Rosemarie Mollinedo has dedicated her life to fostering resilience, self-compassion, and growth in children, families, and communities. With a career spanning over four decades, Rosemarie has worked in early childhood education, family counseling, and community-based interventions, leaving an indelible mark on organizations like the Dubnoff Center for Child Development, El Nido Family Centers, and the East Los Angeles Women’s Center.
In this episode, Rosemarie shares her journey of overcoming personal hardships, finding healing through an education and career in service, ultimately embracing a “divinely engineered treatment plan” that has shaped her life. As a proud mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Rosemarie also reflects on how her experiences inspire her to pass down lessons of resilience, self-compassion, and trust, and the importance of family history to future generations.
Transcript
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
Welcome to Grandma Magic, a podcast from The Grandmother Collective. We are a nonprofit organization that supports and advocates for a world where a grandmother’s power is seen, cultivated, and activated for positive change. The Grandma Magic podcast is an opportunity to learn more about the unique roles that grandmothers, aunties, and other older women around the world play in advancing positive social development by talking to, and learning from, grandmother changemakers. We hope this series inspires you, brings you joy, and helps you recognize the enduring magic and wisdom that comes from grandmothers everywhere.
My name is Lynsey Farrell, and I’m your host. Today, we’re honored to introduce Rosemarie Mollinedo, a dedicated advocate for children and families whose career spans education, mental health, and community services.
Encouraged by a mentor to pursue higher education despite early discouragement, Rosemarie went on to earn an AA in Human Services, a BA in Child Mental Health, and an MA in Marriage and Family Therapy and Clinical Child Development. With expertise in early childhood education, family counseling, and community-based interventions, she’s worked in the Los Angeles area with organizations such as Dubnoff Center for Child Development, El Nido Family Centers, Bienvenido’s Family Services, and Families Forward Learning Center, formerly known as Mother’s Club.
She’s supported parents and caregivers through parenting and child development courses at Pasadena City College, and helps shape future educators as an adjunct professor at Citrus College. Rosemarie’s commitment to children and families is evident in every role she’s held — whether working in early childhood programs, advocating for at-risk youth, or supporting the healing of survivors of sexual and domestic violence. She brings a compassionate and holistic approach to fostering resilience and growth.
We are so excited to have you here to share your journey with us, Rosemarie.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
Thank you. I’m honored.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
One of the questions that I often ask, especially to our wise elder women, is: What is something that you have passed down or that you’re really hoping you’re leaving with the next generation?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
The value that I would like to pass down that’s been passed down to me, I think, is resilience. And the thing that I would also like to pass down to the future generations — my daughter, my granddaughters, my great-granddaughters, and so forth — is self-compassion. Along the way, this is what I’ve learned, and I would like to pass that on to them. Because we can be very strong women and go-getters, you know, but we can be very hard on ourselves sometimes, too.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
How do you pass down resilience? What does that look like, do you think? I mean, how do you think that you’ve learned it in your own life?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
Well, I was raised by a grandmother who was really a matriarch. A strong woman whose husband left the family when her children were in their teens, and she went on to raise her family, to buy property, to instill wisdom in her family and friends. And her children also were able to meet challenges. You know, each one of them had their various challenges, but they all met it, like Maya Angelou says, with “Still I Rise.” And so I resonate with that, and in the hardest of times I remember that. And I look at that strength and I drink from that fountain.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
So there’s sort of a sense that you’ve had the model of what it looks like to continue to rise. And that has been able to be something that you’ve maybe experienced — or, I mean, doesn’t resilience sort of come from — it’s sort of tragic, because it comes from hardship, right? It comes from having to do something hard. Or maybe not hardship, but having to do something hard, like pushing through something to get to the other side. And we can pass that down, but unless somebody kind of gets to experience that hardness, how does it really emerge?
We just did this paper, Rosemarie, where we were looking at literature about older women and the roles that they have played in sustaining societies — keeping them whole during times of hardship. I mean, what it sounds like to me is your grandmother has sort of showed you the way, so that when you were hit with it, you knew you could get through it.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
My grandmother, my mother, and my extended family — my aunts and my cousins — were really a support network for me. I lost my father very young, and my mother moved in with my grandmother and my aunts and my uncle, my cousins. And without that support, I think it would have been a lot worse.
Kaiser did this study Aces, Adverse Childhood Experiences, in the form of a questionnaire, it’s ten questions, and if they answered more than three, it could be that some of their health conditions were affected by some of the trauma they had experienced earlier in life.
