Letter to My Daughter

There are things I should have told you sooner. Like: the world will ask you to be smaller. Quieter. Nicer. Easier to carry. And you will be tempted— god, you will be tempted— because being easy is easier than being yourself. Don't. I know this because I shrank. For years, I folded myself into whatever shape the room required— agreeable, pleasant, no sharp edges— and by the time I unfolded, I'd forgotten my original shape. You are your original shape. Keep it. There will be a boy— or a girl, or a person who hasn't decided yet and doesn't have to— who makes your chest do something your brain can't explain. Fall into it. Not carefully. Not strategically. Fall like you mean it. And if it breaks you, I'll be here with tea and no opinions (okay, one opinion, but I'll keep it mostly to myself). You will fail at something that matters to you. Maybe publicly. And you'll want to disappear, to rewind, to become someone who never tried. But failure is just ambition with a bruise. It heals. The not-trying doesn't. Be loud when you need to be. Be soft when you want to be. Be angry. Be kind. Be the girl who reads at parties and the woman who dances in the kitchen and the person who cries at commercials and isn't sorry. The world will try to write your story for you. Take the pen back. Every time. And know this— carved into every atom of me: there is nothing you could do, nothing you could be, nothing you could become, that would make me love you less. That's not a promise. It's a fact. Like gravity. Like the way the sun comes back. You are the best thing I ever did without a plan. Now go make some trouble. I'll be here. I'm always here.