Life, Lessons & Lylah

I began writing to my daughter before she was born.

I knew the very moment I had conceived her. I remember it so distinctly that I literally spoke out loud to God in that moment. I made a promise that if I were pregnant, I would do everything in my power to take care of her—to love her, protect her, teach her what I had learned, and remain willing to learn from her, too.

I didn't know then just how much she would shape me.

How much deeper she would take me into myself.

How much she would teach me about love.

From the very beginning, I felt an unusual sense of knowing about her. I knew she was a girl. I knew what I would name her—Lylah Rosa. And before I ever found out that she was, in fact, a girl, I had a dream about her.

She was around three or four years old, and I remember vividly her dark brown eyes and beautiful curly hair. I felt like the dream was telling me that she had chosen me, that she was ready for me, and that I had been given a glimpse of the miracle of her before she was mine to hold.

I've always been deeply intuitive and sensitive to the world around me. For much of my life, I didn't understand that sensitivity. Sometimes it felt overwhelming. But over time, I began to see it differently—not as something I needed to quiet, but as something I could learn to listen to.

Motherhood deepened that understanding.

There is a quote by Dr. Shefali Tsabary that has stayed with me:

“The relationship we share with our infant can only be described as a deeply intimate energetic dance in which two souls unite and destinies merge.”

That is how motherhood has felt to me.

I didn't simply feel that I was raising another person. I felt that we were learning from one another.

And that realization changed the way I thought about parenting.

I began studying conscious parenting, reading, taking classes, and learning as much as I could—not because I believed I could become a perfect mother, but because I wanted to understand her, understand myself, and become more aware of the ways I was shaping the person she was becoming.

I began to understand that children aren't simply empty spaces waiting for us to fill them with everything we know.

They arrive with their own personalities, their own sensitivities, their own strengths, their own ways of seeing the world.

Our role is not to create them into who we think they should be.

It is to help give them the foundation, guidance, safety, and tools to discover who they already are.

And Lylah has taught me that lesson over and over again.

She has always had a strong sense of who she is. She knows what she likes, what she doesn't like, what she believes, and what feels right to her. She is kind and compassionate, but she is also strong. She can be soft without being weak and confident without needing to make someone else feel small.

Watching that unfold in her has made me look at my own life differently.

Because while I have been teaching her, she has been teaching me, too.

She has taught me that kindness and strength can exist together.

That knowing yourself is something worth protecting.

That being confident doesn't mean controlling anyone else.

And that sometimes the greatest thing we can give a child is the space to become exactly who they are.

Motherhood has also taught me something much harder:

I cannot control everything that happens to my daughter.

I cannot control how other people treat her. I cannot prevent every disappointment, every hurt, or every experience I wish I could take away.

There have already been things I would have given anything to protect her from.

But I have learned that protecting a child does not mean controlling the world around them.

I can love her.

I can listen.

I can believe her.

I can hold her when she is afraid.

I can teach her that someone else's choices do not determine her worth.

I can help her find her way through what hurts.

But I cannot live her life for her.

And perhaps one of the most important lessons of motherhood is learning the difference between protecting your child and trying to control the world around them.

I cannot always protect her from what happens to her.

But I can help her know that what happens to her does not get to decide who she becomes.

That has become one of the deepest beliefs I carry as a mother.

And it is also part of why Little Balanced Beings exists.

I want children to have opportunities to learn things I had to discover much later in life—to understand their emotions rather than fear them, to recognize what their bodies are telling them, to learn ways to calm themselves, express what they feel, build confidence, and listen within.

I want them to know that difficult emotions don't make them broken.

That asking for help is a strength.

That they can be kind without abandoning themselves.

That they can move through difficult experiences without allowing those experiences to define the entirety of who they are.

And perhaps most importantly, I want them to know themselves deeply enough that when life inevitably challenges them, they have something within themselves to return to.

Because I don't believe motherhood is about creating a child who never gets hurt.

I believe it is about helping a child know who they are deeply enough that when life hurts them, they do not lose themselves inside of it.

I thought I was going to spend my life teaching my daughter how to live.

Instead, she has spent seven years teaching me how to live more fully myself.

She didn't just become my daughter.

She became one of my greatest teachers.

And the more I learn from her, the more I believe that perhaps our children aren't simply waiting for us to teach them.

Perhaps they are inviting us to become more conscious of how we teach, how we love, and how we live.

That is the kind of foundation I hope to help create through Little Balanced Beings.

Growing mindful hearts, resilient minds, and balanced bodies