I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how profound children actually are.
How deeply they shift us.
How loudly they mirror us.
How quietly they heal us… without even trying.
And I want to share something I don’t think I’ve ever said this clearly:
I never wanted children.
For most of my life, the idea of becoming a mum felt… foreign.
Too big.
Too overwhelming.
Too far from the life I thought I was meant to live.
And then Millie came.
And I resisted it — hard.
Not because I didn’t love her.
But because motherhood held up a mirror I wasn’t ready to look into.
Because being a parent meant surrendering to a role I didn’t feel prepared for.
Because it cracked me open in places I’d spent years trying to keep closed.
It felt like I was fighting something inevitable —
something that had already chosen me long before I chose it.
I’m a mum.
I have a little girl.
And she is mine in a way that is cosmic.
But surrender didn’t happen overnight.
It happened over years.
Over quiet moments.
Over breakdowns and breakthroughs.
Over choosing, again and again, to love in a way I had never been taught.
This past year and a half, something has shifted in me.
I’ve been slowly, gently improving not just my relationship with parenting…
but my relationship with myself.
My inner child.
My nervous system.
My sense of safety.
My softness.
My capacity to be held… so I can hold her.
Because the truth is, Millie isn’t just my daughter.
She’s my teacher.
She’s a tiny mirror walking around in a three-year-old body.
I see her do things and it’s like watching myself —
the good,
the challenging,
the patterns,
the light,
the shadows.
All of it.
And that’s the wildest thing about children:
they don’t lie.
They don’t pretend.
They reflect exactly what they’re absorbing.
So when she does something that triggers me…
that’s not her.
That’s something I need to look at.
Something unresolved inside me.
Something asking for gentleness, not discipline.
Children are profound because they show us who we are
long before they become who they’re meant to be.
And honestly… how blessed are we?
How blessed to witness souls that are still so pure —
pure joy,
pure expression,
pure emotion,
pure love.
How blessed to learn from them without them even trying.
To soften because of them.
To grow because they exist.
To parent ourselves as we parent them.
Millie has been — and will always be —
my greatest teacher.
She reflects the parts of me I abandoned.
She reflects the parts of me I’m proud of.
She reflects the woman I’m becoming.
Children are not here to break us.
They are here to awaken us.
And being a mum…
being her mum…
is the most profound initiation I’ve ever walked through.