To my future daughter in law.

To my future daughter in law. I haven't met you yet, but there are a few things I want to say to you. I want to start off by saying that I know the stigma society has placed on our relationship, and I want to say right now that none of it applies to us. I do not hate you, I do not want you and my son to break up. I believe you will be an incredible mother and I thank God everyday that my son will someday find you. But when we meet, please be patient with me, because long before he was your husband, he was my little boy, my best friend, my partner in crime, my ice cream buddy, and my heart is filled with him.

When your husband was placed in my arms for the first time, I stared into his tiny little eyes and my heart filled with fear for the day it had to let him go. I wanted more than anything to keep him all to myself, I wanted every snuggle, every kiss, every nap, if he so much as blinked I wanted it to be in my direction. I didn't even want to share him with his dad. I was terrified of the day that some little girl came along and took his heart right out of my hands. And for a little while, I hated you. But being a mom is a funny thing, it may be the only time in life where something can completely destroy your heart while simultaneously being the only thing that can keep your heart beating.  Your husband is not even three and I  can already see that he is going to outgrow me. He wants to play with other kids on the playground, he is already chasing girls, and while he still wants to snuggle me when he is sick, I am no longer the friend he turns to when he wants to play race cars.

As much as I want to keep him little forever, I know that his heart will be happiest if I let him go, so all I can do is pray and beg God that every person he meets is deserving and gentle with his beautiful little heart. While my heart breaks when he ditches me on the swings to chase after some little girl on the slide, it swells with happiness when I see the smile he tries to hide as he holds her hand to help her up the steps. You see my angel, the only thing a mom wants more than for her children to be with her forever, is for them to be the happiest they can be. And as much as it kills us, we all know that as some point, no matter how much we try, we will no longer be what their heart needs to feel complete. So we pray, every single day, that the right women will find them and give them every happiness we would give them if we could only be what they needed.

my beautiful girl, you are not a threat, you are my God answered prayer. Your marriage will be more sacred to me than my own, because the happiness of my son depends on it. But that doesn't mean it isn't hard my angel. I am his mom, I am the woman who wipes away his tears when someone steals his toy, and the one who comforts him when he's sad, I wipe every booger, pack every lunch, Stay up every long night that he is sick, drive him to every game, and someday you will come along and end all of that. And I will know, probably before he will, when he meets you, the woman who will take my place.

Darling girl, when we meet it will be hard. It might take me a minute to find my footing, because it will be the moment that I KNOW that my little boy, will never be mine again. From that moment forward his heart will belong to you, and that will hurt, but it will also fill me with happiness to know that his heart is full. Please know that I love you, I love you for being everything I could never be to him. I love your for the life that he gets to have because of you. I love you for all the laughs, all the love, all the memories he gets to make with you. You see, as much as it kills me, I am just a chapter in his life, you are his whole book, and I couldn't pick anyone better for him than you.

Angel girl, When you look at him you will see your husband, your protector, a man, but I will still see a little boy in a race car shirt who just skinned his knee on the playground. Because of this I may call more often than you would like. Please know that I don't want to intrude on your time with him, its just that when he leaves a piece of my heart will be missing and I will never be ready, nor will I want to ever, fully let that go.

Beautiful girl, you may not realize it but you mean more to me than I can ever express. I want to be there for you in any way you may ever need. I want to be there when you pick the dress you are going to walk down the aisle to my son in. I want to lend you my grandmothers necklace for your something borrowed. I want to help you pick out bottles and diapers. I want to sit on the floor in a mountain of baby clothes in a brand new nursery helping you sort out sizes. I want to be there for you after you bring that baby home, to cook and clean and give you time to rest with your baby. Just as my mother in law has done for me. And darling girl, do not for one moment think that I am not on your side. I raised your husband, I have seen the good the bad and the ugly. I know how stubborn he can be. I have watched as he intentionally did exactly what I told him not to and called for my attention while doing it. I am not under any illusions that your marriage will be without bumps, but I pray every day that the beauty will outshine the hardships.

While I promise to keep my lips sealed when I haven't been asked, do not think for one minute that I will not have your back if I am called on for advice. There is never anything you cannot come to me with my darling. He may be my son, but you will be my daughter, and once I have met you, I will never stop loving you.

To my baby girl on being beautiful.

My angel girl you will hear time again through tired people that beauty is only skin deep. I want to tell you right now how wrong that is, and pray that you will be the face of change.

