Ruth Pittard is an educator and activist in Black Mountain, North Carolina. In 2017, the Trump administration initiated a policy that separated children from their parents at the Mexico-United States border. Pittard took this tragic news as a call to action. She made a sign with the word “love” written in big bold letters and stood in the middle of town, smiling and waving to the cars driving by. “My whole life as I could remember the pivotal points was about choosing love over fear or over anger or over war,” Pittard said.

After facing a life-changing challenge in her young adulthood, Pittard’s relationship with the word “love” has always been at the center of her interactions with all who she encounters on her life’s journey. “There aren’t many people that I don’t love,” Pittard said. Enduring her own personal struggles has led Pittard to open her heart to herself and to others by embracing pain first. “It’s not pleasant to feel other people’s pain,” Pittard said. “But after several pivotal experiences, I got to see that I was offered a real opportunity to help. To really help.”