Dear Ellie:

I love how when you hear ANY kind of music you immediately throw your hand up and start to dance. Music has that kind of effect on people and I think its safe to assume that you will grow up to like all kinds of music. There will be some songs that will learn the words to almost immediately and they will just kind of stick with you. One of those songs for me is Jay Z’s Public Service Announcement…no matter how long I go between hearing that song I can pretty much recite it word for word (and yep I’ll probably embarrass you doing it). My favorite line though is “no matter where you go you are who you are player”. I think its important to remember who you are no matter the situation, that way no one can tell you who you are or who you are supposed to be. You see my baby when you allow others to dictate who you are you loose sight of who it is that you truly are and where you’re supposed to be going. I am your mother; I had the privilege of getting to know you and your personality for months before anyone else could experience you for themselves but even with that head start its not for me to say the fine details of who you are, what you should do, and how you should do it. You’re your own person my baby. And while I will never stop reminding you that you are a Queen and you are more than capable of greatness your journey is your own. So even when I tell you that you are beautiful, intelligent, amazing, talented, etc if you don’t know it for yourself the value is lost. Never let someone else’s compliments, even more important to remember when you receive as many as you do, drive you more than the good things you say to yourself when you look in the mirror because you can only control the frequency of the latter. It still puts a smile on my face for my crush aka your Daddy to pay me a compliment but I’ve learned that before he says anything it makes me even more confident to have already told myself. And its not a matter of arrogance or being conceited but rather of simply knowing who you are. Honestly I don’t consider arrogance and confidence to be synonyms, in fact often I’ve seen it only speed up the process of people inspecting your flaws and waiting for you to fail when you present yourself as perfect or better than others. We ALL have flaws my baby so remember being and knowing who you are also applies to the good and the “bad” because while there is nothing wrong with healthy criticism it clouds our ability to truly judge if that criticism is coming from a healthy place when we haven’t been honest with ourselves. So just like you look yourself in the mirror and say I’m amazing you have to also be able to say I have flaws, which I can work on and this is how I’m going to do that. If you leave it up to the rest of the world to tell you where you need improvement you’ll be scrambling to repair things that were never broken. Know yourself my baby and be yourself…and once you do that you don’t have to say who you are you just are. I often find myself second guessing the people who constantly feel the need to state how good a person they are. In my experience some of the best people I know or learned of were never big on bragging in fact they were more so focused on: A. informing you that they were not perfect or B. encouraging others to be great. I can’t remember one speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that was all about how great a civil rights leader he was yet history tell us he was. Greatness inspires greatness not by telling someone “I am greatness and I do great things” but by simply being. Be who you are my baby and you will write your story for the world to tell in your own voice without ever saying a word.

Love you always,

Mommy

P.S. To the girl waiting for the first day of school to see if her outfit is cool enough or for the person she likes to tell her she’s beautiful…please don’t. There is nothing wrong with enjoying limelight or a compliment but you can not rely on the world around you for it, its far to unstable to put your self esteem in its hands. Have your head high the moment it comes off the pillow. Just imagine if you spent as much time impressing yourself when no one’s watching as you do preparing to please others when. That is where the true confidence lies, the kind that doesn’t require a single word uttered.