My baby girl, I call you beautiful every time I look at you. It flows as easily as I say your name. Because you are beautiful my angel, you are stunning in every sense of the word, but it has nothing to do with your looks.

Sweet baby, right now you can storm the playground with mud on your face and spaghetti in your hair. You extend that dirty little hand to the closest friend you see and confidently march around the playground like you own the place. You dont care that your friend's shirt is on backwards, or that her mom cut hair at home, and the label on your shirt is nothing more than an itchy inconvenience whose words hold no meaning. When you laugh you do it with all of you heart, your nose scrunches up, your eyebrows come together, your eyes become so squinty one could question if they are even there, and you snort while you laugh loud enough for everyone to hear, and you my baby, are beautiful.

Baby girl as you grow up society will tell you that your hair has to look a certain way, and your makeup has to be done to perfection for you to have value. There may come a day that if you have so much as a blemish on your face you will avoid eye contact with anyone you encounter because you will feel in your heart that you are not worthy of talking to others due to this horrendous, tiny blemish. You will conceal that nose scrunching laugh of yours and you will pick your friends based on how well they dress. So in order to give you the best head start in life my baby, I want to teach you right now how to be beautiful.

Beauty is made up of several extremely important things, and none of them have to do with makeup. Baby girl, the most important things you need to be beautiful are these: independence, humility, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, wisdom, and perseverance.

Independence: While a damsel in distress may be the cute thing in Disney films it is not something to aspire to my angel. A beautiful woman accepts help graciously but never expects it. She is perfectly capable of standing on her own two feet, and does not need others for her daily survival. We all appreciate a shoulder to lean on now and then, and could use a helping hand when the going gets tough, but diamonds are formed when carbon withstands the earth's pressures on its own.

Humility: Baby girl, you may be the fastest, smartest, best, at any and everything you do, but none of that matters if those around you think less about themselves because of your words. A beautiful woman knows to listen without comparing. Someone else's accomplishments are just as big and important as yours. There may be times that by holding your tongue the person you talk to may make it seem as though you cannot do what they have accomplished… do not take this as a challenge, when we begin the battle of who's better no body wins. Simply congratulate them on their accomplishment, know in your heart what you are capable of, and move on. The most beautiful girls do not need to convince others of how beautiful they are, it just shines through.

Kindness: There is a saying “if he is nice to you, but not to the waiter, he is not a nice guy.” There is nothing more true than that. Kindness is not just something you express to those you want to be friends with. There is not a stranger on this earth who is not deserving of your kindness. Baby girl, in the age of facebook and cell phones it is easy to forget there is a human behind the screen with a life and a story and feelings just like you. Your words carry great weight my angel and it takes 100 kind words for every hurtful one. Causing someone else pain, will do nothing to ease yours. So be kind my angel. To everyone you meet.

Compassion: You may think that kindness and compassion are one in the same but they are not. Anyone can be kind but it takes a truly beautiful heart to be compassionate. The ability to see someone else's pain and give them your love to help ease it, is not a quality anyone can possess. Unfortunately our society likes to try to discourage you from using compassion wherever you go. If you give a homeless man a dollar, you will be told that he is going to use that dollar to buy drugs. If you help a friend get on their feet, you will be told they are using you. Do it anyway my angel. Their disapproval of your compassion only proves that the world needs you more than ever. No matter how many times you get burned, no matter who looks down on you, Never. Stop. Caring.

Forgiveness: This one is probably the hardest out of all of them. This world is harsh baby girl. Especially to those who are beautiful. People will see that you are independent and call you a prude, or worse. People will notice your humility and say you have no backbone, they will notice your kindness and compassion and accuse you of ulterior motives. Forgive those people. Forgive them for letting the world make them hard. Forgive them for what they cannot understand. Forgive them for not knowing that cutting you down will not build them up. Baby girl sometimes the people with the meanest words have the saddest hearts. They need your forgiveness, even when it isn't asked for or deserved.

Wisdom: This one is for you my love. This is the one where you take everything I have said and throw it out the window, but only when the time is right. If you do everything I have taught you with your heart, you will know when to use this one. There comes a time when someone has hurt you too many times. When the wound is too deep, the pain is too much, the comments unending. That is when it is time to walk away my angel. Do not slam doors on your way out, just walk away. Show yourself the same kindness you show others every day and remove yourself from a hurtful situation and have the wisdom to never look back. You are better than that my baby. You are a rarity and you deserve to be treated as such.

