Love, Courtney

This summer I am committing to a series. Each morning I will wake up write for 30 minutes and then post. If you know me, you know that the challenges within this series will begin with two things: writing everyday and only writing for 30 minutes. But I am here for the challenge.

The series will be dedicated to our daughters. My hope being, that I can bring awareness to certain issues that our daughters will inevitably face, but that they might be better prepared. Each generation has the opportunity to heal the wounds of the generation that came before it. So, perhaps the knowledge of our generation will push the next generation to even greater wisdom.

At first, I thought that an idea like this could save my daughter from heartache. But I realize I cannot save her from heartache, that is inevitable and somewhat needed. So it is, that this is not a playbook. Sadly there are no “if this happens…do this” scenarios.

The central message is not a “how to” about life, but rather a “you are not alone”.

My prayer is that one day my daughter will read these pages and know that her humanity is beautiful. That her mistakes will not break her, but instead they will shape her. And one day she will look back and see the purpose in the challenges.

It started as a simple idea. Make a list of lessons that I have learned along the way that I want my daughter to know.

While exploring the idea of what I want to teach my daughter, it occurred to me that if my own parents had made a list like this and tried to “teach me” these lessons would have fallen on mostly deaf ears. It really wasn’t until I was much older that I realized how incredibly smart my parents were. It was several years after that that I realized my parents’ humanity.

It was an eye opening journey to discover that not only were my mom and dad wise, but they were also not perfect. My acknowledgement and understanding of that taught me to offer myself grace and to parent my children from a place of my own humanity. This, mixed with an understanding of child development, guides my thoughts in this series. 

The things I want my daughter to know unfortunately are not the types of lessons that one learns from being told or taught. They are the lessons that are (pre)taught through conversation, learned through experience, and then followed by reflection.

The list became a bit of a memoir on accident. The experiences that have shaped me into the person that I am today. The list is not comprehensive as I am only writing from the perspective of a person who has experienced 37 years of life. And, honestly, I may change my mind about some of the lessons. There is no way to predict what life will teach me next. But, I am committed to sharing my learning as I go, and I am not afraid to say “I think I changed my mind.”

My goal has shifted from trying to impart some wisdom to protect her from hard lessons to sharing my experiences, so that when she learns some of these same lessons, she is a little more prepared and a lot less alone. She would know that someone she loved had been through something similar and survived.

I pray that my words bring her comfort, inspiration, and insight.

I pray the same for you. While you are not my daughter, which means you will receive my words differently, my hope is that my words will help you feel less alone. That they might inspire you to have open conversations with your own family. That my words would somehow give you the gift of seeing your own humanity, your parents humanity and ultimately your daughters humanity with grace.

33 minutes, I was close. Excuse my punctuation, if you need perfect punctuation you are in the wrong place…I only have 30 minutes and there are too many thoughts to get out to have time for editing punctuation.