Joanna, thank you for sharing Gibran's words with us, they really resonate with me and describe so well the things I try to be as a parent, the respect I do my best to hold for my children as individuals in their own rights, and the desire I have to try to ensure that they grow up with a strong sense of self, that they feel secure in, to carry them forwards into the unknown.

Kym, thank you to you too, for sharing your experiences as a mother whose children are now adults, and for offering us those words of reassurance.

It's interesting how you relate things back to your own childhood, as I was expected to share everything with my mother, I was told it was wrong to keep anything to myself, that as my mother she should know everything about me and my thoughts and feelings, yet whatever I shared was never the right thing in her eyes, unless it was what she had told me I should be thinking/doing/feeling...it's like I wasn't permitted to have any sense of self, and anything that was "me" was bad/wrong/undesirable/the ways and thoughts of a crazy, mentally ill person etc.

And so I know that is why it is important to me that my girls are "themselves" not an extension of me, or a product of what I might like them to do/be, that all of their thoughts, feelings, ideas etc are valid, and that I love them just the same regardless of that, regardless of whether we've had disagreements, regardless of how much they've tested me that day - the love is there just the same.