Fantastic!
First, the haiku sums up how I've been feeling, now that I'm a grandma, and feeling as if my experience and years of learning should count for something, and a little more respect for ol' mom would be in order.
Feeling my power.
Coming now into my own.
Wise. Woman. Elder.
And, I totally get the initial shock - who, me? an elder?
When I became a mother and our son's friends started calling me Mrs. Kean, I'd glance around for my mother in law. Me? I'm now Mrs.--? But I was a Fraulein, not a Frau!
The empath thing, you're more than one up on me, knowing why strangers feel a certain way - that sounds like Sherlock Holmes or "The Mentalist" skill - but I gravitate to lonely people, mental cases, and anyone who lost a loved one, esp. at a young age. Like that young woman in the bathroom at church - never saw her before in my life - but soon she was weeping, telling me about her first husband dying of stomach cancer. I could go on.... I still have inhibitions about posting long stuff, having figured out that most people skip or skim what I write. You're the rare exception!
There's just so much here - that incredible grandma, the confidence of strangers, and you and your husband both having something more than empathic gifts - even that rare gift of medical diagnoses, or hunches that prove true, and where would the knowledge come from? Now that is one thing I only wish we had in common. Maybe many or most of us are born with this but we lose it (Wordsworth, the Romantics, believed birth was followed by a life-long forgetting of what we knew before we were born).
The date-rape, the Newfie - the things you've overcome - a divorce, a new husband who sounds more in tune with you - you don't mention here the loss of your sister, but you've weathered some really tough situations, and still you sing - your prose sings, your poetry sings - and I haven't even checked your Steemit feed for what you're up to musically. Ok, gotta tend to the dogs, but I'll be back. Thanks for sharing this. Love that line about coming from a long line of opinionated women. ;-)