My sweet Kaylee,

Before I knew anything about motherhood, there was you.

Before I understood how complicated raising daughters could be, before I knew how much motherhood would change me, before I had years of hindsight to look back on all the things I got right and all the things I wish I had done differently, you were there.

My firstborn daughter.

The little girl who made me a mom.

When I think about my motherhood journey now, I realize something I couldn't have understood when you were little: you were growing up at the same time I was learning how to be your mother.

Maybe that's something every firstborn child experiences in some way. They get the newest version of us. The mother who loves them more than she knew she was capable of loving another person, but who is also standing there thinking, Okay... so they seriously just let me take this baby home? That's it? No supervision? 😆

There is no amount of preparation that completely prepares a woman for motherhood. You can read the books, listen to advice, buy everything on the baby registry, and convince yourself you know what you're doing. Then a tiny human arrives and suddenly you're responsible for another person's physical safety, emotional development, happiness, education, health, confidence, and apparently knowing where every missing object in the house is located for the rest of your natural life.

You were the person who taught me what that responsibility actually meant.

And looking back at the woman I was when you were born compared with the woman I am today, I realize that you didn't simply grow up in front of me.

We grew together.

My Firstborn Daughter Made Me a Mother

You were such a bright, sweet little girl. Curious, sensitive, funny, and full of life. You sang. You danced. You talked. You felt things deeply. There was already so much personality packed into that tiny body.

Your dad and I separated after you turned one, and although our relationship changed, he continued supporting us and helping whenever we needed it. Years later, he thanked me for raising you into the woman you've become.

I've never forgotten that.

There are certain compliments that hit differently when you're a mother. Someone can tell you your hair looks amazing and, obviously, we'll take the win. But hearing someone acknowledge the human being you helped raise? That's different.

Because mothers spend years wondering whether we're doing enough.

Are we teaching the right things? Are we protecting too much? Not enough? Are we giving our children confidence without making them entitled? Independence without making them feel alone? Are we creating memories they'll treasure, or are they eventually going to sit in therapy discussing that weird thing we did in 2007?

Motherhood is humbling like that.

When you were around two, Ryan became part of our lives, and you started calling him Daddy Ryan. You had your little adventures with him, especially riding around on the four-wheeler, and life continued building itself around us.

It wasn't some perfectly curated childhood where everything happened exactly according to plan.

It was ours.

And some of my favorite memories aren't the big milestone moments anyway.

They're the ridiculous little ones.

The Childhood Memories That Somehow Stay Forever

I remember driving with Ryan's brother Billy when he told you that you were cute. Without missing a beat, you responded with something along the lines of, "I know! My mommy tells me I'm beautiful and I can be whatever I want to be when I grow up."

I still love that memory.

Partly because it was adorable.

But mostly because when I look back now, I realize you believed me.

You believed you were beautiful.

You believed you could become something.

You believed your mom when she told you those things.

As parents, we don't always realize which words are going to stick. We can give our children a hundred lectures that disappear somewhere into the abyss, yet one random sentence we said while putting shoes on somehow becomes a core childhood memory.

That's why the way we speak to our children matters.

Research into child development and self-esteem has long emphasized the importance of supportive relationships and positive communication. Children gradually develop their sense of identity through many influences—temperament, peers, experiences, culture, and the messages they receive from important adults in their lives.

That doesn't mean telling a child she's beautiful every morning guarantees she'll never struggle with self-esteem. If parenting were that easy, we'd all just shout affirmations over breakfast and call it a day.

But our words become part of the environment in which our children learn who they are.

I'm glad some of mine told you that you were capable.

You also had a special relationship with my best friend Jess, who became like an aunt to you. I loved watching you develop relationships with people who loved you outside of the immediate family because children benefit from having more than one safe adult in their corner.

Then there were the memories that were significantly less sentimental.

Like the day, around four years old, when you told me you hated me while we were in the car.

Apparently I decided this was an excellent opportunity for a dramatic parenting lesson and told you that if you hated me, you could walk home.

Parenting expert of the year, ladies and gentlemen. 😂

You immediately apologized, hugged me, and eventually it became something we could laugh about.

Would forty-three-year-old me handle that exact moment the same way today?

Probably not.

And that's another thing I've learned about raising children: hindsight gives us tools we didn't have while we were actually living the moment.

I don't tell that story because I think kicking a preschooler out of the car is sound parenting advice. Please don't add that to Pinterest.

I tell it because motherhood is made up of imperfect humans learning each other in real time.

The Ordinary Years Were Actually the Important Ones

When we moved into our first house in Denver with Ryan, you made friends with the girl next door, Tay. I remember being so happy that you had a friend right there.

Our home filled with the usual pieces of family life—friends, pets, routines, laughter, stress, random chaos, and memories that didn't seem particularly important while we were making them.

One of those pets was a cat you named Water.

Yes.

Water.

Which eventually created one of those stupidly funny family moments that somehow survives for decades.

I asked Ryan for a glass of water.

He brought me the cat.

Honestly, that joke probably shouldn't still make me laugh.

It does.

Those are the memories I've started appreciating more as my daughters have gotten older. Motherhood can make us believe the important memories are the ones we carefully create: vacations, birthdays, Christmas mornings, graduation.

Those matter.

But childhood is also built inside thousands of completely ordinary days.

It's the neighbor kid.

The ridiculous pet name.

The car rides.

The music.

The conversations nobody thought to photograph.

The stupid joke that somehow becomes family history.

When children become adults, you begin realizing how much of family life happened while you weren't paying attention to the fact that someday you'd miss it.

Raising a Sensitive and Empathetic Daughter

You were always incredibly sensitive and empathetic.

