Raising a Daughter Alone: The Day She Doesn't Need You Anymore

(And That's Exactly What You Wanted)

Today my daughter bought her first car, and not just any car—her dream car. She knew what she wanted and she made it happen—a mixture of the hard work she has put in working this last half of her life.

Twenty-five years ago I was 22, single and nearly nine months pregnant, living in Ukiah, California with a mother I never had an easy relationship with, and that's putting it lightly. For the first two years of my daughter's life, I wondered if I could do it alone. It wasn't until I returned to Southern California that I learned I could.

Starting Over

It wasn't easy at first, but my dad had put me up in a hotel for a week where my daughter and I spent her second birthday. A week later we were staying with him in a studio in a warehouse used to restore vintage race cars on Magnolia near PCH in Long Beach. Shortly after I landed a three-day temp job at American Honda Motor Company—where I impressed the nearly impossible to impress supervisor who remained my "mama" decades after the five years I worked there.

I got a one bedroom apartment and changed her crip into a toddler bed on one side of the bedroom with mine on the other and the hallway was turned into her art gallery with paintings from ceiling to floor. The neighborhood was rough, the cops were constantly telling us we didn't belong there, but I made friends with my neighbors and we looked out for each other's kids. We were all hard working and doing the best we could. I worked hard for my daughter, trying to create a stability I had not known growing up.

Finding My Strength: Raising a Daughter Alone

It was when my daughter became the ages I was when I experienced different traumas growing up that I began to see myself as strong, and not just broken. Raising a daughter alone was difficult. I didn't have a healthy example to base anything on, I did what I thought was right and in a way we called "firm but fair." I know it took me a long time to understand how wounded a place I was operating from. Some of my abuse I didn't even know of until I was over 40 but has made sense why love and trust came so hard for me for so long. They still do.

There was never a relationship with the man we call "sperm donor" and there was never financial support either. After growing up in the midst of my parents' War of the Roses divorce, when he said he didn't want more children, I took him at face value and left. I was friends with his brother—if he wanted to, he could have reached out. I never spoke of him when she was growing up. She didn't hear any spewing hate like I heard in my parents' homes for decades after their divorce. I didn't speak of him to anyone else because it wasn't for anyone to know before her.

When she was eleven, she asked me teary-eyed one day if she had a father, and then I shared with her the story of how we met, showed her who he was online, her half-brother and half-sister, and that I had even messaged him but he never reached out. She hasn't been interested since.

Watching Her Bloom

My daughter was so easy-going as a baby and child that when she began preschool I was afraid the other kids would be able to bully her. One day as I was picking her up from school, I was talking with one of the teachers and asked how she was doing. They laughed and said she gets along great with the other kids, but when they want to move on to something else and she isn't done, she stays and does what she wants alone. I had nothing to worry about.

Every Friday I would pick her up and ask her if she was ready to party like a rockstar, and she always said yes—usually with a streak of hot pink or purple bopping in her hair to prove it.

In third grade I stopped checking her homework. She didn't need me to.

In fifth grade I had to take her in to school so she could recreate a drawing the GATE program didn't believe she drew. It was fun to watch their faces light up in both amazement and the realization of their incorrect assumption.

Building Her Future

She always loved making money and started flipping snack packs in high school in addition to the hours she worked for the company I was helping grow.

She was raised on Microsoft Publisher and PowerPoint, where I taught her how to copy and paste using control shortcuts and choose what color her shapes could be. She quickly learned to spell her favorite things (often going to her picture books and copying the letters from beneath the item she loved) and would create entire stories about cats or about imaginary things we would do on a weekend together.

That turned into Word before I knew it, where the stories became more elaborate, and finally Excel, where she learned how to manage multi-site and state programs and keep track of details and create formulas and link spreadsheets before she could even be old enough to drive.

The Year of Highs and Lows

We call 2018 the year of highs and lows. We had floor seats to Kendrick Lamar and SZA with Jay Rock and ScHoolboy Q (who made me lose my voice for five days), and she was crowned first runner-up Miss Teen Long Beach. We were going on vacations and growing the company I had been working for and expanding into a new state when one of the worst things that can happen to a young girl did.

That is her story to tell, but what I will share is how bravely she fought to recover despite having to be alone for much of the summer after while I was jumping on planes every week for work. By the time school was preparing to start for her senior year, she made the hard decision that she couldn't return because she didn't feel safe at her school. She chose to graduate on her own time and terms—which for my 3.8GPA boss babe meant early.

It wasn't the ending we expected to high school, and it was hard for her at first. She had been seeking help from the incident months before and eventually made a decision to go on medication.

The Darkest Day

Unfortunately, my daughter is as sensitive to medicine as I am, and it led to me almost losing her on January 21, 2019. That should have stopped us both in our tracks, but instead I was still trying to balance the needs of my growing company with being at the hospital with my daughter who was lucky to be alive.

Less than six months later, I resigned.

Seven days after that, I heard "endocannabinoid system" for the first time, and you all know the rest by now, don't you?

Story for another day, I promise.

Full Circle

Today, I gave up my car so she could get hers. It felt right—another one of those moments where sacrifice doesn't feel like sacrifice at all, just the natural order of how love works. She's getting ready to live with her boyfriend of four years and his family, and I am so happy she has found them. I feel better leaving knowing she has people who love her and will protect her as their own.

People who won't let her fail or be alone.

I prayed for that for her as a baby. I always felt bad I couldn't give her more, and so I gave her all I could. I probably should have saved a little more for myself, but honestly, the best life I have been living these past years has been hard financially but rich in every other way.

The universe appears to be calling me overseas, but first there are things unraveling here that require tending to. I'm experiencing the familiar pull of change again, but this time it's different. This time, she doesn't need me to stay.

And that's exactly what I wanted.