The Woman Behind the Woman I Am
Honoring the quiet, enduring influence of the woman who shaped who I am.
There are women who influence us from a distance. We read their books, listen to their stories, follow their careers, and admire what they have built.
Then there are women whose influence is woven so deeply into who we are that we may not fully recognize it until life forces us to look.
For me, that woman is my mother.
My mother, Mary, passed away on June 29, 2026.
Losing my mother changed my understanding of grief. It stopped being something I could describe from the outside. It became something I carry.
Grief can be heavy, but it can also be quiet. It can appear in the middle of an ordinary day, triggered by a memory, a familiar phrase, or the instinct to pick up the phone and call someone who is no longer there to answer.
Since losing my mother, I have thought differently about the word influential.
We often associate influence with titles, platforms, accomplishments, or public recognition. We celebrate women whose names are known by thousands, sometimes millions.
But some of the most influential women in our lives will never have a public platform.
Their influence lives in us.
It shows up in how we survive difficult seasons, how we care for others, how we work, how we love, and how we find the courage to keep moving forward.
Before my mother passed, she had the opportunity to see my previous two articles published in Influential Women. I remember talking to her about them and sharing those moments with her. She told me she was proud of me.
Those words meant so much then. They mean something entirely different now.
Grief changes the value of memories.
Conversations that once felt like part of everyday life become treasures. A sentence you heard before can suddenly become one you would give anything to hear again.
There is something beautifully full circle about returning to Influential Women with this article. My mother was here for the first two.
This time, she is the story.
When I look at the woman I am today, I recognize pieces of my mother in me. Not because our lives were identical. They weren't. Not because I have made every decision she would have made. I haven't.
A mother's legacy is more complicated and more beautiful than simply becoming a copy of her.
Mothers leave things with us that cannot be packed into boxes, passed down in a will, or divided among family members.
- They leave lessons.
- They leave memories.
- They leave mannerisms we don't realize we picked up and sayings we suddenly hear coming out of our own mouths.
- They leave strength we may not realize we inherited until life requires us to use it.
Most importantly, they leave pieces of themselves within the people they loved.
I understand that differently now.
My mother's physical absence has not erased her influence. In some ways, losing her has made me see it more clearly.
There are still moments when something happens and my first instinct is to tell her. There are opportunities I want to share, accomplishments I wish she could witness, and ordinary moments when I simply wish I could hear her voice.
Life doesn't stop creating moments simply because someone we love is no longer here to experience them with us.
- The opportunities still come.
- The celebrations still come.
- The milestones still come.
So does the grief.
Somehow, we learn to hold both.
- I am still becoming.
- I am still building.
- I am still dreaming.
- I am still discovering what this next chapter of my life will look like.
Now I have to do those things without my mother physically here to witness them.
That hurts.
There will be rooms I enter that I cannot call her afterward to tell her about. There will be accomplishments she will not physically see. There will be chapters of my life she will not be here to witness.
Yet her absence from those moments does not mean she had no part in them.
- She helped shape the woman who will walk into those rooms.
- She helped shape the woman who will achieve those things.
- She helped shape the woman who will keep going.
That is legacy.
Perhaps that is also part of learning how to live with grief. Moving forward does not require us to leave the people we love behind.
We simply learn to carry them differently.
If I could place this article in my mother's hands, I would tell her that this one is different.
This one is hers.
I would tell her that when it came time to write about influence, I didn't need to search for a famous name or look outside my own life.
I only needed to look at the woman who helped shape mine.
My mother will not be here to read this article or call me after it is published. But her influence is present in every word.
It is present in the life I continue to build, the rooms I continue to enter, and the woman I continue to become.
There will always be a woman behind the woman I am.
