Originally published in Huffington Post

This Mother’s Day, it is 50 weeks and three days that I am living without a mother, missing her every single day and so grateful for the drive and fight she instilled in me to demand an equal voice for myself and for all women. As the daughter of immigrants – a home-based seamstress and a coal miner who plied his trade as a stone mason on the weekends – my mother committed every waking moment to making our world better than she had it.