Runway ready!

Dear Mom,

I know I have had different kinds of teachers in my life. There were strict ones that focused on what I “couldn’t do” or “shouldn’t” do. Then there were “simple” ones that dumbed things down so much, I felt like I was stuck in preschool. I also had some “better than normal” teachers, and I could go on about the types of teachers I’ve experienced in my lifetime, but that’s not really the point. The point is—YOU—were my “model” teacher. You wore your content every day. You were and still are my walking three dimensional figure of the subject area of LIFE that you continue to teach me. I know many times you feel underqualified and undereducated because you didn’t graduate from college and get numerous degrees in life. However, you have taught me more about life than I care to admit on most occasions (sorry), but HOW you’ve taught me is what really makes you the hero in my book. You didn’t say, “ok turn to page____ and remember steps xyz—you just LIVED. You shaped me with your life, your decisions, your mistakes, and your vulnerability.

First, You taught me to step out! You taught me that I had options; I could do whatever I wanted. I watched you “try” your hand at so many things despite your nerves, lack of confidence or what others might think about you. You have always been willing to encounter and participate in life. I watched you go back to college at 40 and struggle to keep up, but despite your age, what you “remembered” or what anybody “thought” of you—you did it for YOU! I’ve seen you as a struggling college student, a salon owner, a hostess, stay-at-home mom, minister, writer, missionary, and world-traveler...whatever role you were in, it was to experience first hand what life brought to you, and because you chose to LIVE you taught me to do the same. You left me with no excuses and nothing holding me back.

Secondly, you showed me how to accept myself with no exceptions as I watched you fight to create this paradigm shift in your own life. I was educated through both your mistakes and successes. Hearing about the struggles you had with your weight and self-confidence as a child, taught me compassion for others, but as I watched you fight this battle through your adulthood…it made me realize there is nothing more important than loving and accepting ALL of yourself. Having a gastric bypass that nearly took your life when I was six and watching you fight for physical life as you owned every fleshly mistake you made to try to make yourself physically more “appealing”, allowed me to garner from a broken, transparent woman full of wisdom and regret. I gleaned a different perspective, and the value you put on making me understand that I would only be left with running to people, things, procedures and products to fix the pain of self-hate; gave me the drive to fight against my own broken mirrors. I watched your spirit rise through every defeat, surrender, and moment of death and despair. Mom, you taught me that beauty comes out of ashes, and now I can look in my mirror, and though I see the broken; I accept it—ALL of it…and I fight against the lie that I NEED to change it to be more desirable or appealing to myself or the world around me.

Thirdly, the way you embraced people and places empowered me to embrace others in the same way.

You were/are the best at cuddling, holding, accepting, welcoming, supporting, championing etc... I’ve never seen anyone accept the people they come in contact with, the way you do. They don’t have to look like you, think like you or speak the language you do. You’ve taught me that we do have one universal language— Kindness. With friends from Iran, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, England, and the Ukraine (I’m sure that’s not all—just what I recall off hand) it was you that showed me how to welcome all people. Your smile breaks the ice and your hello encircles everyone around you and pulls them in. You’re almost 70 and you still have that welcoming spirit. Remember last year on our way out to Kansas City? You sat down and five minutes later a young Mexican man sat down beside you…before I knew it…you two were best friends and he was giving you vouchers for dinner and drinks at the Mexican restaurant he owned in downtown KC. You know how to make friends—and I am ever so grateful to have been an apprentice of such skill.

Finally, and I believe the most important gift you have given me was the gift of believing. Whether it was believing in myself, Santa, the Easter Bunny, a promise, someone else, or God himself. You taught me how to grab hold of something and become so sure of it, that it became a reality. I watched you believe in and for so many things, and you never stopped until those things started to happen. Mom it was you, who instilled that fight in me to see things come to be, because of your influence I believed in healing and fought through cancer at 19. Your faith increased mine and caused me to hang on to the promise of life, children and a daughter even if it meant fighting for her for 18 years. She is here because you showed me how to believe in things even when I couldn’t see them.

These are only a few reasons you are my hometown hero. Yes—teachers make hometown heroes and you mother—are one of my very best! Thanks for “showing” me—how to live, while you walk the runway of life, I hope I wear life’s lessons as beautifully as you do.

Love your aspiring daughter,

Natalie Nicole