So when I took that test, with a group of people, I scored seven. And the facilitator was saying, “Who scored three?” and people raised their hands. “Who scored four?” and then fewer hands were raised. “Who scored seven?” — you know, I slightly raised my hand, and nobody would admit to more than that. I was shocked. And then I looked back and I realized that I had been affected by a lot of trauma and a lot of losses.
And this was as a professional that I took this, so I knew about them. The agency that I worked with, my most recent one, was the East Los Angeles Women’s Center. And that one really helped me to just bring it all together — to a point to realize the effect of trauma and the effect of trauma on me, and utilizing the skills that I was learning, that I was teaching, that I was using. So that was a great opportunity for me.
I think my journey has really been some divinely engineered treatment plan for Rosemarie that took many years to enact. And I never would have imagined it. You know, I started as a young girl without any kind of thoughts of a future. I couldn’t imagine being sixteen, or I couldn’t imagine what seventeen would be like, or eighteen. I’d look forward to those ages, or what it would be like to be an adult.
Sometimes I thought, “Oh, I think I’d like to help people,” but, “Oh, that’s a lot of work.” And, you know, to want to go on to do further education — I had opportunities that I turned down. I was kind of cynical. I was a lot of things. But that’s where I was then.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
So if that person who I was then would have seen what I became, she would not believe it. She would not believe it. And then along the way, there were a lot of other tragedies and losses that happened that I had to go through. And in my divinely engineered treatment plan, there were these detours or these opportunities for me to grow and to learn and to fail and to get up again and to wonder, What am I going to do? and How can I do this?
And so that’s where I am. Now that I am 81 and have finished consulting with the East Los Angeles Women’s Center, I wonder now, What am I going to do? And so I’m in that place of questioning and searching and looking for a support network and people who I resonate with and people that, you know, I can join with — because being isolated is very lonely.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
The idea of this divinely engineered treatment plan that has emerged through your career — the course of the pathway that you’ve taken — is so fascinating to me. Because I really feel like, in the moment that you’re in a bad job, or in the moment where you’re not feeling balanced or equal, it can be really easy to forget that it’s part of a long life. And that there’s going to be a moment five years from now where you’re like, Man, I was really growing during that hard period of time.
And I think that’s such a cool way — or a neat way — to really think about the twists and turns of a life.
Rosemarie, so you were like, Nah, I don’t know if I’m gonna help people, but then you ended up helping people. What was the thought process or the decisions that you made toward that?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
The first thing, I think, was I was in a very bad place. I had three children. My youngest child was about one. He was toddling around, and I was very, very overweight. And if I would answer the phone, the person would say, Oh, I’m sorry that you had to run to answer the phone. But I didn’t have to run to answer the phone — it was right there. But I was out of breath because I was so overweight. And I was in a very dark place, thinking I couldn’t get out of it.
You know, I’d lost weight before, but then I gained it back — and more. And somebody introduced me to Overeaters Anonymous, a 12-step program. So I went, dragging my heels, not feeling very hopeful that that would be helpful — but it was. And I heard other people — another support network — hearing what was going on with other people, identifying with other people. And I began to lose the weight and become healthier and listen to other people.
And in the 12-step programs, there’s sponsorships. So I had a sponsor and was sometimes a speaker. And I found that that was a helpful tool. That didn’t lead me to want to jump into a career doing that, but it was something that let me know that people can help people.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
Did it help you understand that you actually might have a gift?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
What people would tell me — thank you — and I would go, Oh, that was nice. But I didn’t want to, like, blow it up like, Oh, look what a great thing I’m doing. And so I didn’t know I had a gift. But the next thing, I think, that happened — and all these things happen slowly.
So the next thing was: I saw a program with the then-social worker, now she’s a PhD, Claudia Black. And she wrote a book called It Will Never Happen to Me. And in the book, she said that children growing up in a dysfunctional system with substance abuse addiction grew up with the message: Don’t feel, don’t talk, don’t trust.
And so then, you know, she talked about that, but then she talked about her work with children. And she had these children on — they were elementary school-age children — and they were talking about how they felt growing up in a home with alcoholism. And it was fresh. And I thought, My God, they’re saying it. I could never say it. I could never tell anybody. I could never share it. I could never trust anybody to talk about it. And I was amazed.
