Suzanne Randall

I'm a working mother of three. I have an 8 year old son and boy-girl twins who are 4. I feel an incredible responsibility to raise them to be kind, hard working, confident. To embody all of these traits that I was given from my parents. […] I lost my dad on January 3rd and it was really rough and it still is hard. I see my mother still working through it and I wanted to give her that message that she is amazing and she shouldn't forget how incredible she is because she was so selfless in caring for him in his last 18 months where he just was deteriorating. She put everything to the side, focused on him, and it was an incredible selfless act of love and that was what needed to happen at the time. But now that he's gone and he's no longer suffering, it's like how do you get back into life when you're not caregiving to someone you love. And how do you get your mojo back and think about what you're about and regain your self identity. So I just wanted to tell her that she's amazing and to remember that. And #remember is to remember my dad and his life and not remember him when he was sick, but his 69 years of life and how much he did for our family and how fortunate we were to have him as a dad because he gave us everything. He believed in us. C: Tell me more about you mom and the details of who she is. My mother is amazing. She was born and raised on an Indian reservation and she grew up very poor. She didn't know she was poor because they had basic needs met – food, shelter, etc. But she didn't see her reflection in a mirror until she was in fourth grade. So it was very rustic. And she had incredible faith and she had this crazy creativity about her. She just had these natural talents – she was a singer, she played musical instruments, she was a singer-songwriter so she had this gift of storytelling. So our whole life we always had music in the house. And I felt like she related to the family through her storytelling and singing and she would bring people together and really, whatever was going on with one of our family members – and we had a huge extended family – 2, 3, 400 first and second cousins – like, we were related to everyone on the reservation. It didn't matter what was going on in your life, she had a way to make you feel special and important and heard and visible. She made people recognize what gifts they had, what they were good at, and try to focus on positivity. So she's always been this ray of light for people who maybe didn't have the ability to maintain self confidence but had a propensity to doubt. She could motivate anybody, she'd mother all of you. That was her way. She is just an amazing person. She's selfless and generous and she pretty much just helps you believe that there's a path for every thing and just keep going. C: Sounds like your father was lucky to have that spirit when he was going through hard times His whole life you could tell how crazy he was about her because when they married it was just like, they were it. They were tight. They weren't always happy-go-lucky, they were passionate when they argued and stuff. But it was real. And so we are lucky as their children to have had them as parents. What you become, it's because someone has invested in you and cared about you and loved you. And you can only give back what you were given. By being able to give this message to my children after being encouraged my whole life, 'You can do it Suzy, do it – the harder you work the luckier you get. Go do it.' That was it. It was like, there was no other option!