on very rare occasions i can talk darla into sporting matching top knots with me. on these days i hear the phrase that has followed us around for the past 4 years a little more: she looks just like you.

yes. she does. i think i’ve confessed on here before that i’m not entirely sure that she isn’t just me. that i’ve reincarnated myself before i’m even dead. the lines between where i stop and where she starts have always been blurry. as those lines are beginning to take on definition life has gotten a whole lot more complicated.

don’t get me wrong, darla has always been incredibly willful, ready to make her mark on the world from the youngest of ages and it’s something i love about her…but it makes life incredibly difficult at times.

i’ve come to the awareness that the things i don’t like about darla, the things i nag on, over-parent and try to over correct with her are really the things i don’t like about myself. i’d venture to say that’s how all relationships work but that would be digressing. what i want to convey is that it’s especially difficult to come to terms with the little person that is a mirror image of myself, not just in looks.

i have to face and own up to the fact that the things that frustrate me the most about her were put into her by me in one way or another whether it be nature or nurture. there are so many times when i do things wrong as a parent, when i handle things wrong. some days it seems that everything i do is wrong. when at the end of the day i admit that everything could have been different if i had focused on changing myself instead of changing her. i get fixated on trying to correct things in her that remind me of myself at her age because i want her experience with the world to be different. i sometimes cut her interaction with this world short by trying to force my will instead of leaving it all up to the universe to figure out.

i wish, oh i wish, i could just sit her down and tell her that i don’t have all the answers. that i don’t understand the way of the world any more than she does, that adults seeming to have the knowledge is a farce. i wish i could take her by the hand and tell her that what it’s really all about is us finding the answers together. but how can i explain such a thing to a little girl who doesn’t stop spinning in circles long enough to focus on such a discussion?

i don’t really have a conclusion for this post. all i can ask is that you send me some of your positive thoughts and energy, or a virtual back pat as i try to make progress on this area of myself. she’s the most important mirror in our house and taking a good, long look into that mirror has been taxing for me lately. i’ll need any extra support i can get.

thanks. you’re the best.