“Motherhood is such a beautiful part of a woman’s life and I’m so happy you chose to embrace it. It’s 9 months of a person growing inside of you. 9 months of all those chemical, hormonal changes in your body and stretch marks spreading across your skin like maps to places you forget to love, bringing out all the softness you buried under your chest when the world got too rough. 9 months of every side of you that’s still learning how to heal. None of it all matters when that tiny bundle is cradled in your arms, struggling to keep her eyes open. I hope you’re not too rough pushing her out of the nest and teaching her how to fly. I know you’re scared for her future and for your own, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a little more time in learning how to get back on your feet and walk again. I hope you teach your child to be brave enough to fall over and over again because you’ll always be there to pull her back up so that the pitter-patter of her footsteps and the melody of her giggles resonate through your house, which has forgotten it was ever quiet. I hope you teach her to get trapped in the web of her own head and fall in love with the things that save her. I hope you teach her to be loving and caring, to know the difference between fairytales and snares, to stumble on rocks and bleed but to never stop craving the smell of fresh mud after the rain under her feet. I hope you teach her to believe in the marvel of her curious wide eyes and scraped knees, because even when you catch a butterfly and she sheds her colours on your palms, she doesn’t stop escaping and fluttering her wings. I hope you teach her how important it is to follow your own heart because you never want her to grow old and realise that in her pursuit for stability, she forgot how to be happy. But most of all, I hope you teach her to be kind. To learn to love the fuzzy feeling of warmth spreading across her chest and her palms every time a wide smile stretches itself across someone’s face because she’d rather buy them food than save all her paychecks for jewellery she’d never use. To teach her to be happy with being called crazy every time she’s grinning and excitedly talking about how she rescued a mangled puppy off the streets to give it a home. To teach her how the world runs on these random acts of kindness but everyone is so deeply immersed in their own troubles that they forget how important it is to smile. Last of all, I hope you teach her to say, “I love you” and never not mean it.”