I Won't Let You Fall

"Mommy, don't let me fall!" she said. I responded, "Do you trust me? I'm right here. I won't let you fall." How many times in my life have I desired the same thing? I've wanted to be protected, to be vulnerable and allow someone to protect me without a doubt that I wouldn't get hurt. The reality is that I let myself ride a bike, go full blast and was not protected. My heart wasn't protected so it was broken. Now here I am thinking my daughter trusts me completely to catch her if she loses her balance on her bike that she's riding for the first time without training wheels. She's trusting that I won't let her down. It's my job now as her protector to make her realize and choose the people in her life that will do the same thing. It's my job to teach her and it's no small job.

• She is more than enough. She is pretty enough, smart enough, funny enough. She is enough. The first time someone makes her feel like she's not. Goodbye.
• She is beautiful exactly the way she is. She doesn't need to compromise her dignity in order to make someone else think she's beautiful.
•  Sometimes putting another person's needs before your own isn't a good thing. It makes me think of when you are on an airplane and the flight attendant does her spill at the beginning of the flight and says to place the oxygen mask on yourself before anyone else. As a parent that's a hard concept for me to wrap my brain around but it makes perfect sense. I can't help my kids breathe if I'm not breathing. It's that simple.
• Trust your gut. If it feels weird in your gut, then don't do it or stop doing it.
• Taking care of herself is perfectly acceptable. In my own life my motives have been questioned about why I would go to the gym, why I would run, why I got my hair done, why I painted my fingernails. The motivation in someone else's eyes was that I was trying to attract attention to myself. The actual motivation was just because I enjoyed working out and feeling and looking healthy. I will encourage my daughter to do the same.
• Do not settle. On anything. Ever. She deserves the best. I don't mean material things either although she does have an insane love for shoes at an early age. I'm talking about the way she's treated and who she surrounds herself with. She doesn't need a BFF who puts her down. There are plenty of other BFFs in the sea. She doesn't need to settle for a guy who gives her the silent treatment when he doesn't get his way regardless of whether it has to do with her or not. Silent treatment is a soul killer.

I'm sure my list will grow as she gets older and at some point in her life she'll deal with saying Don't Let Me Fall and someone letting her fall. That is life after all. In the meantime, I'll do my duty of making sure I'm not the one that does it....even if it takes running down the road in the squat position while my legs are on fire so that she doesn't scrape a knee.