Women's history month ends, but your honor remains

This is the last day of Women's History Month, and I want to take a moment to show some love to women. What would we do without the mothers, aunties, grandmas, and friends who add value to our lives?

Celebrating sisters shouldn't require a disclaimer, but I'll give one anyway because men are often overlooked, the evidence of which is obvious when we compare the vast attention given to Mother's Day to the scant Father's Day focus. So I stress that celebrating women is not akin to dissing or dismissing men. If you're a guy leading your family or carrying yourself with integrity or working hard day in and day out, I thank you.

Having said that, today's topic is women. I honor, in particular, two women who have been instrumental in my life, my aunts Mary and Alma. If you've followed me the last few years, the latter is no stranger. You know her from two of my books, "#AuntAlma: Raisin' a Little Heaven [Hell] on Earth" and "#AuntAlma Unleashed: Old, Bold, and Out of Control." Aunt Mary, her sister, helped raise me also, along with her husband, Uncle Cleveland.

I place my aunts right up there with the best of the best. That doesn't mean they did it all right. They did not. I have a plethora of personal scars that testify to their frailty, but being a woman worthy of honor doesn't mean you don't falter. It just means you faltered while doing something worthwhile. I'll use something seemingly unrelated to illustrate my point: Even as an adult, friends and family criticized me for how often I got injured playing basketball -- a sprained this, a dislocated that, too often showing human weakness. My response: "I have bruises because I've been doing something. People who don't do anything don't get hurt." I used to tell students who got hurt playing basketball, "Well, if you just had to get hurt, there's no better way!" Often the injury resulted from a bad decision, an unwise move, an ill-advised risk, and in some cases, their actions caused others harm as well -- all while doing something worthwhile. My [odd] brain connects this to what I'm saying about my aunts. These women who made such a huge difference in my life made mistakes along the way, but the bad they did occurred as they were doing good, so I honor that good. Perfection is not a prerequisite for praise. And even the imperfections have intermingled to make me who I am.

The successes I've had, the dreams I've reached, the faith I've embrace were sparked by these women. They taught me to work hard, respect others and trust God. I cannot imagine the person I'd be without them. Judging from my earliest years in the projects of the Bronx, it would probably have been an ugly sight. While they taught me some things I've had to unlearn, (see previous paragraph), I've learned many more things that have positively shaped me.

As we exit the month set aside to celebrate women, may we enter a sustained time of more deeply appreciating and paying tribute to them, to those who gave us life or enriched our lives. So who are the women who have made the biggest impact on you, and when was the last time you said, "Thank you"? Maybe you do it all the time, but many of us -- probably most of us -- take them for granted. Aunt Mary passed away in 2012, and Aunt Alma is 82 and is going through tough stuff that some go through as they age, which means I, too, am going through some tough stuff as I walk alongside her and pray for a turnaround. These realities have a way of waking us, changing us, even scaring us. Hopefully, they also encourage us to value the moments we have with the people we have for as long as we have them.

Adrienne Ross is owner of Adrienne Ross Communications and a former Southeast Missourian editorial board member.