THE WOMAN WHO TURNED HER PAIN INTO PURPOSE

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ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

She was born into one of America's most powerful families, yet she felt invisible. Orphaned at a young age, painfully shy, and convinced she was ugly, Eleanor Roosevelt could have spent her life in the shadows. Instead, she stepped into the light and lit a fire that still burns for human dignity today.

When her husband Franklin became president in 1933, most First Ladies poured tea and stayed quiet, Eleanor did the opposite. She held press conferences for women journalists only (forcing newspapers to hire them). She wrote a daily newspaper column, "My Day," read by millions. She flew across the country during the Great Depression, visiting coal mines, migrant camps, and soup kitchens then came home and pushed her husband to do more.

She refused to sit at the back of the bus, literally. When the Daughters of the American Revolution barred Black singer Marian Anderson from their concert hall, Eleanor resigned from the organization and helped arrange Anderson's historic performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She joined the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People); she fought for an anti-lynching law; she insisted that democracy must include everyone, or it was not democracy at all.

After Franklin's death in 1945, President Truman asked Eleanor to serve as a U.S. delegate to the brand-new United Nations. At first, many underestimated her, she had no legal training, she was just a widow; but when the world needed a common standard of human rights after the horrors of World War II, Eleanor became the unstoppable force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

She chaired the commission, she mediated between superpowers, she worked late into the night, translating ideals into language that every nation could accept. On December 10, 1948, the Declaration passed forty-eight votes to zero. Eleanor stood holding the poster with tears in her eyes. She was later referred to by president Truman as the "First Lady of the World."

That single document, written largely because one woman refused to give up, has been translated into more than five hundred languages. It has inspired constitutions, civil-rights laws, and freedom movements on every continent. Every time someone says "That is my human right," they are referencing Eleanor's legacy.

Eleanor was terrified of public speaking, she hated conflict, and she had been betrayed in her marriage. She knew what it felt like to be dismissed because she was a woman. However, she kept showing up, she kept speaking, she kept writing, and she kept fighting. She once said, "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

If you are waiting for permission, if you are waiting to feel ready, if you are waiting for someone else to fix it, Eleanor did not wait, she began exactly where she was flawed, afraid, and determined. The world is still broken in many of the same ways she fought against, but because she refused to stay quiet, we have a blueprint for justice written in the language of hope.

365 men who changed the world.

Kamikun John, Author 366 days of wisdom.