An AP Headline, a Life Vision, and My Mother’s Letter to Paul Mellon
In this season of Light, the Associated Press reported that MacKenzie Scott donated $7.1 billion to nonprofits in 2025, describing a scale of giving that’s hard to even picture until you start translating it into lived outcomes—clinics kept open, scholarships funded, shelters stabilized, research advanced.
I read that and thought: this is what it looks like when influence goes private—and is used as stewardship.
And then I thought of my mother, Charlotte.
Charlotte is deceased now. But one of the most formative acts of my life still bears her fingerprints: she wrote a letter to philanthropist Paul Mellon about funding my life vision.
That is where my vocabulary for this moment began.
QO: the Intelligence Nobody Teaches (and My Mother Named It)
We all know the shorthand for IQ and EQ.
My mother Charlotte gave me another two letters—letters that behave like an intelligence of their own: QO — Quantum Opportunities.
QO is the capacity to recognize the hinge-moments: the times when a life can change direction, not by noise or luck, but by alignment—vision, timing, and stewardship meeting in the same doorway.
And QO includes something else that matters in 2025: the ability to understand that the most consequential decisions aren’t always made in public.
Sometimes they’re made quietly—by a philanthropist deciding what to fund, by a board deciding what to prioritize, by a leader deciding what kind of institution they will become.
Why My Mother’s Letter Matters More to Me Now than Ever
Charlotte was a middle school art teacher, but she had the personality of a chaplain—steady, perceptive, tender without being soft, brave without being theatrical.
She understood “seeing.” That was her craft: looking again, noticing what others miss, refusing to force the lines. She taught that with palette and canvas, but she also lived it in how she treated people.
So when she wrote to Paul Mellon, she wasn’t “trying to network.”
She was practicing QO.
She was doing what people rarely do with a real vision: treating it seriously enough to place it before serious stewardship.
That letter—whether it was answered or not—taught me a permanent lesson:
When the vision is worthy, you don’t protect it by hiding it.
You protect it by presenting it with integrity to someone who can steward it.
The “AP Angle”: Giving is Private Influence with Public Consequences
AP’s story is, in one sense, simple: a person with resources chose to give them away at a historic scale.
But beneath the simplicity is the deeper point: Private decisions can create public futures.
That’s true in philanthropy. It’s true in finance. It’s true in healthcare.
And it’s especially true for the work that sits behind My28days: the systems that shape women’s health across the lifespan are built (and repaired) by choices—funding choices, research choices, institutional choices.
So, when I see a headline about billions quietly deployed through private giving, I read it as a modern parable: Influence doesn’t need a stage. It needs a conscience.
My Father’s WWII Service: The Spine Behind My Mother’s Tenderness
My father’s World War II service has always kept me honest about the stakes.
War has a way of burning away pretense. It teaches duty, discipline, clarity, and the sober truth that not all power is good and not all wins are worth the cost.
So when I hold these two influences together—my father’s WWII spine and my mother Charlotte’s chaplain-heart—I get the framework that still governs my life vision:
- Tell the truth.
- Do the next right thing.
- Build what lasts.
- Use influence to protect the vulnerable—never to feed appetite.
That’s QO in lived form.
The Paul Mellon Ending…
It would be easy to define the “happy ending” as whether money arrived.
But the real happy ending – Charlotte’s ending – was deeper:
That I could become the kind of person who might be trusted with opportunity.
So I’ll say it plainly:
My mother, Charlotte, wrote to Paul Mellon because she believed a vision should be stewarded, not merely admired.
And AP’s headline reminds me that, even now, private influence can be used the same way – quietly, decisively, for enduring good.
That’s Quantum Opportunities.
Not hype. Not hustle.
A life vision met by stewardship.
Read the AP article:
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