And I thought, I would like to work with kids where I could maybe help them in that path somehow. So I just thought about it. I didn’t enroll in school right away. But I thought about it and I read a lot, and I listened to other people.
And also, it was a journey — a very painful journey — because I would relive and remember some of the things that were so painful and then learn how I had my adaptations to them. And how they were unhealthy for me. And so I continued to learn, and I went to work, and there came a time where I went back to school — just to go to school.
I was going to be laid off from my job. There were cuts, and there was a threat of being laid off from my job. And in that period of time, my cousin said she was going to enroll in a community college — Would I like to come with her? And I thought, Sure. And I had a few things in mind that I wanted to do.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
And how old were you at this point?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
By that time, my daughter — who’s the oldest — was starting college. Because when I got into the classes, I was in classes with some of her classmates. So that’s how it was. And then it took a while to go through those classes, and because I was an older re-entry student — I mean, older was pretty young back then in comparison to now — but there were people older than I was. Retired people who were in this re-entry class.
And I remember one saying that she had doubts about why she was doing this now. And then she said, if she didn’t, then maybe she would always regret what she didn’t do. And so, when I thought, Nah, I don’t know, what am I doing, I don’t have time for this, that kind of held me in there for a while.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
I’ll let you know — I always liked teaching the mature students. I loved it. They were there because they wanted to be there. They were determined. When I was teaching, I really loved teaching the older students. So that’s cool.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
So, I enjoyed it. I kept moving on. There came a time when I learned that if you worked at a certain university, that could help your children’s tuition. So I thought, Well, maybe I should try to get a job at this university. And then, instead of going to school here, What am I doing wasting my time going to school when I could be doing something like that?
So I decided I was going to go. I made an appointment and I put in letters to my professors that I was going to drop out of the program that I was in. And one of them stopped me and said, Let me talk to you. And he said, You should go on. He was encouraging. So I said, Okay. I put aside the idea I had of working for my daughter’s tuition, and I continued on with school. And he recommended me into a program — a Bachelor-level program in Child Development. And so I continued on like that. I had nudges along the way.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
But you were always, in the back of your mind, remembering that idea — that if you could get to the children and help them name the things?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
So, I went back to school. I also started working with kids that were special in different ways. Sometimes they might have had certain disabilities or handicaps, sometimes it might have been social-emotional, mental health issues, due to abuse or neglect. So it was more challenging. It wasn’t just going and having kids draw a picture and then voila, magic, they’re healed.
It was really understanding where they were and how they got there. It was really listening with another ear to what they had to offer, and realizing that we all have something to offer. Even in my darkest times, I’d think, Oh, I have nothing to offer. But I have — if only just my experience.
So I did that. I worked with kids. There was one story I wanted to tell you. While I was going on to school, there came a time when my marriage fell apart. I was getting divorced, so it was another dark period. What am I going to do? How am I going to support myself?
During my internships, or the work I had done previously, I worked with this group of children. It was called ARC — Activities for Retarded Children — and it was founded by two mothers that had daughters with Down Syndrome. They wanted their daughters to have access to the recreational and educational things that most children did. And up to that point, there was not a lot available to them. So they really pushed to start something.
I developed a friendship with these women — and one especially. So I would volunteer for them. And during this dark time, I wasn’t doing anything. I wasn’t working, I wasn’t doing anything. And I got a call asking if I wanted to come back and volunteer on weekends or work on weekends. So I did.
And the love and the energy, being around those kids, was so uplifting.
There was one instance — we were going on a field trip, and I was sitting next to this young boy, Andy. He might have been eight or nine years old. We were driving on the bus, and I was in deep thought, thinking, How am I gonna make it? What am I gonna do? How am I gonna support myself? Where am I gonna live? What about my son, who was starting college? How can I help him?
We kept driving. I’m quiet, not saying anything, but I’m deep in thought. And Andy reaches over and taps my hand and he said, “It will be all right, Rosemarie. It will be all right.” And that was a profound moment that I still hold and cherish deeply.
Andy was an angel to me. And I didn’t have to say anything. And that kept me going.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
So you hadn’t even at this point — you’d been studying, you’d been learning, you were dealing with some personal stuff — and you had not yet gotten your first real job in the field?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
Not my social work job, no. This was prior to that.
Another instance I had, prior to that, was I worked in another school. The kids there also had special problems — social problems, emotional problems, learning problems. And by then I was in the degree program for Child Mental Health.
