Since 1990, Glamour has honored more than 500 Women of the Year who have used their unique platforms to change perceptions, fight for power, and claim more space for women to show up authentically in the world. Many of these women have been moms. But this year—alongside the rest of our 2024 Women of the Year—we want to spotlight a different type of mom: A mom who doesn’t have a Pulitzer or an Academy Award. A mom who hasn’t met the President or been interviewed by Oprah. We want to celebrate a game-changing mom who the world doesn’t know about—yet.
Introducing Lynda Limón, Glamour’s 2024 ‘Your Mom of the Year.’
“She just gives fearless.”
This is DuPree Walker’s assessment of her mom Lynda Limón, 58, and one of the many reasons she knew Limón deserved to be Glamour’s first-ever ‘Your Mom of the Year.’ “She’s not afraid of challenges, of trying new things, of exploring life,” says Walker, 25. “She’s going to go out, she’s going to do it, she’s going to get what she wants. And it’s really inspiring to see.”
Limón, a family law attorney in Alaska, is also an accomplished endurance athlete, an advocate, and a mentor—certainly a woman with drive. Like every mom I know, she’s capital-B Busy. But it’s clear from speaking with her and her daughter, that she seems to have found a way to harness that busyness, toeing the line between burning out and bringing her best self to her work as both a professional and as a mother.
This was impossible for Walker and her sister, Lucero, 24, to miss. Every morning, they could count on the sight of Limón—already having meditated and been for a run—in the kitchen making steel-cut oats for the family before heading to work.
“Growing up with a mom who just seems to be able to do [everything] all the time, there’ll be moments when I’m really busy and I’m like, okay, I need to channel Lynda right now,” Walker says. “I don’t know how she does it.”
In addition to her job as a mom, Limón has a full caseload—which often feels like a personal crusade on behalf of her clients. “I do divorces, so [my clients] are navigating a very difficult time fighting over money and kids. It’s so much more than a case to me. It’s people’s lives and more importantly, people’s children,” Limón tells Glamour. She’s spent 30 years focusing her attention and energy on helping families in her community make it to the other side of these challenges. “I know I can help people with the work that I do so that they can continue to raise really healthy, successful children.”
Limón is also an active mentor in the legal community. “I feel strongly that I should pay it forward and be a role model for women and people of color,” says Limón, who participates in Color of Justice, an immersive program for high schoolers interested in law hosted by the Alaska Native Justice Center.
Limón has somehow also found the time to build an impressive resume as an endurance athlete, logging thousands of miles over dozens of races and fighting to support girls and women in sports. In 2007, she competed in The Gold Nugget, the largest women-only sprint triathlon in the country, which is dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls through sport, and was immediately hooked. (The exact number of races she’s competed in eludes Limón but she can recall: over a dozen sprint triathlons, seven Olympic distance triathlons, several half Ironmans, three full Ironmans—plus, half marathons, full marathons, and a 50-mile run in celebration of her 50th birthday in 2016.)
Where Limón discovered the ability to manipulate time in order to be able to accomplish all this remains a mystery.
All of this memorably shaped the way Limón’s daughters, who both graduated from Howard University, viewed their mom. “My mom does not give herself enough credit,” Walker says. “I feel like moms in general are really quick to criticize themselves about not being a good mom instead of hyping themselves up for how great of a mom they are.”
But it’s not all about the résumé, Walker says. Ultimately, she wanted to honor her mom for the sense of warmth and safety Limón created at home.
“Everything we needed, she knew what to do, she knew how to address it. I never felt judged by her,” Walker says. “She’s always known what we’re capable of and when we haven’t reached that potential. She’s always encouraging us to put our best foot forward, but also listening to us when we need a break.”
Ever since Walker can remember, Limón has been the person she’s gone to for advice, which is spot on. “When I was in seventh grade, she made me take all that crazy bronzer off my face, which I think I’ll forever be thankful for,” Walker says with a laugh before turning serious. “[She taught me] if you want something, you can go get it. If you put in the work, the goals that you want to achieve will come to fruition.”
