We often talk about the importance of saying no … of protecting our time, our boundaries, our peace. But some of the most transformative moments in my life have come from the opposite choice … the courage to say yes.

Several years ago, I was nominated by a former professor to deliver the Student Representative commencement address for Wilmington University at the Chase Center in New Castle County. At first, it sounded exciting … until reality hit. A massive stage. A packed auditorium. All eyes on me. My heart started pounding just thinking about it.

Immediately, the excuses rushed in — the kind we all know too well: I’m scared. I’m exhausted. I’m overwhelmed. I don’t have time. And seriously… all those people? But something about that invitation stirred a different kind of question in me … a series of quiet, persistent what ifs:

What if I threw caution to the wind?
What if I said yes — what’s the worst that could happen?
What if this was an opportunity to grow?

That moment became about more than a speech. It became a crossroads … a chance to step out of my comfort zone and into a deeper connection with my academic community, my family, and the future version of myself I hadn’t yet met.

So instead of declining politely, which was absolutely my first instinct, I said yes. Quickly. Almost impulsively. And once the word left my mouth, I knew there was no turning back.

That yes called me back to the values I was raised with in a loving, bustling home of 19 siblings. It reminded me of the lessons my parents, James and Elisabeth; my grandmother, Thelma; and my champions, Mr. Kelly and Ms. Carolyn, instilled in me long before I understood my own potential. They taught me to keep my word, to honor opportunities, and to believe in the possibility of who I could become.

Standing on that commencement stage, I shared my story — a story shaped by humble beginnings, limited opportunities, and a determination to rise above statistics. When I stepped away from the podium, a member of the Board of Trustees slipped me a note saying he was from my hometown. Audience members approached me to say my words inspired them. And there I was, thinking, why me? What did I have to offer?

That single yes became a turning point.

It led me to step confidently into C‑suite leadership after decades of serving under others.
It gave me the boldness to take on bigger projects, trusting that I could listen, learn, and grow.
It strengthened my voice, my courage, and my belief that I belonged in rooms I once felt unworthy to enter.

And ultimately, that yes sparked the creation of my own consulting firm — Eddee Boone Consulting LLC — launched in the middle of the 2020 pandemic, a time when many would have said it was impossible. Yet doors opened. Referrals came. Connections blossomed. Opportunities I never imagined found their way to me.

All because I said yes.

Saying yes is an act of courage and trust.
Yes opens doors.
Yes creates connection.
Yes invites growth.

And while no certainly has its place, I know with absolute clarity that if I had said no that day, I would not be the woman I am now — a confident, fierce, unbothered, unafraid Black woman who stands fully in her power.

Today, whenever hesitation creeps in, I return to that moment. I remind myself that nothing in my life happens by accident and that all things work together for my good.

Saying yes doesn’t always lead to dramatic leaps like starting a business. Sometimes it simply opens the door to the belief that you, too, are worthy. That it is your time to soar.

So, when Sharon invited me to share at tonight’s Great Dames Open Mic, I said another yes. And I am grateful, deeply grateful, for the community, connection, that yes continues to bring into my life.

Jamee E. Boone, MS, SHRM-SCP is President of Eddee Boone Consulting LLC and a seasoned consultant, strategist, coach, and facilitator with 35+ years of experience advising executives, boards, and teams. A certified DEI practitioner and SHRM Senior Certified Professional, she specializes in embedding inclusive strategies into leadership, governance, and organizational culture to strengthen belonging and align operations with mission. Jamee is also an adjunct instructor at Wilmington University and a mentor to emerging leaders.

I met my friend Dawn when she was appointed assistant principal at the school where I worked. We hit it off immediately. I was a school counselor, and she was my immediate supervisor. She was tasked with creating the master schedule for the coming school year and asked me if I would help her. Neither of us had ever done this before, but we figured we were intelligent people, and if the men who had preceded her could do it, we could certainly figure it out. It was the blind leading the blind. But with much trial and error we indeed figured it out, and we did that together for the next 7 years until we both left to work in Delaware County, PA. She was a wonderful mentor for me, and I grew in skills and confidence during our time at Howard High School. She advocated for me when I applied for a job at Springfield High School in Delaware County, a job I ultimately got in part due to the fact that I could create a master schedule. I am forever grateful to her for her mentorship, and most importantly, her friendship.

When we both retired, Dawn and her husband purchased a garden center which he asked her to manage. She told her husband that she would only do it if I would work with her. Again, neither of us had ever managed a garden center, or any other kind of center for that matter, but like with the master schedule, we figured if men could do it so could we. We both learned so much about managing a retail shop, about plants and trees and soil and pest control and customer service. We were extremely successful, I think in part because of the relationships we fostered with our customers and staff. I learned things with Dawn that I never thought I would, and I am forever grateful that we were paired together all those years ago. It’s a relationship that helped us both professionally and personally.

My life would have been very different had it not been for Dawn. I consider her assignment to Howard as serendipitous and life changing. I learned things that have served me well these last 36 years, and I thank my lucky stars for putting us together.

Jaye Pedante is a retired educator and currently a Board Member on the Team Cure Cholangio charitable organization, raising funds to support research into effective treatments for cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer of the liver. A Great Dame since the beginning and a warrior battling cholangiocarcinoma since January 2022 and who is currently doing well.

It happened in the most unexpected place, at a time when uncertainty ruled and the path forward was unclear. It was someone I was familiar with but had yet to know at the level and to the depth that I was about to encounter.

My husband had recently passed and honestly, I didn’t know what to do. I had done all the things to answer the text messages and calls, prepare for the funeral, and comfort those who had intended on comforting me. I had said all the right things and had tried to flip the switch from married to single… like it was that easy. I thought I was doing all right. I handled the business. I smiled when they said his name. I reminisced and laughed with others. His memory deserved to be honored. HE deserved to be honored. I did my BEST to make sure he was honored.

But then… I was alone. No more text messages, no more things to check off the To Do list and only moments of quiet reminiscing and laughter. I learned to retreat into my closet because that was (and still in) the safest place for me. The world was too scary, and overwhelming to navigate without him. I don’t want to give the impression that I was totally dependent on him… I wasn’t. I considered myself independently dependent. But we spent almost 13 years doing everything together. It was rare to not see us together other than for work. Yet here I found myself in the only place in the house that didn’t remind me of him. My closet is my designated space for me and the Lord. Some would call this my prayer closet. Yes, of sorts… but it has become far more than that. It is my place of safety, of peace, of escape, of learning, clarity, and rest. It is my sacred place.

There was one day when I just couldn’t carry the grief, the pain, the uncertainty, the anger, and the loneliness anymore. It was just too much. My husband was the ONE person I could count on. The ONE person who understood me. The ONE person who loved me. The ONLY person I had no matter what. I cried out into the darkness and said… I don’t know what to do. I don’t have anyone anymore. I am out here all by myself! I don’t have anyone to protect me. I don’t have anyone to love me. I don’t have anyone. I feel exposed.

In that moment, I experienced God like never before. There was a peace that came into that closet. A sweet peace. The kind you can’t explain and can barely describe. One that was filled with compassion, care, and love. This encounter was different from other encounters with God. I didn’t work for this. I wasn’t perfect for this. I was broken in this. Yet here He was providing the comfort I craved and this kind of peace I didn’t know even existed. I still didn’t have all the answers, but I knew I had someone by my side to walk me through these uncharted waters. That was the start of an evolving friendship.

With every closet encounter, I learned something new. With every encounter, I faced an aspect of myself that served me well in my former life but would not serve me well in my new life. It was not pretty. I was forced into a crash course that I didn’t even know was coming. I had no time to prepare. I had no time to resist. I had no time to say No. The train had already left the station and my travel into the unknown had begun.

I have seen, experienced, and grown much since this journey into the unknown. I still don’t have all the answers. But I have learned much about the Lord and myself. I learned that He leads me by my right hand (Isaiah 41:10). I learned that it takes care of the widowed (Isaiah 54:5). I learned that He is my strong tower and I can always run to Him and be safe (Proverbs 18:10). I’ve learned surrender is a must and trust is its currency.

With every encounter, and with every new lesson… I change and I become. I become the new version of myself for THIS time and for THIS space. I became closer to who I was designed to be.

