What it's like to be a mother to a daughter

Updated: Feb 18, 2023

I recently asked those around me what it’s like to be a mother to a daughter. A pause prefaced every answer indicating how meaningful the question was. A breath and reflection was required to drum up what they deemed an adequate answer—their satisfaction came from a deep place, like they’ve been holding the answer within and were just waiting to be asked. That there was an inside knowing of how big it is; how powerful it is; how significant it is to be a mother to a daughter. To be the person whom relates to meaningful milestones and rites of passage. The someone who innately understands her given you’re steps ahead. And the one whom braces the inevitable growing pains that you too experienced.

The responses echoed one another—a profound collection of different words meaning the same. A melody of mothers’ relationships, a resounding message of great need and desire to love closely. To deeply attune, redeem, and build up in the midst of a daughter’s hurt from both relationships and the world. To help equip them with less fear and more courage; less hesitation and more boldness. As mothers we’re holding our breath indefinitely in the tension of stewarding their path yet having limited influence. The overwhelmingness of wanting for her what you see in her, and the overwhelmingness of she ultimately having to become herself on her own.

Here’s what you’re saying. Being a mother to a daughter is:

A lot

Messy

Healing

Challenging

Intentional

Satisfying

Terrifying

Gratifying

High stakes

Restorative

Transformative

Overwhelming

Peaks and valleys

Perfectly imperfect

Vindicating the past

My daughter Scarlett looks at me, and in that second of quiet space between I notice her. And I take her in. Just for a second I’m engulfed in the fullness of the gift she is and the charge I’ve been given. Mothering her is a thousand little moments like this. For me, being a mother to a daughter is knowing hope. It’s hope for healing my mother wounds; hope for unquestioned love; hope in prayer she realizes her worth. It’s hope in be the kind of mom I yearn to be in the midst of motherhood struggle; hope that if I keep working on me, it can’t help but carry on to her. Knowing hope—to believe that it exists and to witness the proof in our relationship and the changing in me.

So what’s being a mother to a daughter like? Speaking to it means self-excavation—it gives way to a more intentional relationship. Because whatever the experience is for you, naming it helps make it matter. And it speaks to our solidarity. In the aloneness of our motherhood we aren’t at all.

xo