To be seen

"There is nothing more daring than showing up, putting ourselves out there and letting ourselves be seen"

Brene Brown

Another very special post from your mom:

I'm writing this to you on my last Valentine's Day before becoming a parent and it seems especially appropriate because to me this holiday should never have been about just hearts, chocolates and flowers. If anything it should be a time to express gratitude for all the people in your life that you love whether that's romantic relationships, family or friends and to focus on what that love means, not just one day of the year but every day after.

One of the greatest acts of love and trust is to allow someone to see you, really see you at your worst and accept you anyway. For me, that person is your dad and he has brought so much joy into my life by not just accepting my flaws but loving me more for them.

This is a gift we hope you will give us, allowing us to see the full picture of who you are and understanding that showing us your imperfections won't make us love you any less, in fact it will make us love you more.

We hope you will learn a lesson that hasn't come so easily for me which is that you can trust others with your heart and you can trust that even if you do get hurt or make a mistake, you will have been a better and braver person for it. By allowing yourself to push past the discomfort and fear and truly be seen, you will open up a world of possibilities. And if you do get hurt, know that we will be there to catch you when you fall.

At the end of the day, the greatest message we hope to impart is that the first step towards being vulnerable and brave is to truly love yourself. This is something that you and I will be learning together as it is a daily challenge to remind myself that perfection is not the goal, but authenticity is.

Don't just highlight your strengths, embrace your weaknesses and understand that everyone has them. It is first and foremost your job to love yourself, not just in spite of them but because of them and because they make you who you are. And once you are able to truly see yourself from every possible angle, and love yourself more because of it, that will be the greatest gift of all.

Rewriting your life’s rules

"Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be."

Shonda Rhimes

This is a very special guest post from your mom:

My whole life I have tried to play by the rules of a game that somebody else has written for me. In doing so, I was told, you will achieve success. But the part I never understood was what if success isn't necessarily the same for everyone. What if it happens to look differently for me then it does for the person sitting next to me. We are all told to follow the same rules but yet are we all playing the same game? 

In spite of my reservations, this game was all I knew and so I relentlessly pursued this idea of being just like everybody else. Of defining myself by external factors that were set out for me.  I thought if I acted a certain way, dressed a certain way, and valued certain things, I would be just like everyone else and I would be happy.

Yet somehow I always felt myself falling short of reaching goals that were set out for me by others. And I struggled with confusion and frustration. It looked so easy for everyone else, why wasn't it so easy for me? 

As I grew older, an extraordinary thing happened, I learned how to play the game. Suddenly I was wearing the right clothes, I knew just the right thing to say, and I could honestly say I was "winning" at this game I had struggled my whole life to play. I was busy being exactly who I was supposed to be (and having a lot of fun doing it) yet I wasn't being me. 
And for the first time I realized it wasn't that I couldn't win at this game, it was just that I didn't want to. So I had a choice, I could continue to exhaust myself trying to fit into this definition of who other people thought I should be, or I could let it all go and not just write my own rules, but redefine the game. 

You will have so many people in your life who want to define you and who will feel uncomfortable with the fact that you don't neatly fit into one box or another and I know this will not be easy. But while I was taught that there is only one path to follow, your dad and I believe that there are multiple paths that you can choose. 

We believe that there are many different roads that can each lead to happiness, success and fulfillment but nobody can choose that path for you.

If I could only teach you one lesson, it would be don't let other people define who you are. Everybody has a different idea of what is right or wrong based on their own personality, culture, race, religion, economic status, and family background. Don't spend precious time and energy worrying about whether or not you are living up to somebody else's idea of what life is supposed to be. Figure out who you want to be and strive to become the best version of yourself. And no matter what you decide (and even if we don't always agree) your dad and I will support you, stand by you, and love you no matter what.