Luningning Benito b. 1943

As a child, I thought that if there was someone who could hang stars in the sky, it would be my Lola ("Grandma" in Tagalog). Potential and possibility were her fuel, and belief was her vehicle. Having grown up in poverty in the Philippines, she knew the importance of perseverance and the value of dreaming big. In this photo, she and my grandfather are celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary. Little did she know what the future held for her — being the first in her family to have her children graduate college, crossing oceans and continents to start life in a foreign land, realizing the immigrant’s dream of her family living the life that she had hoped for them to have. She was a woman who made things happen. Above all, she possessed a belief, a light within that became a driving force, which would become a flame imparted unto each of us. It’s in moments when I miss her most that I'm reminded she isn’t gone. She gave me her light ... not a distant star in the sky, but one close to my heart, where I'd rather have her always be.