By the time I’ve heard Walker hype up her mom, I’ve surmised that Limón is truly one of those could-be-annoying-if-they-weren’t-so-genuinely-inspiring people. The ones who say they’re going to do something and then actually do it, the ones for whom no obstacle appears unconquerable, and whose motto is a simple and definitive “because I can.”
She sounds like exactly the type of mom I hope I’m becoming. I’m dying to meet her.
Limón and I speak after she’s finished day six of a trial. Despite a long week in court, Limón appears radiant from her yellow-walled office where she spends the duration of our interview standing, often bouncing on the balls of her feet as she recounts a story, gesturing wildly for emphasis, and sometimes throwing her body towards the camera, leaning in as she makes her most passionate points.
Limón is a second-generation American whose grandparents immigrated from Mexico, first to Colorado before settling in Wyoming where she grew up. “I don't come from an educated family,” Limón says. “My grandfather had a second-grade education and spoke very broken English. My father went to trade school and worked in the newspaper business, but he couldn’t really sit down and help me with my homework.”
It was the parents of her then-boyfriend who opened her mind to the idea of getting a college degree. “His parents were very educated. When I graduated from high school they had quit their jobs and decided to go back to law school. I thought ‘Wow, this could be something,’” she says.
As an undergrad at the University of Wyoming, she would wait anxiously for each semester’s course catalog so she could mark everything she wanted to take—a list she’d inevitably be forced to whittle down from dozens to a manageable class load. “I just fell in love with getting educated,” Limón says. “I realized education is a door to confidence, especially as a woman.” Her degree would open doors for jobs, she knew, but “more than that, it was about the self-confidence of knowing who you are.”
In law school, Limón studied business law and clerked for the ACLU. She also met the man who would eventually become her husband, Herman Walker Jr., a superior court judge, in 1989. She never considered practicing family law until she found herself talking to a fellow lawyer shortly after she and Walker moved to Alaska in 1992 with “no jobs and no money.” Before she knew it, she’d been hired to clerk for two judges who presided over family law cases. Within three years, she’d opened her own family law practice.
“I always tell my clients, and I’ve never actually done this, but I really should take a before and after picture,” Limón says. “When they come in, they’re a mess. Their world is coming apart—their partner, their children, all the assets they’ve worked hard for. When you get them through the process and you see them on the other side, it’s like you actually see them for who they really are. It’s an honor.”
There are a handful of cases that stand out in her memory. There was the father she helped to win joint custody of his son; a year later, the son stood up as the best man wheh his dad remarried. And there was the woman with terminal cancer whose divorce Limón fought tirelessly to finalize so that she could ensure her client’s assets were left to her children before she passed. “I remember the last day that I went to see her with the last set of documents that needed to be signed. And I’ll never forget, she looked at me and she said, ‘Lynda, is that all?’ And I said, ‘That's all. We don't need to do anything else.’ And she said, ‘Can I go now?’”
A few days later, Limón was in the middle of a half marathon when her phone rang. “I knew it was [my client’s] daughter. I stopped, I picked up the phone, and her daughter said, ‘Lynda, she just [passed]. She died peacefully. She was happy.’”
Part of Limón’s mission as a mom is to pass the purposeful ambition she’s found in her work on to her children.
“My mom has an ability to connect with people and make them feel safe and comfortable,” says Walker, who’s studying law at Georgetown. “I think that is what she does with her clients. Just really makes them feel comfortable and heard. She leads with empathy.” The same applies to how Limón mothers, Walker says.
When I ask Limón why this is so important to her, she pauses before answering. “What other way is there to lead? Isn’t that the only answer?” she asks. “I mean, yeah. Really, why wouldn’t you?”
If Limón’s success as a mom could be boiled down to soundbites—actionable takeaways from ‘Your Mom of the Year’ that we might all benefit from—they would be: lean on community, prioritize self-care, and act with intention.
“[Parenting] absolutely takes a village,” says Limón. “I think if you accept that and you accept getting help, learning from other people, and sharing your children in a way with the village, your children will have more opportunities. Everything’s just a little bit bigger.”
She looked up to not only her parents and her husband’s parents, but older friends with kids as role models. “We were always quick to ask other parents [for advice] because what you generally find out is you're all going through the same thing,” she says. “What we realized is that taking the time for one-on-one time [with each kid] really gives children a good foundation.”
