This is Who You Are. Never Forget: A Letter to my Daughter
Author’s note:
Imagine my delight when my daughter responded to the question of what she might like to have for a holiday gift with: “Nothing tangible, but please write me a letter about my origins and who I am, so that I never forget. This year has been hard. I almost forgot. I need to remember.”
For several weeks, I ruminated on that request. This letter is the result. It occurs to me that, perhaps, more young women need to hear the same. With the gracious permission of my beautiful daughter, I share this with you.
Much of this is who you are too. Never forget.
You are stardust. You are magic. You are serendipity.
You are the best parts of the love your dad and I share distilled into human form.
You are the loud echos of a thousand grandmothers cheering.
You are a lit torch, burning in the darkness, handed down through generations like an Olympic flame that’s been run hard in each lifetime and then was ignited again in the first cry of your breath.
You are a builder and keeper of stories, the curator of the next chapter of our family history. You are the living incarnation of all that has gone before, Miller, Parker, Conover, Sutherland, and branches back to the beginning of our people, on several continents.
You are Europe and you are Ancient New World. You are both conqueror and conquered; colonizer and colonized.
You are knit together with music and stories, painted with every colour of the rainbow and sparkling with the light of sun and moon in your eyes.
Your feet dance to a drumbeat that is ancient and flows in your blood, the song of your life woven up and out and through the rhythm laid down across the ages and reinterpreted for this lifetime in your voice and style. When I close my eyes and listen there is the sound of a fire crackling and brown feet in leather moccasins tattooing the earth overlaid by the aching sweetness of a highland fiddle and Celtic women singing.
In you, there is the blend of old and new, the clash and war of cultures, the compromises made to survive, the strength and determination of your equal roots in Norman Conquest of England, the Viking conquests of northern Scotland, and the deep history of the Huron people along the very stretch of lake and river we now call home.
You are not a lone girl, born into a fixed time, trying to get on her feet and forge a path in this one sliver of history. No, my daughter, you are the next in a long line of matriarchs from warrior tribes who have overcome battles and oceans, wilderness and privation, cold, hunger, fear, insecurity, struggle, and patriarchy.
You have a rich history of stories to bear you forward and give you courage to face whatever comes in your lifetime; know that the women of our line have borne it all, there is nothing new under this sun, so you are never alone in the fight.
You come from long, deep lines of women with ties to the earth and the old goddesses that rule it still. And from a shorter line of women who are true believers in the new religion. There is depth and benefit to be drawn from both and we all stand together, in you, for you, through you.
You are born into a heritage of warrior women who are not afraid of the battle or the cost. We fight for the weak, for the right, for freedom for ourselves and others. We fight for our children, and for the legacy of our mothers and their grandmothers. We fight for the world that created us and for the people who live upon her. We fight for our beliefs and our heritage as well as our future. We are not afraid to wade into the fray, spattered in blood if necessary, and show up for our tribes, our people, our world.
We live lives of courage.
You are born into a line of builder women, who invest deeply, and have for generations, in family, community, education, health, safety, and security for those we love and those we have not met yet. The women of our line have always been caretakers of the earth and each other, fearless creators and founders. Women in our line do not wait for something to come to them, instead, we build the thing with our own hands, schools, community groups, businesses, families, opportunities for ourselves and others.
You are born into a line of artists and craftsmen. We have a deep heritage of creative genius in our family and you are lucky to have the best of all of that filtered into the essence of you. You carry a legacy of the profoundly practical skills of life building alongside the equally essential ability to embroider upon a life in such a way that beauty is created for everyone. This gifting has been apparent since before you could walk and it is one of the treasures that you bring to the world.
You are free.
One of the things I’ve come to recognize and appreciate in my own life over the past couple of decades is the miracle of being born a free woman in the world. There are not many of us who exist unconstrained by government, society, the patriarchy, family structure, deep woundings, either personal or epigenetic, are economically independent, and equipped with the skill set necessary to live a free life, on our own terms. I can’t see any reason that this freedom has been extended to us except for the luck of the draw. Being born in the right place, at the right time, to a family that has the skills and the heritage to pass down.
You are free from expectations. You enjoy a freedom of movement. You have vast freedom of choice and sovereignty over your own body and your direction. You may choose any path, any work, any place, any person that pleases you. You are free to choose what you will build with the heritage and the skills that have been handed to you and built into you. Never forget, no matter what it feels like now, or later, that you are a free human.
You are loved.
You were loved and wanted before you were conceived. You have been loved and treasured every day of your life. In fact, there is a giant web of love woven all around you and beneath you that will hold together the pieces of your life and provide a place of safety and belonging to wrap yourself in on the dark nights of the soul and to bounce around on like a trampoline as you learn to fly.
There is no way to describe mother love to people who are not yet parents, but you have some concept of it as the most powerful force in the universe, because it is the actual force of creation. My love for you is like that.
And there is the combined love of both of your grandmothers, their four grandmothers, their eight grandmothers, and all of the mothers before them. The deep love of women for their children providing the web of roots that anchor your life to the ether of the universe. Draw on that love like the sap of a tree to give you the strength you need to grow strong, put out leaves, and establish your place in the world.
Just like the mother trees in a forest, we are all around you, sending you nourishment, strength, and all the energy we have collectively stored through the secret underground network of mycelium that connects us to you, and you to us. Because we love you.
The world brought you forth from herself.
I don’t know what god is, but as nearly as I can figure it, she is the earth.
Everything we see before us, everything that we live in and around and with, from the people around us to the plastics in the store was here millions of years ago. The component parts of every single thing was here when life first emerged 3.5 million years ago.
For reasons that we cannot see or explain, this planet has spontaneously generated buildings and cars, through people that she created for purposes beyond our understanding. The computer you’re reading this on was here. The satellite orbiting the earth that connects you and I across continents was here, in its elements, before the first bacteria found itself moving in the water.
You were here in the earth at the beginning. So was I. We feel new in this place, but we are not. We are older than time and part of the life force herself. That is another miracle to me, and a point of connection with all that is around us.
The entire history of the world conspired in the creation of you. That’s why you’re magic.
My wish for you as you end what I know has been the hardest year of your life thus far, is a return to and a deep rooting in the legacy of who you are and what you might become moving forward.
I wish you the peace of deep knowing.
I wish you the joy of celebration in yourself.
I wish you clarity of purpose and life path.
I wish you love like an ocean, in every form.
I wish you courage to face whatever comes and to forge paths through thick dark places where there is no light to see what’s next.
I wish you contentment with what is and patience as you build forward.
I wish you connection, to yourself, to your tribe, to your history, to your future.
