Dear Mom,

How do I begin this letter other than saying how extremely proud I am to be your daughter; that every single day seems like I learn something new from you. I remember I always wanted to be like you. I wanted to grow up to be exactly like you to be as strong and as beautiful as you. I would always see you handle things with so much strength and willingness to not let anything bring you down. Whenever something bad happened you had this way of pushing forward.

When I was young I remember trying to please you in so many ways that I would do everything you asked and always tried to make sure that the things you asked me to do were done the right way. In fact, I always made sure because I not only wanted your approval, but I needed it. I wanted to be sure that you approved of my every action, my grades were phenomenal only because it is what you expected of me. But this soon became difficult because though I had amazing grades I had to work hard to keep them because you expected it.

Then, as I got older, this changed. Instead of seeking to please you, I decided that I wanted to do what I felt was the right thing and that included rebelling. I was stubborn—kind of like you. Of course, I was a little hard headed and always wanting things to go my way, why wouldn't I be? I mean I wanted to be just like you, but things got complicated along the way. See, I wanted to be respected for my decisions and be able to make them on my own, but you didn't agree with the things that I wanted and of course this didn't sit well with me. I wanted to do things my way but you wanted to tell me where I was wrong. This ultimately led to disagreements and arguments.

One day, things changed and our relationship changed. We started to face challenges and things came tumbling down in our lives. Things that knocked us down and made it almost impossible to get back up. But within these struggles we learned to pick ourselves up and by doing so we helped build each other up and along with this came the build up of our relationship we began to become better. Instead of arguments, we had discussions and instead of you telling me I was wrong, you gave me advice.

I learned through these past two years how hard it is to live no knowing what the world is going to throw at you. Luckily I have had my rock with me, my best friend but more than anything, my mother. I spent my life looking at everything she told me as restrictions on what I could and couldn't do when I should have been taking it as advice. I know that things can get hard but I will always be glad to have the best friend that no one really knows about.

Sincerely,

Your Daughter.