Keisha Morris is the Leadership & Organizational Develop professional, who has over 20 years of experience designing and leading leadership and culture initiatives that strengthen teams and develop leaders across organizations. Her connection to Great Dames comes through her friendship with Gigi Gaul, who invited her to speak at a Great Dames Talk and share her leadership insights with the Great Dames community.

The Long Way Around

Under the coffee table, I could see only ankles. My mum’s shoes turned slightly inward when she leaned toward Aunty Ivy. Smoke drifted above me — my dad’s cigarette burning down unnoticed, Uncle George tamping his pipe — and the television flickered against the underside of the wood. I was quiet enough that they forgot I was there. I liked it that way.

Most Saturdays were full of laughter. Stories of school days and dances and who had married whom. Aunty Ivy would laugh until she cried, removing her glasses to wipe her eyes, her face going red as though the joke had risen all the way through her. But sometimes the laughter thinned. Their shoulders curled toward one another. Two words slipped out under breath — blue devils — and the room seemed to fold in on itself.

I knew about the Red Devils, the aerobatic team. The phrase sounded similar enough that I lifted my head and offered it cheerfully, pleased to have something to contribute. The silence that followed was immediate. Both women looked down at me. Someone said, “Little jugs have big ears.” My dad and Uncle George glanced over from their chairs at the edges of the room. I felt my body contract before I understood why. I curled inward and retreated beneath the table, back to my book. I knew I had done something wrong. I did not know what it was.

In the mining community where my parents grew up, violence was not extraordinary. Some men died underground, and many more came home diminished. Lungs failed slowly. Backs gave way. The health of my mum’s three brothers was broken by years beneath the surface. All three died young. Boys were caned indiscriminately at school until their hands swelled or they could not sit. Fathers beat sons and called it discipline. Some men drank and struck their wives. It was spoken about the way bad weather is spoken about — not defended, not dramatized, simply acknowledged.

When my mum told Aunty Ivy that my grandfather used to get the blue devils — after four years in the trenches, after being gassed, after breaking his back in a mining accident — there was no horror in her voice. There was something closer to relief. There were consequences. Life continued.

I absorbed that register long before I understood the meaning. Some things were endured. Certain words lowered the temperature of a room. If I crossed into them, I should make myself smaller.

Years later, early in my career, a woman asked me to walk with her through a manufacturing plant to get to a meeting. I was busy and a little exasperated that she was waiting for me, but she waited anyway. As we walked the most direct route across the floor, men stopped their conversations. Heads turned. The walls were lined with posters of topless women from The Sun, taped up above machinery and workstations. I had seen them countless times and never thought about what they meant. That day, I noticed where her eyes did not go.

When we reached the meeting room, I apologized on the men’s behalf. She told me it had not been that bad because I was there. If she had been alone, she said, there would have been comments — whistles, crude remarks offered as jokes, the kind that expect you either to laugh or to absorb them. She would have taken the long way around the building instead, even in the rain, rather than cross the floor alone.

It unsettled me more than I let on. I had thought myself harmless in that space. I had not considered that harmless was not the same as neutral. My presence altered the moment, not the structure. The posters would still be there the next day. The men would still stop what they were doing and stare at her. I had crossed that factory floor countless times without noticing what it required of someone walking it alone — without calculating distance to an exit, without choosing a route that kept attention brief.

I grew up in rooms where women lowered their voices and men did not need to. I learned early how to retreat when I crossed into something I did not understand. It took much longer to recognize how easily I moved through spaces that required others to adjust.

Some routes are shorter. Some are safer. I was slow to see the difference.

About the Author
Robert M. Ford is a writer, strategist, and co-founder of Toolsie, an AI-powered platform making technology more intuitive, personal, and human-centered. He also leads Reverie House, a literary imprint focused on emotionally resonant storytelling. His work—whether through poetry, fiction, or the tools he builds—explores memory, identity, and the quiet moments that shape who we’re becoming. More at brittleviews.com.

When my two younger brothers and I were all in high school, our maternal grandmother moved from California to our Upstate New York town after retiring, and took an apartment a few blocks from our family home. We didn’t realize it at the time, but she had rosy dreams of the three of us stopping by her place regularly on our way home from school for something like cookies and milk. I’m not sure what else she expected to happen along those lines — confidences, shopping trips together; I just know now that she was deeply disappointed.

We were, I think, a senior, junior and freshman — in our teens, with strong peer groups, navigating all kinds of classic teenage interests and issues. The last thing on our minds, although I don’t recall ever discussing it, was spending a lot of time with a grandmother. The reason I know about her expectations and deep disillusion is that my mom told me about it many years later. It has haunted me ever since that we let her down, even if we didn’t know that we were doing so — it wasn’t anything deliberate; just normal teenage cluelessness and self-absorption.

My middle brother does recall going by Grama’s place often because she would have something good to eat and he could always find a half-empty pack of cigarettes to take with him. He also remembers hearing that she wasn’t happy with the amount of time we spent with her.

My youngest brother remembers trying to make a point of going to Grama for dinner when he’d come home for visits — she would make wienerschnitzel (breaded chicken) for him.

I’ve thought about this recently in light of making a major life move of my own. In trying to be what we nowadays call intentional in the what, why and how of that move, I think I was channeling Grama and her experience.

A few months ago, with an early-70s birthday on the near horizon and a couple of (luckily minor) health issues in mind, I started thinking about how I or my family would handle a crisis if I had one. I was living in a small condo building with good friends among fellow residents, in a wonderfully walkable neighborhood. I was in pretty good shape — mentally still competent and functional, still driving, financially independent, physically fair to middling — but had seen instances of crisis among friends and neighbors that made me start to worry a little bit.

For instance, an upstairs neighbor literally, as he said, tripped over his own feet and fell in their hallway, landing on his back and seriously injuring his neck and spinal cord. He survived but went through a heart attack, surgery, rehab, and physical and personality changes that affected his wife in trying to look after him.

Our building started locking the street-door access at night for security reasons, which made sense but meant it could have been challenging for emergency responders to get access if I fell or had some other medical issue after 10 p.m. and couldn’t reach a neighbor to let them into the building.

I knew about caregiving both intellectually (I co-authored a book about eldercare and have written several articles about that topic) and first-hand (I looked after my mom and then my husband). Thanks to my husband’s desire to move to my hometown after he retired, we were already there when my mom’s health took a dive, so we didn’t have to manage care from a distance or do a lot of traveling back and forth to make sure she was OK. We also found great resources in terms of reliable, skilled home health aides and excellent medical services. Both came in handy a few years later when my husband’s health started to decline. Those experiences, as well as what I was seeing around me more recently, were enough to create a sense of urgency about being in a better environment for that “just in case” moment myself.

I already had one experience of receiving family support that was only available from a distance: I had major abdominal surgery a few years ago, and my middle brother, who lives in New Mexico, came to St. Louis to be there for the week of my surgery, and one of my nieces also came in to help for a few days. It was wonderful, and gratifying, and a huge relief — but I knew what a burden it could have been if anything had gone wrong and I had needed ongoing care.

I have three generations of family here in New Mexico, near Albuquerque: my brother and his wife, their daughter and her family, their son and his family, and even a cousin and her family. (Our other brother lives overseas; his older daughter is also in New Mexico, although not in the same town.) Partly because I wasn’t finding anywhere in St. Louis that seemed worth moving to with caregiving in mind for the future and partly because staying in that area would have meant that family members would still have had to do long-distance caregiving, I started thinking about moving to the Albuquerque area so they wouldn’t have to travel or deal with all the aspects of caregiving from a distance in that future.

Although I wasn’t consciously aware of it at the time, my grandmother’s experience must have been in the back of my mind, because instead of upping sticks and moving to New Mexico without warning, I called my brother to ask what he thought about such a plan. I didn’t want him to feel like I was horning in on his community and lifestyle, or that I would be a burden either personally or medically. To my delight and gratitude, he was totally supportive.

In the way these things sometimes evolve, I found a place nearby a couple of weeks later, became the owner early in the then-new year, and poof, moved from St. Louis to Albuquerque at the end of this past March.

The first few weeks were unexpected fulfillment of my reason for the move: Between a few bouts of dehydration in getting used to the higher altitude and extreme dry heat, and a case of sciatica caused by the packing process that led to overusing over-the-counter pain relievers that created a bleeding ulcer and a couple of 911 calls and a week in the hospital, my first few weeks here involved a lot of hands-on care from family. It was everything I hoped it would be — just way sooner than I expected! I figured it would be a few years before I needed that kind of help.

