To My Daughter

I know that face!

There is no doubt you are mine. Your face is a mirror. A time machine to my youth. All the possibilities that awaited me. All the fear of the unknown, but willing to charge ahead through anything that dared get in my way. Big dreams. Love bursting from my heart wondering who I will share it with. Wondering, “Who will I become?”

We look so much alike, but you are so beautiful that it takes my breath away! I do not see that same beauty in myself. (Did my mother think the same of me?)

When I gazed upon your tiny newborn face, I dreamed of all the things that you would become, and how you might look as you grew into a young woman. How you have already changed my world, like a wave crashing over me and washing my soul. I cannot wait to see how the ripples of your arrival will change the world.

My imagination was never capable to even begin to dream up the beauty that is you. Kindness and strength flow from your soul. I hope you are able to see it before time quickly passes you by.

So for the season of your birth, I gift you – you! Know who you are beyond the mirror. I give to you the ocean of courage from your great grandmothers that (literally) carried them forward towards uncertainty and adventure. I give to you the winds of knowledge from your  grandmothers, to know when a gentle breeze or a hurricane-force gale is necessary to move life. And from me, I give to you the wildfire that was my heart in my youth. Blaze forward in your life unstoppable, and rise from the ashes to make it yours. ❤️