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Love Letter to My Daughter — Before She Starts Hating Me
They say it’s inevitable in the teen years.
You just turned 11. I’ve heard 12 is when you’ll start to push me away. The words, “I hate you” will pass through your lips more than once, especially when I’m doing my job correctly. Your tone may sharpen along with a snarky attitude and contempt for my very existence. I’m bracing myself and hanging onto the last year of little girlness before it’s all about make-up and friends and being cool. I’d like to think we’ll be the exception to the tween cliche, but already you’re hiding in the closet on the phone with your friends and applying mascara before school. You don’t have a real phone, but you do have wifi, and you’ve figured out how to do a group video chat. I’m impressed, actually, and a little relieved that you have this social outlet with peers you have not seen IRL since the pandemic began.
Raising you has triggered all my own childhood wounds. I’m learning how not to project my own fears, expectations and desires onto you. I know I need to stand back and allow you to grow up. It’s so hard.
When I learned I was having a girl, sitting in the doctor’s office at 19 weeks pregnant, my first response was abject terror. What if you didn’t like me? All my insecurities rushed to the surface. Then, only a few seconds later…
