I’ve spent my whole life surrounded by incredible women.
My mother, bless her, is the epitome of pure love.
She’s a woman who’s conquered every inch of her heart and shows everyone around her what it means to really be human. She loves harder than anyone I know, and she raised me to do the same.
My darling sisters attack life with wide open eyes and unabashedly caring hearts, the spark in every room they enter. They radiate the kind of beauty Kings built Empires for, and every day I’m not around them I miss a little piece of myself.
If you only knew the kind of people I got to call family.
I have some thirty odd cousins, maybe more, and an overwhelming majority of them are women. The kind of women they write books about; women who cut through life with love and rigor and a fierce prowess that demands nothing but goodness and a grounded sense of humor. They want to know you, everything about you, because they want to know how to love you. Everyone in sight is family, in our family.
I boast adoring Aunts, quirky and matriarchal, overflowing with wisdom of the heart. Their undercurrent is fueled by an innate sense of family and homestead; life is life, and it’s nothing without the people you love.
My truly magnanimous grandmother, sharply navigating a long and storied life of deep belief and tradition, left cancer in her wake and walks among the Saints, a maven of Queens, New York.
Might we all live a life as full as hers.
To that I add a circle of girlfriends to slay dragons.
The most beautiful, caring, hilarious and intelligent women this planet’s got skipping around it. World changers and nurturers, all of them show me on a regular basis how simple life really is.
I believe that the entire history of mankind’s battle between heart and mind is running through every woman alive, and the few that I’m fortunate enough to call friends each in their own way reveal the savviest navigation of that balancing act. My heart beats for you, misses you dearly, and would stop in its tracks without each of you in my life.
You women shape my world.
You women frame my expectations. You women shine a light on how we got here, and what tomorrow looks like.
You women are my heart and soul.
You women are my Valentines.
