b'every single day of my life growing up as a child. Mom told me she loved me, motheralways showing up. Doing it all. Always showing Thats why I have a high self-esteem today. As a child she poured into me with every fiber of love, life, and positive energy she had. This was done in spite of the fact that her family environment growing up wasnt the most vocal about love. Like a lot of families of that generation in the South, love was about showing it, more so than saying it. Mom loved her children and those around her hard, as a singlethree-piece suit in all of us, essentially,crush velvet, particularand sent me to schoolin Compton, dressed that way.I got beat up every single day.But I never dropped my briefcase, She raised a purple, forgot my dream, or lost sighteven for a momentof who I knew I was.This was the love lesson that mom taught her son. To love I remember growing up in Compton, when she would make these funny little suits soft, strong, and consistent. himself. To believe that he was somebody, and to believe that that somebody, had something unique to contribute to this world. up.I remember her showing up to ask for a job at my schoolany jobbecause she had been laid off temporarily as a seamstress at McDonnell Douglas Aircraft. This happened from time to time over her career working there, but she absolutely refused to go on welfare.And unfortunately for me (smile), she always thought that spending time with her children was a good thing. Even at school. All the examples were not this inspiring. So I saw Mom the security guard at school, and Mom the janitor at school, and so on. And as a kid, really, who wanted that?But thisI was my mothershowing love by also showing up, and being present in my and our lives. It was constant. To the week she passed. It was constant. There was never any question, even for a second, that she was 100% committed to the cause of raising me and her She told me she loved me, and that steeled me to the indifference and the selfishness of this world.It allowed me to love, even when I was not being loved in return. This life lesson in love from my motherbecame sort of my superpower, later in life. A gateway into my personal version of self-esteem today. It made me an individual, in a world obsessed with copies. Because of her, I knew that children, my sister and brother.She brought me into this world, as a newborn baby at birth, and I was deeply was somebody, without question. I still do.as she took her last breath, her soft, loving, still-strong hands,raising, and exited this world, for the next.Full. Circle. And my deep honor. honored, to holdthis one job the entirety of her life; Loving,in supporting, backing and encouraging her children. Well, its now her time to rest. And its our time, to do the work.To pay it forward with moms life lessons, and to has been workingand showing outMomup inspire others to follow her lead. Her example showing love.Mom did the work.She was all in.Gone on, to a better place, now released from the pain and the human anxieties of Today, our mom has been Promoted. this world, and embraced by the unconditional love of the Father, in the next.I love you Mom and thank you for loving me, us, and in a sometimes selfish, rough-and-tumble world ~ that often, really didnt know how to love you back. John'