I was assigned to work with this one boy who didn’t communicate with others. On the property of the school, they had horses. So what he would do is go out and stand by the horses. And I don’t even remember him talking to the horses, but he would stand by the horses and look.
I was assigned to work with him. So I went out, I stood next to him. And very slowly and gradually over time, I began to comment about the horse. And very slowly, he would respond and comment back to me — until the time where we were kind of talking to each other.
And then we went back into the classroom. We would talk about his lessons, we would talk about his family life. He would tell me about all the Hanukkah presents he got — he was so excited to tell me. But this was a boy who had been pretty much quiet and non-communicative before.
I was going to finish my internship there, and I had to tell the children I was working with that I would be leaving. I told him, and he looked at me and he said, “Wait — what am I going to do without you?”
And I thought, Oh no, what are you going to do without me? I didn’t know. So I went to the head psychologist and said, You know, I’ll come back and I’ll volunteer. I’ll follow him through life. I’ll be his special person.
And she said, Thank you, that’s generous of you. But why don’t you tell him this…
So she told me what to tell him, and I did: That in the time we were together, he learned a skill of trust. He could open up to somebody. And there were many people in the world that he would be able to trust and open up to. I was just one. And that was what I was leaving him with.
And I was so happy that he had developed that skill on his own. I told him that, and I left. And that was a piece of advice — or a story — that I told when I went on to work with other people. When I would be supervising them, and their clients had trouble letting go of them — or they had trouble letting go of their clients — that you know, we’re just there to help get them through a rough patch, or help for a period of time, but not to be there forever.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
That’s such an important story — to realize or to teach that. To teach the kid that there will be other people to trust, and to teach you that you have to learn to let go in those moments.
Rosemarie, you worked in family and child services for 30-some-odd years. Do you want to comment on the changes that you saw over that time? Have we gotten better or worse at helping young people?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
I think that we have gotten better at understanding development. But I also think that there’s a sudden backlash against people with differences. And so we’re quick to label.
I hear that louder — that “they need to stay in jail,” or “they are causing all the problems,” or “they don’t need the extra help.” And that really bothers me. I think in that sense, we will have a struggle standing up for diversity and inclusion and equality.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
Which includes disabled children, children who need mental health support. It includes just very much recognizing the diversity of the human experience — and not just color, skin color, or religion. It’s like every single one of us should be met where we are.
Yeah, it’s been lost. It’s been glossed over. It’s been simplified. Something really complex has been oversimplified. I mean, I would imagine — even as you retired last year, or finally gave up your last thing last year — I would imagine even as recent as last year, what felt like great gains in terms of what we are offering and making sure children have… felt good.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
So my career — to jump way ahead, like leap over, leaps and bounds — when I heard Claudia Black, that was the late ’70s, to give you a context of dates.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
Claudia Black who set you on this journey of learning.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
The ’70s is when she wrote a book and I saw her. And so, jumping to maybe a couple of years ago, I volunteered to work in this family program that the agency was having — to do the children’s program — because I had a background working with children. And it was a lot of work, and it was interrupted by COVID.
So instead of having families come together in a place, we had to do it virtually, which was a challenge. And so it was all a challenge. And we did it for three years. The last sessions were in person. But that was an opportunity for me to use some of the skills that I had garnered from those inspirations — having children talk about what’s going on with them and talking together as families. It was just a bit of that, but it gave me a great closure to the career — from where I started off to where I finished. And before that, I was working with administrative details.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
The no fun part — where you don’t get to touch the impact.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
That was a wonderful opportunity. You know, I enjoyed that.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
To go back to your roots of being with the children to start.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
And I think all along — besides this wonderful treatment plan that was set out for me — it’s been healing the child within me. And so I still want to have fun. I still want to, Oh, let me do this! You know, I get held back sometimes by the pace that I want to jump into something, because I can’t jump into something as quickly. But it keeps me young. And it helps to keep me balanced. And so I’m still on that journey. My treatment plan has not ended.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
This is the story I hear time and time again from every woman that I interview. No matter when you started in life, there is always a next. There was a woman I knew once — this is great advice I received once — she said, “You take the next best thing.” Like, don’t worry about it being a perfect plan for your life.
And I’ve really taken this to heart. You take the next best thing — the next best thing that’s tugging at you, that’s going to make you learn, that’s going to challenge you. And it seems like it doesn’t really end. There is no ending to that. You just keep looking.
