Ask any parent what it’s like to be one, and I would bet money that you’ll get some variation of the same answer…

Exhausting. Rewarding, but exhausting. But rewarding.

It’s the hardest and most important job I’ve ever had. I don’t think a single parent would disagree with that much.

The trouble is, I have the added challenge of re-parenting myself at the same time. I not only have to be the best parent I can for my daughter, I have to be the parent I never had for the little girl inside me, who’s never received the kind of thoughtful devotion I’m doing all I can to give my actual kid. My therapist suggested once that I think about my younger self as a foster kid who’s come to live with Adult Me, and consider how to support her in whatever ways she needs and is able and willing to receive.

Here’s a sound byte that is sure to be unpopular for some people. Survivors of trauma have learned that there is only one person we can really, truly count on. And it isn’t our parents, or our friends, or our spouses, or our children. It is ourselves.

Ayesha Siddiqi is credited as the originator of the quote, “Be who you needed when you were younger.” This quote has long been a guidepost for me, but its significance has slowly evolved. I used to use this inspiration as a sign that I was on the right career path, but, my career path has been a winding way through Wonderland. So, that seems less relevant than it used to. I’ve come to learn that when I think of this quote, it’s a matter of personally being the kind of adult that I should have had in my life when I was a child. I need to be that kind of adult for the children in my life now – the students I teach, the child of my own that I’m raising – and for the child inside of me who’s become crystallized in my psyche.

I worry a lot about screwing it up. I’m pretty sure that’s typical. When I first found out I was pregnant, I was sure I was having a boy. I was surprised and then terrified to learn I was carrying a girl. Somehow, I had it in my head that if I had a daughter, I was going to royally damage her in the same way I was royally damaged. This was pure foolishness, of course. First of all, royal damage knows no gender, ha! Second of all, I won’t do the same damage to my kid that my mother did to me, because I’m not my mother. Will she have different damage, my kid? Maybe. But at least it won’t be the same!

This is an important sticking point, as it turns out. My damage is my own; it’s not for my daughter to carry. It’s not her burden to bear, and it isn’t her job to help me with it. If anything, this I know is the difference in parenting styles between my mother and myself. My mother had no boundaries between her emotions, feelings, needs, pain, memories, history, struggles…and me. Already naturally empathetic, I became the empty vessel she poured everything into that I should never have had to hold for her. I refuse to allow my daughter to turn into that same vessel.

Nearly four years old now, I am learning just how much my daughter is like me; she, too, is naturally empathetic. She is caring and compassionate; she is loving and kind and eager to help.

She is a perfect, clean, fluffy marshmallow, still safe so far from the inevitable charring that our burning mess of a world will bring to her. I am not so naive as to think she’ll stay unmarred. My only hope is that she’ll behave like the best marshmallows do when they get toasted; though she may get crispy on the outside, she’ll stay warm and sweet on the inside, maybe become even more so for having touched the flame.

This week, I’ve come down with a really nasty sinus infection that has thrown me for a loop. On Sunday afternoon, I went upstairs to rest in bed for awhile, and ended up having to comfort a sobbing kiddo. She’d never, or at least rarely, seen me stop to rest before (something to work on…), and it had worried her very much. She told me in between her wails that she “didn’t want me to be upstairs, because she loves me!” I reassured her that I would be just fine, and promised her that when she got back from running an errand with Daddy, I would be back downstairs (a sign for her that all was alright, apparently). I’m slowly but surely getting better, but, every time I have a coughing fit, she hugs or pats me and tells me it will be okay. She is the sweetest thing; as her mother, my job is to encourage that sweetness, but also to teach her about emotional boundaries. Compassion is crucial – but it needs to exist within a framework of understanding whose feelings belong to whom. “This is your dance space, this is my dance space,” to quote Patrick Swayze’s character from Dirty Dancing.

My daughter is learning how to manage her own emotions; that’s more than enough work for a four-year-old. She doesn’t need to manage my emotions too. That is not her job. It is my job. And if I have to teach myself how to do that job, while on the job, and in turn while simultaneously teaching her how to do it for herself, well, I guess that is my lot in life. I am simultaneously parenting and re-parenting.

Yes, I learned at an early age that the only person I can count on in the end to pick me back up, to pull me out of the inferno, is myself. I want my daughter to learn a different lesson. I cannot raise her under the delusion that she’ll never come into contact with pain, because pain is inevitable. But I am not raising her to fight my battles for me.

She’ll have her own battles to fight; I’ll show her that she can do it.