Today is my mom’s birthday.

My mom, Michelle Minero, and I co-founded the Love Warrior Community, but this community really spurred from her background and passion in helping people love themselves.

Michelle is a therapist who specializes in helping people recover from eating disorders, but her passion and love reach beyond the eating disorder recovery community.

EDRS Board

Aside from hosting retreats, workshops, speaking, talking to classes, offering free resources, creating an intensive outpatient eating disorder program, founding EDRS (Eating Disorder Recovery Support, Inc), a Bay Area non-profit, bringing ANAD support groups to Petaluma, and a thousand and one other things to help spread body positivity, self-love and self-acceptance – she and my dad also raised four beautiful children, and I’m one of them.

I think looking at someone’s children can give you an idea of what kind of person they are.

Albert, fake passionately singing at the MAKER Faire

My brother, Albert, is the oldest of us four siblings. He’s spontaneous, and takes 8 + hour drives to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Niagara Falls, and wherever else he wants to go on a whim. He can make anything happen. He follows and lives his passions. He isn’t afraid to explore life on his own, and he has an incredibly big heart.

Renee & My Mom at my 24th Zombie Oscar themed birthday party, in August.

My oldest sister, Renee, was a special education teacher for about ten years. She taught in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Hawaii, Georgia and California. She founded Amistad, which means friendship in Spanish. With Amistad, she helps native Spanish speaking women in the Bay Area through friendships. She meets with this group of women and teaches them English, asks them what their passions are and what they would like help with, but it’s not a one-way relationship. They go for walks together, visit each other outside of “classes”, set up play dates with their kids — they are each other’s friends, and beyond that, they have come together as a family. Renee is also working on publishing her book, The Friendship Effect.

My parents at Kristina’s graduation.

My older sister, Kristina, has a huge heart, and is protective of me. When we go out together, if she thinks anybody is bothering me, she’ll set things straight. She volunteered at an orphanage in Africa. Her heart bleeds when she sees abused animals on that horribly sad Sarah McLachlan commercial. She’s also very assertive. She knows what she wants, and she doesn’t feel bad to voice her opinions, to do what she wants or to say no to what she doesn’t want. That’s a characteristic that I don’t often see in people, and it’s an extraordinarily important one to have.

My brother and I pretending we’re Harry Potter wizards on the 4th of July.

Then there’s me, Emelina. I feel this passion, drive and energy course through my body when I help people. It empowers me to empower others. I love connecting with people. I love listening to people. I love helping people see that they are valued, valuable, important and beautiful, just for being who they are. I love helping people live their passions and achieve their goals. I love helping people amplify their voices. I love connecting people, and building communities. I love people. And I’m fueled by helping others, connecting with others, energy, my big dreams to change the world for the better and self-love. I’ve done a few things, like co-found the Love Warrior Community with my mom. I created another online community to help people achieve their goals, Community Bucket List. I volunteer with Eating Disorder Recovery Support. I write for LGBTQ publications, and help promote people’s passions, advocacy and creative projects when I can, and I’m working on creating my own queer magazine to help bridge the gap of misunderstanding among the LGBTQ community, to help lessen the bigotry, to help bring the larger queer community together, to help amplify our voices, to help reflect LGBTQ stories in the media, to help empower the individuals of the LGBTQ community and to help those who are struggling to accept themselves.

My Family doing our yearly “Find an X-mas tree” tradition.

The four of us were raised by my parents, and I think they did a good job. They raised us with unconditional love and support. I know I’m blessed because love and support isn’t something you see in every family.

My parents and their first granddaughter, Ninel.

My niece Ninel.

They helped us become the people that we are now, and the people that we will grow into. The impact that I have, and that my siblings have on others, is a reflection of our parents.

And my mom, not only does her influence spread to others through us, but her influence spreads to her clients, and through her clients. It spreads to her colleagues, her friends and to strangers. Her message of self-love travels through her hugs, her words, her blog posts, a tweet, a Facebook message, and soon – her book, Self-Love: The Only Diet That Works.

Love your Body. Love Yourself. Love the World. – That’s the Love Warrior Community’s motto, and it came from her book.

My mom has this goal to end eating disorders. She has this goal of helping to shape a world where our value isn’t associated with our bodies. She has this goal of re-shaping our culture to one that empowers us, instead of degrades us.

Through self-love, through healing ourselves, we can spread love and healing to others, and spread love and healing to the world. That’s what my mom wants.

For her birthday, she would love it if you did something to take care of yourself today, something loving for yourself today.

It would also be great if you shared this, or any aspect of the Love Warrior Community, or the LWC group self-love blog, selflovewarrior.com.

And she would love to hear about what loving action you took today. Please leave a comment below for her birthday about how you will treat yourself with love today, and how you will spread love to someone else.

Happy Birthday Mom

Love you!

- Emelina