About the Auntie Brigade

For a long time I've been thrilled by what Elizabeth Gilbert has to say about the Auntie Brigade. Even before she wrote about it in Committed - she spoke about it.  I heard her talk at The National Cathedral in Washington DC, many moons before there was any chance (or so I thought) of my becoming an Auntie in the traditional sense.

I've always believed that all of us are here to nurture and care for the children and animals of the planet. I've felt it in my bones and cells for as long as I can remember and I've been wracking my brain for a while to figure out how to help touch lives in a positive way for a long time.

Words are my medium. I love words. I love the written word especially. Reading books - biographies, memoirs, diaries, letters to friends - brings wisdom and understanding.

Thus the birth of "Notes from Your Auntie."

This space is here to share your Auntie wisdom with your nieces and nephews. Whether they're yours by birth or affection, there are pieces of wisdom you want to share to ease their way in the world, to remind them of their vibrancy and brilliance and to let them know how much you love and believe in them.

Submit your essays, letters, notes, pictures, artwork or other missives to me at pointsonpets@gmail.com. I'll do my best to curate and post all of them.  If you want to share a link to your own blogs/work - that is grand!

No matter how your nieces and nephews are - they are always happy to hear from you!  Share your stories and thoughts here!

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an excerpt from Committed, by Elizabeth Gilbert:

p. 191 - "In any case, the number of women throughout history who never become mothers is so high (so consistently high) that I now suspect that a certain degree of female childlessness is an evolutionary adaptation of the human race.  Maybe it's not only perfectly legitimate for certain women to never reproduce, but also necessary.  it's as though, as a species, we need an abundance of responsible, compassionate, childless women on hand to support the wider community in various ways.  Childbearing and child rearing consume so much energy that the women who do become mothers can quickly become swallowed up by that daunting task -- if not outright killed by it.  Thus, maybe we need extra females, women on the sidelines with undepleted energies, who are ready to leap into the mix and keep the tribe supported.  Childless women have always been particularly essential in human society because they often take upon themselves the task of nurturing those who are not their official biological responsibility -- and no other group does this to such a large degree.  Childless women have always run orphanages and schools and hospitals.  They are midwives and nuns and providers of charity.  They heal the sick and teach the arts and often they become indispensable on the battlefield of life.  Literally, in some cases.  (Florence Nightingale comes to mind.)
 
  Such childless women -- let's call them the "Auntie Bridgade" -- have never been very well honored by history, I'm afraid.  They are called selfish, frigid, pathetic.  There's one particularly nasty bit of conventional wisdom circulating out there about childless women that I need to dispel here, and that is this: that women who have no children may lead liberated and happy and wealthy lives when they are young, but they will ultimately regret that choice when they reach old age, for they shall all die alone and depressed and full of bitterness.  Perhaps you've heard this old chestnut?  Just to set the record straight: There is zero sociological evidence to back this up.  In fact, recent studies of American nursing homes comparing happiness levels of elderly childless women against happiness levels of women who did have children show no pattern of special misery or joy in one group or the other.  but here's what the researchers did discover that makes elderly women miserable across the board: poverty and poor health.  Whether you have children or not, then, the prescription seems clear: Save your money, floss your teeth, wear your seatbelt, and keep fit -- and you'll be a perfectly happy old bird someday, I guarantee you.

    Just a little free advice there, from your Auntie Liz.

    In leaving no descendents, however, childless aunts do tend to vanish from memory after a mere generation, quickly forgotten, their lives as transitory as butterflies.  but they are vital as they live, and they can even be heroic.  Even in my own family's recent history, there are stories on both sides of truly magnificent aunties who stepped in and saved the day during emergencies.  Often able to accrue education and resources precisely because they were childless, these women had enough spare income and compassion to pay for lifesaving operations, or to rescue the family farm, or to take in a child whose mother had fallen gravely ill.  I have a friend who calls these sorts of child-rescuing aunties "sparents" -- "spare parents" -- and the world is filled with them.

    Even within my own community, I can see where I have been vital sometimes as a member of the Auntie Brigade.  my job is not merely to spoil and indulge my niece and nephew (though I do take that assignment to heart) but also to be a roving aunite to the world -- an ambassador auntie -- who is on hand wherever help is needed, in anybody's family whatsoever.  There are people I've been able to help, sometimes fully supporting them for years, because I am not obliged, as a mother would be obliged, to put all my energies and resources into the full-time rearing of a child.  There are a whole bunch of Little League uniforms and orthodontist's bills and college educations that I will never have to pay for, thereby freeing up resources to spread more widely across the community.

 In this way, I, too, foster life.  There are many, many ways to foster life.  And believe me, every single one of them is essential.

    Jane Austen once wrote to a relative whose first nephew had just been born: "I have always maintained the importance of Aunts as much as possible.  Now that you have become an Aunt, you are a person of some consequence."  Jane knew of which she spoke.  She herself was a childless auntie, cherished by her nieces and nephews as a marvelous confidante, and remembered always for her "peals of laughter."

    Speaking of writers: From an admittedly biased perspective, I feel the need to mention here that Leo Tolstoy and Truman Capote and all the Brontë sisters were raised by their childless aunts after their real mothers had either died or abandoned them.  Tolstoy claimed that his Aunt Toinette was the greatest influence of his life, as she taught him "the moral joy of love."  The historian Edward Gibbon, having been orphaned young, was raised by his beloved and childless Aunt Kitty.  John Lennon was raised by his Aunt Mimi, who convinced the boy that he would be an important artist someday.  F. Scott Fitzgerald's loyal Aunt Annabel offered to pay for his college education.  Frank Lloyd Wright's first building was commissioned by his Aunts Jane and Nell -- two lovely old amids who ran a boarding school in Spring Green, Wisconsin.  Coco Chanel, orphaned as a child, was raised by her Aunt Gabrielle, who taught her how to sew -- a useful skill for the girl, I think we would all agree.  Virginia Woolf was deeply influenced by her Aunt Caroline, a Quaker spinster who devoted her life to charitable works, who heard voices and spoke to spirits, and who seemed, as Woolf recalled years later, "a kind of modern prophetess."