With those hassles out of the way, the move, and this new life stage, has been great. On the one hand, I’m spending lots of very enjoyable family time, including birthday parties, frequent lunch and dinner outings, and hosting my niece, nephew and their spouses and kids at the pool in my new community. On the other, I’m making new friends among my neighbors at my new place, a nearby bookstore, and a couple of professional associations that I’ve joined since the move. It’s a good — and healthy — balance between strengthening connections with family and creating new ones so they don’t feel constrained by my addition to the area.

I’m very lucky. It feels like I’ve made the best response to what I recall about my grandmother’s experience, and maybe am making up for it by doing this move a little better. I still feel guilty about not fulfilling her dream, but am glad to have learned from what I know about it. I hope she somehow sees that she contributed to my new phase of life.

Dear Mom,

I don’t know if I want you to read this—but maybe someday you will.

For the longest time, I’ve struggled to understand what a mother’s love truly feels like. The softness, the safety, the unquestioned care that people often talk about—I didn’t really grow up feeling that. I didn’t instinctively run to you when I was in pain or needed comfort. I looked for mothering in other places, in other people.

But I know this much: you loved me. I know that every mother loves in her own way. And maybe it wasn’t that you didn’t want to give more—it’s that you never received enough love yourself to know how to give it fully.

You gave up so much: your career, your ambitions, your independence—all for us. And sometimes, I wish you hadn’t. I wish you had chosen you too. Because maybe then, you’d have had your own world, your own joy, your own voice that no one could take away. Maybe then, you’d be able to stand tall, proud, and respected—by others and by yourself.

To all mothers: please don’t give up everything for your children. Because one day, they might forget your sacrifices, but you’ll still carry the weight of what you gave up. And starting over is never easy.

Even with everything unsaid, I carry deep love for you, Ma. You carried me into this world. That’s not a small thing—it’s everything.

And maybe that’s the kind of love I’ll never be able to explain, but will always feel.

Happy Mother’s Day!!

Love,

Archi

Archita founded The Humanize Group to help global business leaders craft powerful personal brands. Through strategic content, audience curation, and podcasts, she amplifies their digital influence. Fueled by passion and guided by ikigai, she empowers leaders to share their authentic stories with the world.

LinkedIn: archita-prahladka

They say that the universe puts people in your path just when you need them. Some come and go, while others arrive at exactly the right time. For me, that person was Lois. She was the first person I met through the Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition as a new survivor – and she became a quiet but powerful hero in my life.

Being diagnosed with breast cancer at 44, otherwise healthy and active, was a shock. From diagnosis to my reconstructive surgery, only a few months passed - a single season, a quarter of a year. It was a blur. Everyone kept telling me how strong I was, while I tried to show gratitude and convince myself I was “good.” In truth, I hadn’t had a chance to feel or process anything. Then Lois came into my life.

I saw that the Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition was looking for volunteers. Like many survivors, I felt an overwhelming gratitude to be alive and wanted to ‘earn’ my survivorship – to validate why I was given a second chance. I reached out to volunteer as a mentor, and that’s when I met Lois.

Lois was the representative for my area, a survivor herself, an advocate, and the leader of the Nurture through Nature program. From our very first phone call, she was warm, genuine, and truly listened to my story. We soon connected at events and through her program, which became one of the most valuable parts of my healing journey.

Every week, Nurture through Nature invited survivors to step outside, notice beauty, and capture it through photos – purple flowers, budding trees, baby animals, moss. Lois would always respond to my submissions, never missing a chance to encourage me and share in our love for nature and simple joys. Lois and these weekly challenges helped me reconnect with life, to be still, present, and at peace in the midst of uncertainty. I was learning to live again, finding my way as a survivor. Life had been divided into the ‘before’ and the ‘after.’ Yet in the midst of that shift, there was still nature—steady, unchanged—and there was Lois, reminding me that I, too, was still here.

We met for lunch, and our conversations flowed easily. We talked about faith, family, and the challenges of reentering the fast pace of “normal” life after cancer. We shared stories of worry, hope, and resilience. We even found common ground in her Polish heritage and my husband’s family. She was more than just a fellow survivor or program leader – she was someone who truly understood without judgment.

Lois never made me feel foolish for wanting to be a mentor for others when I hadn’t fully healed myself. She knew, with patience and wisdom, that healing has no timeline. She met me exactly where I was, with grace and kindness.

Her perfect balance of strength and gentleness, of compassion and faith, continues to inspire me. Some people are simply a gift to those around them. That is Lois. Through her passion for nature, her unwavering presence, and her quiet faith, she has reminded me— and countless others—of the beauty, simplicity, and strength that life offers.

Lois, thank you for being my silent hero.

The DamesTalk group asked me to write an essay about my “silent hero.”

Without hesitation I’d say my big sister Lucy was my hero. Hero, yes. Silent, no. Lucy was anything but silent. She was bold, outrageous, and unapologetically outspoken. And yet—she was my role model for the unrelenting way she spoke her truth, and she was my Silent Hero because she gave me the courage to find my own voice. Just by being herself, she became the compass that not so quietly shaped me.

When Lucy walked into a room, you knew it. Vibrant in voice and presence, she always had a glimmer of outrageousness about her. She didn’t just enter—she landed. Like thunder wrapped in sunshine. With big warmth, humor, and a loud voice that carried. Usually her first sentence (and most others) started with a bright “fuck,” “shit,” or “goddammit” - in a happy-go-lucky sort of way. Somehow, she made even cursing feel joyful and normal.

I was the opposite. The shy one. Soft-spoken. Timid. In a group, I faded into the background.

Lucy was undeniable. I was invisible. While I held back, she charged forward. While I was always polite, she swore freely. She filled spaces I didn’t even realize I could take up.

And yet, even with her outspokenness, she was also deeply caring, considerate, and loving. And dearly loved. She got away with plenty as a kid—sneaking out windows at night, coming home at sunrise— and somehow charming her way out of trouble with Mom and Dad with a hug and a laugh, because she meant well, and our parents knew it. She lived boldly, even when boldly meant making mistakes, like getting married right out of high school to someone she barely knew and then divorced not long after.

No matter what adventure she was charging through, always she looked out for me. She tenderly cared for me and always invited me to tagalong with her friends. She encouraged my unique dreams and convinced my parents to allow 2mid-me to forge my own wild child path— hanging out with artists in NYC, becoming a vegetarian at 14, and leaving home at 17 to join a professional dance company.

She believed in me before I knew how to believe in myself.

When Lucy was diagnosed with breast cancer in her 30’s, her fierceness only grew. She faced it the only way she knew how—head on, with both honesty and f’ing fire.

After her mastectomy, she refused reconstruction. Most people would see that as a loss, but Lucy claimed it as strength. She was proud of her bare, scar-covered flat chest. Lucy saw herself and other cancer survivor sisters as the living embodiment of the Amazon women warrior archers who cut off one breast so they could pull back their bows with greater power. That’s how she reframed her scars: not as absence or loss, or disfigurement, but as a proud badge of warrior strength. She faced her illness with raw honesty, humor, outrage, and unapologetic courage. Not a victim. A warrior. Fierce. Audacious. Unashamed.

And in true Lucy fashion, she took that warrior spirit and made it visible to the world in an outspoken way. She created a button that simply said: Cancer Sucks. No ribbons. Just the harsh, unvarnished truth. She turned pain into protest, and protest into empowerment. She wore it on every shirt, in the place of the breast she had lost. She handed these buttons out everywhere—and of course, to all my friends too.

At first, I was embarrassed. Couldn’t she be a little more mainstream? Did she really have to be so raw? So blunt? It was so different from how polite-me moved through the world. But over time, my embarrassment turned into awe. I began to see the beauty and courage in her choice.

I admired her ability to express the outrage all who are touched by cancer know - the outrage I also shared. She was saying what everyone felt but was too afraid to voice. And she was right.

Cancer does suck.

That boldness - that refusal to wait for anyone’s approval to speak her mind - became one of her greatest gifts to me. Lucy taught me that if you don’t speak up for yourself, express your truth out loud, no one else will. Your truth, no matter how gut-wrenching, uncomfortable, messy, or inconvenient, can set you free.

People sometimes ask me where Lucy lives now. Sometimes the hero doesn’t win the battle.

