Mom is on an incredible journey to fitness

BY Spencer Massicot

“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.”

— Washington Irving

Mother’s Day has not always been about celebrating mothers. Ann Reeves Jarvis, one of the major impactors of the holiday, founded it to help widows and mothers of killed soldiers and to promote peace. Due to Jarvis’ efforts, Mother’s Day became more popular in more and more cities.

Jarvis was inspired to create the holiday after the death of her mother in 1905. Once the holiday became more popular, she fought against it going so commercial by hosting boycotts and threatening lawsuits, until she developed dementia and died in a sanitarium.

She could have made so much profit off of the holiday, but she chose to fight for how it was when she first started it.

It has been 102 years since Woodrow Wilson established Mother’s Day as a nationally celebrated holiday. I agree with Jarvis when she says it is Mother’s Day, not Mothers’ Day, because it is about celebrating the most special mother to you, making it Mother’s Day.

On May 12, 2001, I was born. That year Mother’s Day was on the 13th, so I was born the day before. My mom, Lori Massicot, always tells me that she was so happy I wasn’t later, because she didn’t want

Spencer Massicot  says his mom Lori is one of his biggest inspirations and a best friend.

to wait until the next year to celebrate her first Mother’s Day.

My mom is a huge inspiration to me and always has been. She has shown me and taught me to never give up and that, if you fall down, you need to get right back up.

In 2008, my mom was laid off from her job at an escrow company after her 20 years of work there. She didn’t know what to do, so she decided to start her own cleaning business, Simply Fresh Cleaning. She has owned and been the sole employee of her business for eight years now and has over 20 clients. She is 48 years old and able to clean two or three houses a day.

My mom is the perfect example of a manual laborer. If you went to watch her, you would see how hard she works getting down on her knees and making everything spotless. She loves how it gives her a great workout every day.

My mom has taken herself on an incredible journey to fitness. Over the past few years, she has lost so much weight; that shows me how hard she is willing to work to get herself healthy. Last year she started a new journey with a network marketing business called Beachbody.

Beachbody is the creator of P90X and other workouts videos like that. My mom is a coach; what that means is that her purpose is to motivate other people to join her on their own journeys and buy the products. She has been through so much in this new business, but she has not given up and she never will because she is that strong of a person.

She really wants her Beachbody business to be her primary income and is giving up all of her time to be on social media and watching videos to help her promote her business.

She is so strong and is a huge motivator to many women in her Facebook group and on her Instagram. One thing I admire is that she is not afraid to put herself out there.

She is so vulnerable in her posts and down to earth. She tries to connect with people and help them be able to expose themselves to her. She will talk about really personal things to hook people onto her page, and she isn’t scared.

Recently she set out on a challenge to become a personal trainer. She has enrolled in an online school to get her license and is studying hard for the test she is going to have to take.

She has taken all of the free time she had out of her day to set aside for studying, and I appreciate it a lot. She is doing it for our family because she wants us to have a better life.

My mom cares so much, and I am so happy to have her as my mother. She is one of my best friends and one of my biggest inspirations. She motivates me to go out and take control of my life every day.

Momma, we love you very much and hope you had a Happy Mother’s Day.