Happy Birthday, Daughter

In the moment before my daughter's full birth, after her head was delivered, and just before the next contraction to push out the rest of her, my doctor played a mean trick on me and said: "In your heart of hearts, do you want a boy or a girl?" "A girl" was my immediate response. And then she was born and my deepest dream, that I didn't know I had until that moment, came true. I'm sure I would have fallen equally in love with a boy should he have been born but it was Kelly that gifted my life. I have loved being her mother, not just the mother of a daughter although that zings through my body in its importance, but this daughter. Kelly Marie.

Her birthday is tomorrow and I've been in this funky kind of mood- being alone, missing John, longing for family together time and realizing the year is ending and it's time to take stock of my life. So I've been doing some of that. And Kelly was talking to me about her struggles over what the next step should be in her life. She's a good communicator that way, and lives so on purpose. I love that about her. And it seemed familiar. It made me realize that we cover some of the same ground again and again as we age, not in circles but more like a spiral ascending.

We follow our dreams, our spirits urging. We live our lives fully and with gratitude and then we stop every once in a while and take our inventory. How am I doing? Have I slipped into unhealthy ways of being? Am I doing what I need to do to grow? Have I grown bigger than my environment can hold and I need to find another? Or do I need to expand to fill the bigger environment that I've built? Am I being of service, giving of myself in ways that excite me as well as help others? What's the next way to do that?

Questions of a 34 year old daughter, a 64 year old me and, in our family, a 94 year old father. Questions that honor our responsibility to be true to ourselves and to love one another. I'm glad to be sharing this search with Kelly. She makes my heart happy. I hope for her a happy heart, too.

My Biggest Lesson

Yesterday was my daughter's birthday and it got me thinking about the wonders of raising her. I've always liked my daughter and her friends, still do. I'm very fortunate to have a great relationship with her, her husband and her 2 children. I do count my blessings daily for that!

Also makes me realize, though, how much work I (we) have put into this relationship so that it keeps growing, changing, being satisfying. We hit a snag at one point. All right, a gigantic hurdle that I actually feared I wouldn't be able to scale. Kelly was finished college and making (big, major) decisions that I didn't agree with.

We didn't get far on our own and went to a family therapist for some help. The one thing I was sure of is that I didn't want to lose my relationship with my daughter, nor did her father. Anyway, I was sure the therapist would see our side of things, agree and tell Kelly the error of her ways. I really thought this. I really thought I wanted this. It's not what happened.

What the therapist said instead was that our daughter was an adult making her own decisions and that our job was not just to accept her decisions but celebrate them. I was truly dumbfounded! I said to myself: "That will NEVER happen!". Later I cried and carried on to my husband. He heard me out. He's great that way. I came back to my bottom line- I won't lose my daughter over this, or anything.

Well, I did what the therapist suggested. Kelly wasn't asking for advice, she was telling me her decision. I accepted it and her and trusted her to do what was right for her. As for celebrating her decision, I had to fake it until I could make it, but celebrate it I did. Eventually for really real.

And of course 10 years down the road I've come to see the wisdom of her choice, that it was exactly right for her and was/is a blessing for her, for our family, for the world community (really!). I deeply respect and admire her, this daughter, this woman living her life so on purpose.

Motherhood has taught me a lot but I think this was my most important lesson and I'm grateful for the 3 of us doing all we had to do to make this happen. It was the transition from a parenting role to relating as adults in all that that implies. It smacked me up against my wants-to-be-boss-of-the-world side and my don't-I-get-to-be-boss-at-least-with-my-own-daughter side and put me in my place. In a good way. It got me into Codependents Anonymous and boy did I need that! But that's another story.