I was the only daughter amidst brothers.
I have two sons. And now a brand new daughter.
Boys and all their rough and tumble ways are comfortable to me. No matter how many times folks on the out-and-about comment on their energy level or what a handful they must be, I only deep belly smile and feel blessed because it’s an energy I understand.
I was the daughter who lost her mother one week to the day after turning 18.
I have felt ill equipped to dress, let alone mother, a daughter of my own.
All I know is how easy it is to chip a daughter’s delicate heart.
Since turning mom myself I have realized the necessity of feeling carefully along the edges of my own heart for the word splinters long ignored. Parenthood has taught me how to wield a pair of tweezers with a gentle touch; I self-treat and slowly ease the words out.
I examine them as my boys might do a bit of bark or a bug that unnerves them. Reverently. Turning them over in my hands to better understand them.
How have these words stuck here for so long? How do I sanitize them?
I am sixteen and driving shotgun alongside my mom. It is the season of beauty pageants, giddy girls and tiaras. All caught up in the glory and the glitter I turn to her and declare all aglow, “When I grow up I am going to be Miss South Africa!”
She looks at me long. And then answers out of the deep well of her own insecurity, “Oh my darling, I think you are beautiful. But just not beautiful in that kind of way.”
Twenty years later and I still feel the sharp sting of that splinter. It burrowed deep until it began to feel at home under my skin.
What daughter doesn’t want to be beautiful?
And we can pretend that she doesn’t need to hear it. We can say that it’s enough to be smart or brave or funny.
But deep down is a hole that hungers to hear the word, Beauty.
There are books and blog posts and articles that I comb through in the dark hours. And they say that girls need to hear that they are brave and strong and capable. That their bodies are useful more than they are beautiful.
I don’t doubt that’s true.
But my baby is fast asleep next door wrapped around with the pink and white tutu she wouldn’t take off before bed.
And I imagine there’s something to that too.
Our daughters will see themselves as beautiful in our eyes first. If we let them.
And once they’ve seen themselves as beautiful in the eyes of their mother, maybe they’ll be braver dancing through the minefields of what the movies and magazines scream is desirable.
I am seventeen and grieving. My mom has been in the hospital for a long year and our family is fraying around the edges. But on a dark blue, summer night heavy with jasmine our doorbell rings and I answer it to no one. No one but a love note and a bouquet of roses from a sixteen-year-old secret admirer.
My toes curl up in delight; goose bumps trickle down my back.
I am more than the daughter of a dying mother.
I am singled out as special by the boy every girl hopes will notice her.
I take card and flowers to my mom and offer them proud trophy of womanhood from one woman to another.
She laughs small words, “Oh it’s probably just your friends playing a joke on you.”
I shrink on the inside. My joy deflates.
But the boy is real.
Just as real as the fact that my mother is dying. His consistent selfless love outlasts my mother’s laughter. He delivers roses and joy for the next year. We do not date. But he is my lighthouse in the storm.
I am eighteen and preparing for prom. A friend’s mother takes me for practice hair and make up. I watch in the mirror as a woman emerges. My royal blue dress is waiting. I wear it, my hair and makeup to the hospice to show my mother.
I do not know what she will say.
I love her so much my insides ache. I stand at the foot of her bed and twirl. She is wearing her pink scarf wrapped around bald head and the light turquoise pajamas drape her small shrunken frame.
I wait.
And all the grief and joy and life I feel come welling out her eyes. She weeps and weeps as she looks at me – her only daughter – and she says just four words. Over and over.
The four words that help me see myself as a woman reflected in my mother’s eyes for the first and last time.
“You are so beautiful. You are so beautiful.”
And I believe her.
Linking up with my friend Jessica at The Mom Creative for Throwback Thursday.
Read the full story of how I grew up into a mother by picking up a copy of Surprised by Motherhood: Everything I Never Expected About Being a Mom over here.
Oh my heart… I am so glad it ended happy. It really is SO important that we tell our daughters that they’re beautiful. They need to feel that, and you’re right, somehow it does affect us inside. I wonder why that is… as a mom of 2 girls, thank you for this reminder. :-)
Beautiful, Lisa. Just beautiful :)
{Kathy} Oh how our mothers have such a voice in our hearts! I am so happy your mom gave you, finally, what you needed most from her at such a critical moment. How have you learned to forgive the other times?
I had two boys before I had my girl too. She’s 14 now. The boys are 18 and 20. Congratulations on the addition to your family. I completely understand your fears—and excitement—regarding having a girl. God will honor your obedience to mother her well.
It is so important, as mothers, to keep in mind the power our words hold. How many of us carry around deep scars because our mothers said something in complete innocence that our teenage, hormonal, minds blew out of proportion. I tried very hard to always think before I spoke with my children (and failed at this time and time again) but even with me telling her very often how beautiful she was, both inside and out, my daughter once responded to me “Of course you say that, your my mother” and then once when she was complaining about her looks I said “You look just like me” and she responded “Exactly!!” LOL…..sometimes there is no winning with teenagers!!