Cancer took her, yet I would never say she’s “gone.” Because she’s here—in me. In the moments when my timid self gives way to bold words I didn’t know I could say. In the times I dare to be visible. That’s Lucy, shining through.

My sister Lucy was my hero not because she was silent, but because she was unafraid to be loud.

She was my hero not just for how she faced cancer, but for how she faced life.

Outrageous.

Authentic.

Loving.

Loud.

Unapologetically herself.

She didn’t do subtle. She didn’t sugarcoat. She didn’t wait for permission. She didn’t whisper.

She lived bold. She lived loud. She lived true.

And here’s the thing: the way she lived—and the way she loved—will always be my reminder to speak my truth, too. In her outspokenness, she gave me permission to be more than invisible.

To find some of my bold. To risk being seen. To risk being heard.

So, while Lucy may not have been a Silent Hero in the traditional sense, she was my hero. My warrior. My ‘Shero.’ She taught me this truth: heroes don’t always whisper. Sometimes they blaze through life. Sometimes their loudness, their outrageousness, their roaring raw truth becomes the quiet force that shapes who we are.

Her voice continues to be my compass, an ever present echo in me—reminding me to be brave, to be bold, and to be unapologetically myself.

Every day, my life is a living legacy to my sister. Every time I step out of timid-me and live out loud, I am honoring her gifts to me - to become in my own authentic way a f’ing warrior and hero for myself.

I recently wrote a Father’s Day blog post for Great Dames about memorable moments with my beloved dad. After I wrote it, I realized that I hadn’t — but should have —written something similar about my mother. Our memorable moments were very different from those with my dad, but every bit as important. Because it’s never too late to recognize how someone has contributed to our lives, here are some of my “memorable mom moments.”

At some point in junior high school, I came home in tears because I had been mocked for being one of, if not the first girls to wear a bra (and need one!). My mother knew just what to say: “The other girls are jealous, and the boys are confused.” It didn’t stop the mocking (about that and a lot of other things I had no control over), but it did help me cope.

Another time, one of my classmates was especially mean, and I asked my mom why. She told me that girl’s father had died. My response: “But it isn’t my fault! I didn’t even know about it! I didn’t have anything to do with it!” As Mom explained, she was probably taking out her grief and anger on any convenient target, because people in pain — and often young people in particular — aren’t being logical. They’re lashing out at anyone and everyone, no matter how unrelated to their loss or condition. Years later, I still don’t understand how that behavior helped my classmate, but Mom’s explanation helped me feel a little better by realizing that I hadn’t done anything wrong, and had no control over how other people behaved at such times.

Sometimes her attempted advice was almost funny. When I was 11 and about to go to my first overnight camp, she gave me a small book called something like “Attaining Womanhood” that explained things like menstruation and intercourse, complete with illustrations. Sure enough, my first week at camp coincided with the arrival of my first period — but I had no idea what was going on, and went flying to the camp nurse in terror, thinking the blood in my pajamas meant something was horribly wrong and I was going to die. Somehow, none of that information sank in enough to connect to that reality.

My first experience with sex was equally disconnected from that book. It took the real thing for those illustrations to make sense!

She wasn’t always infallible, but Mom always knew when to make something better and how to fix a problem. For years, she had an oriental rug draped over the daybed in her sewing room. When I moved to my second apartment in DC, I asked if I could have it — it didn’t seem to be important or being used, so I didn’t think it was a big ask, but her response was a big, angry “No!” and I couldn’t figure out why.

A couple of weeks later, I got a letter from Mom, apologizing for her reaction and explaining that she had an emotional attachment to the rug: It was the only thing she, her sister and their mother were able to retain in escaping from Europe during the Holocaust. Even better, the rug arrived at my place a few days after the letter! I’ve cherished it ever since, putting a wooden dowel on the back so I could hang it on a wall rather than using it as a carpet that people would walk on. I’ve moved five times since then, and every time, my first thought on looking at a new place has been, “Oh, Mom’s rug would be perfect right there.” It’s one of the few things that isn’t even my signature purple, but the connection to my mother and her history is beyond such aspects. So is the fact that she explained her reaction to my request and trusted me with the rug ever since.

Mom was quiet and reserved; an introvert in a family of extroverts. It took a long time to realize that she was very shy. One of my lifelong girlfriends once told me that she was almost afraid of my mom, and I couldn’t understand why — she didn’t seem at all scary. My friend said it had to do with Mom always asking her questions. I brought it up somehow, and Mom said, “That’s the only way I know to have a conversation. It helps me learn about people.” I felt badly for her, but had no idea how to advise her; it was a rare role reversal moment that I still wish I had known how to handle better.

She surprised me a number of times over the years, coming up with ideas and activities that I never would have expected her to be up for doing. She had an adventurous strain that rarely came through, but when it did, we had a blast.

When I was in Baltimore and my parents were coming to visit, primarily to meet Wayne- the-Wonderful a couple weeks after we got engaged, Mom came in a day before Dad (a big surprise in and of itself; they never traveled separately!) and I said something about Wayne having to spend more than an hour on two buses to get from work at Bethlehem Steel to our place, and that I’d love to pick him up but had never been to Beth Steel, so I had no idea where to find him. This was before cellphones were ubiquitous, so there was no way to call him and ask for directions. Mom said something like, “Let’s try it!”

The Beth Steel complex was huge, with at least a dozen entry and exit points. We stopped at two or three sentry gates to ask where someone might come out to catch a bus, and finally arrived at what turned out to be the right one. We waited in the car for more than half an hour, and I suggested giving up and going home so he could meet us there. Mom’s response: “Let’s just wait a little longer.” Wayne came out of the plant a few minutes later and saw us in the car, it was just great — he almost ran to the car, with a huge grin.

At the time, Wayne still had his own place and was planning to stay there while my parents were in town, even though he was essentially living with me — I had asked my parents how they would feel about that, and Dad said they’d rather he not spend the night when they were staying with me. After meeting him, though, Mom said we should go and get Wayne’s things so he could relinquish his place. It was such a nice moment of acceptance!

Another time, we had been exploring the Inner Harbor, and Dad and Wayne (by then, my wonderful husband) were ready to head for home. Somehow, a new condo property nearby came up in conversation, and I said something about wondering what it was like. Mom said, “Let’s go look!” It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d be up for such an exploration. She and I spent an hour or two touring the building, getting a kick out of realizing that we agreed on our reaction to it: spaces too cramped and small for the asking price.

It was never a conscious reaction, but I now feel strongly that my mother’s example is a huge factor in whatever courage I have in going for new adventures myself — something family, friends and colleagues have complimented me about over the years, but that I never really thought about until recently.

I knew Mom was braver and tougher than anyone might have realized, given her quiet, reserved nature, but she rarely talked about the past. I did know that she and her younger sister were separated from their mother, ended up in a labor camp in Hungary, and were able to escape thanks to a guard who directed them away from the line of people destined for the death trains. They made it to Switzerland by themselves and were reunited with their mother through the UN Relief Association. That was impressive enough, but they only received one visa for America, and decided that Mom should use it because she had the most English of the three of them (she used to say that she learned most of her English from Alice in Wonderland). She made the journey alone, by ship, at 16 or 17; I can’t even imagine what that would have been like.

I hope she knows that she had an even greater, better influence on my life than I might have acknowledged when I had the opportunity. And probably on many others as well, whether she knew it or not. I hope she did, and does. If she were around today, she would definitely be a “Great Dame” in every way.

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter (www.writerruth.com) is an award-winning freelance writer, editor, proofreader and speaker. Thanks to high school friend and Great Dames guru Kathy Palokoff, she proofread the Great Dames book Great Dames: Women Sharing Their Power. She recently received six awards for her writing work from Missouri Professional Communicators (MPC), the St. Louis-area affiliate of the National Federation of Press Women (NFPW), which makes her eligible for national recognition at the 2025 NFPW conference.

I’ve always felt like I can safely go on autopilot when my dad is around. Let me explain… my dad makes me feel at ease—like I can stow my hypervigilance away because he’s taking care of things. He’s capable, stays calm in emergencies, and knows how to fix things when they break. My dad has a quiet but larger-than-life presence that has revealed itself during key moments throughout my life.

