I have just a little air…

to breathe.  So, I used it tonight to talk to my daughter.  Her world, at 17, was collapsing.  All in one night.  All 17 years of it.  Boom.  Or at least that is how it felt.  I told her to just keep breathing.  That as real and scary as these feelings were, she needed to go through them, not around them.  That they weren’t bigger or stronger than she was.  (As strong as they were).  I told her not to be afraid of them.  To look at them straight on.  Embrace them.  Feel them.  And know there was the other side.  The sooner she went through them, the sooner they would likely subside.  Otherwise, she was destined to live avoiding.  Living in fear of this thing called life because of the feelings it might produce.  I told her to Embrace her mistakes.  Learn from them.  To give herself permission to make them.  A lot.  Man, I hope she can repeat this all back to me in a month or two.  I hope I believe it when she does.

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