My Daughter is The Me I Never Got to Be

I get to re-parent myself through my daughter, and that is the most incredible gift

me and my littlest when she was littler

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Having one girl and one boy was always my dream as a little girl. Yes, I thought often about being a mother when I was a small child. I can now look back and say it was probably because I never had the kind of mother that all my friends had, or like the ones in the movies where they hugged you and sat with you while you spoke.

So I think I sort of started to create one in my dreams.

But I never played ‘bride’ with the bedsheet veil like the other girls, or designed the engagement ring. And I’ve never owned a scrapbook. I wanted to be married, sure, but the wedding or being a bride was never a fantasy.

Instead, I stuffed my shirts with throw pillows and rocked my Cabbage Patch Kid to sleep and started a babysitting business at the age of 12 where I sat for literal babies.

And in those mother fantasies, I always had one boy and one girl. I, myself, was a daughter that came before a brother, so it’s maybe just because that’s all I knew. But it was never a doubt in my mind that I would be a mother in that way.

Of course now I recognize the absurdity and ignorance in that sort of guarantee, but we all learn things the older we get. Or at least that’s the hope.

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At one point I had things called parents. I just don’t refer to them as my parents anymore because they are no longer those people to me.

They just never wanted to have me.

And then once they got to know me, they really didn’t want me.

I watched them adore and love and cater to the brother, while I was just the female version to yell at, use, blame and shame. I didn’t have a sister to compare my treatment to, and I was pretty good at math, so —

One plus one equals daughters are bad.

Daughters have to watch their weight, while sons get Snickers bars and Pepsis from the 7–11.

Daughters have to go for runs and stadium step drills for both weight control and punishment, while sons get to watch Captain Planet.

Daughters come with boyfriends that need to be scared and threatened, while sons never give a father a reason to yell.

Daughters ask too many questions about rules and how the world works, while sons float aimlessly with the unwavering and never ending guidance of their parents.

Daughters are a nuisance and too much work.

Daughters are bad.

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When my husband and I began to talk about starting a family, we got pregnant very quickly with our son. And my goodness, was he easy. The labor, however, was not. I had to be hastily induced to birth a premature baby naturally. But once I was healed, and he was out… as long as that child was fed and had a matchbox car in his hand, life was simple.

So they were right! Sons ARE easy!!

I stopped wanting another kid because he was already past the 2 year age gap, and I’d found my waist again.

But after one night of some stupidly simple convincing on the couch and a lot of rum, our second child started to grow inside of me.

No matter how much I had dreamed of having one boy and one girl when I was little, I had loved being a boy mom so much that I convinced myself that I would be having another.

Plus, everyone kept talking about how easy boys are. How boys always love their mamas. How boys don’t leave like the girls do. How difficult girls are to raise.

My own mother would frequently tell me these things herself.

And I had no evidence or reason to think otherwise.

Then it’s time for the 20 week ultrasound and we find out this life inside me is a girl.

I cried the happiest of tears and let out a squeal at a decibel I’d never heard before. It was one of the happiest moments of my life, sitting on that sterile table covered in tissue paper with a belly covered in cold jelly.

Turns out I still really did want my childhood dream. I had just let people who never knew me at all make me think something different.

I raised my daughter with them still in my life until she was 9 years old. And up until that year, I still had their filter over my eyes when we were all together. I always knew she was special and made of stardust and no one was like her on the planet, but I still let their thoughts infiltrate my own.

They were never kind to my daughter. They tolerated her like they tolerated me. They called her too much and difficult repeatedly. They refused to be with her without their preferred distraction or special timing, while heralding my son as the best one.

I’m ashamed I let them treat her even a fraction of the terrible way they treated me. They dismissed her constantly and gave my son more love and tenderness, saving their jabs and pokes for her. He was easy because he was quiet and more introverted. She was a handful because she talked more and asked questions about the world.

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My daughter had to write a paper in school last year about a life changing moment in her life. She chose to write about the time when she was 4 and had locked herself in the bathroom by accident and they forgot about her for hours. She had been banging the door and window and crying for help, and they were out with my son and their friends sipping a cocktail on the back deck.

When the man I used to call my father came in to use the restroom 2 hours later and found her little red face on the floor, he laughed at her. He laughed at my child for having done such a silly thing, and then paraded her around the yard to announce to his guests the funny thing that had just happened.

My little girl never felt like she could tell me her full truth — instead of going along with theirs — about that moment until last year when she wrote that paper and those people were finally out of our lives.

I have shame around that too. I wish I knew. I wish I was there. Her 4 year old magic was strong enough that anyone with a beating heart would have noticed the air felt different without her next to them.

I wish so many things.

Mostly I wish she didn’t have to go through enough fear and fright without me that day to amount to something that altered her life so immensely.

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For years I let those used-to-be parents and never-will-be-again grandparents dictate and alter so many of my dreams. My hopes. My happiness. My daughter.

I have the best daughter I could have ever dreamed now, thanks mostly to the fact that I am not in a relationship with the people who raised me.

And I have my amazing son, who is everything I could have ever imagined him to be, and more. My daughter is the Me I never got to be, but so much better. She gets to be raised in a way that lets her sparkle keep sparkling. And I get to re-parent myself through her, and that is the most incredible gift.

Being raised by people who choose to never get to know you is hard. It’s like auditioning for the role of ‘loved’ every single day and never getting the role.

The best thing we can do for our children is raise them to keep walking towards themselves. And hold their hand as they take that path until they no longer need us to stand beside them.

I can tell you right now with the hardest of evidence, that if you do that, they will always want to come back for a little hand squeeze. They will choose to be with you after the time comes when they do not have to anymore. Because they know you have always loved and seen them, and they never had to prove anything to you.

But if you don’t — if you try to shape them the way you want them and don’t listen to them and treat them as something you have to do instead of get to do — that child will one day walk away from you.

Because she will one day realize that she can.