Today is the birthday of my mother Ellen Willis, radical feminist, journalist, activist, teacher, and most devoted and kick-ass mother there ever was and ever will be.

My mom died of lung cancer in November 2006, and shortly after, Girldrive was born. It was her death that sparked my interest in discovering our generation’s version of feminism in the first place–it occurred to me suddenly that this legacy was slipping through our fingers, and that we had to propel it forward and intepret this lens, this history, this feeling for ourselves.

Exactly a year after my mom died, Emma and I were in the thick of the road trip, and I sat down to reflect. It’s been more than three years and the feelings are fresh as ever–I still think of her every day, every time I talk about pro-sex feminism (a term she coined), hear a Bob Dylan song, or go back home to New York.

Although the blogosphere has been around since she died, this is the first year (at least in my life) where Twitter has been a major disseminator of information. So I searched her name today, and damn. People be giving love to Mama fo real, including NPR’s Writer’s Almanac, Feministing, and Arthur Magazine, who “sainted” her (not sure how she’d feel about that last one…but still!).

Do me and your feminist consciousness a favor and honor her today by doing one of the following:

-Sift through the amazing amount of beautiful eulogies for her. The New York Times, The New York Observer, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Salon, Dissent, Seven Days, and NPR had good ones, among dozens more blog posts you can find by Googling her. Also, I love this podcast by Susie Bright, where she reads a few passages from her writing:

Susie Bright’s podcast

-Read a piece by her; my personal favorite is her long, nuanced, and, for some, lifechanging essay, Next Year In Jerusalem. Other good ones online are Women and the Myth of Consumerism, Dreaming of War, Lust Horizons, and Three Elegies for Susan Sontag, where Mom addresses her own mortality. There are more on the NYU website, and you can find the older, classic ones in her three books of essays, Beginning to See the Light, No More Nice Girls, or Don’t Think–Smile.

-Watch an episode of the Sopranos– which my mom called in The Nation “the richest and most compelling piece of television–no, of popular culture–that I’ve encountered in the past twenty years”–or just as good, of Mad Men, a show I’m sure she would have been obsessed with had she gotten to watch it. I’m always dying to know how Mom would react to Mad Men moments like these.

-Listen to a rock album–preferably something by Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground, Creedence, Dylan or Van Morrison. There are a few rock pieces online, too–one on Janis and an amazing one on Bowie, for instance.

-Write something about a topic you believe in–on your blog, in your diary, whatever. Because if anybody used writing as a tool for activism, it was my mother.

Happy Birthday Mom–you continue to endlessly influence me…and all of us.