Sable Monroe

I didn’t grow up without love. That matters to say first.

Before anything fractured, before fear learned my name, there was my grandmother, my mother’s mother. She was the first adult who made me feel safe in my body, not just tolerated in a room.

Arriving at her house always required effort. There was a rocky path you had to climb to reach it, an incline that wasn’t quite a hill but steep enough to make you feel it in your legs. I would climb it calling out before I even reached the house.

“Grandma. Grandma.”

Her house sat above the road, two stories with a wing at the time, always unfinished. In Jamaica, that wasn’t a flaw. Whenever money came in, another room appeared. Another level. The house grew the way families did—unevenly, over time, always prepared for more.

She never knew when visitors were coming. There were no phones. Letters took time. So she cooked too much food on purpose, believing someone might arrive hungry.

When she came from the kitchen to greet me, I hugged her and smelled the soup clinging to her clothes—thyme, onion, garlic. That smell meant relief. At her house, my body relaxed. There was no violence there. No constant bracing.

We sat on the veranda in the evenings while she cooked. Red tiles flecked with pink and white beneath our feet. Me still in my blue school uniform. Talking about school. About whatever had happened that day. Quiet, ordinary safety.

She protected me without explaining everything. She had rules. Boundaries. Routes I wasn’t allowed to take because the world was not kind to girls. I didn’t understand the danger then, only the care behind the rules.

What made her love rare was that she saw me.

She told me I was smart. She told me I was beautiful. She believed in education because it gave women options. She had moved from her father’s house to her husband’s house, enduring what she had to. She wanted something different for me.

There was never competition between us. Only love. She was content being an old woman. Content knowing I would have choices she didn’t.

That love became my reference point.

So when people later tried to water me down, tried to tell me I wasn’t as capable or worthy as I knew myself to be, their voices never landed. They were always quieter than hers. My grandmother’s voice lived in my head long after childhood, reminding me who I was before anyone tried to redefine me.

She gave me self-esteem before the world had a chance to take it away.