Legacy of a Mom
Sixty-one is too young to die; especially when you have young children. Elizabeth Edwards had so much to build a legacy on. She was an attorney, an author, and a health care advocate. She was the wife of a politian; active in charitiy work.
So of those things, which one has the media been focusing on since her death? None of them. The legacy she left behind is that she was a mom who loved her kids. She was a mom who put her children above her work; above building a name for herself. When interviewed she was asked why she didn’t go into politics herself. That was not what she wanted; she wanted to be a good mom…and she was. She was a woman of courage; protecting her children when they couldn’t protect themselves.
As moms, we can learn a lot from Elizabeth. Education, influence and open doors of opportunity; those are not the things to build a life on. What truly lives on when our time here is done is our children. Do they know, can they see played out each day what our lives are based on? Do they sense that they are more important than our work, our plans, our goals?
Elizabeth challenges me. I want my legacy to be like her’s: she was a mom who loved her kids and lived every day to prove it.