teach my daughter confidence.

She cut her hair off this weekend, so she would have a different look when she goes back to school next week.

I watched carefully, and there was not the slightest tear while the hair fell. AND the style she choose is wildly becoming, sort of like early Jennifer Aniston.

I think I really have to consider this goal completed, at least for the moment. It’s not like she’s completely grown or anything, but this girl’s a mover and shaker! I don’t think I need worry that about her holding her own. I just gotta stay out of her way!

and I’m just plain ol proud of her for taking this new development in stride and not getting all spookish about it. What a woman she will be!

Her new evaluation is ready. I’ll get the IQ and achievement scores on Monday. Pray that my girl is making progress. I just don’t want middle school to be a trial for her…..

The sweetest love is not the love we earn
through high-priced pumps or brilliant dental care
Nor even that exchanged in kind in hopes
That we can function better if we share.

It is not even that deep urgent need
to stop a hurt, or bandage up a heart—
Nor lovers’ whispers deep into the night,
of promises to never slip apart.

The sweetest love is that which rests asleep
without a thought, a plan, a measured aim
Awakened, it flows forth without a cause
And knows no boundaries and no sense of gain.

This love without the wherefores or the whys
Awakes each day in my small daughter’s eyes.

She is having headaches, bad ones, and she lost her vision last week. I think they are migraines, but I don’t know…Her pediatrician has sent her to a neurologist, and I can’t get an appointment till next week.

She is FINE; she does not have a brain tumour or some other silly thing I’m thinking of. But with her neurological history….I am thinking about impossibly scary things. I remember when she was first diagnosed with cp—they did an MRI of her brain, and when the radiologist walked in the room and said there was no lesion, I fell to the floor. God thank you.

Relax, she will be fine. I internalize this, knowing that she does NOT need to worry about this. Part of raising a confident daughter is to act confident, so that she will know what it looks like—even if I don’t 100% feel it on the inside.

My girl was given to me to give me a chance to develop courage. I sometimes suspect that I love her too much. Is that possible? She is 10 years old, tall and graceful, not like me (I was all knees and elbows at her age). She has copper-colored hair and hazel/green eyes the color of my mothers’ eyes. Somehow she is blessed by NOT having my temperanment—She’s gentle and not easily ruffled, confident with her friends.

But man, has she suffered. First with a neurological injury that we thought she would never recover from. She did—she defied the doctors by the time she was two. She simply healed. I believe it was a miracle, the only one I’ve ever really wanted in my life.

Then she got sick with something completely different. When she was 3-6, she was hospitalized over and over. I drove her to the ER, stood guard over her until I finally fell asleep at 5 in the morning, uneasily laying my head across her legs so that any movement would wake me up. I would sometimes crawl in the bed with her and let her put her head on my tummy. Mama tummies make good pillows.

She got better. She is resilient. But now, she has been shown to have learning disabilities, and this hurts, because it hurts her. She is too bright—she knows what she doesn’t know. I don’t know if she won’t be able to go to college, or how to help her in high school She gets special ed now, but what if it kills her self-esteem in a few years?

So I am trying to prepare her. I teach her that she is beautiful (she is) and to use that beauty wisely. To understand that we all have gifts, and we all have weaknesses. That some people will not acknowledge their weaknesses, and those are rather sad people. That God loves her and will never leave her. I watch her ride her horse and point out how strong she is, how balanced and kind to her horse. I point out that it is more important to be kind than anything else in the world.

And in helping her grow a strong set of values, I hope I can support her in developing the thing that makes us resiliant to the slings and arrows of outragious fortune: our own internal values.