My daughter is beautiful, smart and almost sixteen. When she agreed to interview me for #TalkToMe for the HuffPost challenge on Facebook I was surprised. She is somewhat shy like a teenager (except of course when it comes to snapchat and her million followers.)
Her questions were about the things I learned as a teen that I could pass on to her. And how I found my passion. The thing that moved me was how much it mattered how I answered. Suddenly I was struck by the power my words carried, that my experiences had meaning, that as a woman, growing up as a girl, I had something important to pass down to my daughter.
Growing up I never thought about how my behaviors would affect another young woman thirty eight years later. It was the 70s. I drank, I did drugs, I skipped school, I was deeply unhappy. I never thought about how my actions would be viewed by a child of my own. I was honestly just trying to survive.
I didn’t have the same childhood that she had. I had less advantages, I had fewer parents, I had more problems. And now, here I sat, barely a survivor of my own teenage years, passing on the only advice I knew: be strong. Be independent. Follow your passion. Don’t try to be like anyone else. Lessons I didn’t even know I had learned until I said them out loud.
To see the video of our interview and hear wisdom from both sides, check out the full article on Huffington post.
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