A Good Role Model

Some close to me tell me I am a good role model... but my baby girl, she fascinates me, all her strengths, and weaknesses, all touch this mother's heart. Growing up, I have adopted many Mom's and Dad's over the years, they were friend's/boyfriends'/husbands' parents...and it has dawned on me, I have now adopted many sons and daughters, my friends' children and many of my children's friends. I have become the mother/daughter I needed to be. Maybe that is why some say I am a good role model, today. I still often feel inadequate, but I do love myself, what I love even more are my kids, biological and adopted along the way. My daughter, my baby girl is now a 15 year old young woman, her heart is so good, she is wise, naive, smart and so beautiful...I can't write this without crying, for all the wrongs I made in her short life so far, I only pray I can make it all up to her, for the rest of my life. I do feel a rush to get all things done before she is an adult, some 31 months left of her childhood, I weep. I know I will still be her mom, in 32 months...and pray her life will be a good one, once she flies on her own. She has a great sense of right and wrong, she opens her world to me, and I am so proud to be her Mom, she isn't perfect, but in my "mommy"eyes, she really is. She has been my most influential teacher ever. I found a letter I wrote to her, about 4 months before she was born, my words were full of hope, and so naive. Like mother, like daughter. I struggled so much as a young mother and wife... love is the answer...it just me lots of misunderstanding that simple truth. I then thought if I loved others with all my heart, all would be fine, only to find out, if I didn't love me, the love I showed others would be empty of the true love we have to give. I worry about her heart being broken, broken cerfews, drugs, the internet, friends coming and going, hard life lessons, like what happens when your closest girlfriend kisses your ex-boyfriend. I was a terribly awkward teenager, I was a loner, a misfit: my mother is a hoarder, and was very paranoid about people, all people were bad. I knew from the second I was pregnant, my doors would always be open to friends...for a long time I lived with no curtains and doors unlocked day and night, just to be my mother's extreme opposite. That was something I learned about myself, all those years as a young adult, I wanted to be her total opposite, not realizing all I had to be was myself. Running in the opposite direction of her, I followed many of her mistaken footsteps....I woke one day, I was 31, and to my horror, I had ended up in the same lonely, ugly emotional place my mother had gotten to, after her second separation. We all carry the scars of our childhoods, some cover them with shame, or make-up, or fancy clothes, other wear them proudly as badges of honour. I hope she learns to forgive, herself and others, and that learns to love herself first, sooner than I did. I overcame, so will my beautiful daughter, I can put my worries to bed for now...The hardest part of being a Mom, is knowing when you have to let them learn it for themselves.