The other day I was staring at my daughter’s face, as I often do, trying to memorize it, while also admiring its every feature. Her huge brown eyes and long lashes, the hairs between her eyebrows, the cute little button nose, the pursed lips, the gap between her teeth, her smooth curved cheeks, the hairs on the back of her neck, the wispy strands that fall into her face, the hair that is in some ways still her baby hair.
I thought about how perfect her face is, all of it, how I had grown this little creature in my body and now here she was, a full, complete person, and even though she had come from me, her features were the product of thousands of years weaving together to form my most beautiful girl.
I thought about how in just a few short years, she’ll start looking at herself and seeing only the lack, the things that she wished could be different, the things that society tells her are not quite right. How her hair is not long like a princess’s, her eyes not blue enough, her nose not straight enough. She’ll wonder why other girls have blonde curls and she can’t, or why other girls have certain clothes and she doesn’t.
I thought about how after that it will only increase, the desire to change, to fix, to alter. How nothing will ever be good enough or quite right. She’ll want straight teeth and clear skin and even longer lashes and different colored hair and the beautiful chubby wrists that I love to kiss will suddenly be the bane of her existence. She’ll spend so much time and money trying to fix things that never needed to be fixed. She’ll expel energy on focusing inward, obsessed with what she sees in the mirror instead of out in the world.
Maybe if we do something right, she won’t spend too much time or energy, but maybe even if we do everything right, it still won’t be enough to combat the forces of self-doubt and capitalism.
I wish that we could all look at ourselves the way our mothers did and do, with complete awe at how utterly, astonishingly perfect we arrived on this earth. I hope for you that you can understand, even for a day, how you were born just the way you were supposed to be born, that nothing ever needed to be fixed, and that what you are is exactly right. I hope you know that the things you see as flaws are the things your mother thought were most miraculous, that if your mother cries because you got a tattoo it’s because she cannot comprehend how you ever thought you needed anything additional to what was already complete.
My daughter, it’s not that your beauty couldn’t launch a thousand ships, it’s that you don’t exist in order to launch a thousand ships. It’s that your beauty lies in the fact that you journeyed a thousand years to be here, your cheek on mine, your breath on my face, and that you are you and that is more than enough.
You belong among the wildflowers
You belong in a boat out at sea
Sail away, kill off the hours
You belong somewhere you feel free
Run away, find you a lover
Go away somewhere all bright and new
I have seen no other
Who compares with you
You belong among the wildflowers
You belong in a boat out at sea
You belong with your love on your arm
You belong somewhere you feel free
Run away, go find a lover
Run away, let your heart be your guide
You deserve the deepest of cover
You belong in that home by and by
You belong among the wildflowers
You belong somewhere close to me
Far away from your trouble and worry
You belong somewhere you feel free
You belong somewhere you feel free
~tom petty
Christina says
Love this so much. Thank you!