Question: Describe your father in one word. My Answer? Gold.
I, AnnaLisa Piccolo, openly admit that I am 100% a daddy's girl. And I, AnnaLisa Piccolo, can assure you that my answer to the above question has nothing to do with that.
While I was growing up, the phrase "You're such a daddy's girl", was continuously spat at me. Its purpose? To give others the power to allow me to think that I was a spoiled, ungrateful daughter. For a bit of time in my early adolescence, I had believed it due to other's opinions on how my grass looked greener on their other side. Until high school, when I decided to take every negative comment ever said to me about what my father provided me with and turn it into a positive.
Yes, my father did send me to private, Catholic school. Yes, my father did drive me to school every morning. Yes, my father would stay up late with me at night during my elementary education to assist me in the homework that I did not understand. Yes, he did let me get an adorable four month old puppy.
And yes, my father was able to do that because he pushed through over 12 hour work days, every day. Yes, he did that because he cared about me safely getting to school in the morning. Yes, he stayed up with me to explain the things I did not understand so I would continue to receive good grades. Yes, he wanted the puppy as much as I did. And yes, along the way, I realized all the sacrifices he made to ensure his little girl was happy, healthy, safe and taken care of.
Being a daddy's girl did not teach me how to take things for granted— it taught me the extent at which a loving parent is willing to go to give their child everything they never had. It taught me that hard work and dedication would carry me through life along with ambition and proper regard for others. It taught me how lucky I was to have a golden father as my role model. It showed me the type of parent that I hope to be to my future children. It showed me everything that I hope to one day give them. It enables me to strive to make the person who sacrificed so much for me proud. And it made me realize that I'm the luckiest girl in the world to be a daddy's girl.
Dear the Daddy's Girl Stereotype,
You got it all wrong.
