Chapter 3

I have a 5-year-old daughter and after reading this chapter, I have begun to see my daughter asking “Am I lovely?”. It’s not that she is doing anything different than before I have just become more aware of it. For example, when she dresses up in her princess attire the first thing she does is prance around in front of her dad. She just looks at him and continues doing it until he says something. Sometimes my husband is in the middle of something and doesn’t see her right away, and the longer she waits the more the look on her face changes. At first I see anticipation, then just a smile, then she’ll call his name, and if he still has not said anything she gets a look of fear and worry. And once he says something she has a perma-grin on her face as she dances away excitedly, and the better the compliment the bigger the smile and better the dancing. Keep in mind that if you are trying to fix the air conditioner when it is above 90 degrees in the house, as a man, the last thing on your mind is your daughter fishing for compliments. Yes, in a perfect world he and I would notice every attempt and always stop and say the right thing. However, we aren’t perfect people.

I think when we were little girls we all did stuff like this. Only for me it was “Am I lovely when I hit the softball? Or ride my bike?” Between being that little girl and growing up, I became wounded. Then I became some weird mesh of the dominating, desolate, and indulging women and behind almost all my fears and hurts, I usually find some fear of abandonment.