The first time I saw his superhero side was when we were coming back from the state fair and stopped at a restaurant alongside the interstate. As we were eating lunch, an argument in the parking lot beside us escalated—suddenly, a boyfriend was physically pushing around his girlfriend. No one in the restaurant moved a muscle—except my dad. He called 911 and calmly walked outside toward the fight so the boyfriend would know help was coming. And that’s exactly what happened. The man stopped assaulting the woman and walked away. My dad and I stayed with her until the police arrived, then returned inside to finish eating—still the only ones who had moved to help. That moment taught me the power of taking swift action and standing up for what’s right, even when you’re the only one doing so.

People seem to instinctively know they can come to my dad for help—because they can tell he’s a good guy. One time, a woman flagged him down outside a coffee shop. She had lost her shirt in an incident and needed help until the police arrived. Without hesitation, my dad gave her an extra shirt he had in the back of his car. When he later told me what happened, it stuck with me: you help people who need it, even if they’re strangers who can never repay you. That’s just who he is. He’s the kind of person who’ll jump in to help someone set up a tent at a craft fair (we sold items at craft fairs for years for my nonprofit). He may be quiet, but he leaps into action and speaks up when it’s needed—even if no one asked him to. Those kinds of moments growing up taught me to do the same. Kindness is free, and don’t we all hope someone would do the same for us if the roles were reversed?

Another way my dad and I connected growing up was through karate. We bonded over learning techniques, sparring, and working hard to level up and earn our next belts (we both love learning!). At our studio, we were taught that we have a responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves—and to defend ourselves and our loved ones from harm. That mindset (paired with a little anxiety) has made me hyperaware of my surroundings, always scanning for potential threats. But when I’m with my dad, I can relax. I know he’s got that job covered. That feeling of safety—of being protected—turned my dad into a quiet but constant superhero in my life.

He also seemed like a superhero because he could fix anything. Growing up on a farm, my dad learned from his own father how to build and repair things because that’s just how it was. As a kid, I didn’t fully understand how cool it was to be that self-reliant—to make things from scratch or figure out how to fix something, often by teaching yourself along the way. But as an adult, I’ve grown to appreciate that generational knowledge. I’m grateful he had me help him as a kid, so I’d learn those skills too. Even now, I’m amazed each time he starts a new project or just seems to know how to do something.

I know my dad won’t always be here to make me feel safe or fix something I’ve broken. That awareness makes me treasure these moments all the more. His steady, quiet presence has allowed me to flourish into the person I am today. Because of him, I’ve learned the power of stepping up when no one else does. I’ve seen what calm bravery looks like—and how it can change the course of a moment. My dad didn’t just fix what was broken around me; he showed me how to live with integrity, compassion, and courage. I’m proud to call that fix-it-all superhero my dad.

Why is it me who found her soul
Thousands of miles away on soil so old
I can kiss the ground and feel my ancestors
Embracing a homecoming that was almost not to be.

Why is it me who sits in the room of
Bright fluorescent lights, holding some flocked toy in my hand
As the doctor says, “yes, the cells are malignant, you have cancer.”

Why is it me who gets to breathe another day,
Live another life,
not die from a death sentence.

I look around the infusion center that smells like
Rubbing alcohol and scrubs.
I see a woman in her 90s, so old her body curls
Within itself, returning to a fetal position, like coming home.

Why is it me who didn’t reach remission,
When 70% of people do?
When the depression swallows me whole and I long
To dig up a space under the carpet and burrow,
Disappear.

Why is it me who is blessed with so much love all around me,
Pouring in from the gaping cracks, fighting to suppress
The darkness and screaming, “but you are so loved, don’t you know that, don’t you know that…”

Why is it me who laughs and cries and feels
every human emotion under
the sun and moon and black holes

Whose life is wonderful and awful and beautiful and sad and profound
Whose story is complete with purpose and so void of meaning I want
to beg for a do over from some entity I don’t believe in.

As I lay in bed with the covers over my head,
Drowning in pain and gratitude, I reach out to touch
The very thing that has put me here.
Instead I find love and loss.
I see her, muddled in the water.
I try to grasp ahold, to scream and cry,
“Why is it me?”
But under the surface,
She cannot hear me.

Lucia Tepper is 26 years old. After growing up in Philadelphia, she moved to Europe when she was 20. She teaches English in Madrid, Spain to preschool and elementary school students. When she’s not kicking cancer's ass, you can find her solo traveling, cooking, crafting, going out in nature and connecting with beautiful people from all around the world.

““I can’t do this,” are words I have both thought and said often.

It seems that every big transition engulfs us in moments of overwhelm — moments where we are certain we cannot go on.

And yet… we do.

We go through.

And we grow through.

Because transitional spaces are not just uncomfortable — they are the thresholds into resilience.

For many women, childbirth is one of the most primal thresholds they cross — fierce, sacred, and utterly raw — where life begins and identity is forever changed.

There is a particular stage near the end of labor, that is more intense than any other. It has a name that says it all: transition.

It’s the phase between active labor and before pushing and delivery —when the body is no longer simply working… it’s surrendering. A phase so intense, many women feel they cannot go on. But it cannot be skipped. It is the messy middle — the in-between where control is relinquished and something greater moves through.

A passage between what was and what will be.

I remember being there.
Sweating.

Sobbing.

Silent.

Stoic.

Every fiber of my being begged for this part to be over. The pain was beyond what I could have imagined — because truly, you can’t imagine what you have no reference for.

It felt like a tsunami was happening inside me, physically and emotionally. My body had taken over, it was doing what it needed to do to go from one phase to another. My systems were moving instinctively with a force greater than my will.
The woman I had been — the one who carefully organized, planned, controlled — could not carry me forward. She had to dissolve, to let new life come through.

I looked at my midwife and gasped, “I can’t do this.”

She placed her hand on my back and said, steady as an ancient tree,
“You’re in a stage called transition. The only way out is through.

You are resilient.

You think you can’t do this— but you are.

Right now. You’re doing it. You are.”

What I didn’t know then was that I was standing at the threshold of a liminal space.
A space that strips us down.
A space where something deeply powerful stirs.
A space where resilience begins.

A space that is the tender, terrifying middle ground where you are no longer who you were, but not yet who you’re becoming.

These transitional spaces — the uncomfortable in-betweens — are not just hurdles to cross.

They are the passage between breakdown and breakthrough.

They are the places we grow through what we go through.

And although they are uncomfortable, they are the price of admission.

And it’s not only in childbirth.

Life is full of transitions.
When we leave a job that once defined us.
When we walk away from a relationship that no longer nourishes us.
When a dream we buried insists on being unearthed.
When the caregiving ends and we are left in silence.
When an old identity dissolves before the new one has fully arrived.

These transitional moments – confusing, lonely, liminal - are our thresholds of resilience.
They are rough.
They are sacred.
They are the places that feel like our undoing — but become our remaking.

I've felt it in boardrooms, speaking my truth while my voice shook.
I've felt it packing up a home filled with memories I wasn’t ready to let go of.
I've felt it recently, standing alone on the edge of a new life chapter — no map, no title, just a knowing in my bones, it’s time.

And again and again, I’ve heard the quiet whisper:
You think you can’t, but you’re resilient. You’re going through it. And you’re growing through it. You’re doing it. Right now, you are.

That whisper — that resilient truth — became the heartbeat of my work in the world, leading me to become a resilience coach and trainer.

If life was going to keep inviting me into these uncomfortable thresholds asking/demanding that I move through difficult transitional spaces in order to grow forward, I wanted to understand how is it we survive them— and more than that, how we thrive and emerge transformed.

Now it is an honor for me to guide others through their own liminal spaces —
the heartbreaks, the pivots, the identity shifts,
the losses, the silent seasons, the aching transitions —
and remind them that:

Resilience isn’t built once. It’s built again and again. In the messy middles. In the transitional spaces.

We grow through what we go through.
E v e r y time.

That same primal current which carried me through labor —
that carried my mother, and hers, and yours, and all the women before us —
is still moving through us.

It’s in our breath.
In the strong pulse of our hearts when everything else is shaky and uncertain.
In the voice that says, even when we doubt we can do it:
“You can do it. You’re doing it. Right now. You are.”

To every woman carrying the invisible weight of her own becoming and enduring the messy hard transitions no one sees —
I see you.

May we all honor the courage it takes to sit in uncertainty,
to hold ourselves gently in the dark,
to surrender when we cannot plan or push our way through.

May we remember to whisper to ourselves:
“I’ve done hard things before. I’m doing it now.

