Author: Jackie Pick

Jackie Pick is a former teacher and current writer living in the Chicago area. She is a contributing author to multiple anthologies, including Multiples Illuminated, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood, Here in the Middle, as well as the and the literary magazines The Sun and Selfish. She received Honorable Mention from the Mark Twain House and Museum for her entry in the Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Competition. Jackie is a contributing writer at Humor Outcasts, and her essays have been featured on various online sites including McSweeney's, Belladonna Comedy, Mamalode, The HerStories Project, and Scary Mommy. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Jackie is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film Fixed Up, and a proud member of the 2017 Chicago cast of Listen To Your Mother.

Dr. Angelou, My Light. Day 21 of 100 Days of Writing.

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“She moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace.” — Oprah Winfrey on Dr. Maya Angelou

The world lost a beacon today. People more eloquent than I have summed up her life and her impact on the world.

Dr. Angelou, what I know of her and what I believe of her, has been my North Star for decades. She spoke with ease, she laughed with abandoned, she felt with a full heart, she encouraged with no regard for her ego, she taught with experience and patience, she expected with no patience for dips into our lesser selves, she aspired with no concern for career definition.

She loved with no fear.

In this week when we voice #YesAllWomen, I salute her as Woman.

I won’t say that she is who I want to be when I grow up. I am grown up, and I am on my own journey. But it is her light that I want to illuminate my path.