Also: therapy.
“Having a therapist helped shape [our] parenting because you get to sit down with somebody else and talk about the challenges you are having and how you deal with that,” Limón says. “It was never anything complex—just navigating the normal parenting of children is a lot. Especially when you add two people working full-time.”
In the pressure cooker of modern motherhood, it’s almost impossible to drown out the impossible expectations placed on moms to take care of everyone and, somehow, themselves. But Limón seems to have achieved something like true balance in her commitment to taking care of herself so that she can continue to take care of others in her family and community.
“[My mom taught me] there’s always time to make time for yourself,” Walker says. She definitely saw her mom struggle with burnout during busy seasons at work, but she always pulled out of it. “I’ve seen my mom countless times get really swamped with work, but always find some time for that running group or waking up in the morning and doing some swimming,” Walker says. “Lots of lawyers do not take care of themselves at all, but I know that’s not how I want to be if I want to live a happy life and be there one day for my own kids the way my mom was for me.”
For Limón, the choice is simple: neglect her physical and mental health and be more stressed as a result—or prioritize the routines that make her feel grounded so that she can show up as her most capable self for those who need her.
“Where else do you put the stress of your job? It has to go somewhere,” Limón says. “When I’m running or doing a triathlon, that stress goes out. If I’m doing a hike, I’m dumping all that mental stuff at the top of the mountain.”
Limón’s coping mechanism for the stress also ended up becoming one of her most important parenting lessons. With triathlons in particular, it was important to Limón that her girls saw her set a goal, train for it, and not quit. “I’m not the fastest, let me tell you. But I have passion, perseverance, and I’m not afraid to say ‘Okay, this is what it’s going to take to do an Ironman, here’s the training schedule, I can do that,’” she says. As soon as her girls were old enough, Limón brought them into the race with her, hanging back at their pace and letting them cross the finish line first.
“Girls that are raised with confidence, become confident women,” says Limón. That was vitally important for her and husband in raising women who are Black and Mexican. “When they walk in a room, the first thing people are going to see is the color of their skin and they are going to have to navigate that. In order to do that, you've got to be self-assured, confident, and strong in who you are,” Limón says. “Triathlons do that for you. You cross that finish line and you go, ‘Damn, you know what I just did?’ There's nothing like putting your mind to something and then going through the process of getting there and actually completing it.”
None of these lessons are a coincidence—intentionality is central to Limón’s identity as a mom.
“We really had an intention when we were raising our children,” she says, “and the intention was we are going to raise strong, confident, self-sufficient women. We wanted to provide the girls with as many tools as we could.”
It’s a challenge to write about motherhood in an environment when the idea of motherhood as both an occupation and an identity has become so politicized. And whether a woman is a mom (in any sense of the word) or a proud childless cat lady, it’s impossible not to recognize the impact that ideas about motherhood have on the relationship between women and their power and autonomy in the world.
What does it really mean to be a mother? Motherhood isn’t a legal status or a biological state or a political identity. It’s a mindset. Maybe to mother is simply to lead with empathy. To care for the needs of others. To make those you interact with feel safe, supported, and capable.
As a woman with children, Limón is intimately aware of how her actions, choices, and the way in which she carries herself shaped her kids but “you can also pass that on to other people by being a role model,” she stresses. “It’s this connection you have with other human beings.”
Recently, she was at the bank cashing a check when the woman at the counter realized Limón was a lawyer and shared that she was interested in law. Limón leaned into the conversation, sharing her card and an offer to chat anytime the young woman might want some advice.
That’s what it means to mother. “I think part of my identity as a mother is just caring about people,” Limón says. “But you don’t have to be a mother to do that.”
Before we go, Limón leaves me with one last piece of advice—from ‘Your Mom of the Year’ to a mom still finding her footing. “Embrace it all because it really does happen fast,” she says. “And it really is an honor to be able to raise other human beings.”
Macaela MacKenzie is a former Glamour editor who writes about women and power. She is the author of Money, Power, Respect: How Women In Sports Are Shaping the Future of Feminism.