I will go through this, I will grow through this.

I am resilient.”

Because we are.
And we are not alone.
We are part of a long, unbroken line of women who have walked the in-between — and become more whole on the other side.

This is the invitation of every transition:
To grow through what we go through.
To rise at the threshold with resilience.
To continue, transformed.

When you think you can’t do it, listen for your steady inner wisdom - whispering, or even shouting…

You can do it.

You are doing it.

Right now, you are.

We are.

A Little Bit of Grit, and a Whole Lot of Grace

There are moments in life that don’t just shape us—they carve us. They build our grit, and if we’re lucky, our grace. For those of us who grew up walking on eggshells, you might know what it feels like to scan every room for threat. It has a name: hypervigilance.

“Hypervigilance is what happens when our natural fight-or-flight instinct goes into overdrive.”

It can feel like a curse. But over time—and with therapy, education, and faith—I’ve come to see it differently. For me, it became a superpower. Here’s how.

Survival Mode

I was ten years old when I took my first step toward power—though I didn’t know it at the time.

One day, after my mother hurt me badly, something broke. I realized this time, maybe someone would believe me. I needed them to. So I did something that no child should have to think through: I made the bruises worse. Then I walked into school, went straight to the nurse, and showed her.

That decision changed everything.

By twelve, I was standing in a courtroom, looking a judge in the eye and saying, No, I don’t want to live with my mother anymore. My father got custody.

Choosing Healing

When I was seventeen, my father kicked me out. And once again, I had a choice.

I didn’t want to stay trapped in someone else’s storm. I didn’t want to carry the anger. Or the sadness. Or the emptiness. I just knew: if I wanted to heal, I had to start.

So I began therapy. It took eight therapists before I found the one who felt right—and I’ve been doing the work ever since.

My grandparents took me in, though the dynamics were complicated. These were my mother’s parents—the same people who’d once looked the other way when the court deemed her unfit. And yet, I was close with them. I stayed for a year, then moved out on my own. But I still spent every holiday with them. I still do, with my grandma.

When they got too old to cook, I stepped up—even when it overwhelmed me. That’s how I’ve always responded to pain: not by retreating, but by showing up.

Giving Back What I Never Had

For years, I felt alone. So I gave what I craved: time, energy, care.

Instead of partying, I volunteered—with Special Olympics, with the elderly, with animal shelters. I helped at soup kitchens. One Christmas, I cooked thousands of pancakes starting at 3 a.m.

I learned how to lift. How to move my body in a way that was strong, and not punishing. I taught myself to cook and bake. I read every book I could find about healing. I built a life I could live inside. I chose environments that felt safe. I chose myself.

Faith and the Long Road Back

Somewhere in the space between where I’d been and where I hoped to go, I started trusting in something greater.

I didn’t grow up in church, but around 22 or 23, I found my way back to faith. Unfortunately, my return came with its own kind of trauma. One Sunday, during a four-hour service, I tried to leave quietly halfway through. The pastor stopped me—and told me I would die of cancer in six months. That the devil was chasing me out.

I had hoped my stepmother would defend me. Instead, she sided with him.

Once again, those who should have protected me didn’t. So I did what I’ve always done: I showed up for myself.

Loss, Love, and the Boombox

My grandfather used to call me a pistol. He’d whisper in my grandmother’s ear and say, “She’s special.” I hold onto that.

When he died in 2018, I was 24—and suddenly the one responsible for everything. Making decisions. Carrying out wishes. Holding the family together. There wasn’t space to grieve—only to act.

The doctors and nurses didn’t always take me seriously. But I kept showing up. I brought a boombox into his hospital room and played his favorite songs. When he moved to hospice, I brought it there too—so the last thing he’d hear was something he loved. So he’d know we’d be okay. So he’d hear me say, I love you.

That was new for me.

I didn’t grow up saying I love you. Especially not when the person who was supposed to love me told me she wished I would die in my sleep.

But something in me broke open. And what came out was love.

Carrying On

The morning my grandfather went to the hospital, I’d spoken to him—something I rarely did. It was usually my grandma I called. But we were fighting that day. Eleven days later, he was gone.

That taught me something simple and unshakable: Always say I love you.

A few years later, I left my job working with children on the spectrum so I could care for my grandma full-time while she recovered from a broken shoulder. I was at the hospital every day. Everyone knew my name.

Doing what’s right—even when it’s hard—is how I live.

Through it all, I’ve felt God in my ear, whispering:
You may not understand now. But you will. Keep going.

Grit, Grace, and Getting Here

There were days when I felt like life just kept taking from me. Uprooting me. Again and again.

But I caught those thoughts midstream and asked:
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know what's true?
How do you react when you believe that thought?
Who would you be without the thought?

Those four questions, from Byron Katie’s “The Work,” became part of my daily practice. They helped me let go of the shoulds and shouldn’ts that drain us. They helped me reframe. And rebuild.

Today, I’m a personal trainer. A strongman coach. A general fitness coach. A yoga instructor for all ages and abilities. An advocate. A nervous system workshop facilitator. A strong kids coach. A medical proxy for my special needs sister. A nonprofit volunteer for the elderly. A member of two loving churches.

I’m also a natural athlete, heading to Nationals for Strongman. And I’ve been invited to speak at a national seminar on inclusive fitness in Tacoma, Washington.

On Thursday, my grandmother turns 96. I’ll be there, watching her smile ear to ear while she devours one of my pineapple upside-down Werther’s cupcakes.

That’s a blessing I don’t take for granted.

Becoming

I’ve known since I was a child that I was meant to move mountains—inside myself, and for others.

And I still do. Every day.

I am not that angry, lost, hopeless little girl anymore.

In the space between who I was and who I’m becoming,
I’ve found a woman with a little bit of grit—
and a whole lot of grace.

One day at a time.

Samantha Fox is a strength coach, yoga instructor, and fierce advocate for inclusion—both in fitness and in life. A survivor, caretaker, and lifelong learner, she brings grit, grace, and grounded faith to everything she does. When she’s not coaching, caregiving, or leading workshops on healing the nervous system, you’ll find her volunteering, lifting heavy things, or baking something delicious for her 96-year-old grandmother. A Little Bit of Grit, and a Whole Lot of Grace is her first published piece—and a powerful reminder that healing begins the moment we choose ourselves.

There’s a breath
I didn’t know I was holding.
For most of my life.

I thought tension was normal.
That care meant contortion.
That love was something you proved
by what you were willing to give up.

But lately—
in the space between
who I was
and who I’m becoming—
I’ve learned to stop holding my breath.

Not all at once.
But in slow,
almost accidental sighs.
Like loosening the grip on a rope
you’ve held so long,
you forgot it was cutting you.

Some versions of me were survival.
Some, performance.
Some were just a child
trying to earn
what was already mine.

I’m not angry about that anymore.
Well—
not always.

There’s grace in the middle.
And that’s where I stop disappearing.

These days—
I move slower.
Ask questions
that don’t beg to be answered.
Say “no”
without explaining.
Say “yes”
without permission.

Let silence be
what it is.

Because in the space between
what I clung to
and what I can’t quite see yet—
I’ve found myself
not needing to be
so easily explained.

There’s more of me now.

And less I need to prove.

About the Author
Robert M. Ford is a writer, strategist, and co-founder of Toolsie, an AI-powered platform making technology more intuitive, personal, and human-centered. He also leads Reverie House, a literary imprint focused on emotionally resonant storytelling. His work—whether through poetry, fiction, or the tools he builds—explores memory, identity, and the quiet moments that shape who we’re becoming. More at brittleviews.com.

My dad was affectionate, understanding, honest, and accessible. He was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, but he made it a point to leave the office behind. As he once told my great-aunt, “From 9 to 5, I’m a psychiatrist. From 5 p.m. to 9 a.m., I’m a dad.” I never felt like we—I have two younger brothers—were being analyzed or judged.

It’s hard to isolate a single moment I’ll never forget about my beloved dad, so I won’t try. But here are a few that still live vividly in my memory.

When I was in sixth grade, I was invited to join an AV club, where we previewed movies to decide which ones should be shown in class. I wasn’t very popular, so this felt like a big deal. One day, the teacher said there was a meeting after school. When I arrived, I was the only student there. He walked over to the classroom door, looked through the window, fiddled with the handle, then came over and put his hand on my knee. I wasn’t very knowledgeable about these things, but I knew something was wrong—and I got up and out the door before it went any farther.

