'A Grateful Heart': LA Mother's Day Shoutout For Carí Jackson

LOS ANGELES, CA — Carí Jackson Lewis recalls how hard her mother worked raising her and her twin sister all on her own in New York City.

"You work, and you never give up" is what her mother, Lois B. Jackson, instilled in her, Carí Jackson said. "If you've tried your best, that means you've given it everything you've got. And that's all anyone can ever expect."

Carí Jackson — a married mother of three and an estate lawyer who launched a philanthropic consulting firm in Los Angeles — has done exactly that, according to her twin sister, Carla Jackson, who recently responded to a Patch Mother's Day callout.

Lois B. Jackson worked as a special education teacher in New York for 40 years.

"Let me be clear, there are people who should have statues," Carla Jackson told Patch. "She said, 'Everybody can learn.' She came from a poor family from the South. She knew education was the way to make it and made sure that everybody got it."

Lois B. Jackson's birthday, May 9, will fall on Mother's Day this year. Lois and the family will grill and celebrate on Zoom with other family members who live farther away, Carí Jackson said.

"She's a firecracker. She'll throw dirt on all of us," Carí Jackson Lewis said. "She teaches aerobics, volunteers at our church and at thrift stores. She is a very very, very special person." Her mother's values around work ethic and education struck a deep chord within her.

"She made it very clear in our family that education is the key," Carí Jackson Lewis said. "To further this, I found that the law was the power equalizer.

"For people who may or may not have the resources or the contacts or the background or the network, it's the law that allows everyone to come to court on a more equal level to get justice," she added. "I wanted to be able to support folks like my mother ... and also just to make sure that folks are taken care of and treated equally and fairly."

Carí Jackson Lewis has moved all over the globe for her job as an estate planning lawyer, which always had a charitable component — from New York City to Australia to the United Kingdom and now California. But she hasn't always worked full time. When her children were young, Jackson said she and her husband made a decision for her to step back from her work to raise her kids.

"I just wanted to be the person with the boots on the ground with the kids," she said. "It's a struggle to be a New York lawyer in Australia. ... But certainly, I think trying to balance a career with the family can be challenging."

Lewis's children are (mostly) grown now — they are 27, 22 and 20 — and she's back to helping families through philanthropic consulting, all while continuing to be there for her kids, who are currently staying with her in her home in Agoura Hills. One of her children even followed in her footsteps and is attending Yale Law School.

"I have been called a helicopter mom," Lewis joked. "I feel that we were able to be there for our children when they needed us and probably when they didn't need us."

Carla, with whom Carí always shared a deep connection, moved to Los Angeles in 2018 after learning that Carí was developing issues with one eye. Her condition worsened, and she eventually lost sight in that eye, creating a significant obstacle to getting her work done.

"She still had to read. She still had to study," Carla said. "But she did it, and that's just who she is. It's not that she's just a nice person. She's a strong person."

For Carí, it was about gratitude and drawing strength from her family.

"To have a grateful heart and to live in abundance is the way you can move forward," Carí said. "It was a struggle and still is but I am so blessed to have the support of my family."

Most of all, Carí said she's grateful to have a sister like Carla to celebrate this Mother's Day.

"My sister is every other beat of my heart," Carí said. "The two of us together are like the night and the stars. I think about her, and I see her, and I hear her when I say things, and she's just my best friend in the world."