Read this Letter to Your Daughters.

 

Dear Little Girl,

I wish you could see how beautiful you truly are. You look around at these other girls wondering  why you’re not as perfect, but the truth is you are, you just don’t see it.

You stare in the mirror at your hair wondering why it can’t be flawless like all of the “pretty girls.” You see their clothes and how they always seem to look so well put together, whether it’s in their pajamas, in their gym clothes or in their school uniforms. You believe they have something you don’t.

You notice how all the boys flock to them because they’ve started changing a little faster and a little bit more gracefully than you have. They wear make up and perfume while you wear sneakers and hand-me- downs, because that’s what you’re comfortable in. It’s okay to not be like everyone else, march to the beat of your own drum.

You stare at yourself and see the scrapes on your knees from sliding on the concrete during a game of kickball.  You go home after school and hang out with your mom, listening to oldies and telling her about your day. The radio hits don’t intrigue you and you’re never invited to the mall. You don’t live by the popular rule, and even though it’s your choice, you can’t help but to feel as if something is wrong with you.

You want to be like those girls. The beautiful ones. The ones you’re afraid to talk to because you think they’ll just laugh in your face. Maybe they’re nice, maybe they’re mean. You don’t know because you could never walk up to them in fear that they would realize what you were.

You’re stuck with terrible braces that make you never want to smile and a retainer that makes you the laughing stock of your English class. You’ll never wear skin tight clothes, or even clothes that fit you because you believe those clothes are only for those girls. You stare at their pictures online with their popularity listed below trying to figure out what makes you so different.

I’m so sorry you feel this way, little girl. If I could, I would come there and show you how beautiful you truly are. Even though I can’t find you and show you, I can promise you this; those clothes all of those girls are wearing? You’ll have even prettier ones one day. One day you will meet a boy who looks passed all of the other people in the room and sees you. A boy who loves you for knowing the oldies and not all the junk on the radio. Laying around and going out in public without make-up on, without looking perfect, will be even more stunning than the girls who always have a face painted on; those girls will still be beautiful, but you will be just as beautiful. That big crazy hair you use to hate so much? Imagine people paying to get that hair! Telling you how lucky you are to have it and how they wish their curls could be as pretty as yours.

One day you’re going to see that you were shaped in all the right places, not all the wrong ones. You’ll fill out those clothes you’ve always dreamed of very nicely.  OH! That smile! That smile that was laced in metal is now so beautiful, people tell you it lights up the room when you walk in. You can keep up with all the guys on the kick ball field and the scrapes healed up real nice.

Little girl, everything is going to be perfectly fine. You’re going to look back on these days and laugh with your best friends while your mother will look at you with tears in her eyes, so happy you finally get it. You have always been beautiful, little girl, and I can’t wait until you see that.

                  Love Always,

                                                            The Woman You Become.