At home, Dad noticed I was uncharacteristically quiet. He asked what was wrong, and I told him. I don’t remember exactly what he said—just that I had done the right thing and he was proud of me. The next morning, he was at the school when it opened. He told the principal that either the teacher would be in treatment that day or he would go to both the superintendent and the police.

The teacher ended up in administration in a different district. I never heard of any further incidents, so I’ve always hoped that was enough to protect other girls—or boys. Who knows.

Years later, when my first niece was born, I called home to ask how my brother was doing. Dad said, “He’s feeling like I did when you were born.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“It was the greatest moment of my life.”

“I thought Mom was the greatest thing in your life.”

“Your mother is the best thing in my life. But seeing you for the first time was the greatest moment of my life.”

There’s something quietly breathtaking about being the greatest moment in someone’s life.

After college, once I’d launched my publishing career, I came home for the holidays and agreed to a dinner date with a high school classmate. His idea of a night out was an all-you-can-eat buffet at a Chinese restaurant where he was apparently a regular—and took leftovers. Then he brought me to the house he shared with his mother and younger brother. His mom had the biggest, nicest bedroom; his looked like a college dorm room or a monastic cell.

It was fine, but not a connection I wanted to pursue. I was working on a polite way to decline further contact when he called to say he wasn’t interested—because I wasn’t sophisticated enough.

This from a guy who had never left Rochester except for college, still lived at home, and whose worldly experience paled in comparison to mine. I had lived alone in St. Louis and D.C., traveled to Europe (with family and on my own) and to Mexico for work, written for publications around and beyond the U.S., and spoke three languages other than English.

Still, I was flabbergasted—and weirdly hurt. I called Dad. He listened, then said, “Well, darling, he obviously realized you were beyond his reach and decided to reject you before you could reject him. Take it as a compliment!”

On one visit home, we went to a dinner party with some of my parents’ friends. One of them asked what I was doing in D.C. Before I could answer, Dad jumped in: “Ruth is the communications manager at a trade association, and we couldn’t be more proud of her.”

And then there was the surgery.

I was scheduled for major abdominal surgery, and my doctor had said I’d need general anesthesia. But on the day of the operation, as I sat hooked up to an IV and waiting to go in, the anesthesiologist started talking about giving me a local anesthetic instead. I said no, but he insisted. My surgeon wasn’t available, and I refused to proceed. “Bring me a phone,” I said, “so I can call my father.”

Luckily, Dad was in his office. I told him what was going on, and he said firmly, “It’s your body, your operation, your decision. If your doctor said you should have general anesthesia, that’s what you get.” I repeated that to the anesthesiologist and insisted he check with the surgeon before going any further. I don’t know if he actually did—but I got the general anesthesia.

Later, I told my surgeon what had happened. She was horrified and said she would never have performed the surgery without general anesthesia. But that was after the fact. In the moment, it was my dad who gave me the clarity and strength to insist on what I needed.

That was my dad. He always had my back

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter (www.writerruth.com) is an award-winning freelance writer, editor, proofreader and speaker. Thanks to high school friend and Great Dames guru Kathy Palokoff, she proofread the Great Dames book Great Dames: Women Sharing Their Power. She recently received six awards for her writing work from Missouri Professional Communicators (MPC), the St. Louis-area affiliate of the National Federation of Press Women (NFPW), which makes her eligible for national recognition at the 2025 NFPW conference.

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As father’s day approaches, thoughts turn to my Dad. He passed over fifteen years ago and, as I continue to write about my own parenting journey, there are more questions than ever.

Raised in a small Philadelphia Catholic neighborhood, his parents came to the United States from Italy as teenagers. My dad was proud of the fact that his parents' accent was fairly minimal. Dad did not speak Italian. Did his parents stop speaking it at home?

On the food front, my father would not permit mom to prepare any kind of bean dish for dinner, ever, telling us he had eaten too many beans as a kid. Plus, he hated garlic. What Italian doesn’t like garlic? While engaged to Dad, my mother recalled pasta drying on racks around his mom’s kitchen before Sunday family dinners. My grandmother’s Christmas cookies were known far and wide, but apparently she was very secretive about the recipes.

Why didn’t I ever ask him about these food issues?

There was much scrimping and saving. One of his favorite stories was from his altar boy days. The family was devoted to St. Bridget’s church. Because they lived close by, Dad served as an altar boy frequently from an early age. However, one Sunday, the priest told him to leave in the middle of mass. My father had inherited his brother’s larger-sized shoes, which were making loud, unholy clomping noises on the altar.

Why didn’t I ever ask him, was money that tight? What kind of job did my grandfather have?

As kids, we always want something from our parents. My dad’s job took him to Center City each day and so he was not around much during the week. At dinner, he frequently announced that he talked all day and wanted some “peace and quiet” as he enjoyed his meal. On the weekends, there were four children pleading: take us swimming, pump up our bike tires, check our homework, let’s play a game.

“Aspettt, aspett,” he would say. I didn’t know what that meant, just that he was putting me off. Then we would pester him even more.

It wasn’t until I was watching an Italian movie years later that I heard the word, which prompted me to look it up. He was telling me to wait … wait.

Why didn’t I ever ask him about being a parent, being a father … what did he do for fun when he was a kid?

He was a determined guy, I do know that. Saint Joseph’s College in 1953 never saw a more earnest student. Smart enough to work in the science labs, he earned extra cash. A natural at math, however, he was intent on finding a “creative writing job,” and decided to major in English.

He worked many years in advertising as a creative director, winning a Clio in the humor category. The one thing I thought I knew about my dad was — he wasn’t funny.

Imagine my surprise.

Our college experiences were extremely different. I have played sports my entire life, and Dad never shared my enthusiasm. It was shocking to me when I discovered he didn’t attend even one basketball game as a St. Joe’s HAWK. Unfortunately, he never came to see me play basketball at Villanova. Women athletes were not celebrated as they are today. Dad frequently questioned the time and energy I devoted to sport.

The language, beans, and garlic were all reminders of a life he wanted to leave. What kind of life was he looking for? Now, I would give anything to know more. It’s a regret that comes with getting older. The silence between generations creates canyons of lost history that we only recognize when it's too late to cross them. There are so many memory prompts. The meals that I cook, the books I read and activities with my family are all influenced by my past. Now my thoughts wander. What would he think of AI? Would he ride in a self-driving Tesla? Would he come to church with me at Trinity Memorial Episcopal?

When I became a parent myself, I began to see my father's actions through an entirely new lens, understanding decisions that once puzzled me. Every family has its ghosts—stories untold and wounds never addressed—that shape us in ways we may never fully comprehend.

The example my father set, both in what he did and didn't do, continues to influence how I navigate my own journey through life.

Do you know your father’s most defining trait? I decided to gather the most famous DADs from the entertainment world and quiz my readers about their most endearing quality.

How do we remember our Dads? This will get you started …

Download the What Kind of Father? quiz and choose the most memorable trait for each of the well-known film and TV dads. Then think about your father’s defining style and let me know in the comments.

What ONE word would you choose for your dad?

My father’s word: Striving

Thanks Dad, I learned from the best. I strive to be a better mom, wife, writer and human every day.

This article is slightly modified from the original published in Medium. Anna Maria DiDio is a best-selling and award-winning children’s and middle grade author. Check out her books and memoir at: amdidio.com. Her latest book is Grace’s Write Time; Family Knots Book ONE.

When I try to put into words everything my mother means to me, I can’t. It feels physically impossible. My body becomes overwhelmed with all the emotions of how much she means to me. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. Growing up, my mom was my caregiver, best friend, teacher (I was homeschooled), and biggest supporter. Almost every positive label you can think of, she embodies.

As I’ve grown up, the relationship between us has changed in many ways but also stayed the same. One way our relationship has stayed the same is that my mom has been my full-time caretaker since I became disabled at 14. Throughout high school, she balanced being my teacher—finding new ways to adapt to my cognitive challenges—alongside being my caretaker. She had to keep track of my complicated medication regimens, doctor’s appointments, new diets…everything. Watching my mom step up without question and fill so many different roles seamlessly during that time made me, and continues to make me, proud to be her daughter.

