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I used to assume that if I ever had a daughter, she would be like me.

Quiet. Independent. Capable of sorting through her own problems without much fuss.

Instead, I was given a girl who feels everything.

She cries at sad films. At kind gestures. At disappointment. At things I would have simply swallowed and moved on from. She talks through her worries. Replays conversations. Questions herself in ways that leave me tired simply listening.

For years, if I’m honest, I mistook our differences for weaknesses — hers, not mine.

I didn’t understand the drama of secondary school friendships. I didn’t understand the tears over boys who hadn’t earned them. I didn’t understand the anxiety over grades when she was already doing well.

At her age, my friendships were uncomplicated. Mostly boys. Very little emotion. I made good grades without much effort — and when I got bored, I simply disengaged. Life felt rather straightforward.

Hers does not.

She sets impossibly high standards for herself. All A’s or nothing. Certainty or failure. Love or rejection. There is very little middle ground.

I encourage. I reassure. I tell her she is capable. Sometimes she believes me. Often she doesn’t.

And I have had to learn something uncomfortable:
Just because I do not experience the world the way she does does not mean her experience is wrong.

It is simply different.

She is in her second year at university now, eight hours away. Brave enough to build a life far from home. Strong enough to navigate things I never had to. Sensitive enough to care deeply when others might not.

I am proud of her — not because she is like me.

But because she isn’t.

Perhaps part of motherhood — even for those of us who never quite felt the instinct the way others seem to — is learning to raise someone without trying to remake them in your own image.

She is emotional. I am measured.
She is social. I am reserved.
She doubts herself. I rarely have.

And yet, somehow, we fit.

I am still learning her.
And perhaps she is still learning me.

Maybe that is the quiet work of raising a daughter — not shaping her into who you would have been, but standing steady while she becomes who she already is.

– Kate