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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 without a second thought. She talks through her worries. Replays conversations. Questions herself in ways that leave me genuinely tired just from 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 marks when she was already doing well. At her age, my friendships were uncomplicated, mostly boys and very little emotion. I got on with things, and when I grew bored, I simply disengaged. Life felt rather straightforward. I assumed everyone found it so.

Hers does not.

She sets impossibly high standards for herself. All top marks or nothing. Certainty or failure. Love or rejection. Very little middle ground. I encourage her. I reassure her. I tell her she is more than capable. Sometimes she believes me. Often she doesn’t, and I have learned not to take that personally.

And somewhere along the way, I had to sit with something I hadn’t particularly wanted to admit: that just because I don’t experience the world the way she does doesn’t mean her way of moving through it is wrong. It is simply different from mine. That sounds straightforward enough written down. It took longer to actually believe.

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 even notice.

I am proud of her. Not because she is like me. But because she isn’t.

Perhaps that is the quiet work of raising a daughter, even for those of us who never quite felt the instinct the way others seem to. Not shaping her into who you would have been, but standing steady while she becomes who she already is. Still learning her, even now. And I suspect she is still working me out as well.

— Kate