And I do know the difference between your and you’re….that is just a typo….LOL
I had that mom. Who spoke… Still speaks… Out of the wounds on her heart. At 40(41 this month) you’d think I’d be strong enough to ignore it. To not take it in.
I know somewhere inside me that the words don’t matter. That the people that love me, that cherish and adore that tender part of me so easily wounded…. They are honest, but gentle.
And my own son…with a heart like mine… So easily broken that some days it feels like I’m dealing with the sheerist plane of beautiful blown glass… I remember my wounds…. Just as you have… And I try to very hard to sheild him from being shattered.
And shattered… When I’ve left him stung and burning…. I wonder if my mom ever went back over her own words to me… And felt shattered. Felt guilt. Felt remorse.
Felt anything.
I know I don’t know you but girl when you write about beauty I feel like you know exactly who I am and what I needed. This was gorgeous. I have two girls, and they are gorgeous, and I ache every day with the fear of what the world is going to do to their hearts. You give me hope that we can fight that. That they might not have to live in the self-hate that I did for so long. Keep it coming.
It will never cease to amaze me how a hurt can stretch to live a lifetime in days and years and yet small gestures and murmurs of love can take them from suffocating to not in a minute.
Love to your beautiful self and your radiant daughter.
Brookline: Human Kinetics, 1997. Vegetables (Vary your vegetables).
Chocolate and red wine are both healthy it really is
us. Mix inside the chamomile therefore the
melted butter.
With five flavors, there is certainly sure to be
something you like. These organs are about the size of
the fist. Sprouted grains, raw nuts rejoice in almond etc.
Read More on natural cure for and natural treatment for.
This is so wonderful, Lisa-Jo! I don’t have any daughters of my own, but I’m glad I read this anyway. I dealt with a lot of body-image insecurities as a teenager, so I never really believed my parents when they told me I was beautiful during those years. But there is no doubt in my mind that their gentle insistence that I was provided a guardrail that kept me from falling off the cliff into the serious problems that plagued many of my friends. In the end, I came to see things their way, and to rest in Christ, who always calls his own creation good and lovely.
This is beautiful. I remember reading about this in Surprised by Motherhood, and how my heart ached for you. Also the story about the pastor’s wife, the mall trip, and the knee high boots. I wore my knee high boots for a week after I read that, just for you.
I remember a similar hurt. My mother died unexpectedly when I was 18. She had a heart attack and was gone a week later. We had no idea she was sick. A month before, I had just met the boy I would wind up marrying. I excitedly brought him home. I left the room for a moment and waited just out of sight, wondering what my mother would tell him about me.
“Elizabeth is a hard person to love.”
Those words. And a thousand implied words before them. Those are my splinters. I have carried them around for 12 years, even though I know my mother loved me. It makes it even harder because my mom is gone. There really is no resolution. It almost feels wrong to be angry about it. But some days, I am. I wonder how she could have been so cruel.
I loved your chapter on Micah, because I WAS that child. And yes, I probably was hard to love. I carried that stigma my entire life, but thanks to you, Micah won’t have to. The way you looked beyond his behavior, found a way to not just love him but LIKE him… the way you advocated for him to his teachers and others who were frustrated. It brought me to absolute tears. That is how I want to parent. That is how I wish I had been parented.
I burst into tears when I read this. Because I too remember being hurt by the lies we hear during those formative years. Thank you for sharing your heart and this story. May your Easter be filled remembering the healing redemption that comes through Jesus.
I struggled so very much with poor body image and self-esteem in my teens and early twenties. Deep down I knew that it was what was on the inside that really counted, but I nevertheless desperately wanted to be beautiful in the outward sense. I don’t think there is any harm in telling our girls they are beautiful – indeed, it can be helpful if it is just one praise among many, one praise for the external among a sea of praises for the internal.
How brave you are, Lisa. The way you share your stories give me courage to face my own. Thank you and thank you, Jesus for redeeming moments and pieces of our hearts that would otherwise be forever lost.
東京のAKBから地方に行くのは都落ち感が否めない
有吉に使い勝手の良い土田、媚韓劇団にセット売りつるのがいる事務所です
朝日とか大川とか向いてそうな気がするな（菊地は河村をライバル視してたが）
Thank you, thank you for posting this! So exquisite! I write with tears blurring my vision. Words said to our children are felt for a life time. Such an important post.
Tears…just tears. My daughter is 16 and I wrote a post last week about the masks I’ve been handing her throughout her life. Have you read “Do You Think I’m Beautiful” by Angela Thomas? It is wonderful. This was convicting…and powerful! Thank you!
The new drug works on the digestive system by blocking the absorption of
about 25% of fat that is consumed. It helps decay the traces of
triglycerides, or fatty acid, in the body and organ walls.
Oh friend, I needed a good cry. Thank you! :)