It just appeared on my tongue, distilling what I wanted her to be and how I hoped she would think of herself. There was nothing premeditated about that little sentence.
“I am strong and fearless,” I taught her to say when she was 2, as she hesitated on the playground, her lips quivering as she considered crossing a rope-netting bridge strung 10 feet above the ground. She could be fierce and funny and loving and steely-spined. But after decades of navigating life as a woman, I knew unequivocally what I wanted for her: to see herself as capable of anything, constrained by none of the old limits on who women must be and how they must move through the world. When I gave birth to my daughter, three years before my son was born, I had no idea how to be a mother. Raising a boy sometimes feels like traveling in a foreign land.