I rarely had to discipline you very much because simply knowing I was disappointed could bring you to tears. You wanted to do well. You cared about people's feelings. You wanted the people around you to be happy.

When you have a sensitive child, it's easy to focus on protecting that softness. What I've learned, though, is that empathy is both beautiful and something a person eventually has to learn how to protect.

Empathetic children can grow into adults who feel responsible for everyone else's emotions. They may have difficulty saying no, setting boundaries, or recognizing when kindness is costing them too much.

That's something I understand much better now.

One of the things I hope I've taught you as you've grown is that being kind doesn't require sacrificing yourself.

You can care about someone and still have boundaries.

You can love someone and still recognize that they're not healthy for you.

You can be compassionate without becoming responsible for fixing everyone.

And you can disappoint someone without being a bad person.

That's something I wish more girls were taught early.

We spend so much time teaching daughters to be nice that sometimes we forget to teach them they are allowed to protect themselves.

Watching you navigate relationships, disappointments, adulthood, work, and all the complicated things that come with becoming your own person has reminded me that motherhood eventually requires letting your children use the lessons you've tried to give them.

That's terrifying, by the way.

Nobody mentions that when they're babies.

Eventually, they develop opinions.

And free will.

Rude. 😂

Then Somehow, You Grew Up

Your graduation came in 2020, right in the middle of a pandemic.

Of course it did.

After all those years imagining graduation, we ended up watching from the car like we were attending the world's strangest drive-in movie.

It wasn't how anyone pictured that milestone.

But I was still proud.

So incredibly proud.

And maybe there was something fitting about it too.

Life doesn't usually give us milestones exactly the way we imagine them. Motherhood certainly doesn't.

You spend years picturing what your child's life might look like, and then they become their own person and write a story you couldn't have planned for them.

That's the point, even when letting go of the plan is difficult.

As children become adults, the parent-child relationship changes. The daily dependence starts disappearing. Your child begins making decisions without asking you first. They build relationships and routines that don't include you in every part of them.

For mothers, that transition can be surprisingly emotional.

We spend years trying to raise independent children and then have the audacity to be shocked when they become independent.

Apparently nobody thought this system through. 😆

But watching you become an adult has taught me another version of motherhood.

I don't need to direct your life.

I get to witness it.

I get to support you.

I get to be here when you need me.

And I get to keep learning who you are.

What My Daughter Taught Me About Motherhood

Parents spend so much time talking about everything we teach our children that we sometimes forget how much our children teach us.

You taught me what unconditional love felt like.

You taught me responsibility in a way nothing before motherhood ever could.

You taught me that children are paying attention even when we think they aren't.

You taught me that words matter.

You taught me that raising a daughter means eventually allowing her to become someone separate from you.

And you taught me that motherhood doesn't stop evolving simply because a child grows up.

Our relationship today isn't the relationship we had when you were four, ten, sixteen, or even eighteen.

It shouldn't be.

A healthy relationship with an adult daughter has to make room for adulthood. It requires respect for boundaries, independence, different perspectives, and the reality that your child is no longer a child.

I'm still learning that part.

There are moments when I miss being needed in the ways I once was. There are moments when I miss little-you so much that I wish I could visit her for one afternoon.

I'd listen to you sing.

I'd watch you dance.

I'd probably ask you what you wanted to be when you grew up.

I'd tell you again that you're beautiful.

And I'd make sure you knew you could become whatever you wanted.

Then I'd probably ask you why in the hell you named the cat Water.

Some questions deserve answers.

To the Mothers Watching Their Firstborn Grow Up

If you're reading this while raising your own firstborn daughter—or any child who made you a parent—give yourself room to recognize something important:

You are learning too.

Your first child gets a version of you that has never done this before.

That doesn't mean you're destined to damage them. It means motherhood is a relationship in which both people grow.

You will make mistakes.

You will eventually realize some of your parenting decisions could have been handled differently.

You will probably apologize for things.

You may look back at younger versions of yourself and wonder what on earth you were thinking.

Growth allows you to do that.

What matters is whether you're willing to listen, learn, repair, and continue building the relationship as your child becomes an adult.

Our children don't need us to rewrite their entire childhood.

They need us willing to hear their experience of it.

They don't need mothers incapable of making mistakes.

They need mothers capable of acknowledging them.

And they don't need us to remain exactly who we were when they were little.

We're allowed to grow too.

Kaylee, You Were My Beginning

You were my first experience of motherhood.

That means you got my first attempts, my first mistakes, my first terrifying decisions, my first moments of realizing another person's happiness could matter to me more than my own.

You also got a love I had never experienced before.

There are things I would do differently if I could go back.

Of course there are.

I think any parent who has raised a child into adulthood and claims they'd change absolutely nothing is either extraordinarily enlightened or lying. 😆

But I wouldn't change being your mom.

I wouldn't change the little girl singing and dancing.

I wouldn't change the confidence of that tiny voice announcing that her mommy told her she was beautiful.

I wouldn't change Water.

Okay, maybe the name.

No. Actually, Water stays.

Because those strange, funny, ordinary memories became our life.

And somewhere between the little girl you were and the woman you are now, you helped create me too.

You taught me that motherhood isn't simply something a woman gives to her child.

It's something that changes her.

You made me a mother before I knew what kind of mother I would become.

And all these years later, I'm still becoming her.

I'm still learning.

Still growing.

Still figuring out when to hold on and when to step back.

But one thing has never changed.

I am incredibly proud of the woman you've become.

And if there is one thing I hope you've carried from that little girl who confidently told the world her mommy said she was beautiful and could become anything, I hope it's this:

I still believe it.

I still believe in you.

And I always will.

I love you, Kale.

Thank you for growing up with me.

~Tj 🩷