A lesson from my daughter, Lottie

With both International Women’s Day and Mothering Sunday around the corner, the focus on us females got me thinking about my own daughter, Lottie, and the inevitable excitement and challenges that she will face as she grows, develops and learns. Lottie learns from me as I nurture her, teach her and guide her. However, just the other day the tables were turned and I realised that there is much for me to learn from her and indeed from children the world over.

My daughter handed me a handwritten note that read “you are special mummy because you make me smile like an upside down rainbow” – for each letter she had used a different coloured felt tip pen so that the note read in the coloured order of the rainbow. So, I smiled like an upside down rainbow and I reached for a tissue because her note had tugged at my heart and the tears were welling up.

We need to be original in our sentiments for that originality that has the power to tug at our heart

What my daughter had written was beautiful and it was the originality of her sentiment and the fact that she had written it in her own words that really tugged at my heart. And that’s the lesson I learned. For I believe that originality and being able to share with others exactly what you are thinking and feeling, to have the power to tug at someone’s heart has an absolute place in today’s society.

We are sensory creatures – we use our senses to “makes sense” of our world – we see, hear, feel (touch and emotions), smell and taste our worlds – yet very often we feel that it is a “weakness” to cry or show emotion. We need to take ownership of our feelings, share them with others. We need to empathise with the feelings of others in order to have a deeper understanding of one another. We need to be original in our sentiments for that originality that has the power to tug at our heart – that stands for a lot and that is the great lesson I learned from my daughter.