I am the mother of a strong-willed daughter. The proud, frustrated, and exhausted mother, if I’m being honest, but that little girl? She is my heart.
My daughter is brave and kind and resourceful. She is ferocious and stubborn and unmovable. She is smart and funny and loyal. She is hard.
It is possible for her to be all those things at once, and I love each little part of her.
For me, the struggle comes when her strong-willed nature comes out in public. I see the stares, the clucking tongues, and I hear the non-stop advice about how to get her to “behave.”
But as the quote by Eleanor Roosevelt goes, well-behaved women seldom make history.
So if you see me out in the world with my strong-willed daughter, I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t expect you to know what our lives are like on a day to day basis. And I’m not going to give you a lecture on it when you correct us in a Chick-fil-A playplace.
But here’s what I wish you knew about my strong-willed daughter.