After several years of trying to attend college part-time with accommodations, my health gradually started to decline. Nothing we tried seemed to help my deteriorating condition. By the age of 27, I couldn’t work, attend college, drive, cook, or do my own laundry. The lower quality of life and loss of independence was devastating to me physically and mentally. Still, my mom never let me feel like a burden. Her unwavering emotional support became my anchor.

The silver lining of my health challenges is that it did bring my mom and I closer together. We both had some of the same symptoms and diagnoses (like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). These shared experiences brought my mom and me closer on a deeper level. We shared a profound level of understanding because we both knew what it felt like to live with a disabling chronic illness, and my mom’s quiet but consistently empathetic presence comforted me. I saw my mother's resilience in facing her illness and tried to mirror that strength in my own journey through extreme adversity.

Growing up, I saw my mom as superwoman, not only taking care of herself as a disabled woman (she had to stop a law career after getting sick one day and never recovering) but also taking care of me. She taught me how to navigate the world as a disabled woman, sharing her lessons from 30+ years living with similar symptoms to me. Many days, she put my health before her own. I am very grateful for her sacrificing so much to try improving my own quality of life and making sure I knew I was cared for and loved through the darkest times of my life.

Like any mother-daughter relationship, we’ve had our struggles. No relationship is perfect, and I want to acknowledge that our relationship is no exception. We’ve had our stubborn days of bumping heads and not seeing eye to eye—like arguing over which diet is best for my health (I do love my sugar and carbs, ok!). But through it all, my mom continues to mean the world to me. Even though I still struggle to express the deep well of emotion I feel for her, what I can say is this: I would do anything for my parents and cats—my family.

So, this Mother’s Day, I want to share my appreciation for my mother, who has been my world—and given me mine. “Mom, you are enough…you have always been enough and always will be enough. Even through our challenges, I still love you unconditionally. Thank you for the sacrifices you have given me. I love the example you have set for me to make time to enjoy the hobbies you love. I learned kindness from you like the way you make others feel special and appreciated by giving them gifts like your handmade soap. I have absorbed so many good qualities from you, and I am so grateful to have you as an inspiration for my life.”

Even if I can’t fully capture what my mother means to me, I hope this expresses at least a fraction of how I feel about my superwoman mom. Through every wave of emotion I’ve experienced during my journey, my mother continues to be a lighthouse of inspiration for me. I know her guiding light will always carry me to a safe harbor of support and love. I believe the universe conspired to connect our souls as mother and daughter, knowing we’d face the same chronic illness. I am forever grateful that we get to keep learning lessons from the universe…together.

P.S.
I promise to keep showing my mom how much I love her—even when words fall short.

Dear Mommy,

There are so many things I wish I had said out loud—so many “thank yous,” so many “I see yous,” so many “you mattered so much to mes.” I think of all the times we talked—almost every day. No matter how long or short the call, you’d always say, “You made my day.”

And Mommy, I want you to know: you made mine too—over and over again.
Your voice steadied me.
Your laughter carried me.
Your love made me feel like home away from home.

You called me your baby, and I never took that for granted. Even in a family as big as ours—19+!—you made space for me to feel special.

I know being seen as ‘the favorite’ by you, Daddy, and Grandmom sometimes made me feel set apart—not just held differently, but occasionally left out in ways that others didn’t notice.

But Mommy, I want you to know: I never used that love to stand above.
I used it to stay grounded, balanced, and humbled.

My sister SJ and I worked hard to pull the family together during reunions—even when it cost us deeply, often with no reciprocity, even when it hurt. We tried to keep everyone from drifting too far apart.

I hope, deep down, that you knew that.
That you saw us trying to build a legacy in our own children and grandchildren—something that could sustain our family’s sense of connectedness.

There’s so much I wish I’d asked you, so much I still want to say.
But if I could wrap up my heart in this letter, I’d leave you with this:

Thank you for loving me the way you did.
Thank you for seeing me for who I was—and the woman I would become.
I hope I continue to make you (Daddy and Grandmom) proud each and every day.

With all my love,
Your daughter,
Jamee

Don’t put me on a pedestal — my butt’s too wide!
Don’t tell me just what you expect — let’s BOTH decide!
Don’t lock me into routine things — I don’t fit molds.
Don’t tell me what to think or say — I can’t be told.

Don’t talk of love in fancy words — touch me, I feel.
Don’t claim eternal care as such — ’cause death is real.
Don’t treat me like some “super-mom” — I’m no big “S”!
Don’t guilt-trip me about our house — sometimes, a mess!

Just be with me, I’ll be with you — let’s all just play our parts.
Let’s live our lives in deeds, not words.
Let’s talk in hearts.

Author’s Note: I wrote this for Laurie, Joanie, and Julie — my three “Angels.”

In nearly every memory from my childhood, my mother is surrounded by children. I am the youngest of eight, and by the time I’d arrived on the scene, it was crowded. A kitchen table for ten, assigned seats in the station wagon, side-by-side-by-side twin beds — glorious chaos with no room for solitude.

Our mother was always the center of our universe, and we, eight tiny planets orbiting her sun.

From the moment she stepped out of the shower every morning, she had an audience. When my sister convinced my brother to be her pretend patient in her pretend dentist office using real tools she’d gotten from the basement, five of us went along to the ER.

But there is one moment — a sepia-toned sliver of time — that is just mine.

I was four or five. My mother was slight, her hair was dark, and she was young…younger than I am now. Breakfast was over, the brown-bagged lunches were claimed, and all seven of the older kids were on their way to a school I hadn’t yet started. We snuck back into her bed and snuggled together under layers of blankets and still unfolded laundry. I felt safe in a way that a child can only feel in her mother’s arms.

“I love you,” she said through a delicate smile, her eyes closed and her words softly filling the quiet room.

“I love you around the whole block,” I replied — and they remain the truest words I’ve ever spoken.

She smiled and brushed back my hair: “I love you around the big and little block.”

We laughed and continued on until we loved each other up to the Concord Mall, past the Pathmark and drive-through carwash, around the moon and all of the planets, and eventually, into infinity.

The next year, I went to school, and she went back to work, and life changed for the both of us.

As I grew older, I am certain that there were brief moments when we were alone and together, but by the grace of God, a fourteen-year-old kid doesn’t quite grasp the rarity and magic of a solo drive to the orthodontist because she can’t yet understand the fragile and fleeting nature of time.

My father died when I was thirty-seven and pregnant with my youngest son. One year later, a neighbor knocked on my mother’s front door and noticed that she looked confused and was slurring her words. Her first stroke was the first step on a hard and crooked path that ended fifteen years later when she left this world, unable to speak or feed herself.

In the months since she’s been gone, I have become a reluctant student of grief. I read about it. I chronicle it. I gravitate towards those who’ve been touched by it, and regrettably, I find myself holding back from those who can’t possibly understand my pain.

I have learned the hard way that grief isn’t just one thing. It’s not simply the sadness that comes when something is lost — it’s a parade of feelings that arrive unexpectedly, unbidden, unwanted. It’s anger and pride and love and gratitude, rage and regret, sometimes in rapid succession, sometimes all at once.

Grief wakes me up at 4 am to tell me that I am alone now, parentless. It waits for me in the parking lot of the grocery store. It sits beside me in carline. Grief pinches me when I momentarily forget myself, and it punches me when I open a drawer and see her grey cable knit sweater. Grief gives me nowhere to hide.

Perhaps what has surprised me the most is that recently, grief has begun to feel less like an affliction and more like invitation — a chance to create a new relationship with my mother — one that I never wanted, but maybe, the first time, one that is just ours.

So, I have learned to sit with my grief, to befriend it. Grief is where she now lives. Grief is where I feel closest to her. The door to our old life is shut — I heard the lock click as clearly as I hear these keys tapping out these words. Now, in this unfamiliar place, we must find our way. Just she and I.

“I miss you, mom,” I say aloud each morning as I open my eyes. I say these words as a plea, in prayer, and as a way to orient myself to my new reality.

Most days, there is only silence in return. The dull, desperate ache of a one-way relationship.

But every now and then, she whispers back, so softly that only my heart can hear it.

“I love you,” she says.

I smile, close my eyes, and tell her I love her too… around the big and little block, up to the Concord Mall, past the Pathmark and drive-through carwash, around the moon and all of the planets, and into infinity.

That’s where our love lives now.

That’s where she is.

And here… here is where we are. Alone, and together.

The writer lives in Wilmington, Delaware with her husband, two teenage sons, and their dog, Phil.