Daughters.

Musings on mothering daughters...(keep reading even if you aren’t a mother or don’t have a daughter - because if you know a girl, you can influence her). 👩🏻 I’ve faced a lot of challenges. But raising daughters is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. 👧🏼👩🏼 How in the world do we... ...keep them safe? ...make them kind? ...help them navigate peer and societal pressures? ...convince them they can do anything? ...develop strong self-esteem? ...teach them to make good choices? 👧🏼👩🏼 For a short time, we can control almost everything in their lives - who they interact with, how they spend their time, what they eat and what activities they do. When they are emotionally immature and yet so incredibly impressionable, we have to make such a strong impact that when they are exposed to other influences and start questioning everything, they will default back to kindness and strength and self love. 👧🏼👩🏼 But that’s really tough if we are not modeling kindness and strength and self-love. 👩🏻👧🏼👩🏼 It’s easy to make poor choices and develop unhealthy habits. It’s easy to fall into the trap of caring for others without caring for ourselves. So I try to mother my girls by first caring for myself. 👧🏼👩🏼 Growing girls requires that when we look in the mirror, we see the very best version of ourselves. Because that is what they see. And that is what they will want to become. And that is who they will look to when they’re scared or down or having negative thoughts. 👩🏻 We all look at our parents, try to make their strengths our own and try to improve upon their flaws. We also look at our daughters and want only the best for them. 👧🏼👩🏼 So we start with ourselves. We show them that we are kind. We show them that we are strong. We show them that we love ourselves. It’s a challenge and sometimes we fail, but we show them that too. And we hope that when they look back at us they will see kindness and strength and self love as well as the ability to fail and move forward with grace. 👧🏼👩🏼 What’s the best advice anyone ever gave you about raising your daughter? I’d love to hear! 👧🏼👩🏼 #girlmom #girldad #asawoman #motheringgirls #parentinggirls #strongmothersstrongdaughters #strongfathersstrongdaughters