Raising Daughters

This afternoon was beautifully sunny so me and the girls went to our favourite park. 

When we got there we met three other families all with two little girls apiece. 

It was so nice to see those eight girls running and jumping, chasing and hiding, turning upside down on the monkey bars. knickers showing, not caring. using their bodies the way they were meant, movement for the joy of it.

I am loving watching Clara as she gets bolder with what she can do, Jumping high and long games of hide and seek, spotting her at the other end of the park shinning up a part of the climbing frame that I had no idea she could reach.

Scraped knees and bumped noses, all the fullness and beauty of the human body and none of the grown up self consciousness.

Then theres the baby whos almost not a baby anymore, looking at her toddler beginnings my heart catches in my mouth a bit.

Yet shes still all chub rolls and dimples, flashing her teeth at the world. When you take her vest off she pats her lovely round tummy with apparent satisfaction and smiles absent mindedly.

When I ask my toddler if shes beautiful she answers with an emphatic 'yes', 

Easy.

My prayer is that the freedom they feel about their bodies now, the pride in the new things they are doing with them and the knowledge that they are inherently beautiful and comprehensively lovely will stay with them.

I feel nervous for the things they will come up against and I know that my mother love cannot always protect them from the beasts that they must slay for themselves.

So we will encourage them and teach them, grow them and love them the best that we can. 

forest school girls

being a pirate!

survival training!