Day: July 27, 2025

• Rasheda Williams’ paternal grandmother was always very private.
• When she died, her grandmother revealed her extended family and left most of her money to Williams.
• The $85,000 from inheritance and life insurance allowed Williams to take two years off work.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Rasheda Williams, founder of Empowered Flower Girl. It has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s hard to describe my relationship with my grandmother, Marguerite. You might say it was interesting. Marguerite was my dad’s mother. After my parents divorced, my dad moved to another state, but Marguerite always came to events like graduation and birthdays. In that way, we were close.

But our relationship felt very surface-level. She showed up for my milestones, but I never really knew her. She was very private and kept me at a distance. I took her to a doctor’s appointment once and asked a few questions. She shot me a look that said, “Mind your own business.” That was how she was — always keeping people at arm’s length.

My dad died before his mother, so as Marguerite got older, I was her only living relative — or so I thought. When she was in her late 70s, I began to notice her house was in disarray, and she was struggling with hoarding. I encouraged her to move, but she refused. She was very stubborn.

My grandma left me a note and all her important documents

In 2015, when I was 34, I wasn’t able to get a hold of Marguerite. I called the police to do a wellness check, and they found that she had died at home. The situation was a bit mysterious: She had written me a note referring to “the key to everything.” A folder with her bank and insurance information was nearby. I assumed that was the key she was referring to.

When I opened that folder, I saw Marguerite had about $55,000 in the bank. I was stunned. I couldn’t believe my grandma had that much money while living the way she was.

Marguerite’s official cause of death was a heart attack. I’ll never know if the note was there because she had a premonition that she was going to die. No matter what, I believe it was divine timing for both of us.

I quit my job and lived off my inheritance for two years

Between the money in Marguerite’s accounts and life insurance policies, I received an inheritance of about $85,000. At the time, I was making about $53,000 a year working in communications for a university, so this was a lot of money for me.

I knew immediately I wanted to leave my job. I wasn’t fulfilled at work. I had a side project, Empowered Flower Girl, that addresses bullying in young people. That was my life’s work, but it was always on the back burner because of my job.

It took a year for Marguerite’s estate to move through probate court. During that year, I made a strategic plan for my life. It wasn’t too different from the marketing plans I was used to making at work. I would quit my day job and write a book for Empowered Flower Girl—something I’d been putting off for years.

Once I received the money, I put about $15,000 into emergency savings. I used the remaining $70,000 to live off of for the next two years. Although that wasn’t a ton of money, I was still able to treat myself to some things, including a trip to the Caribbean.

I wrote my book, began speaking professionally, and advanced Empowered Flower Girl. After two years, I started picking up freelance work. I felt my career was much more aligned with my purpose. I was living for a living, and no longer dreading going to work.

I later learned about a family I didn’t know existed

It turns out, however, that the biggest catalyst for change after Marguerite’s death wasn’t the money she left me: It was the realization of a family secret.

When I went through her papers, I learned about my grandmother’s stepdaughter, whom I never knew existed. I also learned that Marguerite had cousins and extended family I had never known.

Finding that family helped me feel whole. I fostered relationships with them and deepened relationships with my friends. Marguerite’s death was a wake-up call for me.

Although she was in her 80s when she died, her death reinforced to me that life is short. I want to spend my time with the people and projects that are most important to me. Thanks to my grandmother, I am able to do that.

• My grandparents raised me, and they used fear as a parenting tactic.
• They thought it would make me safer, but it created anxiety.
• I vowed to do things differently as a parent, but my son recently told me the result was the same.

My grandparents raised me, and they weren’t around much. I was often without adult supervision, and in an effort to protect me, they injected a healthy dose of fear into their parenting. And though it did instill both discernment and resilience, it also created anxiety.

While the origins of many of the stories that scared me didn’t come directly from them, they perpetuated the myth and often added to it. I remember, at the age of 8, watching a movie as a family about the slow fallout of a nuclear war. No discussions followed the movie, no attempts to assuage my fears, even when I told them about the nightmares that came in the weeks after.

The things my grandparents warned me about often became a recurring theme of my childhood nightmares. Though their intentions were good, telling them about my fear just seemed to solidify their commitment to parenting me this way.

I wanted to parent differently

Before I became a parent myself, I talked with my grandparents about my upbringing. They told me they had figured I was better off scared than dead. I reminded them of all the ways my anxiety manifested with the chronic nightmares and fears around everything from death to nuclear war, but they offered no apologies. I knew I wanted to parent differently.

At 30, I had a son. Over the next eight years, I had three more kids. Rather than pull scary tales from the daily news or the town rumor mill, I kept them sheltered. When they asked about issues I thought could be frightening, I tried to explain in a way that was both direct and sensitive. Sometimes, the overwhelming anxiety I struggled with made it difficult, though I don’t think I knew it at the time.

I learned that my son dealt with similar anxieties

Retrospection can be difficult as a parent. It often provides an overarching, distanced perspective we don’t have when our children are little. Maybe this was why I was caught off guard when my 20-year-old son came over to have dinner one night and announced, “I’m afraid of everything.”

When I asked what “everything” included, he delivered a list as long as my own. It included driving, fire, water, and a million other things.

“You passed all the fear from when you grew up to me,” he said. Though I had aimed to raise my children differently from how my grandparents parented me, we had seemingly achieved a similar result. I, too, had created fear, which morphed into anxiety. My son carried it into adulthood just as I had.

As we said our goodbyes, I thought back to my early years as a parent. I told my kids to be careful with electricity. “Don’t plug that in,” I heard myself saying from almost two decades prior, “you might get shocked or start a fire.” At the beach, warnings were issued about swimming too far out without adult supervision.

“You told us never to swim alone,” my son said, “and I remember swimming with friends and searching for an adult. At 13, it became embarrassing.”

The truth hurt, but it wasn’t all bad

Looking back at how I’d parented in contrast to my intention was eye-opening. I didn’t even realize I had anxiety until my 40s. I assumed everyone lived the way that I did — in a perpetual state of fear.

“I didn’t know,” I told my son. Then, I did what I’ve always done when I make a mistake: I told him I was sorry.

He told me it was OK, before adding, “It is probably part of the reason I made it to adulthood.” While I was truly grateful for his forgiveness and understanding, I knew I needed to start doing things differently with my youngest two children, now 14 and 12. I’ve gone to therapy and also realized the value of taking medication to control my anxiety.

What I am trying to do now is instill confidence in my kids. My fears oozed onto everything I did and affected the way I parented. I suppose, like my grandparents, I was just doing my best to make sure my kids were safe.