An Honest Letter to My Daughter
Why Our Fights are Not Your Fault & There’s Nothing Wrong with You
My daughter is a highly spiritual being.
I have a deeply spiritual side.
To me, spirituality is the practice of integrating heaven with earth.
I feel my daughter and I each pulling one another to be “on this planet” in ways that are both uncomfortable and, undeniably, why we are here.
We struggle.
We grow.
We hold hurts.
We grow.
It can be hard for me, and I believe her, to feel stuck in the cage of our ego dance. To want to escape.
We are both more comfortable imagining a heavenly realm where negative feelings and experiences don't exist.
Turns out, embodiment takes time.
To my Daughter,
I observe your delight in getting lost in details.
Or lost in the pleasurable sanctuary of your imagination.
We share that.
I love that part of myself.
And since arriving, trying to allow myself to land on the earth.
I am grateful for practices engaging my whole body, often in the presence of beauty…
Like…
Cooking.
Cleaning.
Eating.
Gardening.
Dancing.
Stretching.
Throwing a frisbee.
These days, I continue to learn about the importance of autonomy and agency. What I need to cultivate to feel more resilient to changes around me. Sometimes getting emotionally tangled with others—power dynamics with those close to me, and the way that certain language invites rebellion, and other language acknowledges agency.
And still, with this knowledge, I struggle to live up to the standards I have for myself as a father. I may take your actions and words personally. That’s not your fault. That’s something going on inside me.
Remember when your brother yanked your hair and it hurt so badly?
Just then, I stepped in between you two.
And you start kicking me.
You had boots on.
I don’t like it.
I can’t allow it.
But I also need to take responsibility when I cross the line into shaming you with statements like, “What’s wrong with you?”
You’re only eight.
The ideal version of me says things that you need to hear from me, like:
“I’m not going to let you kick me.”
“If you kick me, you might hurt me.”
“I love you and I’m not okay with you trying to kick me.”
“I need you to stop kicking me and if you can’t I’m going to hold you so that we are both safe.”
The scared part of me says things like:
“Stop it!”
“Why are you kicking my legs?”
“Enough!”
“Get out of this room!”
“Do it again and I’m throwing your dollhouse in the trash!”
When I lose my center, I can become some unfamiliar part of myself.
Feeling lost.
Feeling disrespected.
It makes me want to fight.
In most cases this is because I shake and suffer inside when my voice is not respected.
I don’t always remember to let myself slow down enough, unplug, and listen in to what some deeper part of me wants to say.
So I don’t have to shout, and demand someone else listen to me. To the one I am not listening to.
I feel like you may be in a place like heaven, often listening to a soothing voice. In a gradual, natural way that is not frantic about time passing and the promise to be somewhere else by a certain time.
Pushing you along to get to school.
Taking you out of your bliss with that deep voice that stirs you to cuddle with our cat or arrange a land of characters.
At least, that’s how I felt as a daydreamer when I was young.
Can you relate? Is that what it’s like for you? Do I just interrupt your natural way and it pisses you off?
If so, I get it.
That would piss me off too.
Doesn’t matter who started it. I escalated when I had a choice not to.
I want to feel safe in my body.
But when I feel overwhelm from the onset of anger and shame, I jump to the judgment I feel ABOUT YOU for the actions you are taking that I never took as a child.
As much as I remember, I never tried to kick my parents. So I’m shocked into moral authority when you act this way.
It’s not your fault.
You are not me.
My distaste with discomfort need not be yours.
And as a parent, I am not my parents, though we share a lot. And they were not their parents, though they shared a lot. And so on.
And this world you were born into is different than the one I was born into.
This world has a level of stress and anxiety that seeps in through the walls of our home.
We can’t keep it out.
You feel it in the tremble of the adult’s voices at the dinner table. You sense it in the air of the grocery store.
Aren’t we all like antennae, picking up one another’s feelings? Not certain which feeling is our own, just being overwhelmed by it all.
It’s okay that we’re still learning to navigate our emotional overwhelm and confusion. It’s okay that you and I are learning the same lesson from different vantage points.
My practice…
May I learn to let the energy of my feelings exist in my body long enough to not make them wrong, so I may make use of them with intention or let them pass through.
May I learn to let the energy of your feelings visit with my body in such a way that I do not feel invaded.
May I learn to let the energy of the world’s feelings exist in my body in such a way that I can hold them with reverence.
May I be a shepherd for the transition we are in.
In the face of breakdowns in the home, as they mirror the breakdowns in the global community.
A wrestling of “power over” that no longer fits our emerging consciousness.
A longing for “power with” that wants to rest in our merging, little nest.
May you and I find our way in the home so we can be humbled by learnings that grow around our beautiful little egos. Such that this new way can spread to the village, the countryside, the lands across the seas, and back to us from the other homes learning the same.
We dance unskillfully with power. Grabbing for it like kittens and yarn.
How many of us need to rest in our autonomy before it becomes the shameless norm?
We are a reflection of ourselves and the whole.
I honor the imperfection and the divine in me.
I honor the imperfection and the divine in you.
May we find kindness towards ourselves and each other as we cross these swaying bridges.
Love,
Dad
My Next Book
BTW, this topic of power dynamics with my daughter is one I wrote a story about.
It’s called Alexandra & the Moon—A story for mindful fathers raising spirited daughters.
Also illustrated by me, it comes from my personal experience and honors my daughter and me, in our journey together, and what’s possible on the other side of power struggles.
At this stage, the entire story is written. And I’m about 25% done with the 96 drawings—this time, all in color.
No ebooks. All printed.
When I hold a physical book, that helps me land on earth some as well.
When will it be done? I don’t know.
But I can’t wait for her to read it.
There is so much potency, truth and heart in this post... I can relate so much to your honouring of the complex and multi-faceted bond you have with your daughter. And I am looking forward to hearing ongoing news of the next book!