A child can be loved so much for the woman she is expected to become that no one notices who she already is.
Field Notes
From the beginning, girls are handed futures to rehearse: the right clothes, the right beauty, the right man, the right kind of life. Adults may call it guidance, but sometimes it is love made conditional on resemblance—be like us, want what we want, become someone we understand.
To the little girl in the oversized shoes: you were never here to become anyone’s idea of a good daughter or a good woman. You did not betray anyone by growing into yourself. The love that required you to disappear was never the love you were taught to call it.