# To My Daughter I didn't know how to say it, so I'm writing it down instead. Perhaps that's the coward's way — to hide behind words on a page, to let silence do what speech cannot. But you've always understood me better through stillness than sound. You've watched me more than you've listened. So let me try. You were born on a Tuesday in November, and I remember the nurse placing you in my arms like she was handing me the whole world, wrapped in a hospital blanket that smelled of bleach and new beginnings. Your eyes — they were so impossibly dark, looking at me as though you already knew something I didn't. I thought then that I would be strong for you, that I would know all the answers, that my love would be enough to protect you from every sharp edge this life contains. I was wrong about almost everything. The truth is, I've spent your whole life trying to become the mother I thought you deserved, and in doing so, I've sometimes forgotten to be the mother you actually had. Do you remember that winter when you were seven and you asked me why the trees lost their leaves? I gave you a biology lesson instead of poetry. I measured you with reason when what you wanted was wonder. What you wanted was for me to sit beside you and say, I don't know, but isn't it beautiful? I've apologized to you so many times in my head that the words have worn smooth like river stones. I've rehearsed them a thousand different ways, waiting for the right moment that never came. And then I realized — there is no right moment. There is only now, and the courage to finally speak what should have been said long ago. You are enough. Not because of anything you've accomplished, though you've done remarkable things. Not because you've become what I wanted you to become, because you've become something far better — yourself, fully and courageously. You are enough simply because you are. Because you were born on that Tuesday in November, and the world shifted, and it has never been the same. I see the ways you carry my disappointments like they are stones in your pockets. I see how you try to be smaller so you don't have to explain your largeness. I see how you apologize for taking up space, for wanting things, for being uncertain. And I want to tell you — these things you think are failures, they're not. They're the most human parts of you. They're the evidence that you're alive and real and searching, just as we all are. I'm sorry for every time I asked you to be braver than you felt. I'm sorry for every time I mistook your gentleness for weakness, your thoughtfulness for hesitation, your caution for fear. I'm sorry for the ways I've measured your life against my own and found it wanting, when really, I was just looking in the mirror and hating what I saw. What I want you to know — what I need you to know — is this: You don't have to be happy all the time. You don't have to be strong when you're falling apart. You don't have to earn your place at the table or apologize for being hungry. You don't have to choose between being kind and being fierce. You can be both. You can be all of it — the contradiction, the confusion, the yearning, the doubt — and still be worthy of love. Still be worthy of your own love, which is the only love that truly matters. I wish I could go back and tell you this when you were smaller. I wish I could gather all those versions of you — the frightened one, the angry one, the lonely one — and hold them all at once and say, It's going to be okay. Not because everything will work out the way you imagined it would, but because you are stronger than the breaking, more resilient than the falling, more whole than any of the scattered pieces suggest. Your life doesn't have to look like mine. It doesn't have to look like anyone else's. The only life that will ever fit you is your own — messy and uncertain and gloriously, impossibly yours. I'm learning, very late, that love isn't about making someone into what you want them to be. It's about bearing witness to who they are, in all their becoming. It's about standing beside them in the dark and not letting go. It's about being proud of them not for what they've achieved, but for the sheer fact of their existence, their persistence, their willingness to keep showing up to their own lives. I'm proud of you. I'm so very proud of you. And I'm sorry it took me this long to say it.

June 14, 2020 3 min read By Sushanta Paul

I don't love you, daughter—don't expect me to. I am only your passage to this Earth. Come with no illusions. I will be your first shelter, the womb that held you safe.

Expect no miracles from me. I am an ordinary woman. Millions before me have given birth, and millions will after. You are not singular, not unique. There are countless daughters in this world, each someone's child. Don't expect me to carry all your burdens, to erase your stumbles, to be forever at your side.

Call me mother, but know this: I am not flawless, never will be. I am no superhero, no sorceress, no magician. I am only a woman willing to give her body to life. Don't expect, daughter, that I will always stand strong and speak only truth. I will fail you in this, believe me. I will lie to you when I am gravely ill. I will weep when pain wrings me dry. There will be days you see me hollowed by suffering, my eyes dark as wounds.

I am imperfect—accept this now. I will not always give you the counsel you need, for you will walk paths I cannot know, feel what I have never felt. Sometimes I will be blind and deaf to your anguish, because you, too, will hide from me.

If you imagine I am some miraculous cook—I am not. There will be cakes burnt black, curries drowning in salt. Don't fool yourself that you have the most beautiful mother. You will see me on Saturday mornings with hair tangled like brambles, eyebrows wild, eyes swollen, my face broken out. And one day, grey threading through it all.

Don't believe, daughter, that my shoulders are Herculean. Mine buckle under life's weight. I can tumble, as anyone can, into the mire of failure and sorrow. My knees will give way; pain has that power over me.

Don't imagine my heart is a paradise. It holds thorns too, harsh words, unlovely deeds. I am a woman, a daughter—not God. I will be your adult, yes, but sometimes you'll catch me clutching my old worn teddy bear. The child in me will never leave. Don't be startled if you see me climb onto your father's back and we play at being horse and rider. My love for him knows no bounds—it needs its madness, its fever of youth.

I don't love you, daughter. But I promise you this: I will let you fall into the mud and learn to rise on your own two feet. I will not carry you through your first steps—you have it in you. I am not the brilliant mind you imagine, daughter. The day will come when you ask yourself why you ever held me in such awe. The sooner you see clearly, the freer you will be.

# Who Am I?

Your future mother. An ordinary woman brimming with enormous dreams. I carry many wounds in my soul, and yes, I have wounded others too. I am fighting for my earthly and spiritual survival. I have walked along steep cliffs, and the stones have left their marks on my skin. Life has taught me to fall to my knees and forgive, to hold my silence when a volcano of words erupts within me.

In short, honestly and frankly—I’m not perfect, daughter. That’s why I don’t love you. I just… I adore you. Everything I have learned, I will give to you as a gift. I’m not perfect, daughter, I’m not. I don’t love you, understand. Pure and simple, humanly naive and godlike, I adore you!

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