A Letter to My Daughter

The other day I happened upon my very first website I started 5 years ago, in April 2015. I found a blog post I had written, long before I was a mother or even married. I reread it with fresh eyes from a mother’s perspective and it brought me to tears. So I wanted to re-publish the words I wrote back then and speak them over my daughter Eloise. I pray when she’s older I can show her this letter, and teach her to embrace every ounce of her worth and identity in the Lord. Here’s what I wrote.

 

Dear little one,

You’re young now. And life is joyous. You get to play with your toys & laugh unconditionally & skip outside to your hearts content. As a child, your faith in people is high. You believe the utmost in everyone & there’s not a stranger who you wouldn’t run up and introduce yourself to. And there is such beauty in that. You are little one. Beautiful. The way you make mud pies in the dirt and splash in the puddles, the way you blow bubbles so passionately, and the way you love absolutely everyone no questions asked shows how much you believe in the beauty of life, even when you can’t understand it just yet. You child, are the joy of the one who made you.

And I’m telling you this because as you grow up things are slowly going to change. You’re going to start to be self-conscious. You will stop carelessly hopping in puddles & playing in the mud because people are watching and you might look “weird.” You’ll eventually go to school and other kids will say mean things to you. Boys will push you. Girls will exclude you. People are going to say your big heart and fiery eyes are too much. You will be taught to follow rules. To maintain order. To be less than you are.

As you get to high school, people will tell you to look a certain way. You should be thinner. Hair longer. Lashes fuller. You should wear this, and not that. You will see this reiterated in magazines. On TV. In advertisements. You will be accepted if you obtain these things. They will tell you your value lies in what you wear and who you hang out with. These things will cause a small little lie to plant itself in the midst of your soul. “I am not enough.”

This lie, so tiny, so small, will slowly start to grow. It will grow so slowly that you won’t even notice that it’s there, or that it’s growing at all. But ever so slowly, you will start to change yourself. Little by little you will start to believe this lie. Eventually this lie will be like a veil over your eyes, over your soul. You will forget the little girl you once were. The one with bright eyes and a wild spirit.

When you get to college and girls invite you to a party and hand you a beer, you will drink it. To do otherwise would immediately outcast you. Proving that you are in fact, not cool. Not worthy. Not enough. So you fall into this pattern of striving. Striving to appear beautiful. Cool. Having it all together. Perfect grades, friends, and life. But inside you will be a different story. You will feel confused. Rejected. Broken. Your mind will have convinced you that this lie, now big, is in fact, truth. Far from the little girl you once were, you won’t even begin to remember that she is still there inside you, so small.

You will graduate and go out into the world in hopes of a job. Every move you take, every decision you make will be a product of that lie. “I am not enough.”  You will apply for big, glamorous jobs because society will tell you that’s what a successful woman does. If you don’t make this amount, you won’t be happy. You will search for love, grasping at any strand that appears in your midst. If a man doesn’t love you, you are not worthy of love. “I am not enough.” It will ring again and again in your mind. You will do anything you can to prove it’s not true, believing though, that it is.

You see, little one, the world has molded you into something unrecognizable from who you were made to be. They have covered you with their veil of perfection. Lies. Deceit. Striving. Their motto, posted on every caption, shone on every marquee, printed on every magazine cover is simple, but destructive. “You are not enough.”  And in order to be enough you must continue to strive. Be more. Accomplish this. Excel at that. Buy this. Throw away that. Little one, the world is going to try and sell perfection to you in a beautiful, shiny bottle. And I’m telling you this now so that you will know when the time comes: it is all a lie.

You are so much better than the empty praise and selfish ideology they will throw at you. You are so much better than that because you were created for so much more than that. Darling, you were created to move mountains with your fingertips, and to be that wild, fearless girl with a big heart and fiery soul. You were created to laugh too loud, share too much, and dance with whimsy, curls bouncing in the breeze, feet barefoot in the mud. Above all, you were made to rip that veil off, to ignore the hollow standards of this world and shatter them to pieces. To inspire others to do the same, and let them know they were created for so much more, just like you.

Little one, the world is going to throw things at you. They are going to tell you lies that will seem like pretty truths. And it’s not going to be easy. However, no matter what they say, I want you to believe this one simple truth:

“You are enough.”

If you enjoyed this, feel free to check out Eloise’s birth story part 1 and part 2. You can also read about our breastfeeding journey here as well.

Photos by Kaley from Kansas

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Lindsey Roman is an intimate destination elopement photographer turned business educator, podcaster, and entrepreneur based out of Oahu, Hawaii. Her heart beats for teaching creative entrepreneurs branding, marketing, and social media strategies, while empowering them to own their God given gifts. She loves outdoor adventures, spicy food, and a good game of Catan just as much as she loves teaching women to be all God made them to be.