Columns Story March Writing Challenge

Who’s Your Shero

The women who shaped my foundation and the Sheroes who continue to inspire my journey

Photo by Erfan Moradi on Unsplash

Some Sheroes build the foundation of who we become, and others appear along the journey to remind us to keep moving forward.

This reflection is dedicated to the countless women throughout history who have lived lives of humility, honesty, and deep love for their families and communities. From doctors to teachers, from mothers to mentors, their commitment did more than shape their own lives; it quietly changed the lives of generations that followed.

When I first read the prompt for this writing challenge during Women’s History Month, two women immediately came to mind.

The first was my mother, my beautiful mother.

My mother was strong, hardworking, and deeply committed to building the life she believed in. She loved beautiful things and carried herself with a quiet confidence that made an impression on everyone around her. But what stayed with me most were the words she repeated throughout my childhood: that I could do anything I set my mind to. I could be whoever I wanted to be. All it required was dedication and hard work.

She believed that completely.

And because she believed it, I believed it too.

Like many children, I wanted to make my mother proud. I worked hard in school and pushed myself to do well. Later in life, that drive continued, leading me to pursue certifications, degrees, and new knowledge. In many ways, I think, I was always trying to show her that the lessons she had given me were working, that I was becoming the person she believed I could be.

Even today, I carry a drive inside me that I cannot fully explain. It has been there for as long as I can remember. Something in me has always pushed forward, always striving, always searching for the next step.

But my mother was also deeply devoted to her work. Her responsibilities meant she did not always have the time to guide me through every step of growing up. Because of that, I often found myself looking for encouragement somewhere else.

In School.

Photo by Haley Hydorn on Unsplash

I loved school. I loved learning, and I naturally looked to my teachers for support and motivation. That was where I met the second Shero in my life, my sixth-grade teacher.

She was beautiful, intelligent, and incredibly inspiring. She had a way of seeing potential in her students that made us believe in ourselves more deeply. When she spoke to you, you felt as though she truly saw who you could become.

I remember sitting in that classroom and loving to learn. She was always doing incredible things to help us shine. Learning felt exciting. That year, we even performed a play, A Christmas Carol, which ran throughout the entire Christmas season at our school. She made every student feel important, like each of us had something special to contribute.

She was just so proud of us.

At that moment in my life, I felt like the luckiest person in the world to have her as my teacher.

That year was a special one for me.

I had no absences the entire year and was awarded Girl Most Likely to Succeed. I won the school spelling bee, and she proudly showed me off to the entire school. I still remember how proud she was in those moments.

At the time, I think we were both proud of each other. I was proud to meet her expectations, and she was proud to see her student succeed. Perhaps it also affirmed something inside her, that she was doing exactly what she was meant to do as a teacher.

But the truth is, she was not only special to me.

Every student in that class felt deeply connected to her. Years later, I stayed in touch with several classmates, and many of them became teachers themselves. That says a great deal about the kind of impact she had on us.

She was truly one of a kind.

That is why what happened next was so devastating.

The following year, when I was thirteen years old, my sixth-grade teacher was killed by a drunk driver in New York.

The news crushed me. At that age, when you are still forming your understanding of the world, losing someone who believed in you so deeply is difficult to process. I remember being in disbelief for months. It felt impossible that someone who had been such a steady presence in my life could suddenly be gone.

Sometimes I wonder how things might have unfolded if she had lived. I imagine she might have continued encouraging me, guiding me, and celebrating my progress in the way only she knew how.

Perhaps my path would have looked different.

But over the years, I have come to accept something that many of us learn slowly in life: we often find ourselves exactly where we are meant to be, even when the journey there includes unexpected loss.

The encouragement she gave me did not disappear when she was gone. The confidence she helped build remained, quietly shaping the person I was becoming.

After that loss, I leaned even more heavily on the lessons my mother had planted in me. But life also began teaching me something new.

Sometimes the people who inspire us are not able to stay beside us forever.

And when that happens, we eventually discover that the strength they gave us has already become part of who we are.

After my mother died unexpectedly, slowly, almost without realizing it, I began relying on someone else; I relied on myself. I would say for a while, I became my own shero.

Today, I find myself trying to do something similar to what my mother and my teacher once did for me. I try to encourage and motivate as many people as I can. Life has taught me how powerful words can be. Words can build someone up or quietly break their spirit. I know this because I have experienced both.

And I know what it feels like to hear the right words at the moment you need them most.

Looking back now, I understand that my earliest Sheroes were the women who helped shape my foundation. My beautiful mother, who showed me that dedication and hard work could take me anywhere, and my teacher, who showed me the power of encouragement and belief.

Together, they gave me the strength I would one day need to stand on my own.

But life has also taught me something equally important. Sheroes do not only belong to our past.

Some Sheroes build the foundation that shapes who we become. Others appear along the way, encouraging us, inspiring us, and reminding us that we are capable of continuing forward.

Photo by Arindam Saha on Unsplash

Even today, I realize that I continue to look up to many hardworking women whose resilience and dedication inspire me. Some of them I have even had the privilege of meeting here on this platform. Their stories and the way they continue to move forward despite challenges remind me that inspiration is not something that belongs only to the past.

Women like Jess, Kate, and Arpita are exceptional in their own ways. These ladies have taught me that, as we go through life, it takes great courage and resilience to move forward. Their journeys have shown me that I am not the only one experiencing challenges and difficult moments. They remind me that it takes hard work to keep building our lives, and that with each new day, we are all, in our own ways, making it.

And as we continue our journeys, we carry all of them with us, the Sheroes who built our foundation and the Sheroes who give us strength along the way.

Perhaps that is the true legacy of the women who came before us. Their strength continues to live on through the lives we build and the encouragement we pass forward to others.

Published by COLUMNS STORY✍️

Your spark, your story, your lived experience — they matter.

Ruth (Silent Scars🌻)

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This story was edited by: Silent Scars🌻