Nearly 40 years ago I discovered this draft of a fan letter written and addressed to the remarkable former U.S. First Lady Rosalynn Carter by my mother, the extraordinary Connie Greer. To say that it changed my life is an understatement. I discovered the letter by accident in my mother’s desk drawer in our kitchen while looking for rubber bands. I was 15 years old.
When I read my mother’s uplifting words of encouragement to the former First Lady to consider running for President herself, I was struck with the power that a letter has to express the deepest admiration from one human being to another. We are all connected by invisible dots of mystical synchronicity, kinship and circumstance. What if we made our feelings and thoughts about those we admired visible?
I cannot express the ineffable feeling that came over me about my mother when I discovered that letter except to say that I fell in love with her in a brand-new way. I loved who Connie Greer was as a human being who, just like Rosalynn Carter, was actively choosing to dedicate her life to lifting others. I admired my mother a lot, but this took things to another stratosphere of gaga appreciation. I knew that my mother loved President Carter. But it was a total THRILL for me to be a secret witness to my mother’s admiration and respect for another woman’s commitment to service.
I understood in those moments that nobody in this world was inaccessible, and I vowed to myself that I would always write and send love letters of appreciation to every woman who ever inspired my soul. And I have.
In the words of Connie Greer to honor and thank an indomitable force of goodness who moved and inspired the world with her service and her FEMA vision:
“Thank you, First Lady Rosalynn Carter, for sharing with the American public, your gratitude, frustrations, aspirations and inspirations.”
Thank you, dear Mrs. Carter, for revealing to my teenaged self, a dimension of my mother that captured and changed me forever.
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