Tonight after dinner, my daughter insisted that we go outside and play basketball. She is 7, still under 50 pounds, and full of sass. Determined, she calls her big brother, her dad and I outside at twilight and says “game on!” As tiny and well below the rim as she stands, she makes the first two shots she attempts. I’m so proud of her as she dribbles up and down the driveway and I love seeing that she’s quite proud of herself, too. I’m reminded of a video I have of her at age 2 trying over and over to make a shot with this huge basketball and a tiny kid-sized hoop at the playground. Just as she did 5 years ago, she refuses to quit tonight even after she misses some shots, injures her finger, and is accidentally slammed in the face with the ball by her brother. She cries big tears from her beautiful brown eyes, lifts her glasses and wipes the tears away. She asks for a hug each time she is hurt. I oblige and tell her it’s okay and that she’s tough. She grabs the ball and soldiers on.
Part of me wonders if I’m doing the right thing each time I say, “It’s okay, you’re tough.” Is that the right thing to say? Later I read a section called “Ears” in Untamed and I cry and grit my teeth. I wonder if I’m just training my daughter to be the same kind of walled up woman I have become – trained to suck it up, be “brave”, and push my fear aside so people think “I’ve got this” even though inside myself I’m saying “No, I do NOT got this!”
But my daughter IS strong. She IS fierce. And she will need to hear my voice in her head in times when I’m not there. “You’re strong and you’ve got this, babe. You got this.”