Wickeds, we’re wrapping up this month of celebrating strong women. Let’s talk about the strong women in our lives. Share a picture of one of yours and tell us about her.
Barb: I’ve been very lucky to have been surrounded with strong women in my life–and it must be said, strong, self-confident men who loved that quality. My mom, both grandmothers, and my mother-in-law were each in different ways role models for me for how women could be in the world. Educating women and viewing them as equal partners in life is a lo-o-ong tradition in my family. I am so grateful for that foundation.
Sherry: My sister is an amazing woman. She had two devastating traumatic brain injuries with two months of each other over twelve years ago. Since then she’s started her own consulting business, went through the rigorous training to become a yoga instructor, and is an advocate for other people with TBIs. She also teaches yoga for people who are injured among many other things. She’s a fighter and always has a smile on her face. I wish I was half the woman she is.
Edith/Maddie: I can see that you two are related, Sherry! I’ll pick my mother, Marilyn Flaherty Maxwell Muller. A talented artist with fabric and baking, she was a loving but no-nonsense mom and Girl Scout leader. She might have struck you as soft-spoken, but she survived a bullheaded Irish father, a deep depression after she and my father were divorced, and finding her way in the working world again. She discovered a new love after age fifty (which I also did) and happiness sewing a hundred quilts in her retirement. Oh, and she taught me to love mysteries at a young age – which planted the seeds for this, my last and best career.
Julie: I love these pictures! I’m cheating, and choosing two wonderful women. My mother, and her mother, my beloved grandmother. My mother is a kind, lovely person who passed on her love of reading. My grandmother called grandchildren “the applause of life”. She loved me unconditionally, taught me how to bake and how to knit, and told wonderful stories, which I pass on to my nieces and nephews. My grandmother had some tough challenges, but she got through them and left me a legacy of love.
Liz: These are all so lovely. Mine is my boss and one of my best friends, Riham El-Lakany. She is one of the strongest, kindest, smartest people I know. Like most of your women, she’s been through a lot of tough challenges in her life but prevails with grace, dignity and most importantly, kindness. I’ve known her now for more than a decade, and one of the reasons I love her is for her fierce support of women. She builds people up and helps them see their own potential, and most importantly she always has your back. She doesn’t love photos so I didn’t include one her, but trust me, she’s beautiful inside and out.
Readers, what about you? Share a story of a strong woman in your life and why she’s had such an impact on you.
I’ve talked about my mother and grandmother, but my sister is another. She became a widow at 38, when her son was a year and a half old. She’s raising him, working, and taking care of our aging (and sometimes very cranky) father. She’s amazing.
For me, it’s most definitely my Mom. As a military wife back before there were organization to help wife’s of deployed men, she was determined not to be held back by “women can’t do that” attitude. Finding herself states away from family, and only other women in the same situation, I don’t think there was anything she didn’t face head on with that can do attitude. Later in life when faces with a ruptured brain aneurysm and even after surgery told there was only a small chance of returning to normal, she proved them wrong. Skip forward a few more years and a diagnosis of cancer still didn’t hold her down. Unfortunately Alzheimer finally seemed to have the upper hand, but even then she was head held high giving it all she had. She showed me about love of God, family and country. She showed through example what true love is and how you work through things through a marriage of almost 60 years after meeting on a blind date and marrying 7 days later. She showed me that sacrifice for those you love is not a sacrifice at all but actually brings great joy to both the gifted and the giver. She sold me that although some friendship last only a short time and others a life time, each friendship is dear and a treasure. She is most defnitely missed, but I hope in some small way to bear the fruits of her labors and to pass on that knowledge to someone else through my examples too..
2clowns at arkansas dot net
Jean Raines. Jean was my mother of choice if there can be such a thing. She came to this country from Australia to marry her GI beau who jilted her. She stayed in the US, carved a career and life for herself. Met the love of her life when she was in her 30s and he in his late 50s. Jean’s life was marked with hardship, including the loss of her only son, but she never, ever let it sour her. Today was always the best adventure. She loved unconditionally. I am daily grateful for the lessons she taught me.
My mom. She raised five girls by herself working at night so that she could be home with us to help with school work She raised us to be strong, independent and to know our self-worth.
My mom is a wonderful woman – caring, kind. And she homeschooled me for a number of years and my brother from K through 12.
My Mom is the strong woman in my life. She married my Dad while he was on leave. He went back to Texas while she stayed in Ohio to take care of my Grandmother who was dying of cancer.
When I was a senior in high school my Dad was hospitalized in a mental health unit. While he was there a lot of things happened, but my Mom is a strong woman who overcame every roadblock.