My Mother’s Daughter

I am my mother’s daughter. I enjoy engaging exchanges and the feeling of connection. If I walk into a room full of strangers, I can walk out with a dozen new friends. Because I’m my mother’s daughter and she taught me how to curiously follow clues in a conversation to common ground. She taught me that common ground is the most nourishing platform we can stand on. It’s what we are all born of and grow from. It’s where the roots of our deepest connections are revealed, realized, remembered. It’s where humans and plants and animals can communicate with the shared language of life. My mother would spend every single summer weekend on her hands and knees, eye-to-eye with thousands of flowers. I’d watch her through the thick, single-pane window, wondering what she was really doing. Now I know: connecting. My mother taught me how to tap into the rich soils of a region, or the silky waters of a sea, or the resonance of an alpine mountain range. She taught me how to move mountains with my mind. Because life is just a matter of perspective and if we change our mind, obstacles can be created or destroyed before our eyes. That’s how she could jet set all week and still make it home in time for dinner on Friday night. She’d wake up Monday morning in our old farm house, feed the horses, then don her high heels and cruise the red convertible past a dilapidated city to DTW in divine time to claim her first class seat direct to LAX. She’d spend all week sitting in a swivel chair, with elegant equestrian posture, eye-to-eye with despondent corporate employees. She’d gently weed through their tangled sentiment in order to find common ground, then translate the issue into sustainable solutions for management to implement. She’s a gardener. She sees ways to make something better, or more beautiful, and she does it. A seer. A do-er. A do-good-er. One Friday evening on her way home from the airport, she pulled over on the shoulder of I-75 and sprinted into rush hour traffic (in her high heels, mind you), to rescue a petrified, stray Rottweiler. Usually she came home with a stuffed animal or box of chocolates— gifting is her love language— that week she came home with Bubba. And Bubba became part of the pack of wolves (Rottweilers) that raised me. Because I’m my mother’s daughter and she trusts the universe. She trusts that all beings, including dogs, are innately good at heart, and if they stray, will return to their true nature, if given the chance. That’s why I started traveling the world and never stopped, why I love floating in the middle of the ocean, and why I talk to flowers. Because I’m my mother’s daughter so I love connection and I trust in the universe. In turn, the universe gives me things to connect to and trust in… because, like my mother, I meet the world around me eye-to-eye.