Happy Mother’s Day, Hillary. You’re a grandmother, like me. And like me, you probably got a hug from your own granddaughter. Perhaps you got a chance to share some stories about your own mother, like I did. In a stopover at a local market, I was given a microphone and had the chance to tell a room full of people in the community dining room about my own mother.
In India, there is a saying: “Your Mother is your first Boss.” She is also your first role-model because everything a child learns in their first five years is like a Xerox copy of the mother, their family, and their culture.
Growing up, my children were always my heroes. I praised them, perhaps even overpraised them, and they grew up strong, strong-hearted, with an equally strong desire to live a life of meaning and purpose.
For you, your role as mentor, and as a role-model on a world stage, extends far beyond your family. You are known by a single name, around the world: Hillary. And, like me and millions of other women – almost 4 billion – you are also known as “Mom.”
We both know that being a mother is one of the most difficult job in the world. It is like we signed up for a bootcamp in compassion and empathy. We become deep listeners. We learn to intuit the unmet, unspoken needs of our children, and by extension, the needs of others.
It put us on a fast-track for what we do in the world today. It reminds us, in every moment, why we do what we do. We want the world to be a better place not just for our own children, but for ALL children, and all people. All life, in fact.
Today the Earth is our home. We live in a global village. The original children stone age women tended around the fire, are now the children of the world. The animals we tended and plants they gathered, are now the ecology of the world and our world is interconnected. A women’s community around the hearth is now a community of nations, and our needs are intertwined.
So today, I want to wish you Happy Mother’s Day, and by extension, want to send a wish to all mothers of the world, from the dawn of human history to the present times. Without them, we wouldn’t be here today.
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Alexia Parks is a Virtual Mentor with the United Nations, award-winning entrepreneur, and Founder of the 10TRAITS Leadership Institute. It offers the ONLY leadership training in the world based on the female brain.
