What to do you see? When I look at this image, I see life and wisdom and experience and history and love and stories that make my head spin.
This is Grandma Kay. She is a brilliant, loving, cantankerous, feisty, opinionated and devoted mother of 1, grandmother of 2, great-grandmother of 4. She is my husband’s Grandma, and I along with countless others, have adopted her as my own. She is 96 years old and has tenacity for life, a passion for her family and a history that leaves me breathless.
I define my Grandma Kay as a Trailblazer.
What does that mean, you ask? If you look up the word Trailblazer in the dictionary, you will see the following definition:
trail·blaz·er
ˈtrālˌblāzər/
noun
- a person who makes a new track through wild country.
- a pioneer; an innovator.
“he was a trailblazer for many ideas that are now standard fare”
Synonyms: pioneer, innovator, groundbreaker
- a pioneer; an innovator.
If a Trailblazer is indeed a Pioneer, an Innovator, a Change Champion, then we need to look at our pasts to define our futures.
Grandma Kay began what we call today, her corporate career, at age 37, back in 1956. She worked for a life insurance company for 28 years. She did not allow corporate politics or the standards of the era dictate how she communicated or the output she provided. Well before business travel for a single woman was commonplace, Grandma Kay was flying across North America, responsible for the hiring and training of the office personnel. She worked for the company until her retirement at age 65 and to this day she shares the stories of her success and challenges. She tells us how she would stand up to the male managers, give her point of view and make her voice heard.
Often society looks at famous people and pins the term ‘Trailblazer’ on them due to their visibility. But in fact, it was our everyday grandmothers and their peers who paved the way for us today. An Osborne Group colleague summed it up this way: “Every generation sees those who came before them as trailblazers and every generation is blazing trails for those who come later.That’s good reason to remember how important it is to think forward and to anticipate and adapt to change.”
Grandma Kay, I look in your brilliant blue eyes, I listen to your stories and I thank you for all you have done for my generation and for my daughter’s generation and more. It is thanks to you and your fearless yet matter the fact approach to life, that you have given us all so much freedom. You are the epitome of a Trailblazer.
