It’s UAE Mother’s Day next Monday, 21st March, and to mark what we consider a significant celebration we’ve been chatting to some of Abu Dhabi’s most inspirational women.

We had a coffee morning at the Beach Rotana Hotel - who we thank for donating a beautiful bay view suite for the occasion - and gathered HE Mrs Sarah Suhail of the Ewa’a Shelters for Women & Children: Dr Chandrakumari Shetty, group medical director at NMC Speciality Hospital: Ms Salwa Zeidan, owner of the gallery that bears the same name here in Abu Dhabi: and Dr Leila Al Husseini, Salwa’s sister and a prominent art therapist.

In the event we found it a truly humbling experience to be sitting in a room with these beautiful, accomplished women. It’s an experience we hope to repeat - the conversation was truly enlightening, a worthy marker for the importance of Mother’s Day.

A common thread emerged; for each of us there was a particular individual who had changed the way we saw the world. For some it was a public figure; for others in the group it was someone from our own family, or even people they had met on the street. But we all found ourselves speaking of people who had done or said something to alter the course of our lives.

It made us think of how the people we meet every day impact on us - and also how each of the women sitting in that room was responsible for affecting other women’s lives in the community every day.

We left the Beach Rotana feeling elated and motivated to somehow have the same impact on others that each of these women had had on us.