Reflections: My mother's service

Words of appreciation for the woman who shaped my service journey

In an effort to both sustainably and consistently write, and examine my own experiences as a volunteer and philanthropist, I present the Reflections series.

Reflections are just that: ponderings and journal-style posts that explore the influences and experiences in my life that have shaped my own view of service. Included will be questions posed to myself, which I encourage you to reflect on as well.

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Every Mother’s Day, I write a card to my mother and slip it in the mail. Sometimes it’s a few weeks late, but it eventually gets there.

Every year, I open the card with the same message: Everything I am, you helped me to be.

Behind those words is a desire to remind my mother of the profound influence she has on my life and how I view the world. The greatest contribution of which is her service mindset and dedication to being useful.

My mother was (is) a homemaker. But when people ask me what my mom did growing up, I always tell them she was a professional volunteer. I remember her leaving after my father got home from work, jetting off to PTA, finance committee, and junior league meetings. My brother and I would eat casserole and watch TV, completely unaware that our mom was a community mover-and-shaker.

I was pretty much totally unaware of the work my mother did in the community until 2001. I would have been in middle school at the time, but suddenly I was back on my elementary school campus with her after school, sitting in the back of the room as she had meetings about building a new library. I am not sure how she was recruited to co-lead the campaign to fundraise for a new library in my hometown, but in 2006, she and her committee had raised a million dollars through both major gifts and bake-sale-style fundraising. I remember the pride I felt when I learned my mom had played a part in raising a million dollars, a sum of money I could not fully conceptualize at the time.

Giving back was part of our lives from pretty much as early as I can remember. We were not a particularly athletic or sporty family. We did not go to church with any regularity, nor were we religious at home. We spent our family vacations on road trips to state and national parks or out in the high desert of California. We were pretty normal upper-middle-class people; quite privileged, though it may not have been obvious to me at the time.

What we had vs. what we did not have did not factor into my family’s service mindset, or at least not framed as “have vs. have not” to us, as children. Volunteering was our civic and social duty; we could, so we did. Finding ways to lend our skills and time to community groups and nonprofits was our normal, an expectation, a given.

I honestly do not know if my parents (my mother, in particular) knew the influence their volunteering and service would have on my brother and me. My mother did not do any of her work for the recognition (in fact, she has always been more comfortable quietly working in the background). She volunteered to contribute, to share her skills, and to improve life in her community. She did not cross the stage to accept awards or recognitions at galas or city council meetings.

When I reflect on my own service, I can link my values and drivers back to watching her. Our family culture revolved around community in the broadest sense of the word, and both consciously and subconsciously influenced my decisions of where to attend university, my career direction, and who I married. Today, as I navigate motherhood myself, I can only hope I set the same example for my children as she did for us.

She likely had moments of doubt in her ability to contribute. I know she had insecurities about leaving her career and the freshness of some of her skills. But it was through her volunteering that she maintained her bookkeeping and accounting skills and developed new skills (like how to use a computer in the early 90s). She built a reputation for herself as a person who got things done, who could be relied on, and who cared.

Every year, I remind her of the impact her modeling has had on my life. And every year she tells me, she was just doing what was right.

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Today I ask myself:

• What does legacy mean to me?

• Are my impact and intentions aligned?

• What role is my ego playing in this experience?