To my daughters, on your 17th birthday—
I knew time would fly, but I didn’t expect it to hit like this.
You’re on the edge of adulthood now, close to leaving home, and I’m supposed to be preparing you to fly. But I’m the one who’s unsteady today. Because when I look at you, I still see the way you beam like I’m your whole world when you see me, the way you climbed and clung onto my legs—how just my presence wiped away all the woes in your world. How completely you loved me. How you needed me and chose me.
By now, you realize I can’t solve all your problems, and your need for me is changing.
I know it’s supposed to. Soon, I won’t need to drive anyone anywhere. I won’t need to be nagging, cooking, checking homework, and planning my life around yours.
Yes, there is relief in that. But a big part of my life will also be gone.
It scares me a little.
I assumed parenting meant being the giver—the one with the answers, the structure, the safety. And honestly, I didn’t even know what I was getting myself into.
I didn’t realize how much I’d be learning—or healing.
There were habits I could never break for myself. Wounds I couldn’t bring myself to face. But you loved me so deeply, so completely—it made me powerful. You gave me a reason to become someone better. Stronger. More patient. More careful. More confident.
And still, there were times I wanted to give up—not on you, never on you—but on the exhaustion. On my own limitations. It’s easy for parents to burn out—especially when their kids get older, and it feels like we’re fading into the backdrop of their lives.
But that’s a lie we tell ourselves to make the distance hurt less.
I’ve heard so many people say that teenagers pull away, as if it’s just what they do. But I’ve watched it happen more like a slow erosion. Parents back off too early—assuming their kids know more than they do, or don’t want them around—and teens, unsure how to ask, stop reaching back. So both sides drift.
It’s not rebellion. It’s sadness misunderstood.
I tried to stay close. Not by clinging, but by creating together.
We found our own way of staying connected—working on something meaningful side by side. Not just a project, but a shared belief: that how kids feel about themselves matters just as much as how well they read or how fast they run. Over time, that effort became something bigger—something others could grow from too.
It became a mirror, not just of what we wanted for others, but for ourselves.
And somewhere along this journey, I started thinking more about my own mother.
One of our program participants once said they learned the kind of parent they wanted to become by watching their parents. That line stayed with me.
My mom didn’t always know how to show love in the ways I craved. But maybe she, too, had a fear—that she would stop being needed. That she might be forgotten once I had my own family, my own priorities.
It’s been too long since I gave her my undivided attention.
Maybe that’s how this story always goes—until we decide to rewrite it.
So on your birthday, I hope that we always make time to experience life together. I hope we keep trying.
To my daughters—
It’s been overwhelming being your mom.
It’s been exhausting.
It’s also been fun, and exciting.
And I wouldn’t trade a minute of it.
I wish you joy—but not the kind you have to earn or buy.
I wish you strength—but not the kind that hides the hardship.
I wish you courage—the kind that says “I didn’t quite make it” and still feels worthy of love.
If you ever doubt whether you’re enough, I hope you remember all the special songs I made for you. The way I showed up. The million invisible ways I built my life around yours.
And if one day you have children of your own, I hope you see parenting for what it really is: not a job, but a lesson in the most essential truth—love, in its purest form, transforms everyone it touches.
You are, and always will be, enough for me.
Love,
Mama
