What Makes A Woman Inspiring?

This week’s [optional] theme for the Fit Dish link up (hosted by Jill Conyers @ JillConyers.com, & Jessica Joy @ TheFitSwitch.org) is on what makes a woman inspiring.

I have a particular person I want to talk about here, but before I start, I’d like to share a video that I saw about a week and a half ago. (If you’re at all familiar with Cassey from Blogilates, you may have seen it already!) She says not a word in the entire video, but I think it’s very powerful, and I sincerely hope it makes people think twice about bodyshaming others.

Today, I want to talk about my mom.

Total honesty–I don’t talk about my family too much on here because a lot of the time, I feel like I’m being a terrible daughter. Ever since I came out here for grad school/med school, I’ve been really bad about keeping up with their lives and I have a tendency to fall off the face of the earth whenever I get swamped with school.

What I hate the most is that when something’s going on, I can’t be there for them, due to the distance and the fact that oftentimes, I didn’t even know that anything happened.

Who has always, without fail, been there for me? Who puts us first without regard for herself and her own wants and interests? Who loves me no matter what I’ve done or how much I’ve messed up?

I have way less patience than I should with her, and it makes no sense, nor is it at all fair to her. I am trying, really trying, to change that, and I hope she knows how much I love and admire her, even if I’m terrible with expressing that. She doesn’t know about the existence of this blog, and since I know she worries about me despite my reassurances, sometimes I wonder if I should tell her about it, since I tend to do such a horrible job about updating her on my life otherwise.

So what qualities do I find inspiring in my mom?

Unconditional Love

It takes a person with an extraordinary amount of patience to be able to love beyond all faults, and I think the best parents exemplify this with their kids.

Kindness + Selfless Altruism

I alluded to this in yesterday’s post, but my mom is the kindest and most giving person I will ever know, which is really saying a lot, because I’ve been blessed to have befriended a lot of really, really amazing people in my life. She takes care of everyone around her, with little regard to herself (which we always get on her case about). I know she’s positively touched the lives of every person she’s ever interacted with.

Persistence & Determination

I like to think I learn from the best. <3 My mom always taught us to do our best in anything and everything that we did. If we didn’t get it the first time, then keep practicing until it’s no longer difficult, til it comes as second nature and we can no longer get it wrong. Hard work trumps the talented, lazy geniuses, and that way, even if we don’t succeed in whatever it is, at least we can’t regret it, because we’ve already done the best that we could.

Standing Up For What She Believes In

Whether that’s your own rights as a human being, or in the causes you support. When I was 15, my mom once sent a guy fleeing down the street in terror with all the fury that an Asian mom can muster. (He’d made the rather grave mistake of asking me, “How much per night?”)

Not gonna lie, that was pretty fun to watch. Don’t ever make my mom mad. <3 She is also why Ninja is in our lives! My mom adores animals and when she found out that I’d smuggled a stray kitten I’d found at the homeless shelter into our backyard to take care of, she adopted my adorable battle tank and battled it out with my dad so that we could keep her.

She brings us immeasurable joy. <3

Confidence

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Part of the reason why I never struggled with self-esteem issues while growing up was because of my mom. She did a great job of instilling that in us early on, as well as the “as long as you’re doing what’s right, you don’t have to care what other people think about you” mentality.

<3

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