Happy 15th Birthday!
I can’t believe you are now well ensconced in adolescence. It seems like only yesterday you were this tiny, adorable little bundle of love and light. Today, you are taller than me but still radiate love and light wherever you go. It is now wrapped in sarcasm and edginess...but that is how it should be also.
I am so proud of the person you are. I am so in awe of who and how you are in this world. The confidence you have about yourself. The way that you think about yourself and others. Your dedication and compassion to your friends and family.
You and your brother are the best things I have ever done or will do. You my beautiful daughter are the best legacy I can possibly give this world.
Thank you for loving me and trusting me. I know I try your patience often, but you never push me far away from you. Which I think means that you value me and my opinions on some level that is inured to the ever changing teenage landscape. I pray that this remains a truth always in our relationship.
I look at you at 15 in awe. You are so much wiser than I at this age. So much more confident, yet at the same time, just as vulnerable. My job as your mother not an easy task, I am never sure if I am letting go or holding on too much. I just keep trying and being willing to be wrong over and over again.
Today, I want you to have the best day. I want to be there with you, for you. I want you to know how very much I love you. How much I admire who you are. I want you to know that I love our life together and while I know it is going to change a lot in the next few years, I want you to know that what I want most of all for you is that you know, with every part of you, how much I love you, am here for you and willing to support you in anyway that I can, without stifling or crippling you. I do not want to tether you to me, but I also will never let you go completely.
You have always had your own ideas and I have done my best to support those ideas and let you soar and fly and be your own person. I hope you feel that. My biggest and best wish for you is that you have your own back always, that you never settle for anything less than you deserve, that you see the most amazingly beautiful girl that I see everyday and that you are humble enough to see the places you need work. Not because there is anything innately wrong with you, but because you too are human and like the rest of us, will need work because that is what our lives are about. Growing toward the hard points and rounding them out. Flinging the fears and insecurities out in front of us and pushing ourselves to do better, be better, evolve into our highest and most loving version of ourselves.
I may not always be the best example. But know that I have gotten up every day since you were born, loving you, caring for you, and endeavoring to be a good example of a human being, a mother, a friend, and a woman. I have failed at all of those a lot. But I will never stop trying, I owe us both the effort expended.
I love you with all that I am and am so proud that you, not anyone else, are my daughter. May your day be filled with fun, love and sunshine, just like you.
xoxoxoxo
Mom
