Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001), writer and aviator, was born on this day in Englewood, New Jersey. Her father served as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico; her mother was a successful poet.

“For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair,” she once said.

She married Charles Lindbergh in 1929, just two years after his solo transatlantic flight. In 1930, she became the first U.S. woman licensed as a glider pilot and flew alongside her husband as co-pilot and navigator.

“Love is a force. It is not a result; it is a cause. It is not a product; it produces,” she wrote. “It is a power, like money or steam or electricity.”

Her flight from Canada to China over the Arctic inspired her first book, North to the Orient (1935). Through her diaries and letters, later published in Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead, she shared the heartbreak of her son’s tragic kidnapping and death.

“I must write it all out, at any cost,” she said. “Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.”

A courageous pioneer, she authored 13 books. Her most beloved, Gift from the Sea (1956), remains a quiet classic—an inspirational meditation on love, happiness, and solitude.

“If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.” Her words still ripple like waves, reminding us to slow down, to listen, and to wait—open as the shore—for the gifts life brings.