At least with the women that have coalesced around us at The Grandmother Collective, there’s a constant desire to urgently try to make change or to participate in the world. We always talk about the aging process and how magical grandmothers are. You’re a great-grandmother, right?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
Yes.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
How many grandchildren and great-grandchildren do you have?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
I had four grandchildren — I lost one grandson — and I have three great-grandchildren.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
Did you notice a shift, as you aged, into finding a different way of approaching things? Do you feel there’s been a different sort of wisdom that’s been revealed?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
Part of my response to don’t talk, don’t feel, don’t trust — part of my adaptation — was to be a very responsible child. Trying to be, anyway. And so that has continued through my lifetime. And something I became aware of along the way is to understand it, but to kind of relax and not have to push.
And then there was another demand that came up — that maybe I needed to help another person. And I wanted to control the situation and what needed to be done for this person. And I was at the breaking point — wanting to help the work and wanting to help this person — and I realized that this push to want to call the shots and be in control and say it has to be done this way was huge.
And I was in huge conflict. And I needed to stop. I really wanted to stop and just take care of myself — because that had never been my first priority of the day. What do I do to take care of myself?
So in these past months, my first priority of the day has been that. Most days, I do an hour of stretching and exercising just to get my juices flowing. And I never did that. I would jump out of bed and go to the computer and see who I had to respond to and what I had to do. So it’s changing.
And I realized in that how much my life had been pushed by that — and not just being able to relax or to breathe or to take the time to do what I needed to do for myself and do it without, Oh, you really should be doing this. You shouldn’t be doing that.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
That guilt feeling. When I was working on my dissertation, there was a thing in the back of my head that was always like, You should be writing. You should be writing. You’re having a nice dinner with your friends — You should be writing. That just nagging inner voice.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
So now, those nagging voices have been with me. Some have controlled me, but some haven’t. Some I’ve learned to recognize. And now I kind of see them as old friends that kind of wanted to keep me safe or keep me on track or keep me warm or whatever.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
Keep you responsible, because you were still reacting to that.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
And so now, when I hear them, I don’t need to spiral down and believe them. But I can kind of lean back and respond to them. You know, I can thank them, and I can go, But I’m just going to take a nap right now. Or, I’m just going to do nothing, or whatever it is that I’m going to do — and be great with it.
The relief that has given me in my body — the relief of tension — it’s been incredible. That’s a big lesson that I’ve learned, you know, at this age.
And it’s not that I want to say, Well, the world can go to hell in a handbasket and I’m just going to take care of me, because I still feel drawn to be a part of caring and supporting people in whatever way I can.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
But you can’t do it probably at the same pace.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
Absolutely. When I was in one of my internships, there was a volunteer that came in. It was a parent-child support group. So the parents brought their children in, and there were these people — us, me, child development major — that would help work with the children while the parents had their groups.
There was this one woman — her name was Franny, I remember that. And she was a Holocaust survivor.
And she would come to the sandbox. She was an older woman. I don’t know how old she was then — I don’t know if I’m older than her now — but she was an older woman. And she would go to the sandbox where there was a lone little boy sitting by himself. And she would sit a few feet away from him — not to be intrusive, but just sit there with him. And gradually, she got closer. And gradually, she engaged with him.
And I think that was the lesson that I learned — that I could use with that boy in the special school, who had the horse, and as a friend. And so I learned that.
And so the lesson to me is — this isn’t a lot of words. I can be a chatterbox. I can say a lot of things. I can write up a treatment plan and tell people what they should do. But the best thing is to be able to be listened to, and to give people the space so they can feel your presence. The way Andy gave me that space so he could feel my presence.
And that doesn’t take a lot of words or knowledge or experience or education or theories.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
But there’s a patience in that, Rosemarie, that I don’t think a lot of younger mothers or younger people have. You learned that by watching an older woman show the way. I have a group of moms around me and they’re all like, “Oh, I keep exploding at my kids. I’m so — I can’t — “ and we all know better. And yet, that sort of patience grows with age. Hmm.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
It grows. Also, at one point when my children were very little — my older two children were very little — I went to a parents group with them, and I felt very isolated. I felt very other, different than anybody — insufficient. And I went to this group.
So part of the group is we watch the children, and then there’s a discussion. And as a newcomer, I came in feeling a little awkward, and I heard other mothers having coffee and laughing: “Don’t you feel sometimes you just want to lock yourself in the closet and pretend you’re not there when the kids are crying, ‘Mommy, Mommy’?” And they laughed and they go, “Yeah.” And I was floored.
