Be Child

I’ve known my daughter for lifetimes. She came out as someone I’ve already loved, many times before. Meeting her was a revisiting. A returning. A remembering of souls.

Raising her and watching her shift and evolve has been the greatest treasure this life could have given me. I’ve never pushed her towards anything; she has always known who she is. I’ve merely walked beside her and given her permission to keep moving towards finding herself.

My girl has always reminded me to marvel at the hidden and overlooked things. When she was small, a walk in the woods was stopping to notice fallen petals, or broken stones shaped in a way that made her brain sparkle. She loved rocks and sticks and leaves. Collected them in her tiny hands and created games for the nature surrounding her. Rocks would be mountains. Sticks, bridges. Leaves would be hats or flags or blankets for ants.

She has always seen things other children don’t, and things adults have forgotten to look for.

She cries at movies when the hero’s heart is aching, but laughs when the dinosaur rips a face off a man.

She is full of mixture and spice. Of peace and tornadoes. Her mind is the most magical land one could ever get to visit.

She is not easy. She never has been and never will be. She is complex and booming and filled with words she must let go of immediately. She is alive and proving it at every turn.

The world is not built for girls like her, and I have always known it. It wasn’t built for me either, and it took me breaking away from the family that caged me to recognize myself within it. Loving her has made me grow bigger than I was permitted to grow. Raising her is raising myself. I am better because of her. I am me because I got to be with her in this life.

I have given her permission to become fully herself and in doing so, I have found pieces of me I was never shown. She taught me where to find them.

She listens to the people, places and things we didn’t think had a voice. She hears things people have stopped listening for. She is made of magic, and I’ve always known it.

She is smarter than I ever tried to be, than I ever thought I could be, and I learn from her daily.

I knew that when I gave her this name, she would have big things to say. She is here to keep changing things and make them better. To right the wrongs and speak for the silenced. To make more beautiful things. Art and music and cookies. She is here to teach and speak and create.

She is my child and my growing creation. An ever-changing prism of expanding curiosity.

She is Wander and Wonder. Allusion and Illusion. My never Idle Idol.

When you move about life today, stop, even for just a moment, and try to see something the way my girl does. Listen to someone like they have secrets. Let yourself learn something new.

Be kind. Be present. Be child.

I love you 💋