Hope Thelwell

“I had no shoes and complained

until I met a man who had no feet.”

My mom taught me the power of being grateful when she shared this quote with me.

(Excerpt from an interview with Njeri Theliwell, Entrepreneur, Blogger, Mental Health Advocate, Loving Wife & Mom)
Montego Bay, Jamaica

My mother is one of the most beautiful women I know. Physically, my mom is gorgeous. She's 75 years old, and she does not look her age. When I was growing up, my friends were always jealous of me because my mom was one of those mothers that anybody could talk to. If you had a problem, you could talk to my mother about it. Anybody could come to our house and they would feel welcome. My friends loved her, and everybody tells me I’m so lucky. Even to this day, I still have them say that to me.

And my mother holds nothing against anybody. She forgives easily. She'll get angry with you and the next minute, she's hugging you. Sometimes when she does it to me,"I’m like wait, what? I'm still pissed. And she's like, oh, I forgot about that”. When I had my own daughter, I realized how much intention and dedication she put into raising us, especially because there were six of us kids. I'm the eldest. She had two sets of twins. So there’s me, my twin brothers, a single sister, and then twin sisters. From the eldest to the youngest is eleven years apart. The love that she has for us and the family is fierce. Her children are everything and she's raised us to understand the power that the family is. She was the one who first said “Your first team in life is your family, your brothers and sisters, and you.” I remember when my siblings and I used to fight, she used to make us hug each other for punishment. And the more we resisted that, the more she insisted it as practice.

Mom made me also learn the value of gratitude by sharing this quote with me, “I had no shoes and complained until I met a man who had no feet.” This really stayed with me as a child and till today, even in the worst of times, I am able to see what I can be grateful for. A demonstration of this was when I left Jamaica and my family for the first time, I was about 17 years old and I'd never been away from my family up to that point. I was shocked coming to the United States alone without my family, and then be in an environment where it was a completely different culture. All I wanted to do was go home, I didn’t want to be there. And my mom reminded me about that quote, and that I can make the the best out of what I considered was a bad situation. She empowered me and encouraged me to stand on my own. In that moment, I discovered an opportunity, a new context that I am one of the top students in Jamaica who was able to apply as an international student and go to a University. I wasn't a resident. I didn't live there. I was an international student. And that was an opportunity that I will always be grateful to my mother. After that shift in perspective, everything changed. I met some really great people. And when it was hard, like I was struggling to get my books and pay my tuition, I took on her advice of just being thankful, and kept moving, one foot in front of the other. And to this day, life as a student in the University was one of the most incredible times of my life. So much about myself and my leadership, my ability to cope with challenges, breaking through barriers happened when I was at the University. All because I listened to my mom.

Mom’s an out of the box thinker. I actually believe my mother was ahead of her time because she raised us to have a voice, she raised us to speak. We were equals. We had opinions. She respected our opinions and our ideas. And we could have uncomfortable conversations with her if we wanted to, and she would listen. She never took the position that she was always right. And that, for me, was one of the most important things I got. Because of this upbringing, I became an advocate, I became a student leader. Everywhere I go, leadership was automatic. In college, it was automatic. I walk into spaces, not being encumbered. I say what I need to say, and I'm a fierce advocate for people having a voice. And if I see anything that's not right, unfair, I speak up. I get that directly from my mom. That's a product of who she is and the influence that she's been in my life.

When I was in my final year the University of Massachusetts, the students decided that the administration wasn't doing enough for underprivileged students, especially students of color. So we organized a protest, and it was so effective that we ended up shutting down the university to meet with the administration. We went in with 40 demands, and they requested that I be the lead negotiator. And we negotiated down to 20 demands and we got literally everything we could legitimately get. Whatever we did not get, it was because the university couldn't legally provide it to us. And 200 people in a room agreed to the negotiations, agreed to what we had come to say we were going to do. It was just a powerful experience for both the administrators, myself and the Student body that we represented. University of Massachusetts Amherst is the third largest collegiate university in North America. So it was a big deal. We shut down the entire campus and the town of Amherst in solidarity, the high school closed and four other colleges in the five college system closed down to support us. It was an awesome experience.