Perseverance: The final quality to a truly beautiful woman is to Never. Ever. Ever. Give up. There is absolutely nothing in this world you cannot do. Do it with gusto my baby. You will be told you can't, that you are too young, too small, too inexperienced, the list goes on. Do not listen to those words. You fight like crazy for your spot. There is no one in this world that got to the top by listening to those who wanted to keep them down. You are just as deserving, just as important, just as amazing as those you idolize, and the only thing standing between you and where you want to be is the amount of fight you are willing to put in to get there. Never give up my beautiful girl. This world needs you.

To my baby girl on Letting go.

To my angel girl, at 10 months old I can already see the free little spirit that lives inside your heart. Your dreams are big, and if I have anything to say about it you will know that you are capable of achieving them all. However, with big dreams can come big heartbreak and that is what I want to talk to you about my angel.

            Baby girl, there will be times in your life when you know without a doubt that you want something more than anything else in the whole world. You will dream about this thing daily, you will build this thing up in your mind to be the unicorn of all things special. This thing that you desperately need will be the only thing between you and happiness and you will stop at nothing to have it. Then you will get this thing and you will realize that this thing, whether it’s a person, place, or object, was not actually what you envisioned being at all. This thing that you just knew was going to be the best thing ever, was not the thing that your heart dreamed it would be. Baby girl when this happens you will have two choices, you can choose to stay with this thing, and try to force it into being what you had wanted it to be, or you can love it, and let it go.

            Baby girl, so many people choose to stay and force it. They think that somehow if they stay long enough, fight hard enough, this beautiful thing that was just not right for them will morph into what they needed all along, but it never does. Instead that beautiful thing that you longed for, for so long becomes ruined. Love is replaced with resentment and desire is replaced with hate. You fight and fight to force this thing into being something you wanted until it is an unrecognizable version of itself and you no longer care for it at all. At this point my baby, its ruined. It can no longer be beautiful to you and when you finally leave it you will have no memories of love to look back on. Don’t do this baby girl. When faced with the decision to force something that you know is wrong, or leave it and let it continue to be beautiful, let it go.

            It can be so incredibly hard to walk away from something you thought you needed for so long, but sometimes that is the only way to truly love something. Knowing that something wasn’t right for you doesn’t mean that it isn’t beautiful in itself, it just means that it wasn’t what your heart needed to grow. Don’t hate this thing for not being what you needed, love it, make your peace with its new role as a memory from your past and continue on with your future. When you look back at this thing look back with love, remember how much you wanted it, remember how beautiful it was, and be reminisce for just a moment about how things were. Then look forward and continue with your new dreams.

            Baby girl, when I joined the Navy there was nothing in my life I had ever wanted more than to leave the small town I was from and see the world. I wanted to push myself beyond any limits I had ever known before, and go to places I never knew existed. So that is exactly what I did, and I LOVED IT. I loved every single minute of my experience in the Navy. I grew from a small town girl, to a woman who had seen an done things very few people will ever get to experience. I was at the top of my game in my Naval career and well on the path to success. It was everything I had ever wanted…until it wasn’t. When I became pregnant with your brother my heart shifted. I no longer desired the deployments, the pride I felt when gaining a qual or launching a jet. I no longer had the urge to stay late and come in early to be the best I could be. I just wanted to be a mom. My heart had left the Navy, but the Navy didn’t change.

            Baby girl when this happened I could have done one of two things, I could have stayed in the Navy and tried to force myself into loving this thing I had dreamed of for so long, or I could choose to love it for what it was, and let it go. I choose the second option. I left the Navy on July 17 2014 to chase a new dream, of being a mom. While my heart no longer longed for the life the Navy could provide me, but it didn’t stop loving it either. When my old ship pulled into port in my new town, my heart grew heavy and my eyes filled with tears. I desperately missed the life I had once lived. But then I looked in my back seat and saw my beautiful angels and I knew that if I was still living that life, I would be forcing a love that was no longer there. I would be miserable and want nothing more than to be with my babies. The nostalgia I feel when thinking of the Navy is the love that I didn’t lose from not forcing what I knew was no longer right. and if I had to do it all over again I would do it the exact same way.

            Baby girl your heart is filled with dreams, and I want you to chase them all. Some will last months and others will last your lifetime. Go for all of them. Love all of them. And when its time to move on, do so with love and grace. Do not step on others on your way up. Keep your roots but never stop growing. Places, people, things, they are all beautiful even if they aren’t what you need. Appreciate them for what they are, but listen to your heart and go where it guides you. You have wings baby girl. Do not be afraid to fly.