I was shocked — quietly to myself. I thought, I feel like that all the time. I feel like I’m an alien from outer space — that I don’t belong, I shouldn’t feel this way. And other people feel this way? That was the key to me.
And when I did parent groups, that was also the key — when other people could share how they felt and other people could identify with that, resonate with that. It’s hard to be a parent. When I taught parenting, it was not the way I parented, because I made all the mistakes.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
That’s why it’s so important to have someone with experience teaching and sharing — because a 23-year-old who has no children cannot teach a parenting class the way a mother of three who’s sent them off to college can.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
And it was also a healing experience, also, because I could then identify too. And I could be kind to that mother that I was — finally. Not judgmental, but say, You did your best, and be kind. And you’re not alone.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
You’ve brought it right back to this journey that you’ve been on — would you say divinely?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
A highly engineered treatment plan.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
It sounds like you’re at the end, where you’re really now taking care of the physical body, taking rest. I’m sure you’ll go and show the way to somebody else on how to make a difference. I’m sure you’re going to figure it out. Any ideas yet, Rosemarie, on what you’re going to do?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
No. I think I need to find a community. It’s harder to find an in-person community of people my age.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
Do you need them to be your age? You can’t find an intergenerational crowd?
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
I don’t want people to, like, feel like they have to help me to sit down or come up the steps.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
Yeah.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
A different dynamic.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
No, you want to find people who understand what you’re going through — at your age and stage.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
Sometimes, at a certain age, you may feel dismissed. But I want people with my experience — people that aren’t holding on to their ailments. You know, that doesn’t define us. Neither do our past deeds define us, but who we are, and what we are, and what we care about — I think that defines us. And what we do.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
Who you are today. That’s what we’ve been battling — is the story of older women either being relevant only for the caretaking that they can do, or even to ask an older woman necessarily to pass down wisdom, which is, of course, what I started with. To say that it’s only about what she’s done and not what she’s doing today. And there’s so much value in just being present, and with the power that you have.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
The one thing I want to pass on to my family — that I had always wanted to do, and my uncle encouraged me to do this years ago — was to pass on the family history. Whatever we know. And I am now the oldest surviving person of my generation in my family. One of them that remembers these stories and can tell these stories. And can document these stories in pictures — not in article form or Substack form or storytelling form — but just in facts. So they know where their people came from, and what they had to do to get here.
So, going back to my grandmother: she came to this country with her mother and her sister, and settled in El Paso when she was a little girl. And then when she was a young girl — I think, and I have to study about the education system in El Paso — but there were not enough teachers to go around.
So when she was just still a teenager, she says she borrowed her grandmother’s skirt and she taught the younger children — because she saw a need. And so that is inspiring. I want my great-grandchildren to know that. My grandchildren to know that. That that’s part of their heritage. And so, I want to learn more about it, and I want to share more about it.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
And then write it down.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
And write it down.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
We have to stop pretending that we don’t have histories. Some people are living and historically — and forgetting where we’ve come from. Well, that sounds like a next step, Rosemarie — a big one. And hugely personally fulfilling.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
It is.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
Well, thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. I am so thrilled we got to dig in and I got to learn a bit more about where you’ve come from — and where you are today. It’s very special. Thank you so much for chatting with us and hanging out with us at The Grandmother Collective. You’re very quiet, and then you say something and all of us are kind of like — When Rosemarie speaks… then she brings it all together. I appreciate it.
Rosemarie Mollinedo:
That should be the name of my book.
Lynsey Farrell (Host):
When Rosemarie Speaks! Oh, yeah. I love it. I love it. That’s your book.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Grandma Magic. We hope you were inspired by today’s conversation with Rosemarie Mollinedo and gained new insights and inspirations for social change.
If you’re as passionate as we are about amplifying the voices and wisdom of older women, we invite you to get involved. Follow The Grandmother Collective on social media to stay connected and discover more stories of changemakers around the world. You can also participate in our storytelling initiatives — submit your own stories for our Substack publication, and join our monthly storytelling circle to share your own experiences.
And don’t forget to subscribe to Grandma Magic wherever you listen to podcasts so you won’t miss future episodes filled with inspiration, wisdom, and the enduring magic of grandmothers. Thank you for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
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