Sometimes there are people on this planet that just their mere existence is enough to inspire you, just hearing about everything that they were capable of doing throughout their lives is enough to encourage you. That is exactly how I feel about my mom because she is the strongest woman I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.

I remember as I was growing up, I looked up to my mom because she was my mom and that’s what kids do. They think that their parents are perfect and infallible. I would take what she said as law because let’s face it, mom’s word is the law of the house. It wasn’t until I got older that it occurred to me the gravity of her words.

Parents hide things from kids until they are old enough to know about more adult topics. I started to realize that my mom hadn’t lived the easiest life when I entered middle school, and she revealed more about her childhood. I learned that she had to move around a lot for reasons that I couldn’t quite understand at the time, and on multiple occasions, she had to start her life from scratch. At the time, I had no idea how much I would learn from her life.

I learned how to stand on my own by watching my mom have a full time job while being a full time student on top of being a mother and a wife. I learned how to speak the truth no matter how difficult by hearing my mom speak it every day. I learned how to have passion for life by seeing my mom’s passion for it despite everything thrown at her. Most importantly, I learned how to love my family and friends unconditionally by experiencing my mom’s love since the moment I was born.

Going through my quarter life crisis, I spend most of my day obsessing over everything that I have done wrong and everything that I can do wrong and everything that I will do wrong. In order to push through it all, I try to remember everything she taught, I try remember that I share blood with my biggest role model. Sometimes the greatest compliment I get is that I’m turning out just like my mom. I hope that I turn out like her or at least half the woman that she is because I know that I could accomplish anything. Whenever the quarter life crisis is getting too much for me, I think about everything that she has been able to accomplish, and I remember that I have greatness in my blood.