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A Letter to My Daughters

Just in case you ever foolishly forget, I am never not thinking about you.

—Virginia Woolf

To my girls,

I’m watching you. I’m watching you love and learn and lean into your own brazen ways. I’m watching what makes you laugh and what makes you cry. I’m watching how you move and how you groove. I’m watching you sleep and watching you play. I’m watching.

There will be days, especially in the years ahead, when it might feel like I don’t see you at all, like I’m not reading your signals, like we’re speaking two different languages. I’m going to mess up. I’m going to make assumptions when I should be listening. I’m going to lose my patience when I should breathe. I’m going to want things for you that you don’t want for yourself. We, too, will endure and enjoy the mysterious complexities of every mother/daughter relationship that has come before us. But no matter what, I’ll be watching.

I will be paying attention, witnessing, when you are trying to make new friends. When nightmares are coming for you. When your body is changing. When you are out and about with boys. I will be paying attention when you are learning to drive a car. When you are making decisions about your grown-up life. I will be paying attention by watching, praying, asking, holding, hoping, believing, and setting up your highly trained father on surveillance stakeouts. (Just kidding about that last part . . . –ish.)

Most of all, I will hold space for your soul, a watchman for the Created You, a custodian for your voice . . . because I believe you are already brazen babes. You are unconditionally complete in every way, and you are so beautifully becoming too. Both of you in your own ways. I get glimpses of your soul, Lane, when you leave notes for me like “You are byootfl” and “God job Mommy” and “Be brav. God keps us saf,” when I see how truly prolific and generous you are with your ideas and creations, and when I see you sitting up tall on a horse. And I get glimpses of your soul, Elle, when you sidle up to me and say, “Hi, Mommy Delicious” and when you call Daddy every morning after he leaves for work and you hug the phone while you talk to him and when—at not even two years old—you started jumping off the diving board like it was your job.

Hopefully I will help you confront the not-worth-your-time voices—the toxic ones in our heads, the mean girls, the preying boys, the curtailers and the controllers and those who would rather you keep it down, please, if you don’t mind.

Hopefully, I will show you—with my actions more than words—what it means to live from God’s wild love and to return to him again and again, to find him in the cool of the morning and the twilight of the evening, and to allow myself to be found by him too. Hopefully I will teach you how to scout beauty, to be filled up and inspired, and to let the loveliness of God himself nourish you.

I want the courage to mother you brazenly—to mother you from a place deeper than shame and fear. I want you to grow up never questioning your beauty, your wonder. I want you to be surrounded by women who stoke—instead of tame—your wild. “The world needs more of you, Lane and Elle, not less of you,” they will say. A big part of your journey will be believing them.

Make a habit out of surrounding yourself with women who have felt the freedom to become, women who are embracing their wounds and their wonder, women who are journeying. Make a habit out of surrounding yourself with women who need you to be bigger, not smaller. And make a habit out of surrounding yourself with women who are available to love you.

These are the brazen ladies. They will save you. You will save each other. You will say to each other, over and over:

“You are that girl.”

“No, you are.”

Reflection & Expression

Write a letter to someone you love, encouraging them to be brazen.

For Your Brazen Board

If it’s not there already, add the word brazen.