The Soul Needs a Passport Too

Gabriela Rocha Caballero
3 days ago
7 min read

by Valerie Marie-Valérie Couture de Troismonts, clinical psychologist.

(I Followed Love to London)

It wasn’t romance that called me across the ocean. It was something older, purer, fiercer. The kind of love that rewrites everything.

I refuse to be a long-distance grandmother. I refuse to love my granddaughter through a phone screen, to know her only through videos: how she sleeps, how she eats, how she takes her first steps, how she grows.

I wanted more. I wanted to live her childhood with her, every season, every stage.

To sit on the floor and play for hours, to braid her hair, to walk hand in hand through London parks, to jump in puddles, to chase butterflies, to ride the merry-go-round, to buy her strawberry ice cream, to choose pink dresses with bows and ruffles and matching headbands.

To help her with school projects, to make pancakes on rainy Sundays, to collect autumn leaves, to write letters to Santa in December.

To ride red double-decker buses, to visit castles and rose gardens, to sip five o’clock tea in luxury hotels, to wrap ourselves in scarves in the snow, to light candles in old churches.

To be there when she asked big questions, to hold her when she cried, to laugh until we couldn’t breathe, to share silences that said everything, to watch her sleep year after year and whisper blessings for the woman she would become.

And later, as she grew, to shop together and let her choose what she loved, to watch her wander between hangers with that picky, sophisticated taste she has had since she was small. To try on sparkly lip gloss, to giggle over secret diaries, to draw side by side, to listen to her read her detective novels aloud. To laugh at animal reels on slow weekend mornings, curled up in pajamas, sharing joy over silly things. To talk about her dreams, what she wants to be when she grows up, which changes like the seasons: this week a summer camp director, last month a gymnast, before that a singer with glittering microphones and world tours. I just listen, marveling at every version.

Because that’s what I believe God placed women on this Earth for: to stand beside the cribs and dreams of our children, to walk with them as they grow.

I refuse to be a grandmother only twice a year, only for birthdays or Christmas. I refuse to be just a grandmother of oversized gifts wrapped in festive paper and loud kisses that leave thick red lipstick marks. That kind of love would never be enough for me.

That is what the women in my family have done, generation after generation. My daughter had the privilege of being watched over by her young great-grandmother, who stood at the foot of her crib, guarding her dreams with quiet reverence. She couldn’t come often, but when she did, she would travel more than thirty kilometers by bus and underground, always carrying a homemade Spanish tortilla in a Tupperware, because my husband loved it. That’s how she was: attentive, generous, and full of silent devotion.

We never forgot the time when he came home from work and the baby was peacefully asleep in her crib, but my grandmother was nowhere to be found. He panicked, thinking she had left the baby alone. After searching, he finally found her on her knees behind a piece of furniture, brushing the carpet with a hand brush. She had spotted a speck and couldn’t let it be. That was the kind of woman she was. Quiet love. Invisible service. Limitless presence.

I didn’t want to let her legacy be lost. She had devoted her entire life to her grandchildren. She had prioritized us. She had given us oceans of love, presence, and wisdom. To not continue that legacy would have been, to me, a betrayal of something sacred.

I rebelled against time and distance, against missing out on the joy of kissing my granddaughter’s chubby cheeks, breathing in the scent of her baby skin, looking into her dark eyes, and hearing her laughter.

I could not accept being denied the right, and the deep desire, to help my daughter. To give her a hand. To care for my granddaughter so she could rest, go out for dinner, follow her passions, or simply read a book in peace.

Life had already taught me that the important things should never be postponed, that what slips away doesn’t return, that children never stop needing us and we never stop yearning to have them near, that the only true treasures of life are our relationships, and that relationships only blossom through presence.

Time is a tyrant. It rushes everything. It sweeps away what we don’t savor. And it never gives second chances, no matter how much you beg.

And one day, my daughter said on the phone, “I would love to have my mom near me.” That was enough. Together with my deep desire to be fully present for my grandchild, it gave me the push I needed.

So I said goodbye. Goodbye to my beloved family. Goodbye to my friends. I loved them all, with everything I am, but I was off to be a grandmother. I rented out my house, I quit my job, and I crossed the ocean with nothing but the certainty that love was reason enough.

And in that instant, I remembered Frida Kahlo’s words:

““¿Se pueden inventar verbos? Quiero decirte uno: yo te cielo, así mis alas se extienden enormes para amarte sin medida.”

“Can one invent verbs? I want to tell you one: I sky you, so my wings extend so wide to love you without measure.” — Frida Kahlo

That was the only way to name what I felt. I sky you, my little one. I crossed the ocean to meet you.

When I arrived, there was a little girl of eight months old, with English, Chinese, Argentinian, Asturian, Italian, and French blood, dressed like a yogi one day and a Coya the next, with enormous perfect eyes, waiting for me on the other side of the ocean. I couldn’t let a blessing like that be something I merely watched from a distance. I needed to live it.

I found a cozy place to live in the city where my granddaughter had been born. I kept working, healing broken souls in whatever language was needed, but the axis of my life shifted.

I was willing to do anything and afraid of nothing. People asked me, “Aren’t you scared?” I wasn’t. “Scared of what?” I would answer. Of loving too much? Of being present? Of choosing the essential over the expected? No, I had already made peace with what truly matters.

If necessary, I was ready to live as a nomad, to eat roots, to sell coconuts, to wrap myself in fallen leaves and warm my frozen hands and feet inside medieval churches, just as I had done that one winter in Paris, stubbornly walking the whole city, nearly freezing to death in the attempt.

How could I love my granddaughter from afar? How would she ever feel my love if we didn’t truly share life?

Now, exactly ten years have passed.

And looking back, I know it was the best decision of my life: to watch her grow year after year, to fill my heart with life and energy through her laughter, her songs, her dances, her somersaults.

Just as I did with her mother when she was little, I fell in love with her gaze. I was mesmerized by her questions as she discovered the world.

I remember that when I first met her grandfather, many years ago, he told me I had “intelligence for life.” I was never good with numbers or math — but maybe he was right. Because if there’s one kind of intelligence that truly matters, it is this: knowing what must never be postponed, knowing what must never be missed.

Just as I had lived the childhood of her mother and her aunt to the fullest, I gifted myself the chance to live hers too.

None of this would have happened if I had accepted being just a video-call grandma.

A few days ago, after a picnic in the countryside, she put on my sunglasses and I lay down in the grass, soaking up the rare warmth of the English sun. And then, without a word, without asking, my granddaughter climbed on top of me and rested there, still, calm, heart to heart. We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. We were one.

In that moment, I remembered the day I made the choice to be with her, fully and completely, and to live her childhood by her side. To be there not just for her, but for my daughter as well, walking beside her as she mothered, loving them both with the same fierce devotion I had once received.

And I knew, deep in my bones, that I had made the right choice. There was a kind of wisdom in my body, in every cell, that had known exactly where I needed to be to live life fully and not miss the sacred details.

That clarity — the certainty of being exactly where your soul belongs — is not only spiritual, but deeply psychological. Abraham Maslow, the renowned psychologist who created the hierarchy of human needs, described it as the highest human aspiration: self-actualization, the fulfillment that comes when we live in alignment with our deepest purpose. That day, I could have raised my hand and whispered, “Here is one.”

Romantic love may be glorified. Erotic love may be idolized. But this, this is the greatest love of all.

Because when you love a grandchild, you love them for who they are, purely and freely — and you love them twice over, because within them lives your own child.

Today, I can say: the soul needs a passport too. And love, when it’s real, always finds a way to reach its destination.

Me vine a ser feliz, me vine a ser abuela.