathy, of even mourning. We reduce people to their worst moments, confusing disagreement with exile.

So when she died, I think part of me decided I wasn’t allowed to be devastated. And as I write that, I realize how ruthless (no uncanny pun intended) we’ve become.

Now I see that if her life wasn’t worthy of love and honor — the complicated, flawed, stubborn, faithful woman she was — then what would that say about everyone else?

That we’d have to be perfect to be worthy of anything? That just can’t be true.

I believe in accountability and consequences, and there were significant consequences to my grandmother’s political beliefs that strained our otherwise sacred relationship at the end of her life. Somewhere between fake news segments and Facebook comment sections, we lost each other for a while.

While I was busy trying to intellectualize it all, my therapist asked me: “What do you need from her?”

“I need her to understand. To apologize. To renounce it. To fix it.” I pleaded.

“Do you think you can realistically get that from her in her current state?”

The healing started there.

It was an important lesson in unconditional love, in empathy, in meeting people where they’re at, and in what it means to be family.

Ultimately, her mistakes taught me just as much as her teachings: never solely rely on a man (lol), always take care of your health, and always believe in love. (She always believed she’d find her Boaz.) And never stop questioning things — especially the internet.

She could be ruthless at times, but I will remember her as ruthlessly faithful.

During a particularly difficult time in her divorce, an older churchwoman counseled her to write something grounding on a smooth rock: the Lord has blessed me this far. She carried it with her for decades as an anchor between homes and tragedies, before sending it off with me during a rather depressing senior year of college. In what I’d describe as the hardest week of my life to date, she serendipitously sent me this text:

Today, every time it works out, I get a glimpse of her — when a Ford Edge drives by, a purple orchid sits in the waiting room, during my Calm magnesium ritual every night. Every time it’s not working out, she’s there, too.

We grieve because of loss, but I’m starting to see it differently.

I didn’t lose her love. I am her love.

Without the life she spoke into me, I wouldn’t have left Missouri. I wouldn’t have dared to get two degrees. I wouldn’t be building a life alone in New York City at 27 — single, self-employed, and still able to dream.

I’m the embodiment of a scorned, joyful, savvy, faithful woman’s raw hope. Her brave vision for me to be more than the statistic I was positioned to be been was the seed for the beautiful life that I’m still just at the beginning of. It would be a dishonor to the sacrifices she made for me to stay stagnant when she coaxed me out of our family’s small Missouri world to go after the biggest possible life I could.

I’ve always been focused on the now, the me, the future. The past feels irrelevant to the hustle — look ahead to where you’re going, not at what’s behind you!! But we cannot forget that grandmothers’ prayers hold up entire communities. Our paths are paved by their bravery to dream for us. You’re a walking testimony, and you matter.

Appreciating my ancestors in their flaws and their fullness allows me to feel compassion for myself — and a responsibility toward their sacrifices.

My job now is to be ruthlessly faithful as I carry out the dreams she planted in me.

The Lord has blessed me this far.

I intend to honor that.

—

I hope you can reflect on people in your life whose unconditional love you may have minimized. Can you accept their love as valuable and true, even if your relationship is imperfect? That paradox is what makes us human.

Sending you lots of love — and a grandmother’s prayer.

xx

Alexis

---

Alexis Barber is the host of the Too Smart For This podcast, author of Too Smart For This (Tarcher), and a Brooklyn-based lifestyle creator who writes for ambitious material girls who care about business, wellness, culture, and building real personal power. A former YouTube strategist and Wharton MBA, she uses strategic intelligence to help smart women build intentional lives and magnetic, profitable personal brands through content, consulting, and community. Subscribe to support her work, purchase the journal, follow along on socials, or inquire about brand strategy at hello@alexisbarber.com.