In 2019, I kept a virtual diary. It was really a collection of letters to God. I spent most of those entries complaining or asking. One day we will talk about that year but this is not about that. This is a collection of entries for you, my dear daughter.
When I was younger, I wrote a lot. I even believed at some point that I would make a career out of writing and who knows I still might but I realised something in 2020, that I wrote entries randomly but I could write them for you Daughter.
When I finally moved away from home at 20, when I started coming home only at Christmas, my mother – your grandmother and I began to fight less. In fact, I often felt like she had become my baby. A subject matter she had raised with me when I was younger. She had promised that the same way she had become a mother to her mother, I would someday be her mother too but I hadn’t realised it would be so soon. I thought I’d be married with kids by the time I would have to do this but it came at me fast.
Once when I was reflecting on the relationship my mother and I have, I realised that when I was younger, I often judged her unfairly. She had made it a point to remind me often that she had been young once and it was incredible that I didn’t think she would understand. I believed her more when we fought less. The thing about moving to a new city and beginning to earn for myself was, I had more of the world to see and that exposure gave me reasons to tell her “you were right” more often than I wanted to. I agree that she doesn’t know everything but I believe that by heeding some of her warnings, I have avoided some of the major mistakes she has made. It is in my relationship with her that I have learnt something crucial – it is important for you to know that there is nothing new under the sun and it doesn’t matter what it is, I bet I have an experience that will help me understand how you’re feeling and how I can help you get through it.
I strongly encourage you to make friends and hold them dear. Your grandmother always says “make new friends but keep the old for one is silver and the other is gold”. She is right and this is my first counsel. To this, I will however add my dear daughters that because you are my blood and my flesh, I am the only one who can promise to move mountains for you and come through. Friends are good but they have their individual lives too, never imagine that they are beyond reproach for mother used to tell me things about friends she had. I used to swear that it could never be my friends but as I grew older, I realised that it could be and it had little to do with whether or not I am an excellent judge of character, it was more the fact that you never really know a person.
Dear Daughter, think of this as the diary of my youth, a collection of some of my best and worst memories. Think of this as a window to my soul. You might see parts of me that I didn’t intend to share but if they help you to be a better woman then dear daughter, I have done what God put me on this earth to do as a mother.
Sometimes I will be tough but it is because I love you. For your sake, I promise to consistently ask Yahweh to give you a father who softens my hardness so that you know that you can get a cushion when I am the hard rock that bruises you.
As best I can, I will date these entries. I will try not to change the content – I want you to know how excited I am to share this journey. Some of the entries in this will be pieces I wrote a long time ago and you may see a disjointed flow but I will try and make it as easy to read as possible.
