Women of Influence: Who’s Your Inspiration?

My Mom was always a fan of Princess Diana, so I just remember a lot of her when I was growing up. She was always such a classy lady and taught others how to care about more than just themselves. She always treated everyone equally so it’s a great reminder for me to do the same.

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books about life in the Midwest in the late 1800’s fueled my love of reading and inspired my understanding & admiration of pioneer life and what sacrifices our ancestors made to settle the frontier.

Diana, Princess of Wales! Because we share the same values as not only a woman but a human being… Family is the most important thing in the world. I don’t go by the rule book… I lead from the heart, not the head. Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.

I have always admired Laura Ingalls Wilder.  When I was young I would go visit my neighbor, who was a retired 1st-grade teacher, and she always sent me home with a book to read.  She had the whole series of the Little House books and she would tell me stories of how she, just like Laura, started out teaching in a one-room schoolhouse.  Reading Laura’s story always made me feel grateful knowing what the generations before us had to endure to make our life what it is today.  On a side note, I can’t believe Kathy picked the same person as I did!

Ellen DeGeneres is a person who always has a positive perspective on life and always sees the good in people and things. She’s one of the only people that can make me laugh out loud to the point of crying!

Eleanor Roosevelt was independent, strong, intelligent, confident and believed in the goodness in people.  She was very shy but overcame her insecurities to be a voice for others and a positive female public figure.  Another one for me was also Rosie the Riveter …I remember writing a paper in school about this time during the war and was profoundly moved that these women pulled together as a community to support their husbands/ fathers/ brothers and each other – while some worked in the factories others watched children, made meals, etc. …the strong sense of responsibility, patriotism, caretaking was inspiring to me that we can accomplish anything and truly that everyone has a role in success.

Toni Morrison: I read 3 of her books in several of my writing intensive classed in college.  For a non-recreational reader at the time, they were all books I couldn’t put down.    I remember specifically the impact she had on our professor, who later died of cancer.  The way Toni Morrison wrote always brought so much discussion to our whole class, so she was influential to me because it taught me to speak out about how I interpreted characters and stories, and how we all had different visions of how the story was going in our heads, and they were all correct according to our professor.  So as a woman, it taught me to